THE SIDE OF THE VOLCANO

WEST Berliners resemble the peasants who live on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. They are not easily frightened by international rumblings, sulphuric diatribes, or the hot-lava flow of Communist threats. Though their city is split in two, though they are completely surrounded by Communist territory. West Berliners view the situation calmly and glory in the nickname Insulaner--islanders.

Sweltering Day. Some 500 streets are sealed off in police-guarded dead ends, often with two West German policemen on one side, six East German policemen on the other. Streetcars and buses come to abrupt stops, and only subways and elevated trains run unhampered throughout the city. If a boy in West Berlin wants to phone a girl in East Berlin, the call must be routed via Frankfurt (West Germany) and Leipzig--a distance of more than 500 miles to make a phone ring in the next block. There are no country weekends for West Berliners, since the countryside is Communist. The most popular and convenient vacation spot is nearby Lake Wannsee. It is usually as jammed as Coney Island on a sweltering day in August.

Eighteen months ago there were signs that the volcano was about to erupt.Russia's Nikita Khrushchev abruptly issued an ultimatum demanding that Western troops be evacuated from Berlin and that the city's links with West Germany be severed. But despite Khrushchev's threats, 1959 represented the best business year ever, and industrial production in the first quarter of 1960 is an impressive 14% above last year. The West Berlin government pressed ahead with supplementary stockpiling until now the city can subsist normally for six months without outside supplies.Berliners know that no limited cutoff of traffic by the Communists can starve them out. Said a businessman: "Now it will take deeds, not words, to really shake us."

Khrushchev's proposal to make West Berlin a "free city," embedded in East Germany and cut off from the West, has had another result: the Insulaner have stopped grumbling about their lot and decided that the status quo is not so bad after all. The currently favorite illustration of Khrushchev's proposals: Two men are arguing. One is standing on the edge of a cliff. Says the first: "We'll compromise. Let's both take one step backward."

The young admire and support their elders' determination. But they see no future for themselves in a beleaguered city and most of them try their fortunes in West Germany. West Berlin is an aging city--more than half of its 2,200,000 inhabitants are now over 45. Contrasts are omnipresent: a fashion show may be held in the striated shadow of the bombed-out remains of the Anhalter Station.

Returning Natives. While the gales of power politics howl over its head, Berlin goes about its business. By day, the streets are crowded with shoppers; the city's score of electrotechnical plants belch smoke against the Prussian-blue sky; workmen scramble over scaffolding of a $900,000 British-American cigarette factory, the newest plant in the city. With a labor force of nearly a million and only 36,000 unemployed (matching the alltime low of last September), West Berlin can boast that it is Germany's biggest industrial city.

At night West Berlin relaxes in neon brilliance, and the wide boulevards hum with traffic--mostly Volkswagens, but with an increasing number of expensive Porsches, Alfa-Romeos and Mercedes.

American jazz filters from cellar nightclubs, well-fed burghers in sidewalk cafes sip coffee and Berliner Weisse--a concoction of beer and raspberry juice.

The night crowds are swelled by thousands of East Berliners who come over to go to movies, theaters, museums and concerts--the only places in West Berlin where East marks are accepted on a par with West marks (one West mark currently fetches 4.85 East marks). In turn, West Berliners frequently use the favorable exchange rate to see such East Berlin attractions as the State Opera and the repertory of Bertolt Brecht's plays.

Realism for Enemies. None of these guarded contacts represent a weakening of West Berliners' fiber. To show their ultimate opposition to Communism, 750,000 people braved cold weather on May Day to jam the wide Platz der Republik in the largest mass meeting since the war. The sea of faces stretched from the old Reichstag to the new, free-form Congress Hall, which Berliners irreverently call "the pregnant oyster." Under banners reading "Freiheit fur Alle" (Freedom for All) and Selbst-bestimmung auch fur Uns" (Self-Determination for Us, Too), they cheered wildly as Mayor Willy Brandt promised: "We say to our friends in America, in England, in France, and everywhere in the world, you can count on us! We say it to our friends in order to assist them. We say it to our enemies so that they will remain realists."

Many West Berliners believe that Brandt is the only opposition candidate who can challenge venerable Konrad Adenauer in next year's election, partly because no one can accuse Socialist Brandt of being soft on Communism. If Berlin is proud of Brandt, Mayor Brandt is equally proud of Berliners. Says he: "They don't behave like heroes. They don't like being called heroes. But they have made up their minds to live under special conditions indefinitely, if necessary, and to go on with the development of their city without getting excited about it. They don't like sacrifices any more than the next man, but they will make sacrifices rather than accept Communist rule."

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