All for Nothing

by Walter Kempowski

  •

  When he thought how he had shown his son what was what. He’d been hard on him, so hard that his wife had often asked if it was really necessary. Their son would run upstairs, howling, shut himself in his room and sob.

  •

  ‘Nothing matters to Frau von Globig,’ Drygalski told his wife. ‘She must get wind of things in advance. And just let me give her son a piece of my mind . . .’

  Get wind of what things in advance? Since Herr Drygalski had been feeling better, his wife had been feeling worse, at first just hanging listlessly round the place – ‘Pull yourself together, Lisa’ – then lying down a good deal, and now bedridden. The doctor sometimes came with his bag, but he left shrugging his shoulders. Wasn’t there anything to be done for her?

  His son fallen at the front, his wife pining away, and now rats in the cellar, if he read those tracks correctly.

  •

  The Georgenhof over there, ivy climbing all over it, and the crooked spiked-mace finial askew above the gable – what would the people who drove past think of it? On one side of the road the neat, clean housing development, roof beside roof, all set out in straight lines, and opposite it the manor house, once painted yellow but now overgrown with ivy, and with grass hanging out of the gutter.

  The courtyard wall needed repairing again, too. Romanticism is all very well and good, but a wall is a wall, and when there are cracks in it they have to be mended. And the implements that had been lying around for ever, a roller, harrows of some kind, all broken and decrepit. A rusty ploughshare – that symbol of a new era, rusty? And the yard gate hanging off a single hinge. If the gate stands open all the time, day and night, why does anyone need a wall?

  He’d asked, Heil Hitler, couldn’t those tools be given away as old iron, melted down to make tanks and cannon, and Auntie had said, ‘We still need them all.’ Had even added, ‘What on earth are you thinking of?’

  •

  As for his own house, Drygalski kept it in good order. At least, if a door stuck, he repaired it at once. And he drew up a regular cropping plan every year for his garden behind the house: kohlrabi on the left, runner beans on the right. Fruit bushes along the fence; they needed pruning now. Nothing the matter but the rats. How to deal with them was still a puzzle.

  •

  There was something wrong with the gentry over the road. Putting out the swastika flag only when absolutely necessary, and then it was just a tiny little rag of a thing.

  Drygalski kept looking over at the Georgenhof, the big house beyond the oak trees. It stood there like an island. When he was chopping wood behind his house he looked that way, or when he was feeding the rabbits. Even when he was getting his wife to drink soup he looked out of the window. She had been in bed for weeks, pale and suffering. He gave her oatmeal porridge, and had to be on the watch all the time in case she brought it up again. She hadn’t left her bed for months.

  Yes, when Drygalski plumped up his wife’s pillows, he had a view of the grand property over there, the yellow house where Auntie sat at her window overlooking the road.

  He could see the house and who went in and out of it from his desk, and when he telephoned, and from the kitchen stove as well. Even from the lavatory he could see it as he did up his trousers, and Auntie made sure to return his glances.

  •

  When Drygalski had to go into town he liked to take a short cut through the park, although it didn’t get him anywhere much, so he had made it a habit to trample round the manor house. A notice on a cracked board said NO ENTRY, but surely these people didn’t have the nerve to claim land for their sole use when they went walking for pleasure, did they? After all, the German forest was everyone’s property. And he blew his nose extra loud into the rhododendrons to right and left. In summer he had once seen the whole tribe of them here as he stood with his hands in his pockets. They were picnicking on a rug spread on the grass, drinking punch, the uncle from Albertsdorf, aunts and children dressed in white all over the place. They had waved to him as if to annoy him on purpose.

  He could always find a reason to prowl round the outside of the house. And now, in winter, he had trodden a semi-circular path through the snow behind it.

  •

  The women workers from the east, the Polish driver – their credentials had all been repeatedly checked, and there was nothing to be done about them. They wore the symbol marking them out as foreign workers, but they kept going off to the Forest Lodge to see the foreign riff-raff there, the Czechs, Italians and Romanians. ‘They’re hatching some kind of plot,’ he told his wife. ‘And they steal like magpies!’ He took his pistol down from the wall and loaded it. The priest from Mitkau who never called on the Drygalskis, even though they were good Catholics, went in and out of the Georgenhof as he liked. What a nerve.

  Last summer Eberhard von Globig, in his white uniform jacket with the Cross of Merit on his breast (the plain Cross of Merit, though, no additional swords), had gone riding through the housing estate as if to take a look at it, had said hello in a friendly way (in too friendly a way?), had watered his horse at the Schlageter Fountain, a good horse called Fellow that then had to be handed over for the war effort, and had bent down to Drygalski and asked how his wife was. (He had refused an invitation to come into the house.)

  All the same, Eberhard von Globig had sent him a little bag of brown sugar and a canister of sunflower oil. ‘Make your wife something good to eat.’

  ‘You have to butter these people up,’ Eberhard had told Katharina. ‘Who knows what may happen?’

  •

  Now the Russians were on the border, the sirens howled every day, and the sound of pigs squealing in agony at their death rang through the housing development. People were slaughtering all their animals and packing up their possessions just in case, although it was strictly forbidden to think of flight. Carts stood behind the houses, carts large and small, weatherproofed with straw and roofing felt. Every crack was painted to keep bad weather out, too.

  Suppose the Globigs were packing up as well? It would be a good moment to catch them at it, thought Drygalski. Then he could ask them whether by any chance they thought the Russians would get as far as Mitkau. Didn’t they trust the German Wehrmacht? The Russians had been beaten back in the autumn, hadn’t they?

  The People’s Comrades who had come from the east, from Tilsit, from Lithuania and Latvia, couldn’t be asked whether they trusted the German Wehrmacht. They’d have given the right answer or none at all.

  •

  Drygalski asked his wife whether she needed anything, put his cap on and strode over to the Georgenhof. He found a pig hanging from a ladder while the Pole gutted it, with the girls lending him a hand. They stopped chattering at once when they saw the man from the Settlement coming. Brown jackboots and a Hitler moustache?

  ‘Killing pigs, are we?’ asked Drygalski, and he almost pinched blonde Sonya’s cheek on a whim. Good healthy stock, she seemed.

  He addressed Auntie, who was rendering lard in the kitchen. Heil Hitler, was she weighing everything accurately and handing it in to the authorities?

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, showing him a list with items crossed off it. ‘It’s all being delivered.’

  He was offered a saucer of boiled pork; would he like to try it? Yes, he would. And he asked for some salt, went over to the Pole and watched for a while as joints of meat were thrown into various different tubs, to make sure he was doing it properly. He thought of his grocery shop, and the way he always sliced the ham so nicely on the slicing machine, and gave the children ends of sausage.

  Jago the dog watched the Pole as well, taking an interest in his own way. The cat, as usual, made himself scarce. He knew he wouldn’t be forgotten.

  •

  Drygalski examined the big farm cart standing in the farmyard, broad and heavy, and sure enough, its sides had already been reinforced, and it had been provided with a kind of roof. So they were already packing up here too, were they? But as he w
as holding his saucer of pork he refrained from asking more revealing questions.

  Now that Fellow had been handed over for the war effort, the Globigs had only three horses left. Two for the big farm cart and the gelding for the coach, wasn’t that so?

  •

  Auntie took this opportunity to tell him that a very strange painter had been here, the artist kind of painter, saying very odd things.

  An artist? What for? Making a record of antiquities? Drawing architectural features of interest?

  But then why hadn’t the man been sent over to the Settlement to draw the Schlageter Fountain? Drygalski couldn’t understand that. And he went once round the house and then back to the Settlement to look at the fountain, which was a really ornamental piece. The bronze plaque on it was turning slightly green. Thank heavens there were photographs of the monument; it was shown from all angles in the newspaper supplement Mitkauer Land. The photographer had gone to a great deal of trouble.

  But fancy not telling the artist about the fountain – that really was too bad.

  •

  Dr Wagner too had turned up to join the pig-butchering party, in his warm walking coat, knitted gloves and black ear protectors. He had brought a small can with him and asked Auntie for some of the broth from the sausages. And as he stayed put and did not look as if he would be going away in a hurry, he got his broth and a little pork to go with it. He knocked his shoes together because he had cold feet. Nothing was easy.

  Meanwhile Peter dragged the Christmas tree out of the hall and left it in front of the house. The tree, once covered with lights, had served its purpose. He should pour a little melted lard on the branches, said Dr Wagner. How happy the birds would be!

  •

  They climbed up to Peter’s room, followed by the cat and the dog, to go on with his studies. They put some wood in the stove, and Katharina joined them.

  German Cathedrals. She showed them the book and talked about the painter who had been here, drawing everything, every nook and cranny. Who had even taken an interest in the pictures in the hall and the rather decrepit finial with its spiked mace. How good that there are people who care about such things. Although . . . wouldn’t photographs have been cheaper? Drawing pictures of everything was such a laborious way of going about it.

  •

  Wagner leafed through the book about German cathedrals. Ah, Speyer, ruined by the French ages ago; Worms, gutted like a pig. And now the air raids: so many already destroyed. Lübeck, Königsberg and Munich. Dr Wagner thought of all the other buildings now gone. Whole towns, bridges, museums with all their contents. Paintings. Valuable libraries perishing on the pyres of burning cities.

  What a good thing there were people still trying to save what could yet be saved, at least in a small way.

  Even beauty must die, though she rules men and gods alike.

  Yet the adamant breast of Stygian Zeus she cannot sway.

  So said Schiller. These terrorist gangsters couldn’t tear the poetry in his head out of him, said Wagner. And with his silver pencil he marked those verses in Echtermeyer’s anthology of German poetry that must be preserved for posterity. It would be a good idea to learn them by heart.

  Then he recited several poems in a sing-song tone of voice, as old people did, his eyes filled with tears, and he buried his face in his hands, the brown marks of old age and large veins on the back of them, to sob into them. The fate of his fatherland moved him deeply, anyone could see.

  •

  Katharina pushed the plate of bread and sausage over to him. Her mind wasn’t on what she was doing; she was thinking of something else entirely. It was as if she wanted to ask a question, but she couldn’t bring out what was troubling her here and now. A mysterious guest was to be smuggled into the house. Today? Tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? Perhaps not at all. Smuggled into her room, to be more precise. But how was it to be done? She thought about it. She thought of those lines by Goethe:

  where darkness through the thicket broke,

  with countless sombre, baleful eyes.

  For her to hide him, he would have to cross the hall – and that would be out of the question. Go up the creaking staircase? Past Auntie’s room? Auntie was always on the watch. What about Jago the dog?

  Going through the kitchen wouldn’t work, and in any case he’d have to pass the hall and the suspicious Jago, and then climb the creaking stairs. The more carefully you tried to slink up them the louder they would creak, the more secretly you went about it the more boisterous the dog would be.

  •

  The only possible way was to start from the park, scale the fence for the climbing roses, get into her conservatory and then into her room.

  Perhaps he was an old man, and wouldn’t make it here anyway. Then she’d be sorry, but it would be the doing of a higher power.

  •

  As evening drew in she put her white Persian lamb cap on and drove to Mitkau. She would have to speak to Brahms and see if the whole thing couldn’t be called off at the last minute.

  She took Dr Wagner with her. He held the little can of sausage broth between his knees. He looked sideways at her and was glad to see how boldly she handled the reins.

  •

  Like a white hand, the aurora borealis felt its way across the sky – whoosh – and an unusual roll of thunder could be heard. A winter thunderstorm?

  A poem by Eichendorff went through Wagner’s head as he sat beside the beautiful woman, holding his can of sausage broth in both hands.

  Katharina had to show her identity card at the Senthagener Tor, and was asked what she wanted to do in the town. ‘Ah, Frau von Globig. And who’s this gentleman? Oh yes, Dr Wagner.’

  A wooden barrier was pushed aside and she drove through the echoing gateway.

  •

  An icy wind swept clouds of snow ahead of it down the streets. Katharina thought: I could still go back. Just turn round and get into bed at home, hear nothing, see nothing. I could simply not go to see the pastor, he would wait and wait and then give up and tell himself: The lady changed her mind.

  Her warm room, the books, the radio . . . Why let herself in for daring ventures that were nothing to do with her?

  •

  She dropped the teacher in Horst-Wessel-Strasse, held his hand just a moment too long – he might take it for a budding interest in him. And then she tugged the bell pull of the parsonage, where Pastor Brahms was already waiting for her, his watch in his hand. The black bulk of the church stood next to the parsonage, where a load of snow was sliding off the roof.

  He greeted her, looking up and down the road at the same time; a guest so late, with a horse and carriage! What would the neighbours think?

  He asked her in, shaking her hand with one of his own and leading her in with the other – leading her into his dark, stuffy study.

  There was a copying machine beside the wall; he had just been turning its handle.

  •

  Almost immediately he explained it all to her again in detail. Explained what it was about. It was a case of conveying a human being on the run, escaping pursuers, from one hiding place to another. It was a case of taking in an entirely unknown person of the male sex whose fate, fundamentally, was nothing to do with her. Goodness knew what he was supposed to have done.

  It was a question of giving shelter, for a single night, to a human being who couldn’t show his face at an inn. For just one night, so really only for a few hours, that was what it was about. And this was the night.

  Did Pastor Brahms know whether the man was something to do with the July plot, or a deserter? Or maybe even a communist, a man who had once broken the windows of the capitalist class and blasphemed against Our Redeemer? One of the Red Front? – Or a Jew? There were fugitives all over the country, passing through towns and forests, staying briefly in old factories and garden summerhouses, crouching in cellars and attics.

  His informants had said, ‘For God’s sake help the man.’ That was all, even Pastor Br
ahms knew no more. He too would be seeing the stranger for the first time tonight. And next morning the stranger would be sent on again somewhere else.

  But nothing would be the same as before.

  •

  Be that as it might, she noticed a certain callous streak in the pastor. Katharina gave him a small sausage. He immediately cut a piece off it with his penknife and pushed it behind his gums like chewing tobacco. They were sitting in his dark study, the clock on the wall struck, and on the table lay a commentary on the Revelation of St John: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. Pastor Brahms was preparing a cycle of sermons on the end of time for the old people in the monastery; he preached on a different apocalyptic chapter every evening. ‘And the heaven will open like a book . . .’ The old, sick people there, brought from somewhere in the east, barely able to understand German, now side by side in the cold monastery; they had seen better days. Now they lay in the refectory, with the gentle curve of its vaulted ceiling above them, and the blue and gold stars in the vault.

  •

  Day after day he was preaching to the old people about the Day of Judgement, when all time ends and we go to the right or the left hand of God, and only then would it be seen who was found wanting and who would stand the test. To think that so many would be cast out into the fiery lake.