All for Nothing

by Walter Kempowski

  Katharina exchanged greetings with an elderly couple coming out of the town hall, and asked how they were. So-so, they said, thanking her; two sons missing in the east, and their daughter could never be left on her own because of her epileptic fits.

  Boys from the Hitler Youth were clearing the snow in the street. An SA man had told them how to do it, and wondered what the point of the boys pelting each other with snowballs was. Could it be reconciled with the gravity of the situation?

  •

  A unit of reservists came marching along from the marketplace: old men in a varied assortment of uniforms with hats on their heads and long rifles on their backs. Their armbands proclaimed their membership of the Volkssturm.

  •

  Katharina spread her fur rug over the gelding’s back, and the horse deposited a pile of dung on the fresh snow. His eyes followed the woman; with luck she wouldn’t be in there too long.

  She was carrying a dead hare wrapped in newspaper under her arm, a present for the mayor. Secretaries hurrying back and forth along the corridor passed the time of day with her; they all recognized her, and knew that she was a close friend of the mayor. Once, when Eberhard von Globig was still in charge of sugar factories in the Ukraine, a handsome present for the town had arrived, a consignment of raw sugar although Mitkau hadn’t been due one. Wartime had made it possible to do many friends a good turn on the quiet.

  •

  So without first going to the reception room to announce her arrival, she knocked on the mayor’s door, opened it and walked straight in.

  The mayor, Lothar Sarkander, a man of upright bearing with duelling scars on his face and a stiff leg, sat at his desk under a picture of Hitler, cleaning his pistol. He looked overworked and anxious. A calm, thoughtful man, every inch the lawyer from head to toe. Salt and pepper hair neatly arranged, with the help of brilliantine, in many small waves above his thin face. Much of the grey in his hair had shown only recently. He had been a supporter of the new ideas from the first, but had now been ‘healed’ of them. Too late.

  They did not bother with saying ‘Heil Hitler’. Instead, Katharina put the hare on the mayoral desk, where it looked like a dead baby. Sarkander reassembled his pistol, put it away in the drawer and came round to the front of the desk. He knew about the hare coursing arranged on the Globig estate, since he had been asked for permission, and as he had immediately given it, a visitor from the Georgenhof bringing him his dues could be expected.

  •

  And there she was, Frau von Globig, Katharina, with her black hair and blue eyes, the ring with the coat of arms on her finger, the gold locket round her neck, her white Persian lamb cap on her head. Sarkander shook hands with her, then drew her to him and kissed her on the cheek, glancing at the dead hare. After that he asked after her husband: how was Eberhard doing in warm, distant Italy?

  ‘You should be glad it’s Italy, Kathi! He’s well away from the firing line there.’

  Sarkander may have wondered why he didn’t maintain his friendship with this woman on a regular basis. But he was a decent man, and he had a wife and children.

  •

  They had stood in the summer drawing room, and the family had sat out on the lawn with Uncle Josef. The doors of the drawing room, looking out on the park, were wide open. ‘What a picture,’ he had said, pointing to the picnic. And what about the two of them there in the drawing room, strange to one another in their familiarity?

  Hadn’t Eberhard been there that day? Or had he only gone into the woods for a moment to clear his thoughts?

  And they had both thought of that other, very secret matter of which so many other people were aware.

  If I’d known what I was missing,

  If I’d known who I was kissing,

  That midnight at the lido . . .

  On that one fine day at the seaside, she had worn a round hat like the sun on the back of her head, and hadn’t he been all in white? The sea had lapped gently against the breakwaters, and there were lights on the fishing boats by night.

  •

  Eberhard had gone to Berlin and the Olympic Games, and he hadn’t taken her with him. ‘I’m sure you can understand that, can’t you?’ No, she hadn’t been sure that she could. So she had gone to the seaside with Sarkander.

  •

  They sat down, and Katharina crossed her legs – she was wearing riding boots – and lit herself a cigarillo. The delightful summer parties at the Georgenhof . . . The telegraph connection to high places – Eberhard had always made sure that it worked well – was still working, in spite of telegraphic interference by people of Drygalski’s kind, those proletarians. ‘I’ll get them yet!’ he had told the mayor.

  ‘Ah, well, Drygalski . . .’ said Sarkander. ‘Leave those folk alone.’

  •

  The two of them exchanged news, whispering to each other although there was no one else in the room. Last night’s column of tanks, the ruined station, the prisoners in the brickworks . . . And they talked about the Russians on the border, where something unpleasant was brewing.

  ‘To think it’s come to this!’

  Lothar Sarkander in his elegant suit, the Party symbol on his lapel, had moments of insight. He knew which way the wind was blowing.

  •

  Was it a good idea to keep Peter here? Sarkander asked, standing up and pacing up and down the room. Wouldn’t it be better to send him to Berlin?

  Wasn’t it too late for that now?

  Sarkander might have to go to Berlin on duty next week. He could take the boy with him, why not?

  But didn’t the Russians behave very decently at the end of the First War?

  ‘We’ll find ways and means to get the two of you to safety in good time,’ he said. ‘You can rely on that.’ He put his hand on her shoulder, and she moved a little closer to him.

  •

  Then he fingered the blood-stained hare and sat down at the desk again, and the young woman went away feeling comforted. What she didn’t know was that Sarkander had sent his wife and children away to Bamberg in the autumn.

  •

  Katharina went over to Gessner & Haupt’s bookshop on the marketplace, where the bookseller gave her an art book, German Cathedrals of the Middle Ages. It was in the Blue Books series, a volume that she didn’t yet have. She already possessed Greek Sculptures, The Quiet Garden and Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits. If she kept her eyes open she’d be able to complete her collection.

  The bookseller was feeling depressed. In spite of his stomach trouble he had been called up as a reservist. He had been told he must be ready, just in case, and if the sirens went three times he must go to such and such a meeting place. He must not leave Mitkau and they must be able to reach him at any moment. And if you hear the sirens going off three times, then put on your uniform and hurry to the meeting place.

  And then what?

  He was sixty-two years old, and this was not how he had imagined spending his old age.

  •

  The bell rang as she left the shop, and the bookseller watched her go. Those people are well off, he thought, taking a stomach pill. There was an open carton in his back room and he was filling it with rare books. The first editions of Lessing and Goethe had long ago been sent to safety.

  •

  Soldiers were hunched over hot drinks in the overheated Café Schlosser. Many had girls with them, who would sit with other soldiers when these had to move on.

  Here Katharina met Herr Schünemann the political economist, who immediately swung himself over to her on his crutches, addressed her as ‘dear lady’, kissed her hand and so forth, greatly surprising the soldiers: such gallantries in the sixth year of the war?

  By now Schünemann had been to Insterburg, he had visited the little stamp shop here, and had come away with good pickings: old German stamps, quantities of them! He opened his bag and showed her his new acquisitions one by one. What does she think of these? he asks, he would really like to know! His bad breath wafts rou
nd her. Katharina thought privately that the stamps were shabby specimens, but she supposed he might be right.

  She leaned back, and Schünemann went on talking to her. ‘When devaluation comes – and dear lady, what do you think this war is costing? – then these little things will rise in value enormously. I shall retrieve my entire fortune like this!’ he said, with a mischievously boyish expression on his face, meant to show he was no fool.

  Katharina thought of the army stamp that he had torn off its envelope on the quiet and taken away. She wondered how much that would be worth some day. Maybe Schünemann was thinking the same? He quickly paid for his coffee and swung himself away again on his crutches. Off to Allenstein! There were surely all kinds of things to be picked up there.

  •

  Katharina paid another visit to her cheerful friend Felicitas, who was always so funny, always so amusing, and told such good stories. There was a hare to be delivered there too. Her friend was heavily pregnant, and the meat would do her good.

  The house was beyond the town wall. At the end of the road, with its many sharp turns, freezing prisoners were busy turning the Senthagener Tor into a tank barrier with tree trunks. Others were levering up paving stones to prepare one-man positions for reservists armed with single-shot anti-tank weapons. The earth was frozen solid. Digging holes in it was extremely difficult.

  •

  The two women greeted one another loudly, and even the canary sang for all it was worth. The hare was put in a pillowcase and hung in the kitchen window.

  ‘Just so long as there’s gas,’ they said, for otherwise it couldn’t be roasted. Pickled in vinegar, maybe? But there wasn’t any vinegar either.

  Felicitas had been lying on the sofa listening to the radio.

  A señor and a lovely señorita

  Went happily walking along by the sea . . .

  A glass dish with crunchy oatflakes stood on the table, and Katharina was offered a green liqueur in a little pink glass.

  Felicitas with her bright aquamarine pendant, and Katharina with her gold locket.

  •

  From the window, they could see the prisoners toiling away at the tree trunks, an old non-commissioned officer standing beside them with a long shotgun, hands in his pockets. He had wrapped a scarf round his head.

  There were two kind of prisoners at work: Frenchmen in thick coats, and other prisoners in striped uniforms, with an SS man keeping special watch on them from the shelter of a doorway.

  •

  The Senthagener Tor, with its snow-capped battlements, looked rather snug. It reminded people of the Napoleonic Wars, when those who got away from the Grande Armée in 1812, hungry and freezing, asked to come into the town. Men from Württemberg and Bavaria had been welcomed in and given hot soup, but not the French. The French were turned away to go elsewhere. Generosity to a defeated enemy is all very well, but while they were still on top the French had gone on levying forced war contributions, had stabled their horses in the church and had burnt down the old Georgenhof castle. The people of Mitkau had not been able to forget that.

  •

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Felicitas. ‘Will the Russians really get to Mitkau?’ And she ran her hands over her body, sighing.

  It seemed to her incredible that the Russians could be interested in such an insignificant town as Mitkau. This was the back of beyond. And how was such a little place to be defended? She couldn’t see what there was here to defend. The two women knew nothing about the ammunition depots along the Helge. Nor did they know that substitute units of the National Socialist Motor Corps were camping in the Forest Lodge.

  •

  Above the radio hung a photograph of Franz, her friend’s husband, an attractive lieutenant, his cap with the lieutenant’s cord round it sitting jauntily on his head. The radio was French; he had brought it back from France in the hot summer of 1940, and it was elegantly curved. It had a streamlined look, and was far more stylish than any German radio set.

  One day you’ll be back with me again,

  One day you’ll be true to me again . . .

  Both women sighed repeatedly at the slow foxtrot being played. Felicitas put a shovelful of coke into the stove and stirred up the embers. Perhaps Franz would be standing at the door some day? Who could tell? He was in that wretched dump Graudenz, in a fortress where he had to deal with German shirkers and deserters. ‘They’ll all be shot, of course,’ he had said. Felicitas could have visited him, but in a place like that where there wasn’t even a cinema?

  As for Eberhard in Italy . . . nothing could happen to him there. ‘You’re lucky,’ said Felicitas, and Katharina sighed deeply. Yes, she was really lucky.

  •

  The doorbell rang, and a girl came in. She saluted, Heil Hitler, bobbed a curtsy and asked if she could help with anything. Her hands were blue with cold. ‘Oh, it’s lovely and warm in here . . .’

  The girl belonged to the ‘Help for Mothers-to-Be’ organization set up by the Party. Boys were sent to shovel snow and keep the main road clear; girls were to lend a hand to pregnant women.

  Yes, she could fetch a bucket of coke, and here were the ration cards; could she buy bread, butter and sausage, and she was to count the change and make sure the shop didn’t cut too much off the coupons.

  •

  Katharina said she had just been to see the mayor, but when she was about to say more her friend put a finger to her lips: ssh! She had a refugee family from Lithuania in the next room, on the other side of the sliding door, a woman and three children, and they were eavesdroppers! Lower-class people who had recently made themselves at home in the kitchen as well, using the good china and putting it away all anyhow.

  ‘And you should see the loo!’

  Their presence here, making themselves at home, treating the china roughly and failing to keep the lavatory clean, was all to do with the ‘community of nations’. One must observe that, naturally, but not in a way like this. Felicitas suspected that these people had never used a proper toilet before. No doubt in the east they had a little shed outdoors.

  •

  At this moment the sirens howled. Felicitas put her hand to her belly and said, ‘Oh, how it goes through one!’ Would it be bad for the baby?

  They both stood up at once, switched off the radio, covered up the canary, opened the window just a crack. ‘We can’t even talk in peace for a few minutes!’

  The air-raid shelter in the cellar smelt of potatoes. It was a vaulted cellar; in earlier centuries the house had belonged to the Senthagener Tor, and in the past people under arrest had been put in here, vagrants and those who couldn’t show any papers, dubious characters who had to be expelled from the town to take themselves somewhere else.

  •

  The rest of the household had already gathered in the cellar, the fat refugee woman with her screaming children – a group reminiscent of the work of the illustrator Heinrich Zille – a sick young man and a miserable old woman.

  The French prisoners were crowding into the cellar as well. For them, it was a welcome opportunity to take time off work. The non-commissioned officer grumbled a bit that it wasn’t really right, but he wasn’t so keen on standing out in the snow himself, so they sat down and thawed out a bit.

  The other prisoners, the ones in striped uniforms, had to stay outside.

  •

  The Frenchmen looked at the two women. So elegant, so ladylike? And the women tried to dredge up their French vocabulary. They knew how to say ‘Good day’ and ‘I love you’ in French, but that was all.

  The refugee children looked at the prisoners with great interest, and were soon crowding round them. The brass buttons on their uniforms . . . The men put the children on their laps, which wasn’t really right.

  Did these Frenchmen have any idea that Napoleon had forced the people here to pay war contributions, and used St Mary’s Church as a stable?

  The sick young man sitting in the corner would probably have liked to stroke
the children’s hair as well, and he could have talked French to the Frenchmen. But was he to tell them that better times were coming? They knew that for themselves.

  The non-commissioned officer’s nose was dripping. He was absorbed in his own thoughts.

  •

  After the all clear went, there was tumult outside. The young man had gone out to the prisoners in striped uniforms and given them bread. This was intolerable! Did he know, he was asked, that they had committed serious offences? But for the presence of the Frenchmen it could have been a bad business.

  •

  Before Katharina went home she had to deliver a third hare, which was for the pastor. Eberhard had said so in writing. ‘Don’t forget the pastor; who knows what we may yet need him for?’

  The pastor, whose name was Brahms, was a doctrinarian who sometimes, when something like extra sausage was being considered, unexpectedly came out with very old-fashioned principles. When Elfriede died, in the winter of the scarlet fever, he had objected to a grave for her in the forest. And it had been difficult to make him change his mind. A solitary cross? A grave mound overgrown with flowers in the middle of the forest?

  ‘It will soon be forgotten,’ he had said. And, ‘In death we are all equal,’ and other such things. Lothar Sarkander had intervened and had made it possible.

  •

  When the German soldiers went to Poland in 1939, there had been some idea of Brahms giving them a blessing in a little service. Or at least those of them who wanted it. The organist had already looked out some sheet music.

  No, that was not something he could do, the pastor had said. There was no provision for an ecclesiastical occasion of that kind in the evangelical state church, and he was not minded to strike out on his own. Someone would have had to make up a special liturgy for it.

  It had been rather bold to say such a thing. Even the Party had asked about it. But no one really bore him a grudge. The church was the church and Pastor Brahms was thought of as fractious, and a fractious person was somehow very German. ‘Here stand I, I can do no other . . .’ Sarkander had pointed out that Martin Luther had also been a fractious man.