All for Nothing

by Walter Kempowski

  Should she take the boy to her own room with her? The way she used to in thunderstorms. And barricade everything in? She saw herself standing at the window with the three-barrelled shotgun, the boy beside her with a gun of his own, and they would defend themselves to the last.

  She looked hard at herself, and the boy looked at her.

  He didn’t say, ‘Is anything wrong?’ or, ‘What’s up?’ He looked at his mother in silence. How long would this last?

  Finally she said, ‘Goodnight,’ and the word leapt out of her throat like a toad.

  •

  Katharina was afraid, but she was also a little proud of herself for saying yes to this adventure, and now she had to go through with it. No one had ever trusted her to do anything before, and no one would have thought what was going to happen now possible. Not she herself. Never in her life. She felt proud, but there was fear as well as her pride.

  ‘Cold, naked fear,’ she said out loud.

  And it also occurred to her that what was about to happen was a lie. Was she really anxious to save a human being, or did she just want to prove that she thought herself capable of something? The wish to do something crazy, like that outing of hers with Lothar Sarkander. Would she have to tell Eberhard about that when all this was over?

  And when would it all be over?

  •

  Everything was recorded in the photo album. Lake Garda – its waters had been smooth and green, with white boats on them. The street singers and the little café. Eberhard had written numbers down on his napkin and worked out, for her benefit, how wonderfully well money grew of its own accord in their account: the English shares, the percentages from Romania coming in. What a good thing they had given up farming . . . And they had discussed what to do with the money that increased as if of itself. Maybe they might even go to America on the SS Bremen some day?

  Thank goodness they didn’t have the estate hanging round their necks any more! Forty thousand acres – horses, tractors, maids, and the reapers from Poland every year.

  •

  Lake Garda. They had crossed to the other side in a boat, to the side that lay in shadow. And there was nothing at all going on there. But they’d had a lovely view of the sunny opposite side.

  The words under the photograph were ‘Eberhard as captain!’ He was standing in the boat, shielding his eyes with his hand.

  •

  Then Eberhard had to put on uniform, and when gunfire was exchanged it meant the end of the English money, and the Romanians stopped paying. Instead his officer’s salary came in, month after month.

  He had sent wine and chocolate from France, and cigarettes from Greece. And brown sugar and sunflower oil from Russia.

  •

  The telephone on the desk; there was no one she could have talked to at the moment. ‘Are you crazy?’ Felicitas would have said. She couldn’t expect understanding from that quarter. Or could she? Felicitas might even have laughed. ‘Don’t be daft!’

  Perhaps she could have talked to Vladimir the Pole about it. But he was against communists and against Jews, and he certainly hadn’t the faintest idea about the plot of 20 July. And then she’d have made herself vulnerable, dependent on his grace and favour. Then he’d have her in the hollow of his hand. He’d sit at the fire-side and make the puppets dance.

  What about Auntie? Could she go over to see her and say, ‘Listen, there’s something I have to tell you.’

  Auntie had a picture of Hitler hanging in her room.

  •

  The idea of Drygalski occurred to her – why wasn’t there anyone for her to confide in?

  She wasn’t afraid of Drygalski. She almost felt as if she’d be tricking him.

  ‘We’ll deal with this,’ he might have said, protecting her from everything.

  •

  At this moment Drygalski was sitting at his sick wife’s bedside, holding her hand. His wife, grey-faced, was staring at the ceiling.

  He thought of their happy wedding, always so happy as they looked forward to it – they had imagined a boat trip to the valley in a folding boat, but nothing had come of that idea. Then they soon had their boy, and then Drygalski was always standing behind the counter, selling an eighth of a kilo of smoked sausage, hoping to get somewhere in life. He’d bought the new sausage-slicing machine – ‘Will there be anything else?’ – and then came the bankruptcy.

  It hadn’t been a profiteer who brought him down, but the taxman. He hadn’t been up to dealing with the tax office.

  They hadn’t been angry there, they just kept looking at him and wondering whether he would manage to find something else.

  •

  And now came the refugees from the east, from Latvia and Estonia, singly or in groups, on foot, by rail or in horse-drawn carts. So far he had been able to find accommodation for them all. It had been possible to put them up in the Settlement; he had billeted them now here, now there. Everyone had to take in refugees. He had drawn up a plan so that he could supervise them. Refugees: there were some dubious characters among them who might appropriate stuff that wasn’t theirs. Many of them never washed, or were always complaining. But there was also a fine old national tradition in those parts, people you could imagine in an engraving, upright and not to be intimidated. German blood that must be saved. The homeland spread its arms to take them in.

  •

  Some refugees would have to go to the Georgenhof too. It would be impossible to avoid that. It would be done tactfully. Perhaps suitable people would come along. Recently that retired judge and his wife had been here; they’d have suited the Globigs, but the judge hadn’t hung around here for long, he had gone on again. Had taken a good breath of the local air and left. No one stayed here long. A few days, and then they were off again.

  •

  Drygalski held his wife’s hand. Perhaps, he thought, I should read her something from the newspaper to distract her mind. But how was he to explain that the news now was of ‘disengagement’? How was anyone to understand that?

  It’s a good thing, he also thought, that our son has already fallen, in Poland, or we would fear for him every day now.

  •

  He let go of his wife’s hand. He must telephone Mitkau, find out if there were more coming from the east again tomorrow, and then go through the lists and think where to put them. Most stayed only a couple of days. There was constant coming and going.

  On the stairs he hesitated for a moment. He went up to sit in his son’s room, and looked out of the window. In the shadows cast by moonlight, he saw the long black lines of topsoil where the wind had swept the snow away.

  •

  In the Georgenhof, Katharina went to the door and put her ear to the keyhole. The dog barked; he heard the maids chattering as they came back from the pleasures of socializing. Should she bring them up here? Or go and sit with them? No, that wouldn’t do. What would they want up here?

  They down there, we up here – there was no sense of community.

  •

  She went into the conservatory, put out the light, drew the curtain aside and looked down at the darkness of the grounds; dark but illuminated by the snow. The semi-circular path trodden in the snow on the grass showed clearly.

  She put a shawl round her shoulders. The cacti were wizened, the soil in which the plants grew was dry.

  Big stars, tiny stars, sparkling and shining. The moon rose higher and higher. The branches of the oak trees rose in front of its primeval disc. The lines of a hand, lines of fate and lifelines.

  •

  The sound of a solitary aircraft moving over the night sky. The pilot would see the farms lying in the snow, the Georgenhof in the snow, the neat and tidy Settlement where every house was just like its neighbour, and Mitkau with its crooked streets.

  Would he perhaps take the semi-circular path trodden down below as a signal, as a message, incomprehensible and mysterious?

  Or perhaps he would see the solitary man stealing along now beside the road,
a note in his hand. A man cursing himself.

  •

  Katharina stood at the window, pale in the moonlight. Who would he be?

  A distinguished elderly gentleman who had been involved in the July plot, an officer in civilian clothes, with duelling scars on his cheek? A gentleman of the old school, who had gone riding in the Grünewald Park in peacetime. Had fought in the First World War, in the Second World War, wounded three times. A man like that probably wouldn’t be able to climb the picket fence. And would an officer then want to crawl into the cubbyhole on all fours?

  •

  A young officer would be welcome. Two in a Big City – that romantic film featured a young lieutenant, a blameless character, he has won the Iron Cross, he is passing through Berlin and drinks coffee with the girlfriend he’s known for only three days. Katharina remembered the song in the film.

  Two in the city who seem

  To be living a golden dream . . .

  Perhaps a young lieutenant who had deserted for some honourable reason? In trouble and on the run, that kind of thing can happen to young men. He just had time to throw on a civilian coat over his uniform and disappear into the darkness . . . on the run against his will, because at heart of course he was for the war. Had it all been for nothing? The columns of tanks, side by side and one after another, moving through the wheat fields of the east along a broad front, and the lieutenant himself standing in the turret of one of the tanks. Those had been the days!

  •

  Or perhaps a civilian would come, a man in a shabby suit? Wearing darned, fingerless gloves. Perhaps an artist who hadn’t been able to keep his mouth shut. Or an organist. Someone who couldn’t stand the killing any longer, who had confided in false friends and now had to save his skin. A man with a wife and children at home.

  Or perhaps it would be someone seeking refuge who had been offered a different place to hide? In a different kind of case.

  •

  She sat down at the desk. For the first time in her life she wanted to write something that concerned only herself. But she couldn’t think what to say. What did concern her? First she had to get this behind her, this experience that perhaps no one would believe later! And then she’d write it all down. Every detail. Her feelings, the suspense – yes, or disappointment, because perhaps it would all be quite different from anything she imagined.

  She picked up her scissors and tried to cut a flower out of black paper, something she always did to calm herself down. But it turned into just a tangle of paper strips, and she threw it away.

  •

  Should she somehow or other get things ready? Do her hair? Light the candles in the candelabra? Katharina wiped the wash-basin in the bathroom clean – would there be any problems of hygiene? After all, a man here. And she kept crawling into the cubbyhole, fussing about the place, trying to make it more comfortable. She pushed the cigarettes, the cocoa and the Italian red wine, the seventeen bottles of Barolo Riserva, as far as she could to the back of the cubbyhole. ‘That’s something special,’ Eberhard had said of the wine. ‘We’ll drink it when the war is over.’

  Inside the cubbyhole she moved a suitcase in front of these secret treasures, and put another mattress on the makeshift bed. The man would be able to sleep there easily enough, wouldn’t he? Just for one night. It was nice and warm beside the chimney. And definitely romantic. No one would find him here.

  The cubbyhole could be locked. Maybe he should be locked inside it? So many questions to ask, so much to bear in mind.

  •

  Katharina listened to the news on the radio, softly, softly. The newsreader mentioned defensive battles in the west, disengagements, terror attacks. Not a word about the east. Not even on the BBC. But there was something in the air, you could feel it. The Russians would attack, a roaring horde demanding revenge! But when? Tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? In a week’s time, two weeks’ time? When? Must it be expected any day now?

  This little song shall bind us two

  Together through all space and time,

  This little song from me tells you

  That I am yours and you are mine.

  The dog barked at around midnight – after walking up and down, Katharina had just sat down in the conservatory again. And when she was thinking, with relief: he won’t be coming, he couldn’t find the way, thank God it was all a false alarm – at that moment she heard the dog and saw a man on the semi-circular path. His shadow, cast in the moonlight, was like the hand of a clock pointing on the snow.

  Katharina moved the cacti on the windowsill aside and opened the window. She flashed her electric torch once, twice. Then she heard someone climbing over the picket fence, which bent slightly under his weight. The dog was running around in the hall barking frantically. He never usually did that unless a rat scuttled past, or a hedgehog in summer.

  Cautiously but nimbly the man climbed up to Katharina, and he was already swinging himself up to the windowsill and over it, bringing some snow with him. Then he was standing there on both feet. If he had fallen down to the garden it would all have been up. ‘It was a thief,’ she could have said. ‘A thief in the night. No, I don’t know the man.’

  •

  Katharina closed the window – cold air had come in – and he was already walking round her room. A small man, unshaven, with the black stubble of his beard showing and a bold expression on his face. ‘Done it,’ he said, putting his cap down on the Crouching Woman. He looked down at her black boots. And smiled: a woman wearing boots?

  Then he showed her his hands; the thorns of the old roses on the fence had scratched and torn them until they were bloodstained.

  •

  Not an old gentleman, not a smart young lieutenant, not an organist. An ordinary but well-made man. He was wearing a rustic jacket, he had a kind of knapsack under his arm, and he brought the cold in with him. He stood in the middle of the room, listened to the dog barking downstairs and showed her his bleeding hands. Katharina fetched sticking plaster and a pair of scissors and put plasters on his injuries. As she did so, she felt his breath on her.

  When the dog had calmed down at last, he walked round the room once more, checked the doors and windows, and then stationed himself by the stove.

  •

  His name was Erwin Hirsch, he was Jewish, he came from Berlin and he was cold. Yes, from Berlin, he was trying to get away to the Russians. He had almost been caught in Mitkau by the guards at the Senthagener Tor. Pastor Brahms hadn’t warned him of that, hadn’t said a word about the guards at the gate there.

  It had almost been the end of him then. Obviously an unworldly man, that oddity the pastor . . . he’d had to haul himself up and over the wall, like Joshua’s scouts getting into Jericho.

  Then all the way here from Mitkau. It had taken over an hour, keeping to the side of the road, flinging himself into the ditch when any vehicle came along, so that no one would see him.

  Katharina was shivering too, but not with cold. She stood looking at him, thinking: this is a nice mess.

  •

  The man didn’t seem to mind the idea of sharing the room with a young woman. He had been through worse than that. Crouching in cellar cupboards, hiding in laundry troughs. He told her about it. He had been on the run for four years. But he didn’t laugh at all his adventures. ‘Imagine,’ he whispered, and Katharina gave him cigarette after cigarette and was not surprised that he used the informal du pronoun in talking to her.

  •

  At that moment the telephone rang. They both jumped at the same time. It rang so loudly. An uncanny sound! The man flinched back, and Katharina picked up the receiver quickly, in case Auntie came running. ‘What’s going on? Is everything all right?’

  The call came from General Command in Königsberg. A strange voice asked if that was Frau von Globig. ‘You’re on the phone? Wait a moment, please, don’t hang up!’ Then there was a click on the line, and Katharina heard her husband asking, from very far away, ‘Is that you, Kathi? C
an you hear me? Can you make out what I’m saying?’ He was sitting over a glass of wine in his quarters high above Lake Garda, looking at the starry sky – ‘Lake Garda, do you remember?’ It was the head of the battalion’s birthday . . . ‘Are you alone?’ Now, he said, she was to listen very carefully. ‘Pack your things at once and get away from there, understand? Get away, just leave everything . . . First thing tomorrow morning . . . The Russians are coming! You’d better go to Aunt Wilhelmine in Hamburg.’

  And then the connection was broken.

  •

  ‘That was my husband,’ said Katharina. ‘How odd, as if he guessed something.’ And then it all came pouring out of her: Eberhard, always so formal, wooden, cold . . . Things she had only felt, had never put into words, spilled out.

  •

  The stranger had turned pale, and he calmed down only gradually. ‘That was my husband, he’s in Italy,’ Katharina said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘these things happen in a marriage.’ And whatever else he might have said, he kept it to himself.

  •

  Then he sat down at the table, and told all his own stories in a whisper: about Berlin, where he had spent months in hiding, and how he wanted to go and meet the Russians now. And Katharina gave him food and drink. Cold fried potatoes and blood sausage, which the man didn’t really like. Katharina gave him an apple too; he turned it in his hands a couple of times, smiled and bit into it.

  He sat on the chair where Eberhard had always sat. But Eberhard had never looked as if he were anything but a temporary presence in the room, smoking a cigarette in his meerschaum holder until he had finished it.

  •

  He told her long stories, the stories of his whole life, and he told them in order, firstly, secondly, thirdly. He had probably often told them before. At last he stopped, and Katharina showed him the cubbyhole, explaining that he could hide in it. He tried out the hiding place, the blankets and the mattress in it. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘like being back in one’s mother’s womb!’ And he added, ‘It smells nice . . . there must be good things here.’ Then he lay down at once.