All for Nothing

by Walter Kempowski

  •

  He had been all right in the old days. He had been a bookbinder, restoring damaged books in the state library, but they had fired him overnight. He had been able to do a little more work as best he could in a cellar, but that came to an end as well.

  •

  His wife and children. The archivist had come over to him one day and said, ‘I’m afraid it’s reached the point where we can’t keep you on any longer.’ Had put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Dear Herr Hirsch, we have nothing against you personally . . .’ And then he had given him another few days of work down in the cellar, but that was it. Fired overnight. He had had to give back his book-binder’s tools.

  •

  Then he told the story, again and again, of all that had happened to him, telling it in short bursts, rhythmically, and his account had something anecdotal about it; it was shaped dramatically, with the aid of accents and effective gestures. He’d had enough of it, he told Katharina, looking her in the face, he’d absolutely had enough of it.

  •

  He told some of it twice or three times. Katharina had already heard this or that before.

  Three years in different hiding places, and so on, and so on, sometimes weeks in one place, sometimes only days. Attics, cellars. And days on foot, walking from one part of a city to another. Sitting in the cinema. He told these stories over and over again, and he had noted clearly the different kinds of reception he got. Hard-hearted, unfeeling specimens of humanity . . .

  His wife! His children!

  Yes, thought Katharina, but there were also people who helped you, my friend. Meanwhile she listened – ssh! – to hear whether Auntie was busy in the attic overhead.

  •

  His wife. ‘Why did I have to go and marry a Jew?’ she had said, forgetting the good years, abusing him and complaining. She even talked about the Führer. And then she had left him, went away with the children and everything else. ‘I’ll have the sheet out from under you,’ she had said. ‘Why did I have to marry a Jew?’ And when he was going to caress the children, she had cried, ‘Don’t you touch them!’ They were half-Jews. It wasn’t so simple.

  The boys had been dreadfully sad because they couldn’t join the Hitler Youth.

  •

  While Katharina was still wondering how she could have failed to lock the door, he kept saying he hadn’t slept a wink all night. The mice made him nervous, scurrying about, squeaking and scratching. He hadn’t dared to yawn for fear one might get into his mouth.

  There was a hole in the roof where the icy wind blew through, and the gap was right above his head. Katharina handed him some knitting wool so that he could stop the gap up, but he proved very clumsy. ‘How do I do it?’ He could repair old sixteenth-century folio volumes, but not a gap in the roof. Katharina crawled into the cubbyhole herself and stopped up the hole. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to follow her.

  When she crawled out again on all fours, they both laughed, it seemed to them so comical.

  •

  Then he told her more about the cellars and attics where he had hidden, and about his wife.

  ‘It’s my own fault. My father warned me: mind you don’t marry a shiksa, he said.’

  •

  At one point he raised his head and looked straight at Katharina. ‘I wonder when the Russians will finally arrive. How much longer will it be?’

  What kept the Red Army from striking a blow? They bent over a map, and realized that the Red Army was less than a hundred kilometres away, ready for the final leap.

  Should he wait for them or go to meet them? That was the question. But in this cold weather?

  ‘If I’d stayed in Berlin . . .’

  Go to meet the Russians? Put his hands up, saying, ‘I’m a Jew!’ But suppose they made short work of him, called him a spy and shot him. Or said, ‘A Jew? So what? Anyone can say that, and we have enough Jews of our own.’

  •

  To take his mind off it, Katharina told him about her travels, about Lake Garda – and Italy.

  He had once been to Italy too, to Venice. How strange! So had Eberhard and Katharina. They had seen Goebbels, all in white, coming out of St Mark’s Basilica, and so had the stranger. They must all have been standing quite close.

  Why hadn’t he stayed in Italy? he asked himself, striking his forehead. And Katharina too thought: why didn’t we stay there, following the English steel shares, or go to Romania while there was still time? But of course the rice-flour factory had failed dismally and nothing more was heard or seen of it, and they’d have been stuck in Romania.

  •

  Then they had to keep quiet, because they could hear Vladimir talking to the maids in the yard. They were fetching in wood and laughing. Then they whispered to each other. Were they looking up at Katharina’s window? The Ukrainian girls must be amused, too, to think that Drygalski had taken to eavesdropping at the drawing room door, as Auntie had told them.

  They themselves were presumably discussing whether to wait here, or whether it would be better to go to meet the Red Army.

  •

  When all was finally quiet out there, the man said, ‘If I had . . . if I were . . .’

  And Katharina thought: if he were . . .

  They studied the map, their heads close, looking to see how far away the border was and where the Russians might be.

  •

  Meanwhile the stranger picked up the Blue Book of German Cathedrals, which was lying on the table. Ah, the Germans, he said, their glory days are over.

  He went to the bookshelves – supported by gilded bronze brackets – and took out individual books. Stefan Zweig? She’d better not be caught with that, he said. He put the book down beside German Cathedrals. He found a book by Jakob Wassermann too, The Little Gooseboy. Katharina had had no idea that those two writers were Jewish.

  •

  Should she show him her silhouettes? Or the photograph albums? She didn’t address him by the informal du pronoun, she said ‘Herr Hirsch’ to her guest, and told him she must go down or her absence would be noticed.

  ‘That’s fine, Frau von Globig,’ he said. ‘That’s fine.’ And he spoke in a way that suggested it was ridiculous for her to be a von, with the noble particle in her name.

  •

  She left him alone. Locked the door twice, click click, and left him behind to wander between her two rooms, going over his memories.

  She put on her white Persian lamb cap and went out into the woods.

  I must pass the time, she thought, and not hear any more terrible secrets or endless stories of his wife and children.

  The question was, had Auntie noticed her locking the door twice, click click? Would she ask why?

  Katharina walked to the bank of the little River Helge. The ice lay smooth and grey before her. The wind whistled round her ears. Carrion crows cawed overhead. Distorted willows stood on the bank. There was the big bridge in the distance. The stranger would have to avoid that as he went on his way. It would probably be guarded. Crossing the ice would be safer, he’d be just a little dark dot on the grey ice.

  •

  Wood lay stacked in cubic metres on the bank. It ought to have been carted away in autumn, but now it was dwindling. She saw that the boat hadn’t been hauled in, and now it was stuck in the ice, rotting. Everything goes to rack and ruin when there’s no man in the house, she thought.

  •

  She walked along the icy bank. The wind blew into her face. It would be good to go on and on, she thought, to go away and never come back again.

  •

  On the way home she passed little Elfriede’s grave. She cast it a quick glance. The idea had been to put an obelisk on the grave and later redesign the park round it, but that had never been done. Pastor Brahms had been right when he had reservations. Why not lay the child to rest in the community’s graveyard, where everyone else was buried? he had asked. ‘Do you want extras? Old Herr von Globig lies here as well.’

  Sh
e stopped, and her thoughts went back in time. Eberhard had pushed the child away when she put her arms round his neck.

  ‘What a picture!’ Sarkander had said in the drawing room. And then she also remembered that Lothar Sarkander had once stood by the grave, and didn’t notice that she had seen him.

  She made a little detour. She mustn’t get back to the man up there too soon. The ruins of the old castle were covered with snow. No fugitive could have hidden in the rubble that filled its vaults.

  She would have liked to talk to the people in the Forest Lodge. One of them was an Italian. She’d never looked closely at those people. Perhaps there were educated men among them. But none of them were here of their own free will, and they must be lonely, without any women at all.

  She’d never noticed much.

  •

  Now the Czech came out of the back door, the man with his leather cap, and he was alarmed to see Katharina. He was on his way to fetch timber from the wood, meaning to steal it. Katharina greeted him and made a gesture, as if to say: Help yourself.

  The Czech was not friendly. He had made his way into the manor house once, and Vladimir had chased him out.

  He was welcome to get himself wood, Katharina told him.

  That’s what he was doing anyway, he said, as she might imagine.

  Katharina looked at the time. She would have liked to talk to the man for longer, but he set to work at once, breaking off branches. Should she help him?

  •

  On the way back she met Drygalski. He was going into the woods too, and he practically ran into her arms.

  ‘Going for a walk?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it too cold for you?’ And he looked behind her to see whether, Heil Hitler, she was alone or in company. Frau von Globig had never walked in this part of the grounds. Was she out to catch timber thieves?

  Was Drygalski here to help himself as well? That was the question. But the woods were here for everyone, surely. Did he have his eye on the neatly stacked timber on the river bank?

  Had she been visiting Elfriede’s grave? He still remembered the child so well. A little ray of sunshine.

  ‘Your dear daughter, Frau von Globig,’ he said, ‘and our son.’

  •

  As she walked back to the yard with Drygalski, unintentionally keeping in step with him, Katharina clearly saw a pale face up at the window of her conservatory. And she thought of the footsteps in the snow that Auntie had swept away, without noticing that they went in only one direction.

  But how on earth had she herself managed to forget to lock the door?

  •

  Her guest had crawled into the cubbyhole and was asleep. Katharina kept quiet, and time passed.

  The books by Stefan Zweig and Jakob Wassermann lay on the table. The stranger had put Heine’s Book of Songs on top of the pile, an old-fashioned edition bound in red leather, tooled in gold. He had laid it right across the other books, as if to say: Now this was a writer . . . you should hold on to him.

  •

  When darkness fell he crawled out. He had been stocking up on sleep, he said, and now he must think of saying goodbye.

  They sat at the table, with a glow like fire on the horizon, and a rumbling that rose and fell again in the distance.

  Then Katharina packed him some food; half a sausage, bread. She also brought herself to part with two packets of cigarettes and a chocolate bar.

  •

  Before climbing up on the windowsill, he stroked Katharina’s cheek briefly once with the back of his closed hand. But he didn’t say thank you. He took his cap off the Crouching Woman and sat on the windowsill. Would they ever meet again? Would their paths cross once more some day?

  ‘Good luck, Herr Hirsch,’ said Katharina, and the man swung himself out.

  With relief, she watched him climbing down. But she also thought: what a pity.

  Would he wave to her again? Yes, he waved from the path trodden in the snow. Where would events take him? Pastor Brahms would probably fix it somehow.

  •

  Katharina cleaned the washbasin, where black stubble still lingered, and flushed the lavatory. While she was about it she also disposed of the fingernail clippings that lay on the rim of the basin.

  She tried stalking across the room as he had done, from one safe floorboard to another.

  Herr Hirsch might have said thank you, she thought, it would hardly have tarnished his crown. She wouldn’t be telling Eberhard about this. Well, maybe later, after the war, when it was all over. ‘Just think what happened . . .’

  She picked up the shaving brush that the man had used in two fingers and threw it away. Then she went to the door and locked it again. Just in case.

  •

  After that she turned the radio on. It was playing hit songs, and she tossed her boots aside and danced from one room to the other.

  She had done it! She had brought off her daring venture, although no one would ever have thought her capable of it.

  I’d give away all that I have

  For one sweet, blissful night,

  But I won’t let you take my heart

  Until the mood is right.

  That night she crawled into the cubbyhole. The paper wrapping of an opened chocolate bar lay on the mattress, so the man had helped himself.

  She switched on the bedside lamp and muffled herself up in blankets. Tiles on the roof clattered, and a thin breath of cold air met her face. This must be how explorers felt in the eternal ice.

  12

  The Offensive

  It broke out in the east that same night. A constant rumbling just beyond the horizon, and the sky lit up brightly. It wasn’t like the bombardment of Königsberg. Then, it had been possible to make out individual explosions far away in the distance. This was a never-ending roar that could be heard even if you covered your ears. A thousand cannon were being fired; no doubt about it, this was the attack.

  On the radio, they were saying that the Red Army had embarked on its offensive. But none of those subhuman brutes from the east, said the commentator, would ever set foot on German soil, they could be sure of that. He also mentioned the Lord God. But surely a note of ugly laughter coming from somewhere was to be heard above or even within these words of comfort and reassurance, so calmly read over the radio. ‘Watch out, you German women and girls, now we’ll pay you back!’ cried a croaking voice, and there was more ugly laughter in the background. ‘We’ll break your pride!’ Then came the usual radio signal: Be true and honest all your days . . .

  Then Merriment in the Morning, a programme of cheerful songs:

  Don’t look here

  Don’t look there,

  Just look straight ahead!

  Auntie came out of her room in her dressing gown. She knocked on Katharina’s door. Could Katharina hear all that rumbling and those explosions too?

  ‘Yes,’ said Katharina, she could hear them.

  ‘Get away first thing in the morning!’ Eberhard had said. And she told Auntie, ‘We’d probably better get moving.’

  Auntie looked at her as she had never done before. Was it possible that she had woken from her world of dreams?

  •

  Auntie went downstairs to the hall and walked up and down. Open the doors or close them, that was the question. Take suitcases down? Jago went with her, up and down, sticking close to her side. She went out of the house, too, listened in case she had been wrong, and came back in again. Brought down her suitcases, all neatly labelled and tied up with string as well, put them in the middle of the hall and sat down on them. Now she was armed for anything that might happen.

  Yes, they’d better get moving. But how, and when? Nothing was easy.

  •

  At last Katharina herself came downstairs, yawning and with her hair untidy, and they sat side by side, while the collection of cups in the little cupboard clinked. They’d have to pack now. She personally, said Auntie, had packed long ago.

  Katharina said, ‘Not just yet. Why not wait and
see first?’ After all, the main packing was done. It was all on the cart, Vladimir had seen to that. The question was whether to take some of those things off the cart again and replace them with others.

  Vladimir was summoned. Was everything ready? And should they take this and that, what did he think?

  Maybe they should drive the cart a few hundred metres to make sure nothing fell off?

  Yes, it was all packed and stowed on the cart, covered with tarpaulin and fastened down with straps and ropes, but some items could still be exchanged for others. Perhaps Eberhard’s suits weren’t vitally important? After all, he had his uniform. But bed linen and underwear . . .

  •

  The maids too came running into the cold, dark hall, where they really had no business, and looked inquiringly at Auntie. Did she hear all that rumbling and crashing? Yes, she did, and so did Katharina. So the offensive had begun. Should the maids be glad of it? They drew up chairs and sat down with the two women. They all had their mouths slightly open so that they could hear better, and they sat together with their shoulders hunched. It was still early in the day. They might wait and see what happened. The Prussians weren’t about to shoot them.

  •

  Finally Peter also joined them, with a scarf round his neck because his tonsils were still swollen. Should he be dosed with Ems Salts or Formamint? Auntie still had a stock of eucalyptus pastilles, and she gave him some of those.

  He was wondering whether to pack up his railway. The castle? The microscope? He had tucked his air pistol into his belt.

  The fire on the hearth wouldn’t catch, however hard Peter blew the bellows to get fresh air to it.

  The women sat together shivering and listening. Vera was praying quietly. Vladimir went out again to see if anything else needed fastening down more firmly.

  ‘We won’t start,’ said Auntie, ‘until we’re told to. Peter, tidy up your room, and you girls go back to the kitchen!’ Wouldn’t they need a permit?

  •

  ‘Is anything wrong with you?’ Auntie asked Katharina, who was staring into space. ‘You look so different today! So young!’ No, there was nothing wrong with Katharina. She scratched her head. She was surprised by herself. A strange man had camped in her room. It had all happened so quickly, her adventure. Was it really over? Or would there be a sequel? Would some part of it stick to her?