All for Nothing

by Walter Kempowski

  She threw herself on her bed.

  The daring venture was over. Or would there be a sequel? Would something of it cling to her?

  Katharina took her tube of tablets off the bedside table. She swallowed one, and soon she felt all right.

  ‘It was all hanging by a thread.’

  •

  At that moment Uncle Josef telephoned from Albertsdorf. He held the receiver out of the window and asked if she heard that? Did she know what it meant?

  He advised her to set out at once. They themselves would probably stay in Albertsdorf, what with their three daughters and Hanna with her bad hip . . . she couldn’t be expected to take flight. ‘I don’t suppose the Russians will tear our heads off.’

  Katharina immediately took another tablet from the tube. Set off with bag and baggage? Take flight?

  13

  The Baron

  So that afternoon Elfriede’s room was taken over by a baron from the Baltic and his wife, with Hitler Youth boys carrying their cases for them. Heil Hitler. The doll’s house and the puppet theatre could stay, said the couple, they wouldn’t be in the way. However, the baron asked whether the little girl had died two years ago in this bed, and he took the portrait photograph of her dead body off the pillow and pressed it into Auntie’s hand. Didn’t she feel that, somehow, it had now served its purpose?

  The baroness, meanwhile, knelt down in front of the puppet theatre, pulled the curtain up and let it down, and arranged the pup pets inside it.‘Ah, the Devil!’she said.‘He’s always one of them.’

  She arranged the chairs in the doll’s house properly. There was a round table, and a gentleman lounging in an armchair. He had been lounging in it for a long time.

  •

  The baron sat in an armchair and watched his wife. So skilful! So clever! Energetic, that was the word for her. His wife got things done, and she wasn’t to be easily deterred. She pushed the sofa over to stand beside the bed. The bed would be for her husband, she would sleep on the sofa, that was somehow or other taken for granted.

  ‘I don’t mind a bit.’

  The only thing was that the bed could do with clean sheets, and then there would be nothing left to wish for. They hoped the bedclothes didn’t date back two years, and the sheet wasn’t a winding sheet?

  The baron, who was not one of the landed aristocracy, but had been an accountant in a pharmaceuticals factory, acted as if he were an old friend of the family. ‘We’ll do fine,’ he said, and left his wife to go on fixing things. He wanted to have a look round and see where they had ended up. He went from room to room, suggesting that the old wing chair might look better somewhere else, and the cabinet could be moved to opposite its present position. He called Katharina ‘dear lady’, and when appropriate he kissed her hand in the old-fashioned way. He picked up the cat, and that animal, who usually ran like the wind from human beings, nestled in his arms.

  •

  The black parrot that the couple had brought with them was a great attraction for the household. You mustn’t get over familiar with the bird, or he pecked. Sometimes he spread his wings, first the right wing, then the left wing, and sometimes he called out ‘Lora!’ occasionally adding, ‘You old sow!’ He looked calmly at the cat. The cat looked back at the parrot with his paws tucked under him. They’d wait and see how things turned out. Take it easy was the right approach. The cat didn’t like it that the parrot was given walnuts, not that the cat fancied them himself. The baron kept the walnuts in his jacket pocket, and he cracked them against each other, two by two.

  A parrot? The maids kept coming out of the kitchen to look at him. They’d never seen such a thing before: a parrot! They reached for him, but he just looked sideways at them. And of course, they claimed, there were much bigger parrots than that in their native land.

  ‘Oh, go on with you, get back to work!’ said Auntie.

  •

  The baron’s wife went round the house singing, chattering away to the maids in their own language and going out to see the horses: the huge gelding and the two fast bays. Peter showed her the dead peacock. He couldn’t be buried yet because the ground was frozen hard, so for now they left him on the dung heap. He showed her the chickens and the rooster, told her how trusting the rooster was, and how he understood every word. And Vladimir had a long conversation with her, heaven knows what about.

  When she went back into the house, he touched his cap lightly. He knew how to behave with aristocracy.

  •

  The baron walked in the grounds for a while, breathing in the air as if it were particularly healthy. This place shows no real sense of design, he told Peter, who was accompanying him. The river! Now that should be included somehow. And with his stick he drew a plan in the snow for the way he saw the grounds redesigned.

  Apparently there were ruins of some kind here. ‘Have you noticed them? Just sort of lying around?’ A broad avenue could be laid out, leading to the ruins, and a teahouse by the river, wouldn’t that be good? Some people never thought of such things, obvious as they were.

  •

  The baron had brought a very heavy suitcase with him, and never let it out of his sight. It contained material about his native city. He had collected everything to do with it: pictorial views both very old and brand new; brochures; books; menus. Photographs (the church of St Nicholas taken from every angle, the gabled town hall in the marketplace). He had all these things in his suitcase. It also contained his family papers; he could trace his forebears back over many centuries. His ancestors had come from Germany and had sought the protection of the Tsarina, who appreciated good German enterprise at the time. To return to the German Reich now seemed the obvious course.

  He showed Peter some of this material, explaining the difference between a family tree and a line of descent.

  He also showed Peter a kind of chronicle of his native city; he himself had written it and it was full of the life of the old days. What Once Was Ours was the title of the manuscript, and he had devoted every free minute to it in recent years. He described the customs of the country’s merchants, who used to eat swan as well as other things at their banquets, and mentioned the introduction of traction engines on the great landed estates.

  ‘All gone, all gone!’ he cried as he walked in the grounds. The baroness asked Peter not to run his toy railway along the corridor because it disturbed her husband; maybe it would be best if he put it away, and Peter immediately did as she asked.

  •

  The baron, whose first name was Eduard, sat in his room, his chilly fingers sorting out his papers. Thank God he had put them in the suitcase at the last moment. He sorted them first by one method, then by another, and he wrote down his final impressions of his native city. Nothing, for God’s sake, must be forgotten, and he licked his pencil, crooking his little finger with its signet ring as he wrote. Its fingernail, like the nails of his other fingers, was manicured. The generations with all their ups and downs . . . who knew when they would see their native land again? Someone had to write down all the good and bad things that happened, and now terrible things were certainly going on and must be set down in the record for all time.

  He must also give a faithful account of what had been done, again and again, to the people of the Baltic states. Recruited in the time of the Tsars, then massacred by the Bolshevists. And now the Germans had wreaked havoc. All of it should be, must be put on record without reservations. He felt it was his personal responsibility to do that, to bear witness for future generations in his entertaining way.

  •

  There was a brochure on one of the bookshelves, dating from Eberhard’s time as a member of the Wandervogel, the German youth organization for ramblers. It bore the title Roads and Footpaths in the Baltic States: A Hiker’s Handbook. It had pictures of avenues and secluded paths, small pools that looked enchanted, and large erratic boulders under the birch trees. At the back there was a large map that could be unfolded.

  What a treasure! The baron
assumed that Katharina would give it to him, since he had lost his native land, and the little booklet must be a matter of indifference to her. However, Katharina folded up the map and took the brochure into her room with her.

  •

  He placed the armchair close to the stove, and then he sat there, with the cat beside him, sorting his papers out. The parrot in his cage looked as if he was playing a waiting game. He saw everything that went on.

  Now and then the baron stood up to go over to the window, holding the cat in his arms, and looked down at the road, which was busy with traffic. When would they get away from here? he wondered; this place was a trap.

  The wind shook the window frame – or was it the detonations?

  •

  Sometimes the baron summoned slender Sonya and showed her, too, what an interesting chronicle he was writing, and asked in her language for a cup of coffee, and was there any of that honey left? Some bread and honey would go down well now. As a man from the Baltic states he spoke Russian, and he spoke it as elegantly as if it were French. Sonya stared when he asked her so politely, and then, sitting as he was, flung his arms round her knees and laughed in a friendly manner, showing his gold teeth. He was old, there was no denying it, but a cheerful heart beat in his breast.

  Could she bring him some hot water, he asked, and then his wife knelt down in front of him and cut his toenails one by one.

  •

  Peter showed the baron his history of the Georgenhof, the project suggested to him by Dr Wagner. It said Good! in red ink at the end.

  A very nice concoction too, said the baron. But Peter should look at this: he himself had already written a hundred and sixty-four pages, and had left the eighteenth century behind.

  He would probably have spoken at even greater length on this subject if Dr Wagner hadn’t come in from the room next door and told the boy, ‘Come along now, we’ll carry on with our studies. You’re in the baron’s way.’

  He had been wondering whether they should read Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea together. It would be very suitable just now, dealing with refugees as it did.

  The baron had also said that he, the schoolmaster, should remove the blue ribbon from his get-up; it had no kind of connection with Peter’s essay. And he had asked the boy to bring him Katharina’s little booklet, Roads and Footpaths in the Baltic States: A Hiker’s Handbook, for another brief glance, because he wanted to look something up in it.

  •

  Then the baron locked the door, put the cat, who was arching his back, down on the floor and counted his money. The signet ring was on his finger. He had drawn all his money out of the bank while he still could, although friends had asked him whether he thought that was right. He was keeping it on his person, in an inside pocket of his coat. Nothing could happen to him now.

  •

  They met in the hall that evening, with Jago the dog, the cat and the parrot. Flames burnt high on the hearth. Dr Wagner was invited to join them too. Where had they all come from? Where would they end up? The baron, who immediately sat down in Eberhard’s usual chair, told them about his historical work and how far he could trace his ancestors back. His wife came up behind him and brushed dandruff off the collar of his jacket.

  Dr Wagner had ancestors himself, but somehow they didn’t qualify for discussion. He might have a goatee beard, but the baron kept a real monocle in a waistcoat pocket lined with flannel. He used it when he wanted to get a hearing. The schoolmaster couldn’t compete with that. Auntie’s Silesia was all very well, but not in the same class as the baron’s native city.

  •

  His beloved Königsberg, said Dr Wagner, stroking his goatee beard. Eating fried flounders in a little restaurant on the River Pregel . . . and hearing the foghorns on the big ships blowing in the harbour . . .

  Then the baron took out his monocle and scrutinized the schoolmaster, and the subject was back on the correct lines again. Flounders were nothing to an ox roasted on the spit. Oxen had been spit-roasted in his native city. Swans were eaten there as well in the old days, and peacocks too! You couldn’t imagine such a thing today.

  ‘Oh, stone the crows!’ said Dr Wagner out loud and quite distinctly, and after that there was silence for a while.

  •

  He had once seen the German crown prince in Cranz, said the baron, before the war. He was very slender and all in white. The spa band had played waltzes, and the crown prince was surrounded by young ladies on a white yacht. ‘A real greyhound of a man!’ said the baron. Katharina von Globig, sitting on the sofa beside the baroness, had no particular connection with crown princes, but as a native of Berlin she didn’t like to hear the baron call the crown prince a greyhound. As for Cranz itself, that Baltic seaside resort, she had her own thoughts about it. Rise high, thou red-winged eagle. They had eaten cod, still blood-stained, and there had been an unemptied chamber pot under the bed. She thought of the charred meerschaum cigarette holder and how stingy Eberhard had been with the tip. They followed the cod with apple tart and whipped cream, and he had quickly put one of the small coins back in his pocket before the waiter came.

  •

  While the men were concerned with each other, the baroness admired Katharina, her black hair and her blue eyes. She even asked to see her hands. What beautiful hands she had! That made Katharina think of the bookbinder’s scratched hands that she had dressed with sticking plaster. She wondered whether to invite this woman up to her own room. You couldn’t really talk here in front of the fire in the hearth. Women are so different. The baron’s wife had probably heard the stories that he was telling with relish many times before. But she was considerate of her husband, and didn’t let it show.

  There was another kind of disturbance in the house that night. At first the Globigs couldn’t believe their ears, but as reflected light flashed over the dark sky, the baron’s voice could be heard, clear and distinct. ‘You old sow!’ he said, and feudal aristocrat though he might be, he obviously meant his young wife. What she replied was more like a howl. And her husband repeated, loud and clear, ‘You old sow!’ Then there was a lot of noise, and coming and going, until Auntie knocked on the wall, hesitantly at first and then very hard, whereupon all was silent.

  14

  The Refugees

  The wind whistled from the west, it howled round the house and rattled the decrepit roof. Its noise almost drowned out the drum-fire. Was this cup, people wondered, to pass them by? But no, the rumbling went on.

  A cold, harsh, icy rain fell on the oak trees. And then came the great trek. Only a few separate carts at first, each on its own, then more densely, one behind another. You could see them from a distance, passing over the bridge in an endless file with tarpaulins fluttering; they drove through Mitkau, they drove through the Senthagener Tor and past the Georgenhof. Columns of carts keeping close together, from manorial estates, with one trek leader on horseback in front. They had put the names of their villages in front of the carts so that they wouldn’t lose each other. And there were single vehicles, some comfortable, some wretched. Farm carts crammed with all they could hold, and here and there even a car with a spare can of petrol fixed to the back of it.

  They moved quietly; all you heard was the creaking of the wheels and the ‘Gee up!’ and ‘Whoa!’ of the drivers, most of them women. On top of the carts were little huts, solidly constructed or hastily knocked together, covered with roofing felt or rugs. Bundles of hay for the horses hung from cords under the carts. Young girls on foot, leading children by the hand. And dogs ran along under the axles of the carts. There were a few pedestrians with rucksacks or children’s sledges. They kept their heads bent. Their coat collars were turned up. Bicycles, babies’ prams, handcarts.

  Where had anything like it ever been seen?

  •

  Was it an illusion, or was Herr Schünemann the political economist hurrying about among all those vehicles on his crutches? Did he raise one of them in greeting? His bag was buckled over his back on a s
trap.

  •

  Next day Dr Wagner and the Baltic baron were seen standing by the billiards table, smoking and making conversation in a very correct way. The baron in his check suit, Wagner wearing his third tie, with the little order on his lapel. The round stove, which dated back to the nineteenth century, gave a certain amount of warmth. They wrote down their scores on the beelyar table, as the baron pronounced it, and leaned on their cues. Sometimes they stood by the ice-encrusted window, and breathed on the ice to make a little hole and look through it at the march of the Ten Thousand, as Wagner the schoolmaster called the long line of refugees. Xenophon, he added, said that traitors were buried alive. The two gentlemen took turns blowing their cigarette smoke into the air in a criss-cross pattern, and sometimes out of their nostrils. It looked like the vapour that came hissing from the noses of the horses out there.

  Sometimes they counted the vehicles: there went a column of three hundred carts! It was like France in 1940, when the Belgians fled before the Germans.

  •

  The baron had been in Paris long ago, and he talked about it now. Bugs in the hotels, and filthy lavatories. Indescribable! The French were real pigs, all across the board. Every last one of them. And incidentally, the young women weren’t as free and easy as a foreigner might assume. It wasn’t a case of anything goes; you could come up against a brick wall; they were all hell-bent on marriage. All those risqué stories people told, not a word of truth in them. And yet, said the baron, he remembered the spring of 1932 . . . ‘I could tell you a thing or two . . .’

  Wagner had also been in France, in the First War, making his way along muddy trenches without a thought in his head about coquettish French girls. But as a student he and his friend Fritjof had visited Italian cemeteries, quoting Caesar – Gallia omnis est divisa in parte tres, all Gaul is divided into three parts – and found that in spite of studying Latin for all those semesters they couldn’t read the funerary inscriptions. That bothered him to this day, although he had long ago decided to make a joke of it. Fritjof – that cheerful, sunburnt young man, powerful and supple, and then he had fallen fighting.