All for Nothing

by Walter Kempowski

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked.

  But Drygalski hadn’t said anything. He was pursuing his own train of thought.

  •

  The Hesses stood at their window, watching the procession of refugees go by, and they realized that they could feel the floor shaking. Frau Hesse told her husband, ‘I think you’d better lie down and get some rest.’

  ‘I should at least have brought the stone axe with me,’ he said, adding that he would always blame himself for leaving it behind. ‘The one with the hole in it . . .’

  ‘But why worry?’ said his wife. ‘The Party will lock it all up and keep it safe until we can come back.’

  It was unthinkable for them to stand at the roadside and hope to get a lift at once, as the baron and his wife had done. No one would stop for them. But Drygalski would sort it all out.

  •

  However, now to eat. Supper’s ready! Supper’s ready! The Hesses, sitting in a corner, half rose to their feet: did that mean them too? Yes, it did. ‘Of course,’ said Auntie, and she let their boys bang the brass gong hanging from the wall, with a brass elephant holding it in his trunk. Herr Hesse carefully wiped his plate and spoon on the tablecloth, and then started spooning soup into his mouth. They served chicken soup at home with baked egg garnish, said the village schoolteacher as he slurped. The globules of fat on top of his soup seemed to interest him. Was he actually counting them?

  Peter showed the Hesse boys the hallmarks on the soup spoons. And the pattern on the plates: the pond where cranes stood, and the boat with a fisherman just bringing in his net from the water.

  Hesse looked at his wife. How, he wondered, was he ever going to stand it if there was all this chattering at table? Could anyone tell him that? Children have to be seen and not heard, that was a good saying.

  If he had opened his mouth during meals as a child, his father would have smacked him in the face.

  Then he told everyone what it had felt like when he slumped sideways. It’s all over now, he had thought. He told his story to everyone sitting at the table, and to his wife and children who, after all, had been there at the time. It was his wife who had got on her bike and cycled straight off to the local doctor, who arrived just in time to save him. His wife could tell them all about that, completing her husband’s account of the incident. And then he, in turn, confirmed all that she said. Imagine if he had been alone at home! That could have happened, couldn’t it?

  It was now three years ago that he had collapsed. The day was marked in red on the calendar. Suppose he had lost his powers of speech, or been left disabled? And then what would have become of his stone axes?

  •

  The two boys were a little younger than Peter, and were quick on the uptake. Eckbert and Ingomar. You could see them imitating their father’s dragging footsteps as he went along the corridor. He’d probably smacked them round the face often enough in the past, when he still had his full health and strength.

  Peter took them all round the house, and yes, they were definitely quick on the uptake. They were not interested in the tiny creatures to be seen through his microscope, but they hammered away on the piano, they banged the gong and they got the gramophone working. Si, si, si, give me a penny . . . They took a good look at the damp cellar, where there were gurgling sounds – could wicked criminals once have been chained to the walls here, waiting to be executed? Peter locked the cellar door behind the two boys, rattled the keys, and let them stew in their own juice in the dark for a while.

  There were walnuts laid out to dry in the attic. The boys explored the huge old wardrobes up there. A hussar’s shako dating from imperial times? Peter’s mother’s wedding dress. A collapsible top hat.

  They played dressing-up games, and couldn’t understand why Katharina suddenly burst into tears as Peter came downstairs in her wedding dress, with Eckbert in Eberhard’s top hat.

  •

  The coach was standing out in the yard now too. Vladimir had got it out of the carriage house and stuffed straw into any gaps, draught-proofing the window in its door. Peter sat in it to see what it felt like. It was very comfortable. He looked forward to driving away with his mother in the coach, going to the west. How much longer must he wait? The two Hesse boys scrambled in beside him, and they agreed that it was very comfortable.

  ‘Stay where you are and don’t move!’

  •

  They rode down the little slope behind the house on the sledge again and again. Then, after playing for a while, they took the sledge round to the front of the house and rode down the slope to the road. The drivers of the carts trotting past along the road hit out at them with their whips. A car stopped. Were the boys out of their minds? Playing with a sledge in serious times like these, riding all the way down to the road? They could easily have an accident.

  •

  Peter took the boys to the chicken run and showed them how friendly the old rooster was. They climbed up to the hayloft in the big barn and fooled around in the hay. One of the boys nearly fell through the trapdoor in the loft to the floor below.

  ‘Don’t tell my father,’ said his brother, ‘or he’ll get slapped again.’

  They climbed to the Ukrainian maids’ bedroom in the cottage, too, but the maids sent them packing. Peter saw at once that the girls had all kinds of things in their room that hadn’t been there before. He wondered whether those crates in the summer drawing room were still intact.

  •

  The Hesse boys shouted ‘Polack!’ at Vladimir, who grabbed them and gave them a hiding, hitting harder than was necessary. It was to be hoped that Drygalski hadn’t seen that. German boys being chastised by a man of inferior race.

  Was it just chance that the Pole brought the Hesse family damp wood for their stove that evening?

  •

  They ran through the forest, past the ruins of the castle and down to the river, where the old boat lay in the ice. They slid across the river to the opposite bank, and watched the long line of refugees trekking over the bridge.

  They also went to see the foreign workers in the Forest Lodge. They slept in bunk beds, and it was rather cramped. The Czech wanted to kick the three boys out, but the others were friendly to them. They asked how strong they were and felt their muscles. The Romanian taught them to smoke, and showed them a conjuring trick: how to make money disappear when it had been lying on the table only a moment ago. Marcello the Italian sang them a Neapolitan song, accompanying himself on the mandolin. He had covered the walls with pictures of naked girls. The Crouching Woman couldn’t compete with those girls.

  The Czech carved them wooden daggers, and showed them how to cut someone’s throat with a knife.

  Romania? No, they had no idea where it was.

  The boys’ dearest wish would have been to sleep over with the foreign men one night, but of course they weren’t allowed to.

  Best of all would be to stay with them; go away with them and have adventures.

  They brought the foreign workers a peacock feather, which was readily accepted. All they’d needed was a peacock feather, said the men, and now the place was really comfortable.

  Of course the boys explored the whole of the Forest Lodge: the panelled dining room with a one-legged grand piano in the corner; the terrace where hotel guests used to drink their coffee; the rooms used by the National Socialist Motor Corps to store spare parts. Peter appropriated a shiny metal bar there, just the thing for the aircraft in his tree house.

  •

  Auntie was surprised to find that the hens had stopped laying. The inmates of the Forest Lodge, however, had plenty of eggs.

  ‘Let me smell your breath,’ the village schoolteacher’s wife told her boys. ‘You haven’t been smoking, have you?’

  Did they know how unhealthy it was to smoke?

  The teacher threw back the blanket under which he was keeping himself warm, and scolded his family. Why didn’t his wife keep a better eye on the boys? For heaven’s sake, he had been telling them
for years that they were forbidden to smoke, and now all rules could be broken. Next thing anyone knew they’d be going round with a bottle of schnapps.

  •

  Peter climbed up to his tree house with the other boys and fitted the shiny bar in place. He could fix a rear-view mirror to it, but he’d better forget about a horn.

  They watched the great trek go on from up in the tree: occasional people on foot; horse-drawn carts piled high with possessions. People on bicycles, others pulling sledges. They counted the carts, but stopped when they got to two hundred.

  They also saw a procession of prisoners go by, coming from the brickworks, wearing striped coats and wooden clogs. Sad figures dragging themselves along. They were guarded to left and right by soldiers with rifles at the ready.

  The pale face of frail Herr Hesse appeared at his upstairs window. He was watching the prisoners go by too. He cleaned his teeth with a wooden toothpick, and then knocked on the windowpane to let the boys know they must get down from that tree house at once. What did they think they were doing? They’d break all their bones, and then there’d be trouble. Wasn’t it enough that he, their father, had almost died, and without any advance warning? Those men in striped coats – they must be antisocial characters. Heaven knew what laws they had broken.

  •

  His wife was looking round the outside of the place. She walked once round the house, and then she wondered: why no garden, with such a large property?

  ‘Don’t you have a garden?’ she asked.

  ‘We have a park,’ replied Auntie.

  ‘Yes, but such a huge plot of land, and no garden?’ And Frau Hesse talked about her dahlias, the begonias – their tubers would be rotting in the cellar now – and the vegetables she used to grow. Broad beans! Green peas! Leeks! There were rakes, scythes and spades hanging from the stable wall. How she would love to lay out a garden here in spring. Ah, in spring . . . ?

  •

  Frau Hesse, who had once been on a first-aid course run by the National Socialist Nurses’ Association, noticed that Peter had something wrong with his throat. ‘Come here for a moment,’ she told him, and she looked down his throat, massaged his larynx and gave him some drops to take. Lo and behold, his tonsils weren’t swollen any more next morning.

  ‘That woman practises witchcraft!’ said Auntie. She wasn’t entirely happy with the way Frau Hesse changed the positions of flowering pot plants in the hall, put the cacti in the dark and what looked like dry twigs of some kind in water in a preserving jar, saying that then they would flower again. Auntie was about to put everything back in its old place, but somehow or other the new arrangement did look better, and made the dark hall seem friendlier. Especially when the sun shone in.

  As for Peter’s catarrh, now bewitched away, perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea. What were they going to tell Drygalski when he came looking for Hitler Youth boys to help out somewhere?

  •

  Katharina and the teacher’s wife got on well. They sat together. Frau Hesse took her good blouse out of her rucksack, and her wool and linen skirt, and Katharina put on the silver brooch that she had brought back from Italy. They played games of patience. First down in the hall, then they moved up to Katharina’s room, and locked the door. There were always people going in and out of the hall, and all of them left the doors open. Upstairs they could be undisturbed.

  ‘Helga!’ called Herr Hesse. ‘Where are you?’ But there was no answer, even when he put his hands behind his ears. Helga was sitting on the other side of a locked door with Frau von Globig, playing cards. Then they stopped playing cards and talked about what women talk about, sitting together on their own. Katharina opened her wardrobe, and Frau Hesse enjoyed a fashion show: Katharina’s pleated skirt, and all those hats. Katharina would have liked to tell the teacher’s wife her secret. It was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘Just imagine, a man spent the night in that cubby hole! He climbed over the rose fence.’ But she didn’t, she kept it strictly to herself. What had happened here must remain a secret, and she would take it to the grave if necessary.

  ‘Helga!’ called Herr Hesse. ‘Where are you?’ He felt cold, and that couldn’t be good for him.

  The boys were nowhere to be seen. They had gone off to visit the foreign workers again. So he had to get up himself and move his chair closer to the stove. It was a mystery to him why that stove wouldn’t draw. If he had another stroke it would be his wife’s fault. Looking in the mirror, he drew his mouth down on one side so it looked as it had on that Sunday morning when he hadn’t known what was about to happen. .

  He had once made a Stone Age loom with his schoolchildren, and the man from the education authority had praised it. Heavens, how many years ago was that? It was all so far in the past. He thought of teacher training college, and how he and his friends used to climb over the wall at night. It had been summer, and the girls sat in front of their houses. The students joked with them, and then climbed the wall by night. He used to wear his hat tilted sideways on his head in those days.

  •

  There was no singing in the kitchen. The maids were quiet, and did their work in silence. When Auntie came in to see if everything was all right, Vera went over and asked if she could have a word with her.

  ‘What, here and now?’ said Auntie. But then she went upstairs to the maids’ room with that mature young woman, who had volunteered to come to Germany from the distant Ukraine and glean experience far from the sunflower fields of her native land, and she sat down in the chair by the window.

  ‘What is it?’

  At first Vera shed copious tears, and then, wringing her hands, told Auntie that she was going to have a baby. What was she to do?

  ‘A baby?’ said Auntie. ‘How did that happen? And now of all times!’ What, she asked Vera, did she think of doing about it? That was exactly what Vera wanted Auntie to tell her. But Auntie had no idea either.

  She couldn’t find out whether one of the foreign workers in the Forest Lodge was to blame for this misfortune – the Czech, or Marcello the cheerful Italian? Or could it be Vladimir? No, surely not the upright and honest Pole. The Czech? He always looked so venomous, and once he had even made his way into the house. Auntie felt sure he carried a sharp knife. He was capable of anything.

  Well, whether it was a Czech, a Pole or an Italian, at least it wasn’t a case of racial defilement. And Vera wasn’t giving any information; she just went on crying.

  •

  Frau Hesse was asked for advice, since she had cured Peter’s tonsils, but her medical knowledge wasn’t up to something like this. She could have relieved a sprained ankle with a criss-cross bandage, or put a dressing on a cut finger, but she didn’t meddle with unwanted pregnancies. The Nazi nurses had not discussed the subject. After all, it was wonderful to bring another human being into the world, so why try to prevent it?

  She advised Vera to avoid lifting heavy weights, and not to jump off a stool for fear of suffering a miscarriage.

  After that, Vera could be heard all over the house jumping off stools wherever and whenever she had the opportunity.

  Perhaps, said Auntie, St John’s wort would help? But where would you get St John’s wort in midwinter? And what was it supposed to do, or not to do?

  •

  Frau Hesse played patience with Katharina, whispered to the Ukrainian maids, and made her husband dumplings, in return for which, and weak as he was, he tickled her under the chin, even though, as he said, the dumplings tasted of Sidol metal cleaner.

  •

  When Frau Hesse heard of the problems of the Drygalski household, she put on her hat and went over there to talk to Drygalski’s wife. Heil Hitler. A woman in the prime of life, lying in bed? She spent a long time explaining why she had to pull herself together. Otherwise her husband might start looking elsewhere. She talked about the Drygalskis’ lovely house, and admired the way they had furnished it. And she pointed to the picture of their son, who had fallen fighting, and who she thou
ght looked like Peter, and also to the crucifix – where did that come from?

  And, wonderful to relate, fresh blood began circulating in the woman’s veins. She sat up in bed and asked for a mirror. Next morning she was down in the kitchen, frying her husband two eggs and bacon for breakfast.

  A woman must fight to keep her man, Frau Hesse had whispered, adding that Frau Drygalski, with her mischievous expression, still looked pretty good. Wouldn’t it be worth cultivating it? Why didn’t she get up and give her husband a mischievous smile now and then? And so Frau Drygalski did.

  Drygalski was almost ready to fall on his knees before such a miracle. But as he ate the eggs she had fried him, he also began feeling furious. How did this come to happen all of a sudden? Had she, perhaps, not been so sick after all? Could she have been frying him eggs every day, and sometimes giving him smoked sausage with green cabbage? There he had been, slaving away and worrying about her. Mollycoddling her to her heart’s content. And he’d almost landed himself with a problem in the shape of that girl, what was her name? She’d had a sudden fit of lasciviousness – she’d flung her arms round him in the cellar doorway, pressing her body close to his.

  Drygalski walked round his house and spat in the bushes. No. He had let himself be fooled, and he wasn’t taking that sort of thing.

  •

  By the fire in the evening, in the pleasant company which the Hesses must of course be invited to join, Hesse the village teacher told Dr Wagner the schoolmaster how nice he had always been to the village children. He had always tried to be gentle, although of course a teacher must also be strict, and then he went on to the story of how he had suffered that stroke on a Sunday, of all days. Without any advance warning, in the morning at breakfast.

  ‘At first we thought nothing much of it,’ said the teacher’s wife, ‘but when I saw saliva running from his mouth . . .’ Then she thought: no, this won’t do! And she had cycled straight off to the doctor. Now he sat there with his hands folded in his lap. She had wrapped a blanket round his legs, which had no strength left in them. And in the past he had been able to swing round in a circle on the horizontal bars in the gym, and perform a straddle vault over the horse.