Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

Katharina threw a coin into the missionary box, a figure of a Moor who nodded his head in thanks. Old postage stamps wouldn’t have done for him.

Out in the porch she almost bumped into the pastor again. He led her back into the chilly darkness. There was something else he wanted to say … and he took her further into the dark. He had something on his mind. He approached her purposefully, and then dropped hints, and finally came out with it. It was a question of giving a man shelter for a night — a refugee. Could that be done? It was mixed up with politics, so not a word to anyone. She could think it over at her leisure and then let him know.

One day you’ll be back with me again,

One day you’ll be true to me again …

On the way home Katharina thought of the Crouching Woman, and of Felicitas and the twilight hours spent in her own comfortable refuge. A strange man? For a night? Possibly one of those men in the striped uniforms?

She couldn’t agree to it just like that. Shouldn’t she ask Eberhard first? But — Italy? Wouldn’t it take ages? Letters arrived six weeks after they were sent. And anyone could overhear a telephone call. ‘Not a word to anyone,’ Pastor Brahms had said. And through what hints was she to present Eberhard with the idea? A strange man?

On the other hand, shouldn’t one help a stranger? Wasn’t it her Christian duty?

Dr Wagner was already waiting in Horst-Wessel-Strasse, and she took him up in the coach. This time he had two bags with him. The gelding looked back intently as he got in.

Today he was going to show the boy something else, he said. He had brought some postcards of Greek art, youths throwing spears and bending bows. There is nothing sweeter than to die for your country, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori . They would have to study that proposition.

Peter was sitting in his room watching the housing development through the telescope. House beside house, arranged in straight lines. An old woman with a bag came round the corner. She slips, and no one notices. Cars drive by on the road, women shake out their mattresses. She lies there and tries to get to her feet, like a horse that has fallen. Peter watched her lying by the roadside, he up here, she down there … how could he have gone to her aid?

After a while he was tired of watching. And when he looked again, the black heap of clothes that was the old woman had disappeared.

It was cold, because the stove wasn’t drawing properly, and Peter would have liked to crawl into bed, but that wouldn’t do, because Auntie had a way of suddenly flinging open the door to see that everything was all right, particularly when it was quiet up here in his room. It wouldn’t have done for him to be lying in bed reading in broad daylight. So he sat at the window and drew shapes in the frost on the panes.

Around midday the sun came out, and Peter immediately left everything where it was and ran down to the yard, where flocks of sparrows flew up from the stable. He teased the Ukrainian maids, who finally hit out at him with the broom, and he threw the chickens some grain.

The rooster, a fiery red fowl with a blue tail, was called Richard, and he was Peter’s friend. When Peter appeared the bird moved a little way aside, so that the hens couldn’t see him, and then Peter bent down and held out a few grains of corn to him in the hollow of his hand. However well fed he was, the rooster would peck them up and nestle his head into Peter’s hand. It was a friendship of equals.

Peter picked up a new-laid egg in the henhouse and tipped the contents down his throat. Auntie wouldn’t have liked that either. You boil or fry eggs — it’s disgusting to drink them from the shell raw. He also liked eating the sliced turnips that were thrown to the cattle.

The peacock was nowhere to be seen; he had moved into the furthest corner of the barn to get out of the cold. Even the corn that Peter was throwing to the chickens couldn’t tempt him out. He sat high up in his corner and didn’t move.

The dovecote was uninhabited, and all was still, bar the odd feather wafting around the opening through which the birds flew in and out. Only a few swallows nested in the dovecote. Old Herr von Globig had been a bird fancier. The peacock with his tail and his little crown, a turkey and his family. Geese. When he couldn’t go hunting any more, pigeons had been his pleasure. He would lie on the terrace, offering them grain, and he was pleased when they came down to him, cooing and nodding their heads.

Pigeons: their heavy bodies, their elegant flight. Of course the old man had noticed that they didn’t have nice natures; they were always friendly to him, but they would peck each other until they bled. ‘Just like human beings,’ he said, ‘one of them tormenting another.’

He had tried to persuade his cousin Josef in Albertsdorf to get pigeons of his own. Then they could exchange news by pigeon post, he said, without paying for postage and packing. From the Georgenhof to Albertsdorf and back. They could tie letters to the birds’ legs. Pigeons have an extraordinary sense of direction.

But what kind of news, Josef asked, would they be exchanging? Anyway, what was the telephone for?

When the old gentleman died, the family got rid of the birds. On the housing estate, however, everyone who wanted pigeons could have them, and they flew in flocks, sometimes right and sometimes left, turning and wheeling in the air.

The cottage stood next to the big old barn that hadn’t been in use since the sale of the landed property. Its lower floor was the laundry room-cum-kitchen, and the Ukrainian women slept on the top floor. You got to it by climbing a ladder. Peter liked teasing the women; he called them ‘maid’ until they hit out at him with the dishcloth. Sometimes he climbed up to their bedroom, where they kept their wooden chests and put their things tidily away in an empty cupboard. There were coloured postcards on the wall, depicting a prima ballerina in different ballet positions. He teased skinny Sonya rather more than stout Vera, who had a mysterious smell. Sonya smelt too, but her odour was not uninteresting. However, if she managed to get hold of him that was no fun at all. She hit out, and hard.

The two women argued. Sonya screeched, and Vera answered her back more calmly. Sometimes they both sang the melancholy songs of their native land together. Sonya took the soprano part in her high voice, Vera sang the lower part in a dark, velvety tone. They were probably remembering the sunflowers at home, and how they had volunteered to come to Germany, a stupid thing to do. Eberhard himself had found them and asked if they wouldn’t like to go to Germany, saying that he could fix it. And their whole village had said: don’t be silly, give it a go. Germany. A chance like this doesn’t come along every day. You’re not getting anywhere here. And their mothers had urged them to accept the offer, while Grandpa hummed and hawed. In fact it hadn’t been such a stupid idea to go voluntarily after all, because a few weeks later they’d have been taken to Germany anyway, with no choice in the matter.

Now their native land was far away and the Red Army was back there. The two girls didn’t know that their mothers had been deported under cover of night for collaborating with the enemy in the east. No letter had come through, no message — even pigeon post wouldn’t have been any use. Now the girls were in a foreign land, quarrelling and singing. And when Peter annoyed Sonya she hit out really hard.

Sometimes Peter watched Vladimir the Pole feeding the horses. The two brown mares and the gelding; you had to be careful not to stick the pitchfork in the horses’ legs when you were mucking out the stable. The smell of their fodder was appetizing: a mixture of oats and chaff. The gelding blew the chaff away before he began eating.