Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

And the gate? And what were those figures in the picture?

He had Mitkau in the can now, said the painter. Danzig would be the last great task he had set himself. He just had to visit Allenstein first, then go on to Danzig and maybe Elbing. Then he would pack everything up and go home ‘to the Reich’, as he put it, and then he would have a good sleep for once and see what else could be done with his wealth of material.

He was really interested in all that had happened to him here. Hours on end in prison, sharing a cell with six subhumans. For hours on end! Work-shy scum, mere rabble …

The Ukrainian maids were curious to see his art as well, and looked over his shoulder, but Auntie said, ‘Come on, what’s all this?’ and they got back to work: peeling potatoes, washing the dishes, cleaning the mighty stove, both in front of it and behind it.

It was the kitchen range that made the painter reach for his crayon, a real traditional range — gigantic, and the Esse cooker. He immediately began sketching the range, and he also sketched the two maids at work near it. He paid most attention to plump Vera, drawing her in profile, whereupon Sonya ran off to the cottage to fetch her check jacket.

The painter then, for professional reasons, or so he said, asked about other architectural features of the house. The cellars? And was there anything else remarkable in some way or other, something worth illustrating?

The cellar could be dismissed without more ado, although it had old vaulting and the date 1605 on a coat of arms — but it was dark and damp there. Water came up over your feet in it. At most there was the spiral staircase. Who used to climb down all those steps? A manservant sent to fetch wine? Or the bailiff, carrying a lantern and propelling a thief caught stealing wood ahead of him? Did this place have a dungeon? Had poachers or tenant farmers late with their rent languished here under lock and key, behind bolts?

These days water dripped into the cellar, gurgling, and green mould was creeping up the walls.

He now knew what it was like to be locked up, said the painter. He would never forget those hours in the prison. Sharing a cell with six suspect characters, for hours on end. Work-shy scum, he repeated, the dregs of society. Bread as hard as a stone, that was all he’d been offered. His companions had fallen on it like animals. Uttering hoarse sounds.

Then he was taken on a tour of the manor house, which he called a castle. The billiard room, the ice-cold drawing room, white and gold with all those crates against the wall. And the hearth in the hall, with a fire already burning in it.

‘A genuine fire!’ he said, rubbing his hands.

Katharina was busy tending the fire, cutting shavings from the firewood stacked by the hearth with a small chopper. Her profile was outlined against the leaping flames. This was one of her bad days; on many days she looked so good that people said: Dazzling! Today she didn’t look her best, and she knew it. She merely gave her guest a brief nod; he could see that she had a lot to do. Her long black hair was caught together simply with a slide. And when he began sketching her at once, she was reluctant and hid her face behind the dustpan.

The man stopped in front of the paintings. Paintings both large and small, all in gilt frames. They had been bought along with the estate in 1905. No one had ever shown any interest in them before, no one had taken them down and looked at them closely.

He passed over the pictures of horses hanging among all the antlers that Eberhard liked so much in the billiards room, but a landscape with cows in the foreground, and the towers of Potsdam in the distance, that was something special. Such a work mouldering away here in East Prussia? He made a mental note that here, entirely unexpectedly, he had come upon a remarkable picture of Potsdam. It wasn’t really right for it to be hanging in this house. He knew the Reich Curator of Art in Potsdam personally, he said, and he felt sure he would want to buy it at once.

That was all very interesting, but Katharina wondered why they would want to sell the picture. It’s been hanging here for ever, she said.

Where did these things come from? Where would they end up?

Then he turned to the large, dark portraits: what about these monsters? he wondered. He took them carefully down from the wall, one by one, and stood them side by side. They were heavy — he mustn’t drop one and break its frame. ‘For goodness’ sake!’ said Auntie. ‘I hope this will be all right!’ What would Eberhard say?

The painter wiped the pictures with a duster, but nothing else came to light. They were portraits; you could hardly even make that out. And there was no inscription of any kind, no coat of arms, no signature. They could be portraits of anyone. Dead and gone, rotting away, worm-eaten.

He could investigate them more thoroughly, he said, given cotton wool and warm water. He would be glad to make himself useful in return for the delightful welcome he had found here, the hot milk and bread and honey.

Peter brought the painter cotton wool and water, and then he set to work on the pictures. He did it very gently, dabbing a little here and there, going very cautiously.

‘This is very interesting,’ he said, showing the grubby cotton-wool ball he was holding, ‘but these people are all very, very ugly. You’ll never find a buyer for their portraits.’

He cleaned their eyes; he enjoyed doing that. It was only from the eyes that he removed the dirt, and they shone out of the brown gravy colour, reminiscent of Rembrandt’s palette, that surrounded them. Just as the gelding could roll his eyes right back when he thought something wasn’t exactly as it should be, these old ladies and gentlemen now looked around them. Where, they seemed to be asking, where the devil were they? Waking from a century of slumber and studying their whereabouts.

The painter hung the pictures back on the wall. The old ladies and gentlemen were back where they belonged; no one was going to take an interest in them again in a hurry.

Auntie said she had another picture upstairs; would he like to see it? It came from her native Silesia.

Yes, he said, he would, but of course his time was limited; he couldn’t stay here for long. However, he’d like to look at the picture. Auntie steered him upstairs into her domain and he stood in her room admiring the mahogany furniture. But as for the picture — the thing above her bed? A pavilion in a white frame? No, it wasn’t worth more than a glance. Prettily painted, a water-colour, but probably the work of an amateur. Yes, the pavilion was attractive — the picture wasn’t.

Before he left the room he pointed to the little picture of Hitler that Auntie had hung over her desk, inconspicuously executed in pen and ink, and said, ‘You’d better take that down.’ Then he positively lost his temper: didn’t she know what sort of a fellow the man was? Hanging it up there! How can any thinking woman bear to have that Austrian looking her in the eye, day after day?

Has she ever seen the Mitkau brickworks, he asks. No? The men who work there? ‘They don’t have such a nice room as yours …’ He had talked briefly to two of those poor bastards in the prison cell, had given them his bread. They’d fallen on it like animals.

And what, he asked, did she think the Russians would say when they set eyes on that picture?

He went over to the window and pointed to the housing estate. An intolerable sight, he said, houses all marching in step with each other.

That desk, however, was a beautiful piece of work. To think of it rotting away here.

When they went back out into the corridor, Katharina could be heard moving quickly about in her room. She closed the door and shot the bolt. She could do without the visitor looking in to make sure everything was all right with her.