Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

He could always find a reason to prowl round the outside of the house. And now, in winter, he had trodden a semi-circular path through the snow behind it.

The women workers from the east, the Polish driver — their credentials had all been repeatedly checked, and there was nothing to be done about them. They wore the symbol marking them out as foreign workers, but they kept going off to the Forest Lodge to see the foreign riff-raff there, the Czechs, Italians and Romanians. ‘They’re hatching some kind of plot,’ he told his wife. ‘And they steal like magpies!’ He took his pistol down from the wall and loaded it. The priest from Mitkau who never called on the Drygalskis, even though they were good Catholics, went in and out of the Georgenhof as he liked. What a nerve.

Last summer Eberhard von Globig, in his white uniform jacket with the Cross of Merit on his breast (the plain Cross of Merit, though, no additional swords), had gone riding through the housing estate as if to take a look at it, had said hello in a friendly way (in too friendly a way?), had watered his horse at the Schlageter Fountain, a good horse called Fellow that then had to be handed over for the war effort, and had bent down to Drygalski and asked how his wife was. (He had refused an invitation to come into the house.)

All the same, Eberhard von Globig had sent him a little bag of brown sugar and a canister of sunflower oil. ‘Make your wife something good to eat.’

‘You have to butter these people up,’ Eberhard had told Katharina. ‘Who knows what may happen?’

*

Now the Russians were on the border, the sirens howled every day, and the sound of pigs squealing in agony at their death rang through the housing development. People were slaughtering all their animals and packing up their possessions just in case, although it was strictly forbidden to think of flight. Carts stood behind the houses, carts large and small, weatherproofed with straw and roofing felt. Every crack was painted to keep bad weather out, too.

Suppose the Globigs were packing up as well? It would be a good moment to catch them at it, thought Drygalski. Then he could ask them whether by any chance they thought the Russians would get as far as Mitkau. Didn’t they trust the German Wehrmacht? The Russians had been beaten back in the autumn, hadn’t they?

The People’s Comrades who had come from the east, from Tilsit, from Lithuania and Latvia, couldn’t be asked whether they trusted the German Wehrmacht. They’d have given the right answer or none at all.

Drygalski asked his wife whether she needed anything, put his cap on and strode over to the Georgenhof. He found a pig hanging from a ladder while the Pole gutted it, with the girls lending him a hand. They stopped chattering at once when they saw the man from the Settlement coming. Brown jackboots and a Hitler moustache?

‘Killing pigs, are we?’ asked Drygalski, and he almost pinched blonde Sonya’s cheek on a whim. Good healthy stock, she seemed.

He addressed Auntie, who was rendering lard in the kitchen. Heil Hitler, was she weighing everything accurately and handing it in to the authorities?

‘Yes, yes,’ she said, showing him a list with items crossed off it. ‘It’s all being delivered.’

He was offered a saucer of boiled pork; would he like to try it? Yes, he would. And he asked for some salt, went over to the Pole and watched for a while as joints of meat were thrown into various different tubs, to make sure he was doing it properly. He thought of his grocery shop, and the way he always sliced the ham so nicely on the slicing machine, and gave the children ends of sausage.

Jago the dog watched the Pole as well, taking an interest in his own way. The cat, as usual, made himself scarce. He knew he wouldn’t be forgotten.

Drygalski examined the big farm cart standing in the farmyard, broad and heavy, and sure enough, its sides had already been reinforced, and it had been provided with a kind of roof. So they were already packing up here too, were they? But as he was holding his saucer of pork he refrained from asking more revealing questions.

Now that Fellow had been handed over for the war effort, the Globigs had only three horses left. Two for the big farm cart and the gelding for the coach, wasn’t that so?

Auntie took this opportunity to tell him that a very strange painter had been here, the artist kind of painter, saying very odd things.

An artist? What for? Making a record of antiquities? Drawing architectural features of interest?

But then why hadn’t the man been sent over to the Settlement to draw the Schlageter Fountain? Drygalski couldn’t understand that. And he went once round the house and then back to the Settlement to look at the fountain, which was a really ornamental piece. The bronze plaque on it was turning slightly green. Thank heavens there were photographs of the monument; it was shown from all angles in the newspaper supplement Mitkauer Land . The photographer had gone to a great deal of trouble.

But fancy not telling the artist about the fountain — that really was too bad.

Dr Wagner too had turned up to join the pig-butchering party, in his warm walking coat, knitted gloves and black ear protectors. He had brought a small can with him and asked Auntie for some of the broth from the sausages. And as he stayed put and did not look as if he would be going away in a hurry, he got his broth and a little pork to go with it. He knocked his shoes together because he had cold feet. Nothing was easy.

Meanwhile Peter dragged the Christmas tree out of the hall and left it in front of the house. The tree, once covered with lights, had served its purpose. He should pour a little melted lard on the branches, said Dr Wagner. How happy the birds would be!

They climbed up to Peter’s room, followed by the cat and the dog, to go on with his studies. They put some wood in the stove, and Katharina joined them.

German Cathedrals. She showed them the book and talked about the painter who had been here, drawing everything, every nook and cranny. Who had even taken an interest in the pictures in the hall and the rather decrepit finial with its spiked mace. How good that there are people who care about such things. Although … wouldn’t photographs have been cheaper? Drawing pictures of everything was such a laborious way of going about it.

Wagner leafed through the book about German cathedrals. Ah, Speyer, ruined by the French ages ago; Worms, gutted like a pig. And now the air raids: so many already destroyed. Lübeck, Königs berg and Munich. Dr Wagner thought of all the other buildings now gone. Whole towns, bridges, museums with all their contents. Paintings. Valuable libraries perishing on the pyres of burning cities.

What a good thing there were people still trying to save what could yet be saved, at least in a small way.

Even beauty must die, though she rules men and gods alike.

Yet the adamant breast of Stygian Zeus she cannot sway.

So said Schiller. These terrorist gangsters couldn’t tear the poetry in his head out of him, said Wagner. And with his silver pencil he marked those verses in Echtermeyer’s anthology of German poetry that must be preserved for posterity. It would be a good idea to learn them by heart.

Then he recited several poems in a sing-song tone of voice, as old people did, his eyes filled with tears, and he buried his face in his hands, the brown marks of old age and large veins on the back of them, to sob into them. The fate of his fatherland moved him deeply, anyone could see.

Katharina pushed the plate of bread and sausage over to him. Her mind wasn’t on what she was doing; she was thinking of something else entirely. It was as if she wanted to ask a question, but she couldn’t bring out what was troubling her here and now. A mysterious guest was to be smuggled into the house. Today? Tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? Perhaps not at all. Smuggled into her room, to be more precise. But how was it to be done? She thought about it. She thought of those lines by Goethe: