Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

The boy stirred up the fire on the hearth to burn so brightly that you might think the whole house would go up in flames.

Then Auntie picked up her lute and plucked out the songs of her youth on its strings, singing in her cracked voice. Ribbons hung from the instrument as mementos. Musical gatherings in Breslau. Her dear Silesia; she would never, ever forget her native land. She thought of the day when they were thrown out, and that money-grubber stood in the doorway, hands in his pocket, laughing scornfully. He’d even fired the gardener, saying he had no further use for him, and the gardener had a wife and child. She used to stand on top of his wooden clogs and dance round with him.

Beside the well, beyond the gate

There stands a linden tree.

How many a dream I’ve had of late,

How many sweet dreams of thee.

‘Cheers!’ she said, and the women poured themselves more schnapps. Katharina sighed deeply, which Auntie found somehow comical. They talked about people’s dispositions, and how she always tended to take things lightly. And also, they said, work was a good medicine.

Katharina looked at the time. She got to her feet and walked up and down the room, then opened the door to the summer drawing room — ‘ Brr! It’s cold!’ cried the other two.

The moon had risen, and its huge disc was standing behind the trees. Moonlight fell through the tall, narrow windows into the room.

She looked round, and felt as if she had never before seen the pictures in the wallpaper on which the moonlight fell. A couple with a flute and a mandolin, dancing children, a soldier with a girl on a rearing horse.

She looked at it all as if she had to impress it on her memory for the last time.

The flute concerto at Sanssouci — domestic music-making.

Eberhard had never been a man for going on holiday, the pleasures of dancing were not to his taste, and now there he was in Italy and must surely be doing something or other there. Perhaps there was a pretty child with him? One of those delicate, dark girls who put flowers in their hair? Who knew what was going on there at this hour of the evening?

She imagined Eberhard in a plainly furnished country inn, with a girl pouring wine for him. Perhaps he was telling her about the Georgenhof, and perhaps she didn’t believe a word of it.

It was a long time ago since she had stood here with Lothar Sarkander. It had happened quite unexpectedly, in summer, when the doors of the drawing room looking out on the park had been standing open. They had seen the family sitting on the grass, and he had said, ‘What a picture!’

Then there was that secret trip to the seaside.

They had been seen sitting in the beach hut, she wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat, he in a pair of white trousers.

Had Eberhard never heard about it?

She kicked the crates containing the worldly goods of the Berlin cousins and said, ‘What a pity. We could have had lovely parties here. With dancing.’

Peter followed her and put on the light. A broad beam fell on the snow outside, and the magic was gone.

‘For heaven’s sake, the planes! The blackout! Suppose Drygalski sees it?’ cried Auntie.

So they switched off the light, closed the drawing room door, and sat down in front of the hearth again.

Before Auntie could go back to playing her lute, Katharina went to the telephone and dialled Sarkander’s number. Nine o’clock, it wasn’t too late for that. She let the phone ring for a long time, but no one picked up the receiver. Just as well — what would she have said to him?

She went into the billiards room, took a board game out of the corner cupboard and put it on the table by the hearth: a polished ashwood board with maple intarsia work, and a little box containing the turned wooden figures that went with it, shepherds, shepherdesses, sheep. Did they all belong together?

‘How do you play this?’ she asked. But Auntie didn’t know either. ‘It looks like a very old game,’ she said. You probably had to stand the pieces on the board, thought Katharina, setting them out at random.

There were three white dice in a leather cup, and Katharina shook the dice and cast them on the table. A one, a three and a five.

That made nine. Did it mean anything?

‘ Nein for no, perhaps?’ said Auntie.

Well, the dice were cast anyway, thought Katharina. She sighed so heavily that Auntie laughed.

Heinrich, the carriage is breaking . Katharina thought of the story of the faithful coachman tacked on to the end of the Grimms’ tale of the Frog King . But no, there wasn’t any iron band around her own breast breaking. She breathed in deeply.

‘You’ll be all right,’ said Auntie. ‘If you ask me, you smoke too much.’

Katharina dropped a kiss on the tip of the boy’s nose and said goodnight. Then she went to the kitchen to find things to eat. This could be a very long night.

When she opened her door upstairs, she briefly felt something like relief. Her little armchair, the table with the fruit plates, her books — it was all as usual.

But this was not a refuge for ever and ever; an adventure was going to take place here in the next hour, and it wouldn’t be a game.

Katharina went into the conservatory and looked out. The moon was as small as a burning glass now, and its light cast the barred shadows of the oak branches on the snow.

Katharina lay down on the bed. She hadn’t taken her boots off yet, and she looked through a photo album of the winding railway line over the St Gotthard Pass, with a view into the deep, rocky valley. She had always expected something to go wrong, but the railway made short work of the mountainous journey. Over there in Italy it had been raining. Sunshine here, rain there. And she had thought it was the other way round. Eberhard blinking in the sunlight. ‘Got it wrong!’ she had written in white ink under the photo.

*

She listened for sounds in the house. The others were going to bed now, too. Peter let the dog out briefly, then his door closed, and so did Auntie’s.

Katharina listened for sounds in the house and for sounds outside. She didn’t know that Auntie was standing at her own door, also listening, and looking through the keyhole, but everything was dark.

Katharina put the album aside. She was afraid. I am feeling naked fear, she thought, looking in the mirror. It was a feeling she had last had in her schooldays in Berlin, when her young girl’s diary had been found. She had been going to write something in it, and it was gone.

Her wedding in the dark church. Until death do you part? Would she be able to last a whole lifetime with Eberhard? Rise high, O red-winged eagle.

Pastor Brahms hadn’t smiled, he had been in deadly earnest. Until death do you part.

And that dream the night before the wedding. She had dreamt of Eberhard. He had been wearing long gloves, lady’s gloves, and he had said, ‘I must go and see to the cows now.’

She stood up again and went over to Peter’s room. She never usually did that, but now she sat on his bed and looked round the little room. The model railway going through tunnels, socks and trousers on the floor, boots thrown around at random. Paper planes under the ceiling. What a poor little life!

The toy castle stood in the middle of the room, with knights behind its walls. The drawbridge was up.

Once she used to pray with the children every evening, as she remembered goodnight prayers from her own childhood, but when Elfie died the prayers had stopped. Now she would have liked to say one of those prayers for children with Peter … the angels spread their wings, to you creation sings, O Jesus my sweet joy … But it was no good. She neither folded her hands nor opened her mouth.