Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

When she crawled out again on all fours, they both laughed, it seemed to them so comical.

Then he told her more about the cellars and attics where he had hidden, and about his wife.

‘It’s my own fault. My father warned me: mind you don’t marry a shiksa, he said.’

At one point he raised his head and looked straight at Katharina. ‘I wonder when the Russians will finally arrive. How much longer will it be?’

What kept the Red Army from striking a blow? They bent over a map, and realized that the Red Army was less than a hundred kilometres away, ready for the final leap.

Should he wait for them or go to meet them? That was the question. But in this cold weather?

‘If I’d stayed in Berlin …’

Go to meet the Russians? Put his hands up, saying, ‘I’m a Jew!’ But suppose they made short work of him, called him a spy and shot him. Or said, ‘A Jew? So what? Anyone can say that, and we have enough Jews of our own.’

To take his mind off it, Katharina told him about her travels, about Lake Garda — and Italy.

He had once been to Italy too, to Venice. How strange! So had Eberhard and Katharina. They had seen Goebbels, all in white, coming out of St Mark’s Basilica, and so had the stranger. They must all have been standing quite close.

Why hadn’t he stayed in Italy? he asked himself, striking his forehead. And Katharina too thought: why didn’t we stay there, following the English steel shares, or go to Romania while there was still time? But of course the rice-flour factory had failed dismally and nothing more was heard or seen of it, and they’d have been stuck in Romania.

Then they had to keep quiet, because they could hear Vladimir talking to the maids in the yard. They were fetching in wood and laughing. Then they whispered to each other. Were they looking up at Katharina’s window? The Ukrainian girls must be amused, too, to think that Drygalski had taken to eavesdropping at the drawing room door, as Auntie had told them.

They themselves were presumably discussing whether to wait here, or whether it would be better to go to meet the Red Army.

When all was finally quiet out there, the man said, ‘If I had … if I were …’

And Katharina thought: if he were …

They studied the map, their heads close, looking to see how far away the border was and where the Russians might be.

Meanwhile the stranger picked up the Blue Book of German Cathedrals, which was lying on the table. Ah, the Germans, he said, their glory days are over.

He went to the bookshelves — supported by gilded bronze brackets — and took out individual books. Stefan Zweig? She’d better not be caught with that, he said. He put the book down beside German Cathedrals . He found a book by Jakob Wassermann too, The Little Gooseboy . Katharina had had no idea that those two writers were Jewish.

Should she show him her silhouettes? Or the photograph albums? She didn’t address him by the informal du pronoun, she said ‘Herr Hirsch’ to her guest, and told him she must go down or her absence would be noticed.

‘That’s fine, Frau von Globig,’ he said. ‘That’s fine.’ And he spoke in a way that suggested it was ridiculous for her to be a von , with the noble particle in her name.

She left him alone. Locked the door twice , click click, and left him behind to wander between her two rooms, going over his memories.

She put on her white Persian lamb cap and went out into the woods.

I must pass the time, she thought, and not hear any more terrible secrets or endless stories of his wife and children.

The question was, had Auntie noticed her locking the door twice , click click? Would she ask why?

Katharina walked to the bank of the little River Helge. The ice lay smooth and grey before her. The wind whistled round her ears. Carrion crows cawed overhead. Distorted willows stood on the bank. There was the big bridge in the distance. The stranger would have to avoid that as he went on his way. It would probably be guarded. Crossing the ice would be safer, he’d be just a little dark dot on the grey ice.

Wood lay stacked in cubic metres on the bank. It ought to have been carted away in autumn, but now it was dwindling. She saw that the boat hadn’t been hauled in, and now it was stuck in the ice, rotting. Everything goes to rack and ruin when there’s no man in the house, she thought.

She walked along the icy bank. The wind blew into her face. It would be good to go on and on, she thought, to go away and never come back again.

On the way home she passed little Elfriede’s grave. She cast it a quick glance. The idea had been to put an obelisk on the grave and later redesign the park round it, but that had never been done. Pastor Brahms had been right when he had reservations. Why not lay the child to rest in the community’s graveyard, where everyone else was buried? he had asked. ‘Do you want extras? Old Herr von Globig lies here as well.’

She stopped, and her thoughts went back in time. Eberhard had pushed the child away when she put her arms round his neck.

‘What a picture!’ Sarkander had said in the drawing room. And then she also remembered that Lothar Sarkander had once stood by the grave, and didn’t notice that she had seen him.

She made a little detour. She mustn’t get back to the man up there too soon. The ruins of the old castle were covered with snow. No fugitive could have hidden in the rubble that filled its vaults.

She would have liked to talk to the people in the Forest Lodge. One of them was an Italian. She’d never looked closely at those people. Perhaps there were educated men among them. But none of them were here of their own free will, and they must be lonely, without any women at all.

She’d never noticed much.

Now the Czech came out of the back door, the man with his leather cap, and he was alarmed to see Katharina. He was on his way to fetch timber from the wood, meaning to steal it. Katharina greeted him and made a gesture, as if to say: Help yourself.

The Czech was not friendly. He had made his way into the manor house once, and Vladimir had chased him out.

He was welcome to get himself wood, Katharina told him.

That’s what he was doing anyway, he said, as she might imagine.

Katharina looked at the time. She would have liked to talk to the man for longer, but he set to work at once, breaking off branches. Should she help him?

On the way back she met Drygalski. He was going into the woods too, and he practically ran into her arms.

‘Going for a walk?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it too cold for you?’ And he looked behind her to see whether, Heil Hitler, she was alone or in company. Frau von Globig had never walked in this part of the grounds. Was she out to catch timber thieves?

Was Drygalski here to help himself as well? That was the question. But the woods were here for everyone, surely. Did he have his eye on the neatly stacked timber on the river bank?

Had she been visiting Elfriede’s grave? He still remembered the child so well. A little ray of sunshine.

‘Your dear daughter, Frau von Globig,’ he said, ‘and our son.’

As she walked back to the yard with Drygalski, unintentionally keeping in step with him, Katharina clearly saw a pale face up at the window of her conservatory. And she thought of the footsteps in the snow that Auntie had swept away, without noticing that they went in only one direction.

But how on earth had she herself managed to forget to lock the door?

Her guest had crawled into the cubbyhole and was asleep. Katharina kept quiet, and time passed.

The books by Stefan Zweig and Jakob Wassermann lay on the table. The stranger had put Heine’s Book of Songs on top of the pile, an old-fashioned edition bound in red leather, tooled in gold. He had laid it right across the other books, as if to say: Now this was a writer … you should hold on to him.