Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

He took an official order out of his pocket and showed it. ‘In case of non-compliance …’ and so on. Then he got them to show him Elfriede’s room, which had been standing empty for two years.

The doll’s house, with its furniture nicely arranged, the puppet theatre with Kasper, Death and the Devil lying over the front of it, even the knitted witch was there with a string a metre long coming out of her stomach. Above the door hung a white-framed picture of brownies with nothing on, holding up a sheaf of flowers.

And on the wall above the bed was an engraving of the Saviour with the caption, ‘SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME’, MARK 10 VERSE 14. He was patting the little children’s cheeks, while the grown-ups stood thoughtfully to one side. It had been inherited from Elfriede’s grandparents.

Her clothes were in the wardrobe, underwear and jumpers, her little dresses and the black knitted jacket with the green yoke and the silver buttons that she had wanted so much. Moths flew out of the clothes.

The bed was made up with white sheets and blankets, and there was a photograph of the dead child on the pillow, showing her with her crinkly hair in braids and her hands folded round a bunch of lilies of the valley.

The room was large enough, said Drygalski, pulling back the curtains and opening the window to let the good fresh air in for once. They must be nice to the comrades billeted here, he told Auntie and Katharina, they’d had some bad experiences.

*

He stood at the window for a while listening to the rumbling. Behind him, Auntie and Katharina were listening too. But as usual, smoke was rising from every chimney in the Settlement. You could even see people sweeping the snow away. All was neat and tidy.

What kind of people were being billeted on them, Auntie asked, and how much rent could they ask?

That infuriated Drygalski, who shouted something about the national community, and took the most impossible tone.

‘Rent? What’s got into your head? These people have lost everything!’

It was a pity the railway line had been damaged, or they could have been sent straight on into the Reich. That could easily have been organized if the line was still intact.

Now Dr Wagner the teacher also came out of Peter’s room and joined them.

Was the front going to hold? he asked the head trustee. And at that moment the background noise in the east grew louder; it could have been because of a gust of wind intensifying the sound of the detonations.

‘What are you doing here?’ shouted Drygalski. Calmly sitting here in the warmth, while all hell was let loose outside. This sort of thing wouldn’t do.

Dr Wagner pointed to the east, and ventured to ask the head trustee for advice: he had experience of the World War from the Chemin des Dames ridge, he said, but all the same he’d like to know more precisely. If he wasn’t much mistaken, then what they were hearing was drumfire, wasn’t it? But from the German guns or the guns of the Red Army, that was the question.

They all stood listening, as people used to listen to the Führer’s speeches, but the schoolmaster’s question remained unanswered. The aircraft flying over the house were German, anyway. They’d show the Russians a thing or two. Drygalski almost felt like waving his cap to them.

Drygalski closed the meeting. He turned to go and see round the rest of the house; he had to see Katharina’s room, he said.

‘It’s private,’ she said, pushing past him and shutting herself into it.

Drygalski was about to go downstairs again, but then he said no, he must insist. He hammered on the door, and Katharina was obliged to let him in. Her bed was still unmade.

‘Aha!’ said Drygalski, shaking his head. He didn’t put up with unmade beds at home.

‘This is a real self-contained apartment! A bedroom, a living room and another room as well? That’s just wonderful! And a toilet of its own?’ Then if necessary the boy could move in with her, and so could Auntie! If more room was needed, then people just had to squeeze up together.

His eye fell on the books lying on the table. Heinrich Heine? Stefan Zweig? Surely Heine had been Jewish? Well, this was all very, very interesting.

‘ German Cathedrals, however …’ And he picked up the book of pictures and held it out to Dr Wagner, who had come up behind him. ‘Now this is the kind of thing you should be teaching!’ he cried.

Dr Wagner wanted to see Katharina’s apartment too, and this was a good opportunity. He stood on tiptoe. Wasn’t that an open tube of tablets lying on the table? He managed to get a glimpse of the Crouching Woman ; a female figure, naked? Her attitude was unnatural. The Medea on the wall was very different from this distorted figure on her plinth.

This woman lived very comfortably, Dr Wagner thought. Little armchairs, a plate with a pattern of fruit, and with apples on it. A pretty conservatory, with the cold, clear sunlight flooding in. He thought of his own dark apartment in Mitkau, in Horst-Wessel-Strasse, where there were always farm carts going by on their way to the abattoir and so forth. Now he saw what a lovely place Katharina had, and he thought: some people have everything.

Of course he lived comfortably, with his study, which might be dark but was spacious, the dining room with the seascape over the sideboard, the smoking room and the bedroom. There was even another little room looking out on the back yard. His mother had died in that room, and a hyacinth vase was still there with a dead hyacinth in it. The water in the vase must be full of plankton. All very nice, but farm carts frequently drove past — often there was no bearing it.

And here everything had its unique style. Orange shutters! Why hadn’t he thought of having orange shutters? She had a view of the park too.

Drygalski went downstairs again and looked at the summer drawing room — impossible to heat, he assumed, and crammed with crates and boxes. Also, as Auntie commented, ‘You can’t get it properly blacked out.’ He glanced at the billiards room, nudged one of the balls, which nudged another, and that one struck a third. Was Drygalski a man who never missed his mark?

He inspected the hall as if he were going to put chalk marks on the furniture ready for an auction sale.

Aha, pictures. ‘Are those your distinguished ancestors?’

The ancestors looked back with their eyes wide open. Ancestors who might well have upheld good German values all their days.

Straw could be spread in the hall for a large contingent, he said thoughtfully, accommodation still had to be found for the inmates of the Tilsit orphanage. Here, however, Auntie was quick to get her word in. ‘But the toilets,’ she said. ‘There aren’t nearly enough of them for so many people.’ And those that they did have, she added, were stopped up all the time. She blamed the Ukrainian maids.

Drygalski stood thinking right in the middle of the hall, under the candelabra made of antlers, wondering whether the summer drawing room couldn’t be made fit for use somehow or other, and the hall and the billiards room too, and the women stood round him thinking of ways to prevent it, and watching him as he stood there thinking. There was no denying it, the head trustee had bow legs.

It was a funny thing, said Drygalski, how the general hadn’t fallen fighting among his men but had died in a car accident. And now of all times, when the red tide was catching fire, such a man would be hard to replace. He, Drygalski, hadn’t been able to save his life, but in a way he had saved his death. It was he who had seen to having him carried into a house. And who had told his wife in Hamburg. Seven children!

The driver, he said, would certainly be called to account. It might have been better for him if he had died with the general.