Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

‘All gone, all gone!’ he cried as he walked in the grounds. The baroness asked Peter not to run his toy railway along the corridor because it disturbed her husband; maybe it would be best if he put it away, and Peter immediately did as she asked.

The baron, whose first name was Eduard, sat in his room, his chilly fingers sorting out his papers. Thank God he had put them in the suitcase at the last moment. He sorted them first by one method, then by another, and he wrote down his final impressions of his native city. Nothing, for God’s sake, must be forgotten, and he licked his pencil, crooking his little finger with its signet ring as he wrote. Its fingernail, like the nails of his other fingers, was manicured. The generations with all their ups and downs … who knew when they would see their native land again? Someone had to write down all the good and bad things that happened, and now terrible things were certainly going on and must be set down in the record for all time.

He must also give a faithful account of what had been done, again and again, to the people of the Baltic states. Recruited in the time of the Tsars, then massacred by the Bolshevists. And now the Germans had wreaked havoc. All of it should be, must be put on record without reservations. He felt it was his personal responsibility to do that, to bear witness for future generations in his entertaining way.

*

There was a brochure on one of the bookshelves, dating from Eberhard’s time as a member of the Wandervogel, the German youth organization for ramblers. It bore the title Roads and Footpaths in the Baltic States: A Hiker’s Handbook. It had pictures of avenues and secluded paths, small pools that looked enchanted, and large erratic boulders under the birch trees. At the back there was a large map that could be unfolded.

What a treasure! The baron assumed that Katharina would give it to him, since he had lost his native land, and the little booklet must be a matter of indifference to her. However, Katharina folded up the map and took the brochure into her room with her.

He placed the armchair close to the stove, and then he sat there, with the cat beside him, sorting his papers out. The parrot in his cage looked as if he was playing a waiting game. He saw everything that went on.

Now and then the baron stood up to go over to the window, holding the cat in his arms, and looked down at the road, which was busy with traffic. When would they get away from here? he wondered; this place was a trap.

The wind shook the window frame — or was it the detonations?

Sometimes the baron summoned slender Sonya and showed her, too, what an interesting chronicle he was writing, and asked in her language for a cup of coffee, and was there any of that honey left? Some bread and honey would go down well now. As a man from the Baltic states he spoke Russian, and he spoke it as elegantly as if it were French. Sonya stared when he asked her so politely, and then, sitting as he was, flung his arms round her knees and laughed in a friendly manner, showing his gold teeth. He was old, there was no denying it, but a cheerful heart beat in his breast.

Could she bring him some hot water, he asked, and then his wife knelt down in front of him and cut his toenails one by one.

Peter showed the baron his history of the Georgenhof, the project suggested to him by Dr Wagner. It said Good! in red ink at the end.

A very nice concoction too, said the baron. But Peter should look at this: he himself had already written a hundred and sixty-four pages, and had left the eighteenth century behind.

He would probably have spoken at even greater length on this subject if Dr Wagner hadn’t come in from the room next door and told the boy, ‘Come along now, we’ll carry on with our studies. You’re in the baron’s way.’

He had been wondering whether they should read Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea together. It would be very suitable just now, dealing with refugees as it did.

The baron had also said that he, the schoolmaster, should remove the blue ribbon from his get-up; it had no kind of connection with Peter’s essay. And he had asked the boy to bring him Katharina’s little booklet, Roads and Footpaths in the Baltic States: A Hiker’s Handbook, for another brief glance, because he wanted to look something up in it.

Then the baron locked the door, put the cat, who was arching his back, down on the floor and counted his money. The signet ring was on his finger. He had drawn all his money out of the bank while he still could, although friends had asked him whether he thought that was right. He was keeping it on his person, in an inside pocket of his coat. Nothing could happen to him now.

They met in the hall that evening, with Jago the dog, the cat and the parrot. Flames burnt high on the hearth. Dr Wagner was invited to join them too. Where had they all come from? Where would they end up? The baron, who immediately sat down in Eberhard’s usual chair, told them about his historical work and how far he could trace his ancestors back. His wife came up behind him and brushed dandruff off the collar of his jacket.

Dr Wagner had ancestors himself, but somehow they didn’t qualify for discussion. He might have a goatee beard, but the baron kept a real monocle in a waistcoat pocket lined with flannel. He used it when he wanted to get a hearing. The schoolmaster couldn’t compete with that. Auntie’s Silesia was all very well, but not in the same class as the baron’s native city.

His beloved Königsberg, said Dr Wagner, stroking his goatee beard. Eating fried flounders in a little restaurant on the River Pregel … and hearing the foghorns on the big ships blowing in the harbour …

Then the baron took out his monocle and scrutinized the schoolmaster, and the subject was back on the correct lines again. Flounders were nothing to an ox roasted on the spit. Oxen had been spit-roasted in his native city. Swans were eaten there as well in the old days, and peacocks too! You couldn’t imagine such a thing today.

‘Oh, stone the crows!’ said Dr Wagner out loud and quite distinctly, and after that there was silence for a while.

He had once seen the German crown prince in Cranz, said the baron, before the war. He was very slender and all in white. The spa band had played waltzes, and the crown prince was surrounded by young ladies on a white yacht. ‘A real greyhound of a man!’ said the baron. Katharina von Globig, sitting on the sofa beside the baroness, had no particular connection with crown princes, but as a native of Berlin she didn’t like to hear the baron call the crown prince a greyhound. As for Cranz itself, that Baltic seaside resort, she had her own thoughts about it. Rise high, thou red-winged eagle. They had eaten cod, still blood-stained, and there had been an unemptied chamber pot under the bed. She thought of the charred meerschaum cigarette holder and how stingy Eberhard had been with the tip. They followed the cod with apple tart and whipped cream, and he had quickly put one of the small coins back in his pocket before the waiter came.

While the men were concerned with each other, the baroness admired Katharina, her black hair and her blue eyes. She even asked to see her hands. What beautiful hands she had! That made Katharina think of the bookbinder’s scratched hands that she had dressed with sticking plaster. She wondered whether to invite this woman up to her own room. You couldn’t really talk here in front of the fire in the hearth. Women are so different. The baron’s wife had probably heard the stories that he was telling with relish many times before. But she was considerate of her husband, and didn’t let it show.

There was another kind of disturbance in the house that night. At first the Globigs couldn’t believe their ears, but as reflected light flashed over the dark sky, the baron’s voice could be heard, clear and distinct. ‘You old sow!’ he said, and feudal aristocrat though he might be, he obviously meant his young wife. What she replied was more like a howl. And her husband repeated, loud and clear, ‘You old sow!’ Then there was a lot of noise, and coming and going, until Auntie knocked on the wall, hesitantly at first and then very hard, whereupon all was silent.