Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

The wind whistled from the west, it howled round the house and rattled the decrepit roof. Its noise almost drowned out the drumfire. Was this cup, people wondered, to pass them by? But no, the rumbling went on.

A cold, harsh, icy rain fell on the oak trees. And then came the great trek. Only a few separate carts at first, each on its own, then more densely, one behind another. You could see them from a distance, passing over the bridge in an endless file with tarpaulins fluttering; they drove through Mitkau, they drove through the Senthagener Tor and past the Georgenhof. Columns of carts keeping close together, from manorial estates, with one trek leader on horseback in front. They had put the names of their villages in front of the carts so that they wouldn’t lose each other. And there were single vehicles, some comfortable, some wretched. Farm carts crammed with all they could hold, and here and there even a car with a spare can of petrol fixed to the back of it.

They moved quietly; all you heard was the creaking of the wheels and the ‘Gee up!’ and ‘Whoa!’ of the drivers, most of them women. On top of the carts were little huts, solidly constructed or hastily knocked together, covered with roofing felt or rugs. Bundles of hay for the horses hung from cords under the carts. Young girls on foot, leading children by the hand. And dogs ran along under the axles of the carts. There were a few pedestrians with rucksacks or children’s sledges. They kept their heads bent. Their coat collars were turned up. Bicycles, babies’ prams, handcarts.

Where had anything like it ever been seen?

Was it an illusion, or was Herr Schünemann the political economist hurrying about among all those vehicles on his crutches? Did he raise one of them in greeting? His bag was buckled over his back on a strap.

Next day Dr Wagner and the Baltic baron were seen standing by the billiards table, smoking and making conversation in a very correct way. The baron in his check suit, Wagner wearing his third tie, with the little order on his lapel. The round stove, which dated back to the nineteenth century, gave a certain amount of warmth. They wrote down their scores on the beelyar table, as the baron pronounced it, and leaned on their cues. Sometimes they stood by the ice-encrusted window, and breathed on the ice to make a little hole and look through it at the march of the Ten Thousand, as Wagner the schoolmaster called the long line of refugees. Xenophon, he added, said that traitors were buried alive. The two gentlemen took turns blowing their cigarette smoke into the air in a criss-cross pattern, and sometimes out of their nostrils. It looked like the vapour that came hissing from the noses of the horses out there.

Sometimes they counted the vehicles: there went a column of three hundred carts! It was like France in 1940, when the Belgians fled before the Germans.

The baron had been in Paris long ago, and he talked about it now. Bugs in the hotels, and filthy lavatories. Indescribable! The French were real pigs, all across the board. Every last one of them. And incidentally, the young women weren’t as free and easy as a foreigner might assume. It wasn’t a case of anything goes; you could come up against a brick wall; they were all hell-bent on marriage. All those risqué stories people told, not a word of truth in them. And yet, said the baron, he remembered the spring of 1932 … ‘I could tell you a thing or two …’

Wagner had also been in France, in the First War, making his way along muddy trenches without a thought in his head about coquettish French girls. But as a student he and his friend Fritjof had visited Italian cemeteries, quoting Caesar — Gallia omnis est divisa in parte tres, all Gaul is divided into three parts — and found that in spite of studying Latin for all those semesters they couldn’t read the funerary inscriptions. That bothered him to this day, although he had long ago decided to make a joke of it. Fritjof — that cheerful, sunburnt young man, powerful and supple, and then he had fallen fighting.

Birth and death — an everlasting sea …

Ah yes, Goethe … he must have left his tiny copy of Faust somewhere. When he volunteered in 1914 it had gone into the field with him. Where was it now? He’d take it again if he had to join this great train of refugees. Would he himself have to leave his native land? No, not a bit of it … or not yet, anyway.

‘In the First War we softened up the Russians too.’

Head Trustee Drygalski was standing at the roadside, making sure that everything was done properly. He kept careful check lists, and got the leaders of the trek to show him their permits; yes, they could move on, place of origin, destination, number of horses pulling the cart. Sometimes he climbed up on the carts to make sure there wasn’t a soldier hidden among the household goods. And he told refugees where to go; every house had to take some in, individuals or whole families. It was only for a day or two, three at the most, as no one stayed any longer. It all had to be managed correctly, and Drygalski was the man for that.

Now and then he went home to see how his wife was. He added wood to the glowing embers in the stove, straightened her bedclothes, put a glass of water within reach.

He couldn’t take in any refugees with his sick wife, and his office was needed for all those files and for telephoning. The roll-top desk against the wall, the table with the telephone on it.

There was one young girl who had no one in the wide world left. Had she said her name was Käte, or was it Gerda? She had plump red cheeks. Drygalski showed her the attic room and its beautiful view to the north, the Georgenhof and the wide fields to the west, now covered with snow. The wind blew over them. And cart after cart was now going along the road. This had been his son’s room, years ago now, he told the girl. Fallen in Poland. The table at which he had prepared for the Technical College still stood by the wall. There was a folder of sketches in the drawer; no one had ever looked at them again. Also drawings of designs to improve the Albert Leo Schlageter Settlement. And an idea for an inauguration pageant; Drygalski had never known it existed.

The refugee girl wore Hitler Youth ski pants under a flowered skirt, and a pre-war quilted coat which had probably been her mother’s. She had lost track of her own people at the very beginning of their flight, when she went into a farmhouse to ask for a little milk, and the carts from her village had gone on without waiting for her.

She nodded when Drygalski suggested staying here for the time being. She could make herself useful, he said, cook, wash the dishes, keep the house nice and so on. They were a little community now, he said, and she must always keep the front door closed. And look after his wife, wash her, spoon soup into her now and then.

A flushing toilet and a room to herself, the girl had probably never had it so good. At home she’d have been sharing a bed with her little sister.

Peter climbed into his tree house, with the instrument panel and the steering wheel, and watched the trek. The long line came from far away in the east, and wound on like a huge S into the white landscape, moving towards the hazy sun.

The foreign workers were also watching, standing at the roadside. They were pointing out to each other what the vehicles were, and wondered what would become of them — and hey, look at that one!

Of course Drygalski had to intervene. Gloating over German misfortune wasn’t to be tolerated. But these people refused to disperse; they hardly even took their hands out of their pockets.

‘Don’t you have anything to do?’

No, they said, not here. For these foreigners the long line of refugees was a sign of hope. They smiled at each other: soon we’ll be going home. Drygalski had no power over them. Or did he? Maybe he could still get the better of them somehow? Search the Forest Lodge and see what came to light. He telephoned the Labour Office; did the people there know that this riff-raff were standing about in the road, doing nothing?