Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

And yes, another column of tanks had gone by in the night, he thought they were Waffen-SS. They’d soon fix things. Hitler wasn’t fool enough to let the Russians into the country. He might let them in just a little way, but then he’d pull the strings of the sack closed and trap them.

*

Go to Berlin after all? The Globigs discussed this idea over and over again. Go to Wilmersdorf? Katharina made long, detailed phone calls to her cousin. The Globigs had always sent the Berlin cousins such lovely presents, always when they were least expecting it. For Anita’s confirmation, and the goose just before Christmas. And they’d had Elisabeth staying here for months on end when she was about to start medical studies and prepare for her first exam. The children had come to stay for ages in the holidays, riding the horses like mad. Hadn’t they crossed themselves three times when they left, as you do on entering and leaving a church?

In particular, the possibility of sending the boy at least to Berlin was the subject of much discussion. But when it was brought up, they said in Berlin, ‘Yes, but how do you think we could manage it? When Elisabeth is still having such trouble with her feet? Two operations, and she still isn’t better. And where would he sleep? And then he’d have to go to school here, and Hitler Youth service …’ It was all very difficult, and somehow or other it was out of the question.

Auntie asked what, for heaven’s sake, was to be done with all those crates that had been standing around in the drawing room for months and months. No one here could take responsibility for them, did the Berlin cousins realize that?

To this the Berlin cousins replied that they were good solid crates, what could go wrong? They had put an inventory of contents at the top of each, and a copy of the inventory had been deposited with the Berlin cousins’ lawyer so that there could be no misunderstanding.

Then they asked if perhaps the crates couldn’t be sent back to Berlin by horse-drawn cart. A single load should be enough to do it. They knew that no trains could leave Mitkau now, but a horse-drawn cart could surely get through? All their table linen and bed linen were there, along with underclothes, suits, dresses. And the family silver!

They had even packed up the family Bible in one of the crates. Who would ever have guessed that things would come to this? That Bible dated back to the seventeenth century, too.

‘Inventory of contents?’ said Auntie. ‘Well, you certainly find what people are really like in times of need.’ And she held the telephone receiver out of the window, so that even in Berlin they could hear what was going on: the wind was blowing the sound of rumbling here from the east, and it was distinctly audible.

‘Are you still on the line?’ someone asked at the other end.

Those cousins weren’t living in the real world! Depositing copies of the inventories with their lawyer. You could only laugh. All their table linen and bed linen? Underclothes? Suits and dresses? The silver! — Auntie stood thoughtfully in front of the crates and wondered what else might be in them. Cognac, maybe? Nothing was easy, was it? For goodness’ sake, it was hundreds of kilometres from Mitkau to Berlin by horse-drawn cart. The horses would fall down dead!

Anyway, the big farm cart was already loaded up with their own possessions. Vladimir had stacked them neatly, crates and boxes and suitcases, all tied up with clothes lines. He had even seen that the horses had been shod with winter shoes. No one would have thought the man could be trusted to do all that. In the evening he sat in the kitchen reading the Bible. They’d made the mistake of assuming that everyone from the east was the same. ‘Polish economy’ — it was a synonym for bad management and disorder. He’d even managed to fit the big milk cans in. Why? Well, because they were full of dripping and flour and sugar.

New refugees arrived: a village schoolteacher called Hesse, who kept shaking, and his wife, Helga (Heil Hitler), with their two boys, whom they had called Eckbert and Ingomar.

Peter had to clear his room for them, as instructed by Drygalski, and move in with his mother. Before leaving his own room, he shot down the paper planes with his air pistol. The Wellington, the Spitfire and the Messerschmitt 109. They sailed to the floor one after another. Then he opened the window, set fire to them and let them sail out towards the tree house. True to life, they crash-landed in the yard. He packed his railway up in cartons, pushed the castle into a corner, and took the microscope with him. There was something moving now in the liquid where he had steeped some hay. Tiny animalcules were floundering about there. Would they get bigger? Would there be no room in the end for anything else on the glass plate under the lens?

The refugees stood in the hall with their luggage, looking lost, and didn’t move from the spot. Goodness, what a huge place! Is it, they wondered, some kind of castle?

‘And who keeps it all clean?’ they asked Auntie.

They had been on the road for ever and a day, or rather three days, leaving everything behind. The teacher had left his collection of Stone Age artefacts from the village behind: his stone axes, scrapers and blades. All neatly numbered. His wife had left her pretty garden, where she grew dahlias every year, stocks, hollyhocks, phlox, systematically laid out in order of rotation and their requirements for light and shade.

The man looked damaged. That was because he had suffered a stroke three years ago. He mentioned it at once, telling them how one morning at breakfast, thinking nothing of it, he had slumped sideways with his mouth distorted.

‘And I thought he was joking!’ said his wife.

He wore glasses with strong lenses, and a Party symbol, and looked more like the grandfather than the father of his two sons, who both had glasses as well.

His wife, on the other hand, gave a vigorous impression. She had white hair combed back, held in place by a tortoiseshell hoop.

She pulled her husband’s hair back from his forehead — had a lash fallen into his eye to make him blink like that? — cleaned the inside of his ears and straightened his tie. Yes, he had collapsed, said the man, and thought it was nothing much at first, but it was a stroke. And his wife had thought he was joking.

‘Well, that’s enough complaining of our troubles,’ she cried. Even before she had taken her coat off she was going from pot plant to pot plant, nipping something off here, adjusting something there. And then — was it imagination, or did the flowers really breathe more freely for her care of them? Had they been waiting for a loving hand so long?

She took their ration cards out of her handbag and was about to give them to Katharina; she expected they’d have to eat here, she said, and she was happy to peel potatoes any time. There wasn’t a grocer’s shop anywhere near; they must have had to foot it to Mitkau for any extra little thing, and it was an icy road to walk.

‘No, never mind the cards,’ said Katharina. ‘Keep them.’ But just then Auntie came along. ‘Ration cards? Of course …’ They weren’t a charitable institution, she pointed out. Two adults, two children? The baron had always helped himself with a lavish hand, and then he liked to go to the kitchen and find something to nibble from time to time. She didn’t want that happening again. He never so much as mentioned the coupons. Ration cards? He didn’t even know what they were.

‘Well, you’d better come upstairs,’ said Auntie.

Auntie showed them Peter’s room. They’d soon feel at home there, she said. A bedstead was brought down from the attic, and mattresses, and the beds were made up with clean sheets. ‘You’ll be comfortable here with us,’ said Auntie.