Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

Drygalski said, ‘We’ll find out.’ There was some kind of reception camp in Danzig providing medical care, and that would solve it all. As he said so, he was wondering whether there was really any such camp, and if so whether it would be the place for his own constantly ailing wife. It was to be assumed that such a place did exist; the Party would surely splash out on such things.

Herr Hesse wasn’t letting go of Drygalski so easily. There was something else on his mind, he said: his collection of old Germanic artefacts — couldn’t a car be sent to collect them from the Hesses’ apartment? Irreplaceable old stone axes and scrapers. Maybe a troop of Hitler Youth lads, ready for anything, could be sent?

‘What did you say?’ he asked.

But Drygalski hadn’t said anything. He was pursuing his own train of thought.

The Hesses stood at their window, watching the procession of refugees go by, and they realized that they could feel the floor shaking. Frau Hesse told her husband, ‘I think you’d better lie down and get some rest.’

‘I should at least have brought the stone axe with me,’ he said, adding that he would always blame himself for leaving it behind. ‘The one with the hole in it …’

‘But why worry?’ said his wife. ‘The Party will lock it all up and keep it safe until we can come back.’

It was unthinkable for them to stand at the roadside and hope to get a lift at once, as the baron and his wife had done. No one would stop for them. But Drygalski would sort it all out.

However, now to eat. Supper’s ready! Supper’s ready! The Hesses, sitting in a corner, half rose to their feet: did that mean them too? Yes, it did. ‘Of course,’ said Auntie, and she let their boys bang the brass gong hanging from the wall, with a brass elephant holding it in his trunk. Herr Hesse carefully wiped his plate and spoon on the tablecloth, and then started spooning soup into his mouth. They served chicken soup at home with baked egg garnish, said the village schoolteacher as he slurped. The globules of fat on top of his soup seemed to interest him. Was he actually counting them?

Peter showed the Hesse boys the hallmarks on the soup spoons. And the pattern on the plates: the pond where cranes stood, and the boat with a fisherman just bringing in his net from the water.

Hesse looked at his wife. How, he wondered, was he ever going to stand it if there was all this chattering at table? Could anyone tell him that? Children have to be seen and not heard, that was a good saying.

If he had opened his mouth during meals as a child, his father would have smacked him in the face.

Then he told everyone what it had felt like when he slumped sideways. It’s all over now, he had thought. He told his story to everyone sitting at the table, and to his wife and children who, after all, had been there at the time. It was his wife who had got on her bike and cycled straight off to the local doctor, who arrived just in time to save him. His wife could tell them all about that, completing her husband’s account of the incident. And then he, in turn, confirmed all that she said. Imagine if he had been alone at home! That could have happened, couldn’t it?

It was now three years ago that he had collapsed. The day was marked in red on the calendar. Suppose he had lost his powers of speech, or been left disabled? And then what would have become of his stone axes?

The two boys were a little younger than Peter, and were quick on the uptake. Eckbert and Ingomar. You could see them imitating their father’s dragging footsteps as he went along the corridor. He’d probably smacked them round the face often enough in the past, when he still had his full health and strength.

Peter took them all round the house, and yes, they were definitely quick on the uptake. They were not interested in the tiny creatures to be seen through his microscope, but they hammered away on the piano, they banged the gong and they got the gramophone working. Si, si, si, give me a penny … They took a good look at the damp cellar, where there were gurgling sounds — could wicked criminals once have been chained to the walls here, waiting to be executed? Peter locked the cellar door behind the two boys, rattled the keys, and let them stew in their own juice in the dark for a while.

There were walnuts laid out to dry in the attic. The boys explored the huge old wardrobes up there. A hussar’s shako dating from imperial times? Peter’s mother’s wedding dress. A collapsible top hat.

They played dressing-up games, and couldn’t understand why Katharina suddenly burst into tears as Peter came downstairs in her wedding dress, with Eckbert in Eberhard’s top hat.

The coach was standing out in the yard now too. Vladimir had got it out of the carriage house and stuffed straw into any gaps, draught-proofing the window in its door. Peter sat in it to see what it felt like. It was very comfortable. He looked forward to driving away with his mother in the coach, going to the west. How much longer must he wait? The two Hesse boys scrambled in beside him, and they agreed that it was very comfortable.

‘Stay where you are and don’t move!’

They rode down the little slope behind the house on the sledge again and again. Then, after playing for a while, they took the sledge round to the front of the house and rode down the slope to the road. The drivers of the carts trotting past along the road hit out at them with their whips. A car stopped. Were the boys out of their minds? Playing with a sledge in serious times like these, riding all the way down to the road? They could easily have an accident.

Peter took the boys to the chicken run and showed them how friendly the old rooster was. They climbed up to the hayloft in the big barn and fooled around in the hay. One of the boys nearly fell through the trapdoor in the loft to the floor below.

‘Don’t tell my father,’ said his brother, ‘or he’ll get slapped again.’

They climbed to the Ukrainian maids’ bedroom in the cottage, too, but the maids sent them packing. Peter saw at once that the girls had all kinds of things in their room that hadn’t been there before. He wondered whether those crates in the summer drawing room were still intact.

The Hesse boys shouted ‘Polack!’ at Vladimir, who grabbed them and gave them a hiding, hitting harder than was necessary. It was to be hoped that Drygalski hadn’t seen that. German boys being chastised by a man of inferior race.

Was it just chance that the Pole brought the Hesse family damp wood for their stove that evening?

They ran through the forest, past the ruins of the castle and down to the river, where the old boat lay in the ice. They slid across the river to the opposite bank, and watched the long line of refugees trekking over the bridge.

They also went to see the foreign workers in the Forest Lodge. They slept in bunk beds, and it was rather cramped. The Czech wanted to kick the three boys out, but the others were friendly to them. They asked how strong they were and felt their muscles. The Romanian taught them to smoke, and showed them a conjuring trick: how to make money disappear when it had been lying on the table only a moment ago. Marcello the Italian sang them a Neapolitan song, accompanying himself on the mandolin. He had covered the walls with pictures of naked girls. The Crouching Woman couldn’t compete with those girls.

The Czech carved them wooden daggers, and showed them how to cut someone’s throat with a knife.

Romania? No, they had no idea where it was.

The boys’ dearest wish would have been to sleep over with the foreign men one night, but of course they weren’t allowed to.

Best of all would be to stay with them; go away with them and have adventures.