Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

They brought the foreign workers a peacock feather, which was readily accepted. All they’d needed was a peacock feather, said the men, and now the place was really comfortable.

Of course the boys explored the whole of the Forest Lodge: the panelled dining room with a one-legged grand piano in the corner; the terrace where hotel guests used to drink their coffee; the rooms used by the National Socialist Motor Corps to store spare parts. Peter appropriated a shiny metal bar there, just the thing for the aircraft in his tree house.

Auntie was surprised to find that the hens had stopped laying. The inmates of the Forest Lodge, however, had plenty of eggs.

‘Let me smell your breath,’ the village schoolteacher’s wife told her boys. ‘You haven’t been smoking, have you?’

Did they know how unhealthy it was to smoke?

The teacher threw back the blanket under which he was keeping himself warm, and scolded his family. Why didn’t his wife keep a better eye on the boys? For heaven’s sake, he had been telling them for years that they were forbidden to smoke, and now all rules could be broken. Next thing anyone knew they’d be going round with a bottle of schnapps.

Peter climbed up to his tree house with the other boys and fitted the shiny bar in place. He could fix a rear-view mirror to it, but he’d better forget about a horn.

They watched the great trek go on from up in the tree: occasional people on foot; horse-drawn carts piled high with possessions. People on bicycles, others pulling sledges. They counted the carts, but stopped when they got to two hundred.

They also saw a procession of prisoners go by, coming from the brickworks, wearing striped coats and wooden clogs. Sad figures dragging themselves along. They were guarded to left and right by soldiers with rifles at the ready.

The pale face of frail Herr Hesse appeared at his upstairs window. He was watching the prisoners go by too. He cleaned his teeth with a wooden toothpick, and then knocked on the windowpane to let the boys know they must get down from that tree house at once. What did they think they were doing? They’d break all their bones, and then there’d be trouble. Wasn’t it enough that he, their father, had almost died, and without any advance warning? Those men in striped coats — they must be antisocial characters. Heaven knew what laws they had broken.

His wife was looking round the outside of the place. She walked once round the house, and then she wondered: why no garden, with such a large property?

‘Don’t you have a garden?’ she asked.

‘We have a park,’ replied Auntie.

‘Yes, but such a huge plot of land, and no garden?’ And Frau Hesse talked about her dahlias, the begonias — their tubers would be rotting in the cellar now — and the vegetables she used to grow. Broad beans! Green peas! Leeks! There were rakes, scythes and spades hanging from the stable wall. How she would love to lay out a garden here in spring. Ah, in spring …?

Frau Hesse, who had once been on a first-aid course run by the National Socialist Nurses’ Association, noticed that Peter had something wrong with his throat. ‘Come here for a moment,’ she told him, and she looked down his throat, massaged his larynx and gave him some drops to take. Lo and behold, his tonsils weren’t swollen any more next morning.

‘That woman practises witchcraft!’ said Auntie. She wasn’t entirely happy with the way Frau Hesse changed the positions of flowering pot plants in the hall, put the cacti in the dark and what looked like dry twigs of some kind in water in a preserving jar, saying that then they would flower again. Auntie was about to put everything back in its old place, but somehow or other the new arrangement did look better, and made the dark hall seem friendlier. Especially when the sun shone in.

As for Peter’s catarrh, now bewitched away, perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea. What were they going to tell Drygalski when he came looking for Hitler Youth boys to help out somewhere?

Katharina and the teacher’s wife got on well. They sat together. Frau Hesse took her good blouse out of her rucksack, and her wool and linen skirt, and Katharina put on the silver brooch that she had brought back from Italy. They played games of patience. First down in the hall, then they moved up to Katharina’s room, and locked the door. There were always people going in and out of the hall, and all of them left the doors open. Upstairs they could be undisturbed.

‘Helga!’ called Herr Hesse. ‘Where are you?’ But there was no answer, even when he put his hands behind his ears. Helga was sitting on the other side of a locked door with Frau von Globig, playing cards. Then they stopped playing cards and talked about what women talk about, sitting together on their own. Katharina opened her wardrobe, and Frau Hesse enjoyed a fashion show: Katharina’s pleated skirt, and all those hats. Katharina would have liked to tell the teacher’s wife her secret. It was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘Just imagine, a man spent the night in that cubby hole! He climbed over the rose fence.’ But she didn’t, she kept it strictly to herself. What had happened here must remain a secret, and she would take it to the grave if necessary.

‘Helga!’ called Herr Hesse. ‘Where are you?’ He felt cold, and that couldn’t be good for him.

The boys were nowhere to be seen. They had gone off to visit the foreign workers again. So he had to get up himself and move his chair closer to the stove. It was a mystery to him why that stove wouldn’t draw. If he had another stroke it would be his wife’s fault. Looking in the mirror, he drew his mouth down on one side so it looked as it had on that Sunday morning when he hadn’t known what was about to happen.

He had once made a Stone Age loom with his schoolchildren, and the man from the education authority had praised it. Heavens, how many years ago was that? It was all so far in the past. He thought of teacher training college, and how he and his friends used to climb over the wall at night. It had been summer, and the girls sat in front of their houses. The students joked with them, and then climbed the wall by night. He used to wear his hat tilted sideways on his head in those days.

There was no singing in the kitchen. The maids were quiet, and did their work in silence. When Auntie came in to see if everything was all right, Vera went over and asked if she could have a word with her.

‘What, here and now?’ said Auntie. But then she went upstairs to the maids’ room with that mature young woman, who had volunteered to come to Germany from the distant Ukraine and glean experience far from the sunflower fields of her native land, and she sat down in the chair by the window.

‘What is it?’

At first Vera shed copious tears, and then, wringing her hands, told Auntie that she was going to have a baby. What was she to do?

‘A baby?’ said Auntie. ‘How did that happen? And now of all times!’ What, she asked Vera, did she think of doing about it? That was exactly what Vera wanted Auntie to tell her. But Auntie had no idea either.

She couldn’t find out whether one of the foreign workers in the Forest Lodge was to blame for this misfortune — the Czech, or Marcello the cheerful Italian? Or could it be Vladimir? No, surely not the upright and honest Pole. The Czech? He always looked so venomous, and once he had even made his way into the house. Auntie felt sure he carried a sharp knife. He was capable of anything.

Well, whether it was a Czech, a Pole or an Italian, at least it wasn’t a case of racial defilement. And Vera wasn’t giving any information; she just went on crying.

Frau Hesse was asked for advice, since she had cured Peter’s tonsils, but her medical knowledge wasn’t up to something like this. She could have relieved a sprained ankle with a criss-cross bandage, or put a dressing on a cut finger, but she didn’t meddle with unwanted pregnancies. The Nazi nurses had not discussed the subject. After all, it was wonderful to bring another human being into the world, so why try to prevent it?