Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

She advised Vera to avoid lifting heavy weights, and not to jump off a stool for fear of suffering a miscarriage.

After that, Vera could be heard all over the house jumping off stools wherever and whenever she had the opportunity.

Perhaps, said Auntie, St John’s wort would help? But where would you get St John’s wort in midwinter? And what was it supposed to do, or not to do?

Frau Hesse played patience with Katharina, whispered to the Ukrainian maids, and made her husband dumplings, in return for which, and weak as he was, he tickled her under the chin, even though, as he said, the dumplings tasted of Sidol metal cleaner.

When Frau Hesse heard of the problems of the Drygalski household, she put on her hat and went over there to talk to Drygalski’s wife. Heil Hitler. A woman in the prime of life, lying in bed? She spent a long time explaining why she had to pull herself together. Otherwise her husband might start looking elsewhere. She talked about the Drygalskis’ lovely house, and admired the way they had furnished it. And she pointed to the picture of their son, who had fallen fighting, and who she thought looked like Peter, and also to the crucifix — where did that come from?

And, wonderful to relate, fresh blood began circulating in the woman’s veins. She sat up in bed and asked for a mirror. Next morning she was down in the kitchen, frying her husband two eggs and bacon for breakfast.

A woman must fight to keep her man, Frau Hesse had whispered, adding that Frau Drygalski, with her mischievous expression, still looked pretty good. Wouldn’t it be worth cultivating it? Why didn’t she get up and give her husband a mischievous smile now and then? And so Frau Drygalski did.

Drygalski was almost ready to fall on his knees before such a miracle. But as he ate the eggs she had fried him, he also began feeling furious. How did this come to happen all of a sudden? Had she, perhaps, not been so sick after all? Could she have been frying him eggs every day, and sometimes giving him smoked sausage with green cabbage? There he had been, slaving away and worrying about her. Mollycoddling her to her heart’s content. And he’d almost landed himself with a problem in the shape of that girl, what was her name? She’d had a sudden fit of lasciviousness — she’d flung her arms round him in the cellar doorway, pressing her body close to his.

Drygalski walked round his house and spat in the bushes. No. He had let himself be fooled, and he wasn’t taking that sort of thing.

By the fire in the evening, in the pleasant company which the Hesses must of course be invited to join, Hesse the village teacher told Dr Wagner the schoolmaster how nice he had always been to the village children. He had always tried to be gentle, although of course a teacher must also be strict, and then he went on to the story of how he had suffered that stroke on a Sunday, of all days. Without any advance warning, in the morning at breakfast.

‘At first we thought nothing much of it,’ said the teacher’s wife, ‘but when I saw saliva running from his mouth …’ Then she thought: no, this won’t do! And she had cycled straight off to the doctor. Now he sat there with his hands folded in his lap. She had wrapped a blanket round his legs, which had no strength left in them. And in the past he had been able to swing round in a circle on the horizontal bars in the gym, and perform a straddle vault over the horse.

Ah, his beloved Königsberg, said Dr Wagner. Eating fried flounders in a little restaurant on the River Pregel … and hearing the foghorns of the big ships in harbour going wooo-wooo-wooo. He had brought his poems with him, why not offer to read them? Sitting by the fire declaiming poetry was conviviality in the old style. The dog and the cat in front of the life-giving fire, and children listening with their eyes wide.

He was civil to the new guest, who after all was, in a way, his colleague, and the man’s wife was very nice as well, in her skirt of hand-woven russet-red wool and linen. But when the man went on and on, yet again, about his stroke, Dr Wagner cast up his eyes to heaven, and then his glance met Katharina’s. He was unaware that the village teacher also cast up his eyes to heaven, if for a differ ent reason. This was all I needed, thought Herr Hesse, a specialist in higher education who prides himself on writing poetry.

So Wagner left his poems in his pocket. Anyway, he had brought the telescope from school, where it was standing around unused. As nothing had come of the poetry idea, he went outside into the open air with the boy to look at the stars. But the sky was overcast.

‘Close the door!’ the village teacher called after him.

*

Wagner said goodnight. These days it was better to be at home within your own four walls. He tried it: he tried carrying Katharina’s hand to his lips, as the baron had done again and again. But she withdrew it with an expression of distaste.

He left the telescope at the Georgenhof. He couldn’t very well keep taking it back and forth.

On the way home he thought of Katharina — he would have liked to read her his poems, up in her boudoir, at her feet, so to speak, as they did in the old days. He would have liked to read her one in particular, the most successful one. He had given it to his mother on Mother’s Day. Caput mortuum … To think that it was women who bear all the sorrow in the world. God, how long ago was it that his mother had died? That kindly woman.

Although he could not see the stars, he was sure that a benevolent father protected him. The thunder in the distance suited his mood. The Twilight of the Gods! There was something grand in that idea.

Suppose people of some kind were billeted on him, in his own apartment? The thought filled him with anxiety.

That night Katharina lay on her bed fully clothed, listening to the distant rumbling. She felt the ground shake when there were explosions, and the glasses beside the washbasin clinked softly. She must talk to someone, but who? Pastor Brahms? Ask him whether everything was all right? Should she leave first thing tomorrow? Get away from any possible consequences of what she had done?

It was difficult to reach Lothar Sarkander these days; when Katharina phoned she was always told that he wasn’t there. And anyway, what did she think he could have said?

‘As you can imagine,’ they told her in his office, ‘the mayor has his hands full at the moment.’ That wasn’t the way they used to speak to her.

Katharina opened the cubbyhole. Why had she let herself in for that adventure? And then again: why hadn’t she kept the man there? If you start something you should see it through. But she had been glad to be rid of him, that was the truth.

Next morning there was a phone call from the police in Mitkau. Katharina was still in bed when the phone rang. They had picked up a man in the monastery courtyard — a Jew! — and after denying it for a long time he had admitted being hidden by her at the Georgenhof. Was it true?

Soon after that the mayor rang. Lothar Sarkander, whom she’d been unable to reach for so long, would you believe it? This time he didn’t want to talk about the old days, he said not a word about the summer drawing room. He came straight to the point. For God’s sake … he had heard … they’d been in touch with him … ‘How could you, Kathi?’

The police had already been to see him, he whispered into the receiver. The pastor had been taken away.

‘How could you let yourself in for something like that …? You must have known that these people walk over dead bodies!’

A note had been found on the man, a sketch showing the way to what was clearly the Georgenhof … ‘It’s criminal to put anything down on paper! How could you be so naïve?’