Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

She wrote a postcard to the Berlin cousins, pointing out that no one could now guarantee the safety of the crates left at the Georgenhof. Why hadn’t they taken them away long ago?

She was also going to write to Eberhard, military postal address number so and so. She started several times, but how could she tell him that they had left the Georgenhof? And say what had happened to Katharina? Better not send the card yet, she thought, better wait and see how it turned out.

Katharina was sitting in a cell by herself, as if it were a waiting room. She was wearing her heavy coat and her white fur cap. She had put her feet on a stool, and she was twiddling her thumbs. She watched her breath rising; it was cold in the cell.

A bit of grey sky could be seen outside the grey windowpanes. She had already tried standing on the stool to look out of the window at the marketplace, the church on the other side of it and the old town hall. If she had seen Sarkander she’d have waved, but Sarkander wouldn’t have seen her. Did he know she was in here?

Didn’t other prisoners look out of the window too; wasn’t everyone hoping for something?

Not many words had been wasted on her case. The police officer had kept showing her the note with the sketch of the way to the Georgenhof on it, and she had nodded.

‘Well now,’ the officer had said, ‘this is serious, Frau von Globig.’ And he asked, ‘What did you think you were doing? And you also listened to foreign radio stations.’

He had stopped asking about any incidents of racial defilement between Katharina and the Jew. The whole thing, he thought, was so unedifying that he began to fear for his own skin.

Far away in Italy, Eberhard had already been repeatedly questioned. His superior officer had talked to him seriously for a long time. First just the two of them were present, then the commanding officer joined them. Heil Hitler.

‘Your wife gave shelter to a Jew, is that correct?’ And, ‘So you supported the enemy by holding shares in English steel?’ That was a grave accusation; he should expect demotion. And he could wave goodbye to his officer’s salary.

A Jew hidden in her room?

Eberhard did some calculations, and realized that it must have been on the evening when he was drinking wine with that little Italian girl.

After the war, when all this was over, he might go back to Italy. What about the Georgenhof? Get the estate back into good shape and forget it! What about this business with the Jew? The dust could settle on that as well.

There was something else on Eberhard’s mind. Katharina, and the way she had avoided his kiss when they said goodbye. What sort of woman doesn’t even give her husband a goodbye kiss on the cheek?

Get the gate of the yard and the morning-star finial repaired. Put his life in order, those would be his priorities.

Next day Auntie went to the police again. She’d had about enough of this, she told Peter, and the friendly police officer had had enough of her.

She wondered whether Vladimir might come back after all. Perhaps there had been a mistake of some kind? Perhaps he had thought he was acting for the best?

‘If that’s so, I’ll keep quiet about it,’ said Auntie. Everyone can do somthing stupid now and then. ‘D you hear me, Peter? If he comes back we’ll say no more about it.’

Although her curses couldn’t simply be withdrawn.

When Auntie’s new acquaintance, the limping Silesian, came to see them he stabled the gelding, who was still inclined to turn his head behind him, in the fire station. The horse could even be locked in there. The Silesian told the people there that it was all right, and even brought in some straw. The man had all kinds of connections. He might even be able to get his new friends a room, he said. But that wasn’t necessary; if they’d wanted a room they might as well have stayed at the Georgenhof. They didn’t intend to put down roots here, they wanted to move further on.

He turned up for breakfast in the morning, saying it was only natural for friends to keep company in these hard times. He listened calmly to the full story of the loss of the farm cart, and he helped to repack the suitcases in the coach. There was a lot of useless stuff to be sorted out — away with all those summer clothes! It was ridiculous to be carting them around in the middle of winter.

‘But what will we do in summer? Although heaven only knows where we’ll be when summer comes.’

‘You’ll have been home again long ago next summer,’ said the gentleman. But Auntie wasn’t so sure of that. She thought she would never see the Georgenhof again. She didn’t want to see the Georgenhof again. Hadn’t she sacrificed over twenty years of her life to the place, more or less? And all for nothing. She hadn’t been paid a proper salary; what she got was more like pocket money. Nor had anyone ever stuck social security stamps into a booklet for her: life insurance or a funeral benefit fund. She had no savings under her mattress.

She had been an outsider all her life. Back when she had been turned out of her parental home by Raffke, who stood in the road with a nasty look on his face. In those days she might have trained to be a teacher. She’d always enjoyed playing schools in the garden arbour. But no one had helped her except for old Globig. You’ll come to us, he had said, and so she did. It felt like being liberated. However, no salary, just some money put down now and then for her, and a muff or knitted gloves at Christmas.

And later, when Eberhard had bought that wonderful car, the Wanderer, dark blue with a split windscreen … couldn’t he have taken her for a drive in it some time?

‘See what a lovely car we have, Auntie,’ he might have said, hooting the horn as they drove out of the gate. Going south, to the sea, into the mountains! She’d have liked to go to Italy, too.

The Silesian told her how he’d love to taste Silesian ham again. He brought a jar of pickled gherkins with him; delicious. Pickled in the Silesian style. And he bought Peter a bowl of ersatz honey. It tasted extremely sweet and surely wasn’t good for his teeth. You couldn’t eat much of it.

Wouldn’t he like to sell his microscope, asked the Silesian, or swap it? And he gave Peter a couple of rifle bullets, all polished and shiny. There were Polish, Belgian and German bullets too. They were made of copper and brass; one even had an eyelet at the back so that you could hang it round your neck.

Peter would have liked to make a collection of such bullets, and the Silesian promised to get him some more. ‘I know a man who can get hold of them in return for a bit of ham.’ He had a whole cupboard full of them, said the Silesian. He even asked whether Peter would like to have a Finnish dagger. Would it come in useful?

The ration coupons for soldiers on leave that the political economist had given Auntie at the Georgenhof turned out to be invaluable for buying bread. Five or six sheets of them! At the time Auntie had been going to turn down the political economist’s offer, but when he still held them out to her, smiling, she had readily accepted. The man hadn’t said where he came by them. They looked brand new, and a little different from ordinary coupons.

They were very welcome now.

One time the baker looked at the coupons rather more closely, and Auntie realized that there was something wrong with them. After that she was more careful, sending Peter or the Silesian gentleman to buy bread, and always from a different baker. The baker at the post office was the least suspicious; he was a good-tempered fat man with a red face. His name was Bartels, and he was known as ‘the post-office baker’. He had hung the certificate qualifying him as a master baker over the door in a golden frame. He tore off as many coupons as necessary with his thumb, and then pushed the warm, fragrant bread over the counter. He even took an interest in his customers — where did they come from? Where were they going? — and Peter told him stories about the Russians, hunched figures as brown as earth, who had stormed past him, keeping low.