Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

Peter went up and down the high street, past the rows of carts. Perhaps Vladimir had come back, and would be standing here as if nothing had happened. I’m sorry, it was like this …

A farmer took a pee under his cart, where else could he do it?

People moved aside a bit.

There was no piano music coming from the town café now. The place was being aired. An officer wearing the Knight’s Cross went in. Heil Hitler. He came straight out again; he had probably thought he could sit in the warm and drink coffee, but all the windows were open to let fresh air in.

A man had been awarded the Knight’s Cross for annihilating a Russian detachment by pressing boldly forward with the tanks in the armed wedge formation, and now he couldn’t get a coffee here?

He had unbuttoned his coat so that everyone could see his medal.

Peter was in luck. The officer spoke to him. ‘Boy, is there another café anywhere in this dump?’

Peter would have liked to go to the restaurant at the railway station with the officer, but the bearer of the Knight’s Cross didn’t want his company. He wanted to sit in a café listening to piano music and smoking a cigarette, perhaps being approached by a young lady who would ask him where he won the Cross. Then he would buy her a slice of rye-flour tart and ask whether she knew her way round this town, and what she did with herself all day.

He’d heard that there was music in this café — and now they were airing the place!

*

The Dutch barber stood in the doorway of his shop, snapping his scissors in the air. Perhaps he was thinking of the hunched figures, keeping low, as brown as earth, who had run past Peter in his stories. And Peter had heard screaming women, had he? Or perhaps the barber was thinking of his village at home in the Netherlands, where they had given him funny looks last time he went back on holiday.

His friend Jan was lucky. He wouldn’t be considered a collaborator. He had spent a couple of days in prison for grinning when he’d been told he wasn’t allowed to give the Hitler salute. He had it in writing, too! That would make a difference one of these days.

In the stationer’s shop they sold puzzle books, the right size to go by military post. They were for soldiers at the front, sitting in their trenches and waiting for the enemy. The booklets had titles like Clever Dick and Mastermind . You could buy stamp albums there as well, and stamps in clear film envelopes, neatly sorted like the scores of the card game Skat. A hundred and fifty stamps for one Reichsmark. Austrian Republic and Danzig Free State stamps, used and unused. General Government of Poland stamps consisting almost entirely of the postmark.

Peter thought of buying a stamp album, and held it for so long that the salesgirl got impatient. Herr Schünemann had advised him to invest his money in stamps.

But in the end he didn’t, because he could see that the assortments of stamps included some with the picture of the Führer on them.

The pharmacy was sold out of liquorice. Heil Hitler!

‘Haven’t you been here before?’ asked the pharmacist. He thought it was odd that a boy who was a stranger to the town came wanting to buy liquorice twice running, when the stuff was sold out.

‘I’m a refugee,’ said Peter. He seemed to himself abandoned and all alone as he said that, and in fact it was the first time he had done so. The pharmacist thought that was sad, and opened up his display case to see if there was a little bag of Italian liquorice left there after all.

Looking through the shop window, Peter saw Auntie walking down the other side of the street with the Silesian gentleman. Auntie in her black hat, wearing her muff and her rubber overshoes, the gentleman limping slightly. Which of them was supporting the other? Had the Silesian taken Auntie’s arm?

The first cartloads of old people arrived from Mitkau. They were being evacuated from the monastery. The old folk were transported in open horse-drawn carts, sitting on straw packed well round them. They were nodding their heads, as if in time to cheerful tunes played on a concertina. They had never thought they would have to go on the road again in their old age, with cannulas sticking out of them like hedgehog prickles, with colostomy bags and devices for getting air into their thoracic cavities. They were bad on their feet and had trouble with their waterworks.

It hadn’t been so bad in Mitkau; they had got used to the place. Why, they thought, can’t people leave us in peace?

They were surely thinking, too, of their pretty home town of Tilsit. It used to be so nice, sitting outside their houses in summer, watching horses being ridden down to the river to drink.

Perhaps their evacuation had gone wrong?

The sun had always been shining in Tilsit. There were always sunflowers in Tilsit growing beside the fences.

The locals lined the streets as the carts of old folk arrived one by one. No one called out ‘Heil.’ Good heavens, what a sad load of poor old people. Coughing and spitting. They hadn’t imagined that the evening of their days would be like this. What, wondered the spectators, will happen to us when we’re old and weak? And the local old folk in the church care home, hearing that they were to have new arrivals, were wondering: when will they take us away? Lord, let me know the number of my days …

And many of the passers-by were probably thinking: terrible! Wouldn’t it be a mercy to put these sick people out of their misery? Useless mouths to be fed, lives not worth living. The expression vegetables fit for the graveyard did the rounds.

Doctors in white coats arrived. Heil Hitler. Nothing had been prepared, nothing was organized. Should the seats be ripped out of the cinema? No, there were objections to that. The cinema was still needed; people needed something to take their minds off the present. They wanted to see a film to entertain them and make them laugh wholeheartedly.

What will our lives be now, dear heart?

Happy or sad, say the powers above?

What course does our life take, must we part?

Or may we yet come to the land of love?

They would have to call on the school; plenty of room there. The headmaster wrung his hands, and jubilant children ran down the street.

The local pastor put in an appearance, standing in his church porch like the post-office baker standing outside his shop, and sure enough he was needed: some of those taken out of the carts were dead, with their bread rations clutched in their hands, and they were laid at his feet. The problem was how to get them buried. For the time being they must be left lying here, side by side; when they thawed they would begin to stink.

Ding-dong ding-dong, rang the bell. ‘We will meet here at six for silent prayer,’ the pastor told those hurrying by, who couldn’t believe that there were dead men and women lying outside the church. News of it went from mouth to mouth.

Peter too saw the old people sitting in the carts, and being lifted down. The carts were already being turned to fetch the rest of the old folk from Mitkau. They couldn’t be left to fall into the hands of the Russians. It occurred to Peter that he could go home to Mitkau with the empty carts, pay a quick visit to the Georgenhof and come straight back again. He could give the others who were still there a surprise. The Hesses, Sonya and Jago the dog. Take another look at the family home, see it with new eyes. And then, next day, he could come back here with the last load of old folk.

Perhaps he could bring something from home back as well. Peter thought of the new locomotive he had been given at Christmas for his railway. He’d have liked to have it with him now.

And he thought of his mother’s silhouettes. He’d never looked at them properly.