Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

He had noticed what nice fillings Frau von Globig’s sandwiches had.

Could he have soup that was rather more nourishing given to everyone tomorrow morning, and then go out of town on police business?

Could he fix that somehow?

Katharina wasn’t thinking of Peter — he would be all right, she was sure — or of Auntie either. And certainly not of Herr Hirsch, who had climbed the old rose fence to her room. Should she ask how he was? Perhaps he was only a few cells further away. She remembered his scratched hands; she had put sticking plaster on them. And his fingernail clippings on the rim of the washbasin.

She would have liked to talk to the police officer about something else entirely, about that single day at the seaside. But it was nothing to do with this case, and the police officer wouldn’t know about it. She would have liked to tell him. Who else could she talk to? Who took any interest, now, in the fact that the mayor of Mitkau had sat in a wickerwork beach chair with Frau von Globig?

A great many things went through her mind. She thought of the water in the cellar and the foreign workers in the Forest Lodge.

How would Eberhard take this? His own wife in prison? Would he pick fluff off his uniform tunic and say, ‘It can’t be true’?

The police officer took the key and stood up. ‘Come with me,’ he said. Then he went out into the yard. Stood in the doorway with her, watching the snowflakes floating softly and steadily down in front of the wall. Voices came from the cells. Was that someone laughing?

He opened another door, and they were standing in the marketplace. People were passing by, and didn’t even look up. From the north-east the long line of the trek was moving over the marketplace, like Katharina herself, and then it disappeared through the Senthagener Tor again.

A few carts began assembling in the marketplace as if forming a stockade. They were preparing to spend the night there.

The officer was letting her have a little fresh air. And allowing her to walk a few steps up and down.

Doesn’t anyone here know me? Katharina wondered. But she knew none of the passers-by. There was a man over there in the town hall who knew her very well. A friend? But there was no sign of him.

The police officer pointed to the church. ‘There,’ he said. ‘You can thank his reverence Pastor Brahms for all this. A fine sort he is!’ He stood with her for a few long minutes, letting her breathe in and out. And he thought of the black-haired Jew they had shot in the cellar: he had crumpled at the knees before he slumped sideways.

I’m dancing to heaven with you,

To the seventh heaven of love.

Katharina thought of Felicitas. Just fifteen minutes’ walk, past the cinema and the post office, and she would be with Felicitas …

But she’d never persuade the police officer to go on such an expedition. Her friend’s chatter, and her laughter, and story after story. In fact by this time, as Katharina was not to know, Felicitas was far away. She had thrown in her lot with the refugees billeted on her, who turned out to be resourceful. They had eaten Katha rina’s hare together, and that had paid off. ‘We’ll stick together,’ Felicitas had said to the refugee woman, who was happy to agree.

‘There it is,’ said the police officer, ‘you can’t rely on anyone. The pastor was not an innocent. You’ve no idea of all the stuff we found at his place.’

Forming an alliance with a man like this, she thought, would be playing with fire. But what did he want? she wondered when she was back in her cell. Did he want to let her go? Was she supposed to console him?

*

Peter spent the night in the pastor’s bed. He had put the two teaspoons, the little dried-up wreath of flowers and the gold locket on its chain on the bedside table, and then went to sleep at once.

The pastor himself had got up several times in the night to look out of the window. Was he thinking of his violinist? Were his thoughts with the church?

The pastor thought of what he had told Peter about the German Christians. And he had spoken so disparagingly of them … this boy was bound to be a Pimpf, in the junior branch of the Hitler Youth. Hadn’t children denounced their own parents for an incautious word?

But von Globig? Weren’t all those aristocrats against Hitler? 20 July and so on?

Imagine if he did something stupid at the last moment. He’d survived the local rural district leader, who had always been sitting under the pulpit listening carefully to his sermons, even making notes, and now was he going to be handed over to the executioner by a child?

It would be best to get out at once. He should have gone with the villagers, they’d offered to take him. His superintendent had allowed him a dispensation, although his Catholic colleague in the next village showed no signs of leaving.

Would he have to knock the figure of Christ off the porch with a hammer and take it with him? Could he leave the beloved image that had accompanied him for so long to be destroyed by the Bolshevist hordes?

He opened Auntie’s suitcase. What on earth would the boy do with all that ladies’ underwear? Panties and vests? Handkerchiefs with little red bows? Peter had already taken two of the silver spoons, but he had the third safe. I coaxed that one out of him, thought the pastor. He would keep it as a talisman. No hallmark, but it was certainly silver.

He picked up a packet of handkerchiefs. One more or less surely wouldn’t be noticed?

Why, why had he let himself be carried away into talking about the German Christians? ‘You’re so trusting,’ his wife had always told him. ‘You’ll talk yourself into trouble some day.’

But hadn’t the boy himself said something that could be used against him if necessary? ‘Nazi.’ He had mentioned Drygalski ‘the

Nazi’. Yes, that was it. He could strike back with that. This Drygalski was evidently high up in the Party.

Nazi … didn’t anyone using a word like that incriminate himself? Hadn’t he given himself away?

He sat down at the harmonium and tapped out a tune on the keys, but he didn’t tread on the pedals to works the bellows.

I long for my eternal home,

No longer in the world to roam.

Ah, might I pass through heaven’s door

To gaze on God for evermore.

He was so tired of everything.

Next morning the pastor looked out of the window and said to Peter, who was washing himself in the kitchen, ‘Snow, snow, snow …’ He tapped the barometer and said, ‘It’s rising.’ On the outdoor thermometer he read fifteen degrees below zero. ‘Snow, snow, snow. Those poor people, how will they ever get through? There’ll be snowdrifts a metre high.’ He went out and threw the birds a little food. But then he shook out the entire contents of the bag, as if sowing the seed broadcast, and birds came from all directions. Why keep any of the bird seed back when all was lost anyway?

Peter returned to the road, where carts were still driving along — or were driving along again — one after another, with a rumbling, crunching sound. ‘Where are we going?’ someone called. The dead gelding was already buried under the snow, his mouth open and showing his teeth. But he couldn’t just leave the animal like that, could he?

Carts that had fallen over lay in the road, bodies among them. And more bodies in the ditches, the bodies of children.

Peter thought of the gelding. He had always blown the chaff away from the oats, clever creature that he was. When Vladimir had lifted him up on the great horse’s back, the gelding used to nuzzle his leg affectionately. And hadn’t he even once spent the night beside him?