Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

Oh, well, that was different.

Some two hundred people, large and small, were waiting for soup here under murals illustrating the life and work of the philosopher Herder. As well as soup, they wanted to know how things were going. They listened to the latest news, on the radio and as it was passed from mouth to mouth. How far away were the Russians now? They hoped to find out whether the road to the Frisches Haff was still clear. Every detail was passed on in an undertone. Children ran about among the adults, playing catch.

Up in the gallery, a sailor hoping to cheer everyone up brought out his accordion:

Homeland, see thy stars

Shine in the firmament.

He was surrounded by refugees, small and large, some with tears in their eyes. The sailor was part of an anti-aircraft unit. He hadn’t expected life in the navy to be like this. As far as he was concerned, his homeland was one of the old tubs now at the bottom of the sea.

And here in this place, built by the Party to encourage young people to go hiking, in a youth hostel of the Greater German Reich and under a picture of Herder’s voyage to the west, it so happened — because the world is nothing but a big village — that Peter came upon his tutor, Dr Wagner the schoolmaster, who was clad in walking trousers and coat and gaiters.

Which of them saw the other first?

Dr Wagner joyfully hugged the boy, and they immediately began exchanging news.

‘Mitkau is burning, my dear boy,’ said Wagner, ‘and the Russians are probably in the Georgenhof by now.’

And Peter told him about Auntie and Vladimir and Vera.

‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Dr Wagner. ‘Hanged? The woman too? They didn’t deserve that.’ At first the schoolmaster had said only, ‘Really?’ because he assumed the boy was telling his stories again. But he was shocked by this. ‘Hanged?’

‘All wrecked,’ said Peter, ‘the coach too. I drove it all by myself,’ he added, ‘with Auntie in the back.’ He claimed to have made her very comfortable there, with straw packed round her. And that, he said, had been her downfall — the horse and coach done for, and he, up on the box, had got away without a scratch. He fell to the ground, yes, but not a scratch on him. A miracle!

‘A miracle,’ whispered Wagner. ‘To think you were able to drive a coach!’ And he thought that Auntie had never been very nice to him. She spoke sharply when he was teaching Peter irregular verbs — fero, tuli, latum.

‘And do you know who else is here?’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ He went ahead in his old-fashioned walking trousers and his gaiters, which dated from the 1914 war, and led Peter to a back room, but they were sent straight out again, because a woman was having a baby there. It was Felicitas, and half an hour later mother and child were both dead.

‘She was always so funny,’ said Peter.

‘Yes,’ replied the schoolmaster. ‘Death takes us all just as we are.’

Peter said nothing for a while. ‘I expect you’re thinking of your mother, my dear boy,’ said Wagner. But Peter wasn’t, he was thinking of the Georgenhof and the penknife with the four blades that his father had brought back for him last year. He wished he had brought it with him. And he was also wondering what ‘opake’ meant. The schoolmaster had just said the situation was opake.

His trouble, said Wagner, was having to drag that damn suitcase of the baron’s round with him. Heavy as lead, with all those chronicles inside it. He’d been tempted several times to leave it behind … and there was a tale to be told about that, too, and how difficult it had been to retrieve the case in the first place. The things the people there had said to him.

What with Drygalski asking, in irritation, what that was supposed to be … and Sonya wanting to know what was in it.

And incidentally, Drygalski had left the Settlement too, simply abandoning his wife.

Katharina’s situation had changed considerably. The police officer who allowed her a breath of fresh air had not reappeared. She had been left alone in her cold cell with her white fur cap on her head. Were the guards still here? Much as the banging of doors and the sound of a key turning in the lock had alarmed her, this sudden silence was uncanny.

But then, very early in the morning, the cell doors were opened and everyone was told to come out. ‘No talking!’ They were herded into the yard, and given half a loaf of bread each. ‘And bring your blanket with you.’

Almost at once an unshaven man on crutches made his way to Katharina’s side. He had a great gash on his forehead, like a sabre wound. ‘Dear lady …’ he whispered. It was Schünemann the political economist, who had been picked up with a bag full of forged papers and ration cards.

‘Dear lady …’ he said. Did he want to pour his heart out to her? Or ease his conscience? Tell her why he had taken the envelope with the military postmark on it?

None of that mattered any more. ‘Shut up!’ a guard called, and the gate was opened and they had to march out.

They marched through the town, thirty prisoners, and at the Senthagener Tor they were joined by another thirty concentration camp inmates.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Shut up. There’s going to be some shooting.’

They were led westward, and just as they were passing the Georgenhof the big green bridge, Mitkau’s pride and joy, exploded. The trek stopped, and the carts were taken over the ice of the River Helge. More and more carts went on to the ice, and there was a jam because it was difficult for the horses to pull the heavy carts up the sloping bank. Then the ice broke and carts sank, and the screams of the people in them sounded, from a distance, like a great sigh.

Katharina kept her head bent. Like the others, she looked neither to right nor to left. Schünemann swung himself along on his crutches beside her.

‘Dear lady …’ he kept saying. Was he trying to tell her how good life used to be, and how he too had seen better days?

‘Shut up!’ shouted the guards, and then they pulled him out of the group by his coat and hit him. A man who had helped to destabilize the will of the German people to resist, shooting his mouth off. They began beating him in earnest.

Katharina had thought that Lothar Sarkander might get her out of this. Would drive up in his car at the last moment, waving a white cloth out of the window. Reprieved! Reprieved! And then he would get her to climb in as he once did before, holding the car door open, and racing away with her.

‘This woman is a very special person …’

The sea! They had stood on the landing stage at the seaside. Seagulls, and the waves lapping at the wooden breakwaters, her hat like the sun behind her head. And in the restaurant that evening, he had blown cigarette smoke over the candle. Acting the part of a Hungarian café violinist — ‘Avant de mourir?’ It had made them laugh so much. He had burrowed his way into her heart with that violinist act … And the view over the sea from their room. Had the sea shone that night? Had billions of little luminous fish made the sea glow? And when the time came she had brought the little girl into the world.

Katharina thought he might come to her rescue. At the last minute?

But it didn’t happen, and she had to take care that no one trod on her heels. The concentration camp inmates from the brickworks were crowding round her. ‘Lady … bread,’ they said, and Katharina gave them all the bread she had. These men formed a phalanx against the others who also wanted her bread, and would let no one else near her, a woman who still had bread … Only when she had no more to give did they move away.

‘ Votre coeur …’ said one of them. Was he an educated man?