Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

Next morning he had disappeared.

Katharina had been going to take him some breakfast. Of course there was nothing else missing, but the stamp had been torn off the army envelope sent from the front by the master of the house. The man hadn’t been able to resist it. In return, several sheets of ration coupons were lying on the table.

‘Think of that!’ said Auntie. ‘Just think of that!’

The door was open. He might at least have closed it.

And of course Jago the dog had seized his opportunity to go off again.

The next guest could be seen coming from far away, silhouetted against the horizon and crossing the fields, enveloped in swirling snow. Crows with ragged wings dived down on the fluttering figure. This visitor was a young woman, and she was pulling along a sledge with two suitcases on it. The sledge kept tipping over as she hauled it across the snow-covered clods of earth. She had difficulty standing upright in the violent gusts of wind, which blew the skirts of her coat apart, and it was some time before she finally reached the manor house that lay, like a last refuge, behind the black oaks. The young woman had a violin case on her back, and that, too, made the people from the Settlement stare at her.

She knocked the snow off her shoes, straightened her knitted cap with both hands, took a deep breath and opened the door of the house. Jago jumped up at her with a friendly welcome, and since no one else appeared she called ‘Heil Hitler!’ into the house.

She was petting the dog a little too boisterously, and the noise brought Auntie out of the kitchen, where the two Ukrainian girls were quarrelling again — couldn’t they keep their voices down? A strange woman with a violin case in the middle of the hall? She had wiped her shoes, Auntie could see, but all the same. Peter came running downstairs, taking three steps at a time. A visitor!

Now Katharina appeared too, all in black: black trousers, black pullover, black boots, and an oval locket round her neck, gold with a diamond teardrop on it. She had just been lying down for a little rest, and was curious to discover what was going on.

The young woman, it turned out, came from Mitkau. Her name was Gisela Strietzel — ‘I’m Gisela,’ she introduced herself. She had been entertaining the wounded in field hospitals for weeks, and now she had to make her way to Allenstein. She had spent three days in Königsberg, three days in Insterburg and two days in Mitkau, playing music to grateful injured soldiers, whose arms and legs were encased in white bandages, while many had bandaged heads.

Now she had to get to Allenstein and spend a week there, and then at last she could go home to Danzig, where Papa was expecting her. But a bomb had hit the railway line, and the car that was supposed to be coming for her was delayed: no petrol. She didn’t feel like hanging about, so she had borrowed a sledge for her suitcases and set off across country. Would it cost the earth? The sledge would have to be returned to the field hospital some time or other; that was another problem. Perhaps the kind folk here could help her?

After that she would have to find out how to get to Allenstein. This journey was giving her a hell of a time!

It remained a mystery why the young woman hadn’t taken the ordinary road. Why had she struck out across country? ‘I like to go my own way,’ she said, and they had to accept that.

She took off her gloves, shoes and coat and undid the straps holding her cases to the sledge. The sledge itself could be left in the porch, which had a lock on it. The road had been busy for the last few days: an occasional cart packed high with luggage, while other travellers on the road were riding bicycles or wheeling babies’ prams. All the traffic was going from east to west. And everyone could use a sledge these days.

*

It was obvious that she couldn’t be sent straight out on the road again: a young woman who had been entertaining the wounded for weeks on end in field hospitals. A young woman putting her whole heart into giving pleasure to unfortunate men who had imagined a soldier’s life as very different.

So that she would not be politely shown the door — looking after number one in these hard times — she opened one of the two suitcases and took out a ‘front-line fighter’s package for the great operation’. It had been given to her in Mitkau for her journey. Putting the package on the table, she opened it: chocolate, biscuits, cigarettes and glucose tablets. Katharina von Globig, Peter and Auntie watched. Peter got the glucose candy, and the can of airman’s chocolate was pushed over to Auntie. Katharina immediately lit one of the cigarettes.

Was Peter a leader of the Pimpfs, the junior branch of the Hitler Youth, Fräulein Strietzel asked the boy. No, he wasn’t, and it was difficult for her to understand that out here in the country they weren’t so interested in service with the Hitler Youth and the Pimpfs. Out in the Settlement, yes — but not here. He had a cold? Was that any reason to hide behind the stove? What would our soldiers out in the snow and ice say about that?

The boy put a piece of glucose candy in his mouth, and Katharina drew on her cigarette. Fräulein Strietzel went over to the window to see whether the car might be coming after all, but it was getting darker and darker, and in the end they showed her the sofa near the fireplace where she could lie down and get a little rest; there was plenty of time before supper. She did lie down, and fell asleep at once. She did not wake up until Vladimir the Pole brought in firewood, dropped it on the floor beside her, and took his chance to get a look at the new guest. He put a hatchet beside the wood.

*

When the smell of fried potatoes rose to her nostrils, she was wide awake. She was surprised to see a Pole walking in and out, just like that. Didn’t such people get above themselves if you gave them so much as an inch, allowing them liberties that they could only dream of out in the steppes? In fact, wasn’t familiarity with them forbidden? Remember the massacre of Germans by the Poles in Bromberg, in 1939.

By the light of the oil lamp — there was a power cut again — they all had a plate of fried potatoes, pickles, and a slice of blood sausage, and the Globigs sat at the supper table and watched Fräulein Strietzel, who was a real artist, enjoying the meal. She had bad teeth, as they could all see.

It seemed strange to the young woman that they said grace before meals in this house; she scuffed her feet on the floor, listening. She wasn’t going to bother with all that God-in-heaven stuff and say prayers, not she. Of course there was a higher power, Fate or Providence, whatever you liked to call it, and there was something like that to be sensed in music — but so far as she was concerned the church was just big business. At home, she said, they had a book of maxims from which her Papa would sometimes quote: Goethe, Schiller, Dietrich Eckhart. She asked Peter if he knew any good rhymes? ‘Itsy-bitsy spider, climbing up the spout. Down came the rain and washed poor spider out.’

She ate heartily, now and then pointing to the dark portraits on the walls with her fork. She didn’t exactly describe them as daubs, but said they must date from the year dot. His Nibs of Nibs Castle, she expected. Then she asked if she could have another slice of blood sausage? She was terribly greedy, she said. It didn’t occur to her to get her ration coupons out of her bag; she hadn’t been asked for them in the field hospitals. In the field hospitals she had always been given second helpings, and no one asked for her coupons.

Over the stewed gooseberries, she told the Globigs about the new tanks that had moved into Mitkau. She had seen them for herself — here she clapped her hand to her mouth; should she be giving that away? — as well as the fabulous barricades being built there. Ivan the Russian would never get through those! Mitkau was becoming a regular fortress; there were experts at work, and the enemy would certainly break their teeth on the fortifications.