Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

She described the present peace and quiet on the front line as a pause to take breath. At this moment the entire front was breathing in deeply, and the resulting silence might deceive many. Then, one day, it would let that breath out again, as if to sneeze, and the sound would be a great, vengeful roar. The enemy would be blown away like chaff on the wind.

Did they have any hunting guns in this house, she wondered, so that they could defend themselves if necessary?

Peter went to fetch the triple-barrelled gun, and showed her that if you had already fired the first barrel but had missed, you could still fire the other two at the same target.

Fräulein Gisela thought that was fantastic, and asked whether the guns at the front also had three barrels.

After supper, the fire on the hearth was stirred up again, and Fräulein Strietzel put her feet on a footstool. She talked about the wounded men in the Mitkau field hospital — ‘the disabled’, as she called them — the amputees, the crippled and the sick. There were even blinded men among them, a whole section of them. She described the kind nurses who took such good care of them. The poor lads had to be spoon-fed. And one of them was both blind and deaf. A few days ago a convoy of severely wounded men had arrived, and ought to have been sent straight on to the west, but once again the road was impassable.

Yesterday evening a variety show had been put on for the soldiers, with a conjuror, a juggler and two women stand-up comics telling jokes. And she had been the high point. She had brought an evening dress especially for such occasions, when she couldn’t very well stand there playing the violin in trousers.

The wounded men in their ward — what a shattering sight. Many, many beds, ranged side by side, and oh, the way the men looked at her when she began to play. You could have heard a pin drop; the only sound had been a high, rhythmic groaning from the back parts of the building, but someone had managed to shut that noise up quickly. And when she raised her violin, put the bow to the strings and played the first note in that silence, a sigh had passed through the whole ward. You could hardly imagine a more grateful audience. Grown men in tears.

A blind man had been led forward; he had asked if he could just touch her hand. She would never in her life forget that moment.

Grown men in tears — she herself wept very easily, in the cinema, for instance. Not that she ever cried when playing the violin; that was more of a matter of technique, you left your feelings out of it. But the cinema was different. Had they seen Friedemann Bach , that wonderful film about J.S. Bach’s eldest son? She had wept buckets watching it.

What times that young woman had behind her: eight appearances in only seven days. And she showed them her hands, covered with chilblains. Basins of hot and cold water were quickly brought so that she could bathe her hands in them alternately, and a tube of chilblain ointment, which was applied thickly. If something wasn’t done at once, she would never be able to play the violin again. The chilblains would burst, and her finger joints would stiffen up.

Where did she come from? Where was she going? Danzig? Her father was a major in the Medical Corps, such a kind man. ‘If there’s anything more forceful than Fate, then it’s the man who bears it steadfastly …’ She spoke enthusiastically of the latest batch of young men called up — such splendid material, you could hardly believe it. Where were they coming from? Now it was those born in 1928 — the strength of the German people was inexhaustible. She looked at Peter, still too young, of course, but later he would be good material himself. When it came to the point he too would surely stand his ground.

Of the seven students in her violin class, five had already fallen, in Africa and Yugoslavia, at Stalingrad and in the Atlantic. Five brave young men. If the same toll of lives was taken in all the music colleges and conservatories in the country … oh, it would come to hundreds of young men. She spoke as if the enemy had set their sights on violinists in particular.

She did not mention the fact that later, when the war was over, that would be all the better for her professional opportunities. Then the time for women would come. They would have to fill the breach, that was obvious to her.

It was a long time since she had last heard from her fiancé. She wore a locket round her neck with his picture in it. She took it out and showed it to the three of them; they all had a look at it. A soldier in a tank, wearing a black beret. O thou lovely Westerwald. All kinds of things had been going on in the Ardennes. Now it was quiet there. Perhaps — with luck — he was in a prison camp. The Yanks treated their prisoners humanely. The main thing was not to fall into the hands of those subhuman Russians.

The remains of a four-leaved clover lay on the photograph in the locket; the young couple had seen it at the same time on his last leave. They had both bent to pick it together. It had been so funny.

She held her locket, for comparison, against Frau von Globig’s, which was larger and heavier. What, she wondered, was in it? It had a small diamond teardrop on the outside.

Hail, land of Brandenburg.

After supper Auntie took the dishes out, and as she opened the door to the corridor the two maids could be heard screeching in the kitchen again.

‘What’s that?’ asked Fräulein Gisela. Ukrainian women? Making such a racket? What did they think they were doing, screaming like that? If she had a say, there’d have been silence at once.

It was a mystery to her that such conduct was allowed in this house. A Pole and two Ukrainian women, all of them riff-raff? She looked from one to the other of her hosts, wondering if anyone was going to tell her why they let the domestic staff get away with it.

Eight o’clock. Peter ought really to go to bed, but he was allowed to stay up when Fräulein Strietzel took her violin out of its case. Her idea was to play something for her hosts, to thank them for the blood sausage.

The instrument had been in the wars itself: the fingerboard was attached to the body of the violin with an ordinary everyday screw. And as there was still no electric light, Auntie lit two candles to supplement the oil lamp. Then the sound of a serenade rang through the house, with sobbing effects and sforzandi , a moving and somehow familiar piece that the violinist had already played frequently in the field hospitals. It went straight to the heart of anyone hearing it, and once its haunting melody had entered their minds it took permanent root there.

*

The maids in the kitchen caught some of that sacred sound. They stopped screeching, stole out into the corridor, and listened close to the door.

Vladimir stood in the stable doorway, his letter P hanging crooked from his jacket, looking up at the glittering night sky. He too was thinking his own thoughts. Was the low rumbling sound in the east louder now? He’d better see to the horses.

It was a real private concert. Peter sat on the sofa beside his mother; he was on the left, Jago on the right, his mother in between them. The dog barked a couple of times, perhaps wondering whether to give free rein to his feelings and participate in this concert in his own way, but then he fell silent. The cat, who disliked high-pitched sounds, made his escape. They knew about Frederick the Great and his flute concerto at Sanssouci, the ladies of the Prussian court around him. Otto Gebühr had taken the part of The Great King in the film of that name.

If they had guessed that such a fine musician was coming to visit them, Uncle Josef could have come over from Albertsdorf with Aunt Hanna, or maybe even the mayor of Mitkau. On Midsummer’s Day last year, long ago now, they had all gathered under the copper beech in the park, Eberhard, the Berlin family, Uncle Josef and his family too, to sing the lovely old songs. Beside the well, beyond the gate / There stands a linden tree … Dr Wagner had also been there, with his sinewy fingers. If he shaved off his goatee beard he would surely look much younger.