The Tower: A Novel

by Uwe Tellkamp

  In his mind’s eye Christian could see the impression in the iron balustrade on the Brühlsche Terrasse that was supposed to have been made by August the Strong with his thumb … Bored, Ina jiggled her feet. Ulrich seemed to have calmed down, for he was staring at the football pictures on the table, arms akimbo. Now there would be a special footballological quarter of an hour: Ulrich could always talk about football and knew simply ‘everything’ – at least he knew as much as Robert, and that was saying something.

  ‘What’s this, Chrishan? Laid up again, are we? In Fernau’s firm hands? And feeling more bitter than better, closed now those songster’s lips of yours?’ That was Aunt Barbara, known to the family as ‘Enoeff’ – she pronounced the English word ‘enough’ as if it were Saxon and used it, together with a determined karate chop, to indicate that some matter had been decided once and for all. ‘How are things at school, apple of my eye?’ Robert was the potato of her eye. Christian didn’t answer at once and Barbara was immediately worried, sat down on the bed and waved Ina and Ulrich away.

  ‘I was just going to have a chat with him about football, Bubbles.’

  ‘Enoeff!’

  ‘Dynamo against BFC!’

  Christian shot up. ‘When?’

  ‘Enoeff, I tell you! Out!’

  Ulrich gave Robert’s net of footballs an appreciative thump with his fist. His face twisted. ‘You’ll have to get a move on, Cuddles.’

  ‘Don’t call me that, Dad,’ Ina protested, ‘how often do I have to tell you?’

  ‘Out you all go. There’s a sick guy here, he needs some peace and quiet. – Did he lose his temper again? He’s impossible. And I’m married to him. Shows no consideration whatsoever and here you are, ill in bed. Men! … I tell you, Chrishan … You’re young and foolish and you meet them and before you know it, whoops! you’ve got a bun in the oven! I’m only telling you this because I hope you’re not like that. And don’t start something with Ina, that … wouldn’t be a good idea. Where would it lead, cousins … ? I recently read an article about the risks with incest. You mustn’t let it go any farther, believe you me. I’ve already had a hint of the odd disaster. God, I’ve lost any influence over that child. She does what she wants and the guys she brings home, they’ve all got long hair and smoke! And listen to that horrible music. Chrishan’ – she took his hand and leant over him, her blue-grey eyes with the fine mascara lines round them looked like porcelain discs – ‘listen to me. You know what I always say … you mustn’t be a pipsqueak in this world. No, definitely not. We’re not big shots, no, not by a long chalk. But we’re not pipsqueaks either. – So, how are things at school?’

  ‘Quite good –’

  ‘You’re saying that out of modesty, aren’t you? You Hoffmanns have a tendency to keep things in a low key. Quite right too. What do you think of my new hairstyle? Sorry for putting you on the spot like that, but no one ever tells me anything. – You don’t have to say anything if it embarrasses you. I have great sympathy for the male psy-kee. You know that. And you read such a lot and people always say the more a person reads, the more problems he has with words. If you think my hairstyle’s good you can, for example … just give my hand a squeeze.’ Barbara smiled and shook her head proudly.

  ‘Were you at Schnebel’s?’

  ‘What an idea! I don’t go to that cheap hairdresser. Chrishan – it can’t look that bad, can it?’ The expression on Barbara’s face was the one she had when she stroked Chakamankabudibaba’s back and said, ‘You looovely cat’, as if she were checking what part of the coat she was working on at the moment its soft fur could be used for. ‘You do give a person a fright! I went to Wiener’s, of course. He’s the only one who understands women’s hair. It’s so difficult to get an appointment with him … Even those women from East Rome want to go to him, despite the fact that in ’56 … I think he even went to jail, down there in dear old Hungary. If only they knew? But I’m sure they do know, those … tarts. Yes, that’s the word. Wiener’s an old charmer and a bit eucalyptical as well – I mean, that toupee! He really shouldn’t, especially one that’s as black as liquorice – and he’s sure to be well into his fifties. And the hairnet as well. I mean – a man! And a hairdresser into the bargain. With a hairnet and that hussar’s moustache! At his prices … And then he walks in such a lah-di-dah way’ – Barbara had got off the bed and was imitating Lajos Wiener’s gait – ‘his hands raised as if he had to waddle along on them, and then he wiggles his hips and lisps, “I hope we shall see you again soon, dear madam.” My God, with his waiting list?! Then he gives you such an outrageous wink, screwing up the whole of his cheek, you have the feeling there must be a gypsy band lurking in the background and someone’s going to start hammering with those thingies on the what-d’you-call-it … You know, those little hammers that look like the spoons in the milk bar and those … zithers. Yes. Those boards with strings over them on which they … magyarize!’ She sat down again, stretched out her fingers with their generous complement of flower-rings, regarded her nails with their raspberry-coloured paint. ‘You know, Chrishan, I’m not just asking you for fun. The women at work are just jealous, you can’t talk with them about that kind of thing. They don’t tell you whether it looks good, for if they say that, they’d say it would ’ve been better if they hadn’t said that. Of course Ina thinks: the aged parent’s gone off her rocker. And of course I could ask Snorkel’ – that was what Barbara called her husband – ‘but he’d just mutter, “That’s really great, Bubbles”, but wouldn’t even look up from his SoWe – Soccer Weekly or whatever the magazine’s called. But you: I can ask you. I know that. You have an honest opinion and eyes in your head as well. Wiener, the man who won’t admit to fifty, just tells you what you want to hear because he wants you to come back. – I can see you’re too embarrassed to tell your aunt how much you like it. It’s nothing to cry over. After all, we’re all going to end up in communism and then we’ll have to cut off our hair anyway. Enoeff, my dear. You mustn’t talk so much, it’ll just tire you out. Have a good sleep.’

  23

  Breathing

  Richard went into the cellar, to the workshop he’d set up in the old laundry. It was quiet down there. He was going to switch on the light, but then he didn’t bother; the twilight in the room calmed him down; the outlines of the objects had already blurred into the darkness, which seemed to be spreading out from the unpainted walls. It smelt of damp, mould and potatoes. He knew that it wasn’t a good idea to stay down there too long, especially not now, at the cold time of the year; in the spring and right through to the late autumn, on the other hand, when you could leave the window open, there was a smell of turpentine and dry wood, of paint and benzine. He had to change when he came to work down here, his clothes absorbed the acrid cellar smell and it was difficult to get rid of it. Despite all the disadvantages of the room, Richard liked being there – apart from the fact that it was a privilege to have extra space available for his hobby; he would have been happy with the smallest of attic rooms and would even have let Griesel have a corner. In his study he could be undisturbed – down here, on the other hand, he was alone. As in the operating theatre, the language was not that of words, but that of hands, which was familiar to him and in which he felt secure. He turned on the light, enjoying the clack as the black Bakelite rotary switch engaged; the carbon filament bulb that some predecessor had left cast an ochre tent over the room. His tools were his pride and joy and when he thought of ‘possessions’ then the first thing that came to mind was not a bank statement, the furniture in the apartment, the record player, the paintings by Querner or the Lada, but the wall cupboards with their rows of ring spanners, open-jawed spanners, the sets of cylinder wrenches, thread cutters and screw-stocks, the chisels. Not rubbish from some state-owned factory, but heavy, pre-war steel goods drop-forged in the Bergisches Land south of the Ruhrgebiet. He saw the thirty screwdrivers in the canvas roll with the broad leather straps, a present from his boss when he’d completed his apprenti
ceship as a metalworker, hexagonal bars, one blow from which could kill a man, forged from a single piece, the toolmaker’s seal punched into the handle; he saw the old drillbits made of solid brown iron, greased for the winter and wrapped in oiled paper as well, sitting in their birchwood case, in the compartments made to size for the thinnest to ones as thick as your finger. Meno often talked about poetry and Richard couldn’t always follow him, at such times Meno seemed to have gone off into regions that had nothing to do with Richard, had nothing to say to him, but one thing he did understand: when Meno told them that it was hard work and that something like the poems of Eichendorff – deeply moved, he recited them enthusiastically – couldn’t be tossed off in a day, that behind them was an intimation of something that Meno called completeness. And when Meno went on to say that in his experience simple people only rarely had access to that realm, though he begged those gathered there not to misunderstand him, he didn’t want to sound arrogant, but it was a fact that everyone knew but didn’t dare to say out loud because then the Party would be faced with the question as to whether their cultural policy, their image of the reading worker, was not based on false assumptions, Richard simply couldn’t go along with that, he didn’t like what his brother-in-law was saying about workers’ relationship to reading. He knew of enough counter-examples, and Meno’s assertion denied their sense of beauty and quality, and thus of poetry in another but not shallower sense. Oh yes, he understood very well what Meno was saying, even if his brother-in-law would not always accept that. The same feeling of profound satisfaction, of happiness perhaps, and perhaps also of release – that here for once there was a product of the human mind and the human hand that could not be bettered – this feeling that he could see in Meno’s face was something he, Richard, knew as well, only it wasn’t a poem that set it off but this workbench, and for his father it had been the inner life of a mechanical clock from the great period of clock-making in Glashütte, a testimony to craftsmanship and a meticulous technical ingenuity. Meno might well mock and think him a philistine who seriously dared to see poetry in a set of screwdrivers, but his brother-in-law was an odd guy, stuck in his world of the mind and letters but not seeming to know much about people. Hid himself away behind his desk and researches – then talked about workers and their appreciation of higher things … nothing but waffle, waffle. Richard felt tired, went over to the washbasin in the corner, behind the huge tub in which the washing used to be done. Now potatoes were kept in it. He washed his face, then stayed leaning over the washbasin, listening to the drops of water falling from his face and plopping onto the enamel of the basin – like bubbles bursting, unreal in the growing sound of his breathing. He felt so drained that he couldn’t understand how there could ever have been anything inside him: his childhood, his experiences during the war, the bombardment of Dresden, getting burnt, Rieke, his apprenticeship, university, Anne, the children. Perhaps we had a receptacle inside us that gradually filled in the course of our life but his, now, had sprung a leak and everything had run out. He washed his face again. The water was so cold his forehead and temples ached, but after he’d dried himself off with his handkerchief he felt better. He looked at the workbench, which went back to Alvarez’s time, the smooth wood of the work surface, polished by the touch of countless hands. It was so hard the woodworm didn’t attack it. He didn’t know what kind of wood it was, it was a coppery red, unusually solid, unaffected even by damp and mould. On it he’d made the table for Meno, the desks for Christian and Robert, the hundred-drawer cupboard in the study that had even earned the approval of Rabe, the singular, cigar-smoking cabinetmaker, tough as old boots, who, as he would say, couldn’t stand ‘amateurs’. Richard had made the cupboard from the two plum trees that had died during the autumn gales two years ago. What great pleasure the work had given him: planing, cutting to size, fitting the joints, and before that the laborious, detailed design work, repeatedly based on errors, for which he’d studied plans in museums and the Department for the Preservation of Historical Monuments. How he loved the resiny smell, how he’d been delighted when his plane had revealed the strong grain of the plum-wood, the look on Rabe’s face when he’d bought some bone glue that was bubbling in a washpot on an open fire in the cabinetmaker’s workshop – and how Rabe’s expression had brightened when he saw the cupboard and examined it, how the look of suspicion and contempt had turned to appreciation; that was something he would never forget.

  There was a knock. Anne came in. ‘What’s the matter with you, Richard?’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter with me,’ he replied irritatedly.

  ‘But I can tell there’s something the matter. You’re not yourself, you’re running around like a bear with a sore head, hardly have you got home than you disappear into your study … you yell at Robert for some trifle, you’re grumpy …’

  ‘Problems at the hospital, that’s all. The usual stuff, for God’s sake. They’ve got this idea about the collective of socialist work, Müller’s demanding overtime from the assistant doctors, and from us as well, of course, the senior doctors are to set a shining example … And then the never-ending struggles in the hospital management meetings, we’re not doing enough to influence our colleagues to bear society in mind in their work and then it’s the Karl Marx Year and we’re supposed to “seize” some stupid initiative with our students –’

  ‘It’s not that. I know you. You’re different when it’s that kind of thing.’ She went up to him. He was turned away, leaning over the workbench, closed his eyes when she took his hand.

  ‘Is there something you’re keeping from me?’

  They’d made it a rule not to discuss serious problems in their own home but on a walk. These walks were a general custom in the district. Couples were often to be seen walking in silence and with heads bowed or in a discussion with hurried gestures – one could only assume it was being held in a whisper, since it immediately broke off as soon as others came within hearing.

  ‘Is it another woman?’

  ‘No. What makes you think that? No.’

  ‘So it isn’t another woman?’

  ‘No. No! I’ve just told you.’

  ‘You hear this and that. People pass rumours on to me.’

  ‘Rumours, rumours! Are these rumours worth anything? It’s just people making things up.’

  ‘A colleague of mine has a sister who works in the Academy, another was recently a patient in your orthopaedics department –’

  ‘Stupid gossip!’

  ‘So it’s not another woman.’

  ‘How often do I have to tell you: no!’

  These problem walks seemed to have become more frequent recently. There were days when it seemed to him as if all the inhabitants apart from the children had left their apartments and were walking round the streets, murmuring, so that the whispered conversations were constantly being interrupted to say hello, raise your hat, wave. How grotesque it was! He couldn’t help laughing – broke off. That he was still able to laugh! Anne gave him a disturbed look. She had wrapped up warm and was grasping the collar of her coat with her hands.

  ‘And you believe this scandalmongering! They’re trying to pin something on me, perhaps out of jealousy –’

  ‘They? Who’re they?’

  ‘Not your colleagues.’ Richard leant against a fence. ‘They’ve dug up the old business. When I was a student. Back in Leipzig.’

  He started to tell her about the discussion, at first hesitantly, disjointedly, by fits and starts, then more and more urgently.

  ‘But what reason could they have … ? After all these years …’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Sometimes several couples could be seen leaning against a fence, sometimes Arbogast turned up; he had a strange sense of the comic, would greet them silently with his stick and if it was a fence on Holländische Leite he would have chairs brought up from the Institute.

  ‘This old story … did you tell me everything back then?’

  ‘Yes, I di
d.’

  ‘And Weniger … does he know about it?’

  ‘No. No he can’t know about it.’

  ‘He’s your friend … The way you treat him, pat him on the shoulder, sometimes I watch you and –’

  ‘Do stop it!’

  ‘And I’m afraid. You can’t tell, not at all. Perhaps you’re deceiving me, perhaps you’ve been deceiving me all these years, just as you’ve deceived Weniger –’

  ‘Anne! Can’t you understand? Can you really not understand? I … I was different then, the fifties in Leipzig, you never went through that, the mood there was then, and I was honestly convinced as well –’

  ‘So honestly that you shopped your friend to them. My God, I’ve been living with –’

  ‘Anne!’ Richard had gone white as a sheet. He grasped her by the shoulders, shook her. ‘We’ve talked about this already, talked until we’re sick of it, right down to the very last detail, don’t throw it at me again now. That’s what they want! They want it to drive a wedge between us, they want to use it to destroy us because … because they’re afraid of love, yes, that’s it. Because they’re afraid of people sticking together and …’

  Anne burst out into a shrill peal of laughter. ‘Afraid of love … What nonsense you’re talking. You ought to hear yourself, how … sentimental and ridiculous you sound. That isn’t you at all and I don’t want to hear any more of your pseudophilosophical analysis … My God, Richard.’ She raised her hands, shook them at him, burst into tears.

  He embraced her. They stood like that for a while. Richard stared at the street, shadows moved and came nearer. He closed his eyes, opened them again, the shadows had disappeared. Treetops and hedges, their branches still dead and bare, were hanging over the fences; there was a mild breeze and a smell of grass trailing through the air that smelt of coal. In his mind’s eye he saw the sheet of paper with the figures on that Lucie had given him for his birthday, the seven wearing a hat, the five smoking a cigar. He tried to repress the image but he couldn’t, it kept coming back, the figures seemed to be alive, malicious creatures that kept on bouncing back up. Lucie coming in through the door, carrying her teddy bear, complaining she had tummy ache. The smiling dolls in the hall. Then he felt as if Josta were looking at him. He shook his head, but that image wouldn’t disappear either. ‘Let’s move on.’