The Tower: A Novel

by Uwe Tellkamp

  One Sunday in the middle of May a wedding party was standing outside Pastor Magenstock’s church waiting for the bride and groom to appear. After a glance at her watch, one at Pastor Magenstock’s calming gesture, one at the sky, Barbara wailed that there was a jinx on the wedding: where were the two of them? And now the first drops were starting to fall, thick and soft as slugs, on Ulmenleite.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Niklas said, opening the Tietzes’ family umbrella with demonstrative casualness over Gudrun and Reglinde; his own aristocratic pepper-and-salt thatch, still giving off the scent of Wiener’s birch hair lotion (it made Meno think of a Russian track across the fields with exultant larks and the obligatory horse-drawn cart), he sheltered under the porch, from which a blob occasionally spattered down. Pastor Magenstock was proud of the birds’ nests and all the spiders’ webs. They were all God’s creatures, he’d insisted to Barbara, to which Barbara had retorted that the Lord would do better to think of the dressmakers and their wearisome wedding preparations and did it not bother him that the stuff stuck to the soles of your shoes and was thus trodden in all over the church? His Reverence had made a slight bow. Pastor Magenstock, as Meno was aware, had his own ideas about caring for his flock and what it meant to be a shepherd in difficult times. The ship of Christianity was heading for dangerous depths and sometimes when, in the dark of the night, Pastor Magenstock turned to the picture of Brother Luther – his countenance afire, the hammer of the fenceposts, lion of the Scriptures and flail of disputes – seeking a draught from the spirit of his strength, all he could hear was the familiar clatter of the loose shutters and the breathing of his seven loved ones.

  Ulrich shook back the sleeve over his wristwatch, spread his arms wide, startling Josta and her husband (a fellow student of Wernstein’s, Richard had learnt, who was staring at a saint looking up in improbably mild ecstasy in the aisle of the church), rubbed his chin that, like all the male chins in the wedding party (even Robert’s and Ezzo’s, Ulrich had insisted because of the photos), had been shaved by Lajos Wiener himself with a heavy, blue-ground Solingen blade, stropped on Russia leather. All Ulrich said was ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake’ (he wasn’t wearing his Party badge, Meno had established) spat out through clenched teeth, at which Barbara’s teacher Noack, the white-haired furrier from the Brühl, exchanged looks of concern with Barbara’s brother, Helmut Hoppe, a pastry cook at Elbflorenz, and pointed to the sky as a first rumble of thunder was heard.

  ‘But it’s true’ – Ulrich looked up at the sky with a shrug of the shoulders – ‘can’t stand criticism, eh?’

  ‘But surely Herr Kannegiesser will make it?’ Anne’s question sank into the unfathomable discretion of Pastor Magenstock’s face. Who knew whether the organist/choirmaster’s F9 could still manage the climb from the Mordgrund, past the Soviet army hospital and up to Turmstrasse?

  ‘I’m going to get in the car and go to meet them.’ Ulrich, furious, jutted out his chin and squeezed his key ring in his fist. ‘They must be somewhere. But I don’t suppose it would occur to your daughter and our son-in-law to find a telephone kiosk and call us?’

  ‘You never give us a call when you’re late. – Perhaps they’ve secretly run off.’ She’d seen a thing or two herself, Barbara said in horrified tones, in her life in and around Dresden.

  ‘Of course.’ Helmut Hoppe took out a hip flask. ‘Just you have a sip of egg liqueur, sister. Made it ourselves, it tastes better than the stuff from the other side. The eggs come straight from the farmer to our Rationalization Department and if it’s a long day, and it’s always a long day in the Rationalization Department, they rationalize this tasty little sauce.’

  ‘Here they are,’ Christian said. The fact that he was there was due to a promise he’d been able to give, after correspondence with Meno, to the sergeant in his new unit who dealt with requests for leave. ‘Private Hoffmann,’ Staff Sergeant Emmerich, known as Nip, said, ‘you’re an earhole in the second six months of your term and earholes don’t actually go on leave, but if you happen to have a Polski Fiat exhaust manifold …’ Meno had provided one.

  Ina got out of the car, laughing. Wernstein and Dreyssiger, his best man, looked like dyers; both were stripped to their vests and shivering, despite the heat; their arms were smeared black up to the elbows. Ina was carrying their white shirts and tails.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, child, what’s happened?’

  ‘Engine fault, mother-in-law.’

  ‘How stupid can you be! You should have left the car and taken a taxi.’

  ‘We tried, there were none available. And hitching a lift didn’t work either, there weren’t any cars to hitch.’

  ‘And what do you look like?! Can the pair of them get washed here, Herr Magenstock?’

  ‘We’ve only got cold water in the church. We’ll slip over to my house.’

  Christian watched Ina as the three of them, followed by Magenstock, came back out of the parsonage; she still hadn’t calmed down and had to hold on to the fence to give her exhausted body a few moments to gather strength such as happens in ripples between contractions or after the relief of vomiting in cases of gastroenteritis. Then she lifted her head and looked Barbara in the face: in moments of great agitation it resembled a horrified jackdaw. Limp and groaning, she raised her right hand and put it to her forehead, then she was once more shaken by convulsive laughter. Wernstein and Dreyssiger each hooked an arm under hers, Pastor Magenstock tried to hold an umbrella over the bride. The organist’s wife had rung up while they were in the parsonage to say her husband was ill, Dr Fernau, who was still with her, had said he must stay in bed, but she’d spoken with Herr Trüpel, who was already on his way to the church with a selection of records.

  ‘And there he is now, our sunshine man.’ Ulrich grinned.

  ‘A good thing we’ve got these excellent umbrellas. Do we feel smug! Magnificent.’ Helmut Hoppe licked a drop of egg liqueur off the rim of his hip flask and observed with interest Rudolf Trüpel as he fluttered along towards them in the now pouring rain like a water rail, bent under the weight of his case of records.

  Many times before when Kannegiesser was ill, the owner of the Philharmonia record shop had helped to provide a solemn setting for weddings, baptisms and funerals. Meno remembered Christmas services with toccatas and fugues struck up by a player who sought release in music and showed no consideration for a parish choir on a Silbermann or Arp Schnitger organ in a hurricane of thunderous sound that aroused sinners’ consciences the moment Rudolf Trüpel, with quiet satisfaction and educational aggression, let them resound from the Japanese hi-fi equipment donated by members of a twinned parish in Hamburg with a concern for quality. Meno recalled his father telling him when he was a child about the Abode of Rest, as if Rest were a woman with a tenancy agreement and a list of the house rules, and when he remembered the domes of St Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square, he thought that was where she lived and not in the Arbat district and not in the office of the director of the Lubyanka where a telephone screamed even when silent. The onion dome of St John’s in Schandau had had the same effect on him; now, however, in Ulmenleite the chain of associations broke off. The wedding party outside the church was getting restless (Barbara with discontentedly furrowed brow), for one of Bach’s funeral chorales after another was ringing out with the force of an alpenhorn blown next to the ear of a sleeping infant.

  ‘Great choir,’ Niklas said, ‘could be the Thomaskirche. It’s the Gewandhaus orchestra, the violins speak Saxon, but not that of Dresden.’

  A further attempt brought melancholy, obstinacy and God with open arms.

  ‘Some marriages are like that,’ Helmut Hoppe said. ‘Anyone it makes think of egg liqueur is a rogue.’

  ‘You and your suggestive remarks,’ Helmut Hoppe’s wife Traudel sighed. ‘Can’t you keep them to yourself, at least at your niece’s wedding.’

  ‘Nah. It’d be nice if the wedding could get going. Oh look over there now. There’s a man shrugging his shoulders and sp
reading his arms. I know that from work. It means we’ll just have to improvise.’

  The congregation was waiting inside the church while Herr Trüpel conferred with Pastor Magenstock. As far as Meno understood, Trüpel’s son must have swapped the contents of the record cases (baptism, wedding, funeral) round. Magenstock nodded, thought, adjusted his spectacles. Reglinde shook her head categorically. She had graduated from the school of church music but not taken up a post as organist/choirmaster. At the moment she was working in the zoo as an assistant keeper. Robert had an idea and as the wedding party entered the church, after the bride and groom and Pastor Magenstock, a choir, singing in canon, improvised Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’ from the gallery: Trüpel conducted, Niklas’s bass imitated the organ, Gudrun the high voices, Ezzo and Christian hummed delicate arabesques while two of Ina’s fellow students and Robert intoned the melody. Pastor Magenstock welcomed the bridal couple, family and friends. ‘We now begin this service in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘Let us pray with the words of psalm thirty-six: Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds …’

  ‘So there’s nothing doing under water, you can lie as much as you like down there,’ Helmut Hoppe whispered to Barbara, who was sitting in front of Meno.

  ‘I don’t believe in it myself, but enoeff. Blaspheming in church brings bad luck.’

  ‘… in thy light shall we see light. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.’

  ‘Amen.’

  Pastor Magenstock gave the choir a sign. A safe stronghold our God is still, a trusty shield and weapon – Trüpel conducted with feeling and zest. The voices of Noack, the furrier, and the Stenzel Sisters rose up, thin and quavering. Richard kept his eyes on the ground. Meno knew that he only went to church services as a favour to Anne and, that day, his niece. Kurt Rohde would come later and wait outside for Malivor Marroquin, who was to take the wedding photos. The hymn began to die away in embarrassed tatters; Trüpel brought the choir in again to bolster up the tailing off in the pews below and bring it to a conclusive end. Pastor Magenstock went up into the pulpit and began his sermon on the text chosen for the wedding ceremony. ‘But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.’

  Richard observed Lucie. She had scattered flowers with other children. Now she was sitting between Josta and the husband he didn’t know, surreptitiously dangling her legs. Daniel was lounging next to Josta, blowing bubbles with his chewing gum, and kept turning his head round.

  ‘What a badly behaved boy,’ Anne whispered. ‘Why does he keep grinning at you? Do you know him?’

  ‘No. Perhaps a patient’s son.’

  Richard listened to the sermon for a while, then let it go in one ear and out the other when Magenstock brought in his third parable: the kingdom of heaven was like unto a net that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind; the good were gathered into vessels, the bad were cast away. That made Richard think. Wasn’t there a hymn that said: Whatever thou may be, come to Him and He will welcome thee? So the kingdom of heaven had to fish out its own inhabitants … Did that mean the little fish felt no desire to swim into heaven and had to be dragged up out of their stupidity and into paradise? But if it was so splendid up there why did the fish not go of their own accord? All that seemed familiar to him. He watched Magenstock, who was in the pulpit, preaching with joyful fervour. It also brought back the scene in the forest when Wernstein, Dreyssiger and he had tried to steal a Christmas tree. A hymn started, he didn’t join in; too proud to pretend. He didn’t know any of these hymns and Ina, he thought irritably, hadn’t thought of making copies of the words for those who didn’t know them. And, of course, there weren’t even enough hymn books. Ulrich seemed to be able to keep up pretty well … Interesting. The Stenzel Sisters didn’t need a hymn book. They stood up straight in their row giving those beside them, doctors from the Academy, their noses plodding along the lines of a shared hymn book, looks of restrained puzzlement. As Ina Wernstein was putting the ring on her husband’s finger (with a grin, as Richard could tell from his view diagonally behind her: Wernstein’s fingernails were still dirty from the engine oil), Barbara shouted for help, scrabbling around wildly in her cleavage; a scorpion had fallen on her, she said, running out of the church, Ulrich behind her. ‘An earwig,’ he whispered when they came back.

  ‘Our father, who art in heaven.’

  Richard resolved to ask about Wernstein’s family; the wedding party seemed to consist of just the Rohde wing and a few of Wernstein’s colleagues from the Academy and his student days.

  ‘Plizz lukk at liddel gold-finsh, plizz sink she fly naow, you smile.’ Outside the church door, in the damp light of a returning sun, Malivor Marroquin was adjusting their positions for the photo. Kurt Rohde kissed Ina on both cheeks, looked Wernstein up and down, turning his face either way as he did so, gave him a brief but hearty pat on the shoulder; Meno thought: he likes him, all the rest is embarrassment. Typical Tower-dweller. They do have the big emotions but they play them down, they prefer to make them look ridiculous rather than admit to them; to show them all too openly would seem like an affront to them, indiscreet, an infringement of the inviolable inner sphere. To speak the secrets out loud is to lose them, anyone who is lavish with the big emotions doesn’t respect them; they avoid kitsch and prefer to tone down the grand gesture; they are afraid of the things that are important to them being sold off cheaply. Marroquin held up his light meter, adjusted the three thumbscrews on the wooden tripod legs that looked like propellers which were about to join forces to lift the scratched, bulky camera case with its brass-bound lens and black cloth up into the air, leaving the baffled photographer standing there with the torn-off cable release in his hand. Marroquin had closed off the street with two warning triangles (‘Photography in progress’). He wasn’t put off when cars started to hoot, waggled a warning index finger at them as he threw his red flag of a scarf in a challenging gesture over his coat, the pockets of which, added by Lukas, the tailor, according to Marroquin’s instructions, were crammed with pieces of photographic equipment and accessories that might turn out useful in the usual kind of session (‘What do you think, how is it to be? – No idea, you’re the expert’): false noses, paper chrysanthemums, for children a Makarov cap-pistol. Marroquin wore a beret with a badge pinned to it over his long white hair that was engaged in philosophical discussion with the bewitching May breezes; on the badge were the words ‘No pasarán’ between exclamation marks, one inverted, one normal, that looked to Meno like two quarrelling fists and had a strangely ironic effect (why two exclamation marks, wasn’t one enough?); at least he couldn’t repress a smile when he imagined Party slogans between the belligerent punctuation marks.

  ‘Do you want peepul to see liddel gold-finsh or not?’ Marroquin came out from under the black pharaoh’s cloak and pointed to Ina’s belly. ‘Then plizz lukk at home of stirrup of imperialism.’

  Magenstock’s response was a bored raising of the eyebrows.

  ‘Hold breath. Ready … Two liddel brrats have stuck tongues out – once more? But that will cost extra.’ Wernstein and Ina declined with a wave of the hand, despite Barbara’s objections and the fact that Traudel Hoppe hadn’t been able to repress a sneeze. The bride’s posy was caught by Kitty Stenzel.

  The party was to be held in the House with a Thousand Eyes. Two days before the wedding, demijohns with kvass that Ulrich had started had burst in the house; he had been impatient, had placed heaters beside them, the pressure of fermentation had sent circular discs of glass, that looked as if they’d been cut with a glazier’s diamond pencil, shooting out of the bottles. The Afghan rugs, the Tibetan runners and the big Persian carpet from Vietnam, Barbara’s walking tour of distant lands and daily vacuumed pride, were soaked through and sticky;
Meno and Ulrich took them out into the garden and dipped them in tin bathtubs filled with hot water. The kvass had seeped through into the apartment below – they had to get a device to draw the dampness out of the walls (Herr Kothe, who was sitting on his balcony dunking a biscuit in a glass of tea as the carpets splashed about in the garden like colourful seals, knew someone who knew someone); a team of painters had to be arranged and courage screwed up for a contrite ring on the bell of a firmly closed door: would the Scholzes be prepared to accept an invitation to the wedding as interim compensation? Now Herr Scholze was standing on the washing area in front of the balustrade with the eagle exchanging tips about the preparation of sucking pig with Pedro Honich. He favoured le porcelet farci but Honich could not find a butcher who could supply the ingredients for stuffing the piglet (‘Boiled ham? A hundred and fifty grams? No chance!’), a shop that had fifty chestnuts in stock in May, nor a dairy that sold Parmesan or mature Comté cheese, and you couldn’t get saffron, not even in Delikat shops. Pedro Honich stuck by Serbian (he said ‘Yugoslavian’) sucking pig. Helmut Hoppe and Noack joined them, made wise comments and bore the responsibility as Honich prepared sausage meat, sliced peppers, rubbed salt on the inside of the piglet, warmed up Puszta sauce and beer. Meno kept apart. The Kaminski twins were away and had locked their apartment, otherwise all the doors in the house were open. In the shed Meno and Stahl had set up one table with bread and one with a cold buffet from the Felsenburg; Adeling, the waiter, and Reglinde’s friend who now had a job in the Felsenburg were serving dumplings in Danish sauce.

  A smell came from Arbogast’s chemical laboratory, at first of peaches, then of slurry. Christian looked for Fabian and Muriel but couldn’t see them, their parents weren’t there either, but had sent a camera (K16 model, Christian knew it from his period of work experience with Pentacon) that was on a table with the other wedding presents in the summerhouse; Alois and Libussa had put them there in case it rained. Records, books (historical pigskin-bound medical tomes from Ulrich’s collection, a complete Treatment of Fractures by Lorenz Böhler, all the surgeons present envied Wernstein for it); then a dkk refrigerator with a two-star freezer compartment from Anne, Richard and Meno; from the Hoppes a perambulator and baby clothes (‘A Baby-Chic nappy makes any mother happy’); Barbara had made both a winter and a summer suit for her son-in-law; Kurt and Ulrich had given a voyage (on MS Arkona to Cuba, Ina had been beside herself with joy); Christian saw a washing machine, vouchers for furniture (the Tietzes; Niklas had added one of his St Petersburg stethoscopes); from Noack, the furrier, a marten fur muff ‘for Madame’ (a suggestion of a kiss on the hand), a lambskin coat collar ‘for Sir’ (sketching a bow); a canoe from Wernstein’s colleagues.