The Tower: A Novel

by Uwe Tellkamp

  Costa said it served the bigmouth right. Irrgang came from the depot and shouted that if that was one of the privileges accorded discharge candidates, then count him in.

  Pancake accepted his nickname, even seemed to be happy with it and look on it as flattery, for he didn’t object to it, on the contrary, sometimes when he was on duty he would report as ‘Private Pancake’, grinning maliciously at the confusion he caused. During the first few days, Christian thought, he was trying things out, giving the officers a look-over: he respected Nip, who, giving him a look from his yellowed sclerotics, breathed out an alcohol-reeking, ‘Imtheonewhodecidesonthefunnybusinessizzatclearcomrade’, looked the battalion commander, Major Klöpfer (whom all the soldiers in his battalion thought totally incompetent), up and down, listened to the political officer with half-closed eyes, observed Christian, who was his tank commander. Pancake seemed to possess an intuitive knowledge of human nature that came to rapid conclusions, a cool ability to see through bluster and poses and assess people as ‘useful’ or ‘no use’, ‘dangerous’ or ‘harmless’, a crude but probably tried-and-tested classification on which he based his behaviour. He seemed to have problems fitting Christian into this classification for more than once Nemo, as Pancake also called him, felt the grey-flecked eyes under their sleepy, heavy lids on him. After a few days Pancake had declared poor Burre his ‘slave’ (what surprised Christian was that none of the other drivers protested; perhaps the performance he’d put on with Musca had convinced them?); Nip’s ‘humming top’ he dismissed with a twitch of his fleshy lips; the company commander did not interfere in the business of the lower ranks and Pancake was in the platoon leader’s good books because he was the best driver the battalion had ever seen. He was better than Popov, for Pancake had the confidence to reverse into the tank shed in the technical depot at full throttle (and without a guide, that was the game when a fractional movement on the steering lever could decide the fate of a Double-T carrier); on the old Wehrmacht practice course, which had been adapted to Russian conditions, he lowered the company record that had been set by a legendary reserve officer in the early seventies; in Pancake’s fist the right-angled steel hook to open the hatch bolt looked as delicate as the handle of a lady’s hatbox.

  There was no baptism. Five of them tried to overpower Pancake; Christian, who was duty NCO, woke from his doze with a start when they flung open the door to the drivers’ room; the first Pancake threw out of the open window (a coarse-voiced loader who was ready for any brawl or booze-up, even when it was an NCO – otherwise the various ranks were strictly separated); then Pancake put on a knuckle-duster, sat down at the table, an open clasp-knife in front of him, had a drink of tea and calmly asked if there was anyone else who wanted a go. He seemed to be thinking while the others stood, uncertain what to do, in the doorway, then, smiling, he raised his forefinger and pointed to his locker, letting it circle round a block wrapped in silver foil, gave the bed in which Burre slept a kick and bellowed, ‘Up you get, Nutella, serve us the steaks.’

  The new arrivals: among the commanders a man whose cheesy, acne-ridden face creased like a glove puppet when there was something he didn’t like and who was running off all the time to the political officer, who dampened his ardor with a variety of commendations. A taciturn goldsmith, who used a serviette when eating and folded it before throwing it away. There was an argument about the allocation of areas to be cleaned, Burre wanted to keep the toilet. Christian knew it wasn’t the filthy enlisted men’s toilet he was concerned about but the officers’ toilet, which could be locked. But Pancake said he just wanted to get out of the way there and it would be enough if he stayed at the personal disposal of the drivers.

  ‘But I want to do the toilet,’ Burre insisted. A short, stocky driver refused to give in as well.

  ‘Aha, you slaves want something. OK.’ Pancake put two dolls on the table, carved from wood, one red, one green. ‘I see things this way. There are basically two kinds of people: those at the top and those at the bottom, those with dough and those without. Those who give orders and those who receive them, and if one wants something and the other doesn’t, God, what happens then? If two want to scrub the loo but only one can do it, they’ll have to fight for it.’

  ‘We could get them to compare dicks,’ Karge suggested. ‘But that would be unfair. Nutella’s is swollen from all those hand jobs.’

  ‘It has to be fair,’ Musca crowed. ‘Clever Dicks always have small ones! And who knows whether this mucky pup here will polish my loo seat as well as Nutella does?’

  ‘Oh man,’ Popov sighed, ‘that I should live to see this. Two earholes sluggin’ it out over who’s to scrub the shithouse. Right, I want to see blood.’

  ‘They’re to lift weights. A fair competition.’ Pancake went over to his bed, rolled out the bar with the two 50 kg weights. He came from a circus dynasty, his ancestors had bent iron rods, juggled with 25 kg balls, wrestled and taken part in eating competitions; he himself had worked as a smith with the Aeros and Berolina circuses; there had been an argument, ‘some business, sorted out’, as he put it with his malicious grin; for some time he’d been dealing in cars and it was said he’d gone to ground in the army for three years because of some shady affair (there were targets here as well, what did a recruiting officer care about the past if he got a useful recruit because of it). Pancake lifted the weights with no problem. The driver tried first; his head wobbled like a baby with a weak neck but eventually he got his arms stretched. Burre stepped forward and as he bent down Christian knew he’d never lift the weights. His thin arms dangled over the barbell, then Burre put his glasses on the table, spat on his hands and made a show of jogging about a bit, a kind of voodoo or conjuration; perhaps it would help; at last with a vigorous jerk he lifted the weights up to his chest – Christian would never have believed the chubby, clumsy Burre capable of it; it was followed by a shout, like those made by weightlifters on Today’s Sport, then a sidestep to the right, his knees still bent, he puffed, his hands turning white under the bar, concentrated, his right leg, stuck out at an angle, began to tremble, Musca said, ‘Just no one laugh now’; Burre closed his eyes, struggling, his face went red, then he uttered a dull cry, it sounded like casual disappointment, mixed with surprise, this ‘Oooh’, damning his own limited body and weakness, from Burre, whom, at the moment of the change of grip, of the decisive effort to lift the weights, all his poems did nothing to help.

  At night, before going to sleep Christian had the feeling his body was floating away, was breaking up in the area where he took breath, something was fraying (he thought of his cello, only briefly, pushed it out of his mind: dead, dead, what are the old ghosts to me, to his inner eye his cello seemed to be smouldering like a hot strip of celluloid film); a bridge collapsed and dark water swept away the voices (Verena’s, Reina’s), the warming memories of Dresden, which might at the moment be as mysteriously and richly filled with conversation, music, old plays as Ali Baba’s cave with treasure; open sesame. But the catfish on the fountain outside Vogelstrom’s fortress wouldn’t take off its mossy cloak of silence, the sound of a porcelain coffee cup being put down on its saucer in Caravel, cut in two by the to and fro of the pendulum of the grandfather clock and the constant violet glow of the amethyst druse, wouldn’t change. He thought of home, had difficulty calling up the images. Did they exist at all, Caravel, the House with a Thousand Eyes, the Rose Gorge, from which at that very moment sleep could be flowing over the city, Evening Star, where Niklas was cocooned in music and voices and his archives, sick with longing for the Nuremberg of the Mastersingers? Christian moved and was back in his bed in the tank commanders’ room of the 2nd Battalion of the 19th Armoured Regiment, which would likewise disappear as soon as he closed his eyes.

  The company was sleeping. Dreams and visitations had taken hold of them. Those with a pass wouldn’t come back until shortly before seven, when duty officially started, they would be sitting in the Dutch Courage, the only bar in Grün that didn�
��t shut at midnight. The worn-out women who hadn’t got married went there after the second shift in the metal works, the late girls of the town, ready for a drink and with ready tongues: they didn’t say ‘a man’ but ‘a guy’ or ‘a dude’. And Christian heard; listened: there was the quiver of the flower water in the plastic vases on the bar tables, two or three waves of a napkin got rid of the smells, the crumbs, the food-filled presence of the previous customer before the waiter gestured with his thumb at the still-warm seat of the chair, next please, dealt with at thirty-minute intervals, only the regulars’ table with, in the middle, the carefully painted sign with a border of oak leaves, was left in peace; and if in Schwanenberg it had been the noises of the brown-coal excavators, the distant screech (or was it cries? Squeals? Feeling hungry? Being tortured?) of skeleton-armed primeval giants that performed their lumbering sumo wrestler change of stance against a sky ranging from burgundy-, piano-, chocolate-, fire-hydrant-red, flamingo- and tongue-pink, islands of matchstick- and vaccination-drops-red, close-your-eyelids-orange to cat’s-paw- and love-letter-rosé; animals buried beneath chains of buckets, burrowing in the treadmills of the open-cast mines, the sounds of tortured creatures that Christian couldn’t forget – here in the small town of Grün it was the shimmering whistles of the goods trains that mostly travelled through the provincial station at night, rumbling tapeworms of carriages filled with the products of the metal works, with coal, with wood from the surrounding spruce monocultures, eaten away by acid rain, with ore from the mountains out of which the people in the works to the west of the town still managed to boil a few grammes of nonferrous metal, with chemicals, an indigestible brew drawn by a landlord lying in a coma. He thought of the Danube delta and the hoopoe on a postcard Kurt had sent him that he had pinned up in the private compartment of his locker, where others had a picture of their wife or girlfriend, a photo from Magazin. He thought of the constellations on Meno’s ten-minute clock, the Southern Cross that he would never get to see, nor the sky into which it had hammered its silver nails.

  The senior high and its problems, the final exams preceded by weeks of revision, their fear of the teaching staff in overheated classrooms when they were called in for an oral exam, the discussions with Reina, Falk and Jens by Kaltwasser reservoir all seemed to be in the distant past; his sense of time said: in another life. Had he ever passed the school-leaving exam? Sat in a classroom, in civilian clothing and wearing slippers, bent over a book or a sheet of paper? In another life. A barrier had come down between there and here. Even though he was tired, it hurt when he closed his eyes; a salty pain; but out of habit the inner drive inside his body that was ready for, thirsting for sleep rolled on, could not suddenly halt. In his mind’s eye he saw Burre, his reserved expression, trying for dignity; he was tormented by the way they treated Burre. It wasn’t fair … Fair, fair! came the mocking echo from the dark corner of the room where Musca and Wanda had long been gathered into the claws of a wheezing but in its way caring night deity. What could one do? What can I do? –

  Write a report. Describe everything, the conditions here, the reality. Submit it to the Minister of National Defence or, even more effective, straight to the First Secretary personally. They said that such reports were considered … But the postboxes were under observation, especially here in the regiment. And if his complaints were actually checked, Nip would build a pretty Potemkin village, the inhabitants would have snow-white collar binds, clean fingernails; they would all be entirely satisfied comrades (‘I am serving the German Democratic Republic,’ was the prescribed formula) and on that day a soldier like Burre would have been sent on leave. And once the inspectors had left, shaking their heads at the completely unfounded, slanderous accusations of that Private Hoffmann …

  The sound of caterpillar tracks from outside, at the entrance to the technical area: the 3rd Battalion returning from an exercise. Was that someone coughing outside? Nip, perhaps, with his ‘drake’? Christian felt restless, got up again. The corridor was empty, gleaming from the evening exertions of the floor-polisher’s barbels; the duty guard’s table was floating, like a tiny island with a yellow position light, in the darkness by the stairs; Costa was sitting there reading.

  There was no light on in the toilets. Christian could feel that there was someone there, he had a sixth sense for it, could tell by looking at them whether postboxes were full or not (an ‘aura’, something or other left over from the postman, a change, no greater than an eyelash, in the resonance of the postbox interior, the echo of the clank of the flap?); he could tell by looking at an ice cream whether it contained too much milk fat and he wouldn’t like it; he sensed that someone was sitting in the cubicle by the window, motionless, probably holding his breath, his eyes scouring the tiny gloom over the top of the door; and he sensed that it was Burre. He went into the cubicle next to it, waited.

  ‘Christian?’

  ‘I wanted to ask you something, Jan. – Can I do anything for you? I have an uncle, he knows people.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him for yourself? I don’t need help.’

  ‘So you don’t want me to?’

  ‘I can look after myself. – Makes you feel good, does it? Why do you laugh at my poems?’

  Pause; but Christian didn’t want to chicken out. ‘Because they’re not very good – I think. I don’t laugh at them.’

  Burre remained silent, there was a rustle of paper, a streak of brightness stabbed across the floor. ‘I know they’re not any good.’

  ‘My uncle’s a publisher’s editor, perhaps he can help you?’

  ‘But they’re all I’ve got.’ When boots were heard outside, Burre switched off his torch. Then it was quiet again, Costa must have been stretching his legs. ‘I’d like to be your friend.’

  Christian, only wearing his thin pyjamas, started to shiver with cold. ‘This Pancake … perhaps we could make a complaint somewhere?’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll kill him, one day,’ Burre mused. ‘As his “slave” I get to know him better than he does me, and eventually, perhaps, when he’s asleep … I don’t care. I’m fed up to here, sometimes I just can’t take any more …’ Burre was speaking rapidly, in a strained voice, full of hatred. ‘And at the works they work themselves to the bone, everything to meet the plan’s targets and when my mother comes home she’s so exhausted she falls asleep in front of the television …’

  ‘Jan, I won’t tell on you, but be careful.’

  ‘Yes, I thought you wouldn’t do that. – Go now, I’d like to be on my own for a bit. – Thanks.’

  Christian didn’t ask what he was thanking him for. On one of the next days there was PNP – preparation for a new period of operation: tank tracks were lying on the ground outside the shed like the dried-up skins of a colony of dragons – he saw Burre outside the regimental office, looking round hastily. He seemed not see Christian, went into the building.

  51

  In the Valley of the Clueless

  November: in the evening, after periods on duty, the operations, Richard began to be more aware of his body than usual. His arm and hand were sore, also the spot on his thigh where the skin transplant had been taken from. Something inside him seemed to slip out of position on these short, waxy days that turned over sluggishly, in a flat trajectory, not properly born and heading for an early, rain-pale death; he didn’t like this epoch of grey skies (even if the days themselves were short, the time they added up to was not, and the year seemed to have two clocks: a small one for blossom, spring and summer – and a big one with the slow, dream-damp November numbers on its face); he became morose in the atmosphere of ill-temper and keeping one’s head down (would they ever disappear, these brown and grey coats with turn-up collars and pockets your arms went into up to the elbows, making him feel impolite when he encountered an acquaintance and held out his hand to him); and in contrast to Meno, who particularly liked going for walks at this time (hat, pipe, scarf, sniffles and memories), the town held no attraction for him either, the slimy stre
ets, houses deadened by catarrh. He was depressed by the ruins, the Frauenkirche, the castle, Taschenberg Palace, Rampische Gasse, which was tumbling down, all said out loud that Dresden was a shadow of its former self, destroyed, sick. The weeds grew rampant on the huge, wind-blown patches of waste ground in the city, in the new districts the pavements and roads were unrecognizable under layers of mire and mud. Rain … In the seeping damp, soaking the finest pores, sieved by the roofs and strained into metronomic drips, the Neustadt houses were like rotting ships. The façades broke out in a pre-winter sweat, the cold sweat of a moribund town, with no official approval … In the art gallery it clung to the walls in a greasy film, removed Giorgione’s Venus to an inaccessible distance, overlaid the joys of the flesh in the Rubens scenes with melancholy, gave Heda’s blackberry pie a withered look, even the roguish faces of the chubby-cheeked cherubs below the Sistine Madonna suffered that too. Mist hung over the meadows by the Elbe. The side roads in the Academy were sodden, the fountains switched off. When Richard came back from a consultation, he looked up at the Academy buildings in Fetscherstrasse, wondered what the sandstone volutes on the roofs reminded him of (the wigs of English judges – he kept on forgetting and that annoyed him!), looked at the lamps, which were on all the time now, like metabolizing leucocytes appearing or disappearing in the glassy-thin, creeping blood vessels of the park trees.

  Wernstein was at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, he hadn’t been replaced.