The Tower: A Novel

by Uwe Tellkamp

  It’s talking of the wheat.

  Whispering of the ships it’s seen.

  The haulers that pulled the barges upstream on chains. There were still milestones. The burlaks sang, the singsong of the barge-haulers, on the Elbe, the Volga. He recalled a picture by Ilya Repin, men in tattered clothes, greybeards and downy-faced youths, in broad harnesses dragging the ship upstream. They said, What do you want? – Music. To be alone in silence. The music of the river, the throaty murmuring down the ages. ‘To walk until you’re free, that is what you want,’ Christian chattered, unconcerned whether anyone could hear. The river wanted nothing. The river was a molten magnet, a baroque ship was stuck in it, wanted to sail on but the algae, the filth, the garbage from the towns made a slick round the bow, twisted round the throttled propeller. It couldn’t move forward, it couldn’t drift back. It was full of people, it was a city, you could see houses, electric cables, the entrails of the city. Dresden … the sigh went through the air, Dresden … a stranded ship, stuck in the past, clinging with every fibre onto the past that had never been as beautiful as the raptures you go into. Dresden … Christian took a mouthful of water. Am I a human being? What do you want? No one’s interested in what you want. Now orders will come and you will have to obey them. Now orders will be expected and you will have to give them. What is an order? How is it that there are orders anyway?

  The river didn’t know. It stank of cellulose and sewage farms. Of solid glue and burnt animal skins, of shampoo from Wutha, yellow as marzipan, washing powders from Ilmenau and Genthin: IMI, Spee, Wofalor: don’t forget anything. Don’t forget anything. At Torgau the Elbe was a dead river; the water was rusty and if you threw a pfennig in, it floated for a long time.

  Christian looked for a flat pebble and had a go at skimming: he heard the stone hit the water four times. It should have been five since seven times for a first try (and he hadn’t done it since he was a boy) would have been unrealistic. One too few, Christian thought. One too few is a broken leg: as the saying Anne had brought from childhood went.

  The most disagreeable thing about a tank was that it gave you the feeling of being safe and sound. The company commander was pacing up and down in the preparation area, checking with the platoon leaders, the crews that were making their T55s ready for the underwater drive, known as a UD. Christian had been on one twice, for Pancake it was something new, he kept running over to the machines beside theirs. The Elbe at Torgau was wide and it was also more than a metre deep, the tanks couldn’t get across without assistance. The two underwater drives Christian had been on had been in daylight; this time they were to cross the river by night, an exercise everyone was afraid of. The preparation area was lit by several floodlights, it was a sandy clearing in a pinewood. The crews were working hurriedly, the commanders had to report their tanks as ready for UD in thirty minutes. All the things that had to be done! There was a lot Christian had had to learn; he had to know this, to be able to do that; he was the commander for whose orders the crew would wait if they didn’t know what to do next. He had to know what came next. He bore the responsibility for the crew and he would never have dreamt of being in such a tricky situation: hating the tank, the noise, the drill, the military life – but having to have mastered it because he was the commander. Technology, the principles of operation (why can’t I start a tank cold, why must the driver pre-heat the diesel and, if there’s an alert, why must I run to the tank hangar, in my pyjamas if necessary, in order to switch on the pre-heating battery?), writing surveys on tactical and strategic problems. Here as well, in the army, he was part of a Great Plan, of a great computation of mankind; here as well they used the words ‘collective’ (his crew was a ‘combat collective’) and ‘main task’.

  He worked mechanically, starting in alarm when he lost concentration. He forced himself to think systematically, to go through everything step by step. Seals on the hatches exchanged for the sponge rubber ones? The loader and the gun pointer were sharply delineated shadows heaving the packed anti-aircraft machine gun onto the turret. Pancake had dropped down into his driver’s hatch, Christian heard the hum of the course indicator starting up – the device that made it possible to drive in a straight line under water. He climbed into the forward area, closed the drain of the mantlet over the cylindrical mounts, checked whether the breech wedge of the gun was closed, lashed down the turret and tightened the seal of the turret ring, which had turned out to be one of the trouble spots during previous underwater drives. Inspected and closed the filter fan next to the gun. Checked and closed the overflow slide on the rear wall of the forward area, below the heavy fragmentation and hollow-charge shells. He heard the voice of his platoon leader asking, ‘Why do we need that, Lance Corporal Hoffmann?’ – ‘In order to divert water that’s got in the drive into the forward area and pump it out from there, Comrade Lieutenant.’ – ‘And why must there be no water in the drive?’ – ‘So that it doesn’t get into the engine, Comrade Lieutenant.’ – ‘And why mustn’t any water get in? Irrgang?’ You’re the pupil and they’re the teachers Christian had sometimes thought during these instruction periods – only that here they ask about seventeen-disc dry clutches and epicycloidal gears; a school, the whole country’s a school! ‘Hey, Pancake, batteries charged up?’

  ‘As charged up as a sailor on shore leave. I’ve been thinking. I know the Stenzels. Trick riders from the circus.’

  ‘Checked lower compressed-air cylinder?’

  ‘One thirty kPa, enough. – Course indicator working, Comrade Mummy’s Boy.’

  ‘Level, earhole?’ Responding in kind, Pancake was probably grinning. Christian inserted the bilge pump.

  ‘Track cover plates secured, changed elephant’s rubber,’ the gun pointer shouted down the turret hatch. Elephant’s rubber – the muzzle cap on the gun. Funny words you learnt here. Close ejector plate, open dividing wall fans. What was the point of that thing there? A window between the forward area and the engine room that looked oddly like the black radiation trefoil printed on yellow: a diesel engine guzzled air and under water it couldn’t get it in the usual way through the slats in the drive-cover – they were sealed – but drew it in through the periscope tube, which was like a snorkel fixed on the loader’s side.

  ‘Fuel three-way tap set to interior container unit,’ Pancake reported.

  ‘Checking driver guide system.’ Christian pressed the buttons to activate the device with which he could guide the driver should radio contact fail. Port red, starboard green, as on a ship.

  ‘Left. Right.’ Pancake repeated Christian’s commands.

  ‘Right then. Shitting yourself?’ One of the driving instructors had stuck his head into Pancake’s hatch.

  ‘I’ve never drowned yet.’

  ‘Keep an eye on the auxiliary transmission. Forgot the cover plate last time, just a tiny leak and it poured in like a mountain stream. Hey, Nemo,’ the driving instructor shouted. ‘Pancake’s to go over, to One, the CC’s driver’s unwell.’

  ‘And who’s his replacement?’

  ‘Nutella.’

  Christian switched on the command frequency, on which the CC could communicate with the tank commander, and the recovery frequency, which called the recovery tank. The next tank, Irrgang’s, hooted twice, a diesel engine roared into life. Christian looked across: the gun pointer was controlling the fuel with the Bowden cable through the closed driver’s hatch, the driver watched the manometer, Irrgang, holding a stopwatch, raised his arm. They were already on the low-pressure-leak test – and had come through it to go by Irrgang’s expression. They had hardly anything to do with each other any more; each went his own way and tried as far as possible to get the upper hand … Say nothing, keep your head down, be invisible. Lie. Christian had not told Anne the truth in his letter. The art of knowing how to lie – how to praise enthusiastically, how to keep a serious expression when saying stupid things that are empty of meaning but please the person you’re flattering, how to encourage illusions. Herr Orré
had taken great pains. And Irrgang had lost his witty repartee. After duty he mostly lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to Costa’s melancholy music that he’d copied onto cassettes before Costa was discharged. If he had a pass, he came back drunk. That was presumably what was meant by being brought into line. Big Irrgang, never at a loss for a quick saucy response, now jumped smartly to attention for every officer, didn’t argue any more, said what was expected in political education, secretly cut the monthly seal off the string of seals the more junior soldiers used to count the days until they were due for discharge … Leak test OK, they continued. Thirty seconds had to pass before the pressure fell from 1,200 to 200 mm of water. Since he had been commander Christian’s tank had never managed that; like most of the tanks in the regiment, his T55 was an ‘old banger’, a ‘rust bucket’ and the best servicing could do nothing about it. Tank 302 remained watertight for twenty-five seconds, despite the layers of UD putty that had been smeared over it, actually five seconds too few for the forthcoming exercise, but what did they say: Actually the sun’s shining, you just can’t see it for all this rain.

  Burre. All the sympathy Christian felt for him couldn’t alter the fact that he was a lousy driver.

  He reported for duty: ‘I’m to join you.’ He attempted a grin, tilted his head, climbed aboard the tank.

  ‘C’mon, c’mon, time’s passing,’ the platoon leader urged them. ‘The drive’s still open, shut the thing, get your finger out.’

  Burre disappeared down the driver’s hatch.

  ‘Slats position five,’ Christian ordered, shining the hand lamp. Moths flew out, the pines smelt of resin. ‘Position two!’ The gun pointer and he stamped the lock on the drive unit shut. ‘Lock!’ Check the lugs – the drive unit was closed. Musca had already collimated the UD pipe, transferred the recovery hawsers, tied on the floating buoys, white in front, red at the back. During the first UD exercise Christian had put them the wrong way round and had had to suffer the bawling-out of the tug commander: should there be an accident, a tank was pulled out by the stern hawser to which the red buoy was tied – ‘if you’d got stuck I’d ’ve had to drag your bow round ’n people ’ve drowned when that happens, dickhead!’ –

  ‘Dear Christian, Comet fever has broken out here, everyone’s humming Halley, Halley; even Herr Honich, whom we know as a dyed-in-the-wool materialist, had none of his dismissive remarks based on scientific dialectics for the Widow Fiebig in the queue for rolls recently – it was so impressive in the night of the comet (I spent it in Arbogast’s observatory with the Urania group, Ulrich was there, Barbara and Gudrun came along later) the way, just at the moment when the sky cleared and such a wealth of constellations appeared, that we felt like Babylonian astrologers – the way that at that moment the clocks all struck, all at the same time it seemed, from near and from afar; a jingling, tolling, tinkling, pealing, gonging, Westminster-chiming, as if all their hands were in collusion and all that despite the fact that this time the comet couldn’t be seen in the northern hemisphere; only the Widow Fiebig refused to believe it, craned her neck and shouted, “There, there! That’s it’s sulphur tail!” But it was only one of Herr Malthakus’s jokes, he’d set off an anachronistic New Year’s rocket from the roses below Arbogast’s Institute. We also thought it was a joke, something we couldn’t really take seriously, when Professor Teerwagen was arrested recently. He was supposed to be a spy, it was said; dubious dealings in Mexico; his wife seems to have known nothing at all about it and now she’s in the Academy, being treated by Dr Clarens. – Lange’s turning strange. On the evening of the comet, after the talks (Stahl spoke about reservoir dams, Ulrich about the Babylonians) Arbogast organized a guided tour of his estate, as smiling and inscrutable as ever, and Lange suddenly groaned and started to ramble, pointed to a sealed bottle, saying, “Lead, it’s made of lead, and the seal on top, encrusted with gold – King Solomon’s bottle!” – “But Herr Lange,” Arbogast laughed, “who believes such fairy tales? That’s an eighteen-twelve cognac trapped in ethyl alcohol from Kutusov’s supplies, he took it from the French general staff as they were retreating across the Beresina.” Sometimes Libussa comes down and takes me to one side. Alois, she says, is spending all their money on sailing ships: photographs, ships in bottles, books; sometimes in his sleep he mutters the names of the captains of the Laeisz Line, the names of the ships, he knows all the legends, every one of their sails – and that when he’s never been on a sailing ship himself. And what does he say to her? “My little Brunetka,” he replies, “I have to know all about it for when the great hell-ship comes and the press gang tell me to join the crew …” That’s the latest from up here. Let me know if you need any books. Libussa’s just shouted for me to send you her best wishes. She’s going to make up a package of preserves for you. Frau Honich has started a Timur Assistance project for the elderly here, does the shopping for them, deals with the authorities (commendable, you can’t deny), her husband’s carrying coal, also has a package to take to the post office. Perhaps it’ll include socialist greetings for you. You have the honour of guarding the peace for us. You should look on it as experience, Libussa’s just shouted. Worth recording, says Adeling the waiter, alias Skinny. Best wishes, Meno.’

  Twenty-five seconds for the leak test, the platoon leader had called the company commander over, he waved the objection away, ‘Drive on. They’ll be on the other side before the tank’s full.’ Christian was sitting on the loader’s side, from now on it was radio traffic over the command frequency of the UD route; he was worked up, he could only see an occasional gleam of light through the periscope, perhaps from the regiment in the woods, perhaps from the Elbe already, from the recovery armoured personnel carrier, the engineers’ boat or the motor tractors. They’d passed the initial checkpoint and were travelling along the line of departure, Musca’s tank in front of them, the goldsmith behind; Burre accelerated too much and didn’t steer smoothly enough, the UD tube, which was now extended, scraped against twigs. The direction indicator, a gyro compass, added its hum to the crackle of the radio. He hoped Burre was familiar with the direction indicator – if not, the tank could veer off course if Christian couldn’t manage to guide it by the periscope. Vision: a disc the size of a saucer, no more. Across there, on the other side of the Elbe, floodlights had been set up, he had to focus on them before the serious business started.

  Checkpoint. Musca stopped. The other tanks continued steadily on their way. Christian heard shouts, someone closed the shutter valve on the exhaust; footsteps, stamping, flap 6 over the drive was closed. ‘Idle at eleven hundred revs,’ Christian ordered, Burre repeated.

  ‘Line up on floodlights.’

  ‘Is lined up.’

  ‘Unlock direction indicator.’

  ‘Is unlocked.’

  ‘… foor-ward!’ Christian heard the company commander order over the radio. So now the serious business was starting. His diving goggles were pinching. Was the glass misting over? That ought not to happen. Gun pointer, loader, driver – they all wore diving goggles over their padded helmets. The black life-saving equipment over their chest so that the loader, who was on Christian’s seat above the gun pointer, could only twist and turn with the greatest difficulty. The light filled the forward area with a misty ochre. Was the turret really lashed tight? Burre let the clutch in gently, the shutter valve made a snort of irritation. That wasn’t the earlier noise, the one they’d listened for with tense expressions during the leak test; the sucking in of the outside air at the turret race ring, almost ending in a slurp. The company commander wasn’t replying; the noise floor of the radio, a crackling, as if from slight electrical discharges. The tank tipped forward. Christian could see through the periscope that they were nicely lined up on the floodlights, were going down the UD track. The river was known there, but not on either side of it. Musca’s tank was already in the middle of the river. No one knew anything about underwater obstacles. Nip had told them a story from his time as an ensign: when r
ecovering a T54 that had got stuck, a motor tractor had struck an unexploded bomb. It was here at Torgau that the Americans and Russians had met; the Elbe was silent about what had been before. There were channels and potholes in rivers, Christian knew that from fishing, treacherous deeps, wash-outs made by the current where the old fish liked to stay. There were shoals, places where the bank had been undermined, others where the river bed would give way, inner and outer banks at bends. He switched over to internal radio. Burre was muttering, the gun pointer was muttering.

  ‘Coolant temperature?’

  ‘Ninety.’

  ‘Brief report, Jan.’ A hundred and ten degrees was the maximum temperature for coolant, more than that and the tank could be damaged. A slight draught – the diesel engine was taking in air from the cockpit. Woe betide them if the UD tube went under water. Water from above, the air sucked out from behind.