The Tower: A Novel

by Uwe Tellkamp

  Regine protested that this registration was a pure waste of time, why should she register downstairs when her appointment was up here –

  The official reminded her of the regulations, which she, as a citizen, had to observe!

  Regine shrugged her shoulders. Richard followed her, she hurried on ahead, unfazed by the junctions that led to other corridor systems, all of which looked the same. Not even the indoor plants on the window ledges were noticeably different: well-fed exotic plants with spoon-shaped, carefully dusted, fleshy leaves. One little copper watering can with a spout like an ibis beak per floor.

  They passed a rotunda and Richard was already thinking they’d lost the way and gone back to the first – the same icicle chandelier with thousands of bits of opaque paste frippery dangling from it, the same pillars on the rotunda’s balustrade, the same threadbare reddish-pink runner – but the statues, although similarly armed with swords and shields, had different expressions on their faces. Amusingly, one of the stone knights had stuck his sword between his knees and was blowing his nose on a handkerchief. The sculptor, in whose name Richard was now interested, had done the folds with delicate meticulousness and kept them as thin as a communion wafer.

  Central Registration was a hall with counters all round buzzing with voices, Job-like patience, the noise of conveyor belts. In the middle a Christmas tree, still decorated with snail-shaped decorations, Narva lemons and little wooden horses from Seiffen, was quietly shedding its needles and in cordoned-off solitude, which didn’t seem to bother the overalled messengers pushing their carts through the queues without looking anyone in the eye. Regine joined the queue at the counter with the letters ‘L, M, N’, Richard that at ‘H’ and when he looked round he saw Meno, who, like them, had been overhasty and had to register at the ‘R’ counter, which had the second-longest queue after ‘S, Sch, St’.

  After an hour it was Richard’s turn. He had two pieces of business: in the first place he had to collect a second medical report on the case of a car tyre repairer who, although he was the sole specialist of that type in the southern area of Dresden, had been sent his call-up papers (upon which Richard, at the behest of Müller, whose Opel Kapitän was sorely in need of such a specialist, had written a first report attesting the man’s absolute unfitness for military service because his left leg was ten centimetres shorter); in the second, the gas water-heater in Caravel was nearing the end if its life and Richard wanted to apply for a new one.

  ‘Fourth floor, E corridor, HM office – Housing Matters – forward slash, Roman two,’ the man behind the counter informed him. Regine also had two things to see to: firstly she had to get a certificate attesting that Hansi’s violin was not part of the state’s cultural heritage and that its export would not damage the interests of the state in any other way, secondly she had an invitation to a ‘personal discussion’ with the official in charge of her matter. ‘The valuation section is also on the fourth floor, though in B corridor, but we can go up together,’ Regine said. In the HM – Housing Matters – office Richard was told that the employee at Central Registration had made a mistake and that the office for requesting communal gas water-heaters was on the eleventh floor, G corridor, CHA – Communal Housing Administration – office, Arabic five. He went back to Regine. She was looking nervously at the clock. She had an appointment at nine thirty and there were about two dozen people waiting at the Valuation Section. Could Richard get the violin valued for her?

  ‘But you’ll have to get a certificate confirming that, my dear lady,’ a man in front of them in the queue warned her. ‘Firstly you’ll have to get a certificate confirming that you are the person requiring an article to be assessed, secondly that it belongs to you, thirdly that you have given this gentleman here the power of attorney. – I speak from experience.’

  After he came back from the certification procedure Richard remembered that recently there had been certain rumours circulating about this valuation section. Wernstein had told him about one case that he had heard from a nurse who was engaged to an assistant doctor in Internal Medicine. A technician in the department had inherited a Guarneri violin, but wasn’t sure if it was genuine and had had it examined here, at the Valuation Section. The instrument was actually a genuine Guarneri, a rarity on which her late aunt had quietly and modestly bowed her way through several decades in the ranks of the second violins in the Dresden Philharmonic; no one apart from the aunt, who was single, had known what a special instrument it was; the first mention of the name of the Italian instrument maker was in her will. In the Valuation Section a man in a grey suit had appeared who, after the evaluator had pored over a few catalogues, repeatedly looked inside the violin with a dentist’s mirror and, for safety’s sake, consulted a colleague, picked up the telephone and had a long conversation. A few days later the technician, who thought her worries were over, was sent a letter from the Coal Island finance department. She couldn’t pay the sum that was demanded in inheritance tax and so the violin was taken away from her. That was the story Wernstein had told; but Niklas Tietze, whom Richard asked, had also heard about it; as had Barbara, who had picked it up at Wiener’s, the hairdresser’s.

  The evaluator glanced at Richard’s power of attorney, shuffled back to his table, which was covered in green billiard cloth, and started to study the violin.

  At first he twisted and turned it with jaunty, elegant movements, the violin whirled, stopped – a look through a lens; more turning, a few pencilled notes; more turning. He didn’t look inside the body, didn’t open a catalogue. Scroll, pegbox, fingerboard, shape of the F-holes; then he put the violin under his chin, took the bow out of the case and began to play Bach’s Chaconne. He let its solemn, stately tones ring out clearly for a good minute, so that the other officials of the Valuation Section interrupted their work and listened to him. The muttering in the queue stopped, the crackle of sandwich wrappers, the rustling, the shuffle of feet. But no one clapped when he put the violin down. Richard observed his crisp, precise movements; there was no superfluous nor even jerky action; in his mind’s eye he could see his father repairing a clock at his workbench in Glashütte, Malthakus sorting postage stamps, the same precise, finely adjusted movements, and that made him think.

  The evaluator put a form in the typewriter and typed a few lines. Then he replaced the instrument and closed the lid. However much of an effort the violin maker had made – he spoke the name with mocking contempt – who, as far as the secrets of the ribs and purfling were concerned was at least more than just an amateur, his violins would never be part of the cultural heritage of the German Democratic Republic. There, he had it in writing. The evaluator stuck a revenue stamp on the certificate and pushed it across the flap in the door. Richard paid, was about to leave.

  ‘One moment.’

  ‘Yes?’

  The evaluator removed his glasses and took his time cleaning them. ‘As you will be aware, the bow goes with the violin. I have only certified that the violin is not part of our country’s cultural heritage. You have to get that certified for the bow as well.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Richard fiddled with the violin case, was going to take the bow out there and then.

  ‘Sir,’ the evaluator said, ‘I am a certified specialist for string instruments and bows; according to regulations, however, string instruments and their bows are to be submitted for assessment separately.’

  ‘But I’m here and you could, I mean it would save time, and there are other people waiting behind me –’

  ‘According to regulations string instruments and bows are to be submitted for assessment separately.’

  Richard lost his temper. ‘Now listen … what nonsense! You’ve just played the violin yourself. – And to do that you used the bow, otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to play it. Please have a look at it and put your stamp on the bumph –’

  ‘Are you threatening my colleague?’ another official asked, looking Richard disparagingly up and down. ‘In our state all citizens are
equal before the law. Are you demanding special treatment? Who do you think you are?’

  ‘Just check his bow, this is ridiculous,’ a man behind Richard muttered. ‘I’ve got nothing against all citizens being equal and that, but I’ve got a violin and a bow to be assessed as well, so I’ll have to go to the back again too, and who knows how many others will be in that situation today. A load of nonsense!’

  ‘Yes, nonsense,’ Richard agreed. ‘I’m going to make a complaint.’

  ‘If you want to have the bow certified, please go to the back of the queue,’ the first evaluator said with official politeness. There was no point in continuing to object; if he did so Richard would have only been inconveniencing Regine, who would have had to come back another day. Richard stood aside, took a sandwich out of his briefcase, thinking about a bomb, and joined the queue at the back.

  After the bow had been checked (‘not one of Tourte’s, not one of Pfretzschner’s, not one of Schmidt’s’), Richard went to the second floor, F corridor, to find Regine. Going up and down the stairs, he encountered acquaintances, said hello to Frau Teerwagen here, to Frau Stahl from the House with a Thousand Eyes there, had a brief chat with Clarens.

  ‘Not on duty either, Hans?’ Clarens shrugged his shoulders in silent impotence. ‘What’re you here for?’

  ‘Gas water-heater, report, favour’ – Richard waved the violin. ‘And you?’

  ‘Vehicle licensing office, increased coal allocation, burials office.’

  ‘Who’s died?’ Richard shouted from one staircase to the other. The psychiatrist waved his question away. ‘Let’s just say: hope, my friend, hope!’ and, smiling and waving goodbye, he slid back into the stream of supplicants, applicants, messengers and officials.

  ‘Where are you going?’ The attendant outside F corridor asked to see Richard’s identity card.

  ‘I’m waiting for someone.’

  ‘This is solely for people wanting to emigrate, those are the only ones I can let in.’

  ‘But as I said, I’m just waiting for someone, surely that isn’t forbidden?’

  ‘Hm. Who are you waiting for?’

  ‘Frau Regine Neubert.’

  The attendant leafed through his documents. ‘Your name? – We could sort the matter out in the following way: I give you an entry permit. You leave your identity card here, you’ll get it back when you leave. You have one hour, then you must come and report to me again.’

  Richard looked up, it was rare to be addressed in such a friendly manner here.

  ‘Hmm, Dr Hoffmann.’ Immersed in thought, the attendant riffled through the lists of names, one sheet after the other.

  In F corridor the sewing machines were buzzing behind the doors. Here the queue stretched out into the rotunda. Richard, not finding Regine, stood by a window and waited, not without receiving suspicious, not to say hostile, looks – a man with a violin who didn’t join the queue, what was he doing here?

  ‘Hey, you there,’ a woman barked, ‘there’s no jumping the queue here. We all want to get out.’ Richard was about to reply that he had no intention of jumping the queue when a door was flung open and a woman stormed out, swearing and cursing loudly. ‘I’m Alexandra Barsano, you’ve presumably heard the name, this will cost you dear,’ she shouted back in through the open door. Soothing words were to be heard from inside. The waiting queue observed the scene that was being played out in front of them in silence. Richard remembered: years ago there had been photos in the press showing the powerful Party Secretary of the district, one arm proudly round the shoulder of his daughter; but the young woman, who was getting more and more worked up, swaying as if drunk and waving her arms around, clearly had nothing to do with the young girl in the old photos any more. A few shaggy black strands were hanging down either side of a Mohican hairstyle, the spikes of which were a lurid yellow, otherwise her head was completely shaven. Her eyes ringed in black, skull-rings on her fingers, a slashed leather jacket with a ‘Swords into Ploughshares’ symbol sewn on the back, leather trousers, studded belt; over her shoulder Alexandra Barsano had, attached to clinking silver chains, a chimney sweep’s weight. As she turned round, Richard saw the Party badge on her lapel. A man in a grey suit approached.

  ‘You’ll hear from me,’ Alexandra Barsano snarled. The man in the suit drew her to one side, talking to her quietly all the time. The door to the office slammed shut, opened briefly, someone hung an ‘Office closed’ sign on it. Alexandra Barsano ran to the door and hammered on it with her fists. Two men in uniform appeared and led her away, she didn’t resist, the chimney’s sweep’s weight hit her in the back. The man straightened his suit, ran a comb through his hair, jutted out his chin to the queue: ‘The office is closed.’

  The muttering from the people in the queue grew louder.

  ‘I will have any troublemakers arrested for resistance to the authority of the state. Is that clear? This office is closed, shut, for the rest of the day.’ The man in the suit strode off. In disbelief, those in the queue waited for a while longer, then dispersed, grumbling and cursing. The daughter of our District Secretary at the office for exit permits, Richard was thinking, still dazed by the scene, when the office door opened and Regine came out, pale and tear-stained. Beside her was Philipp holding a packet of Ata out of which there came a trickle of white scouring powder. ‘Come by yourself the next time, Citizen Neubert.’ During a long discussion, in the course of which she had been strongly advised to divorce her husband, since he was a traitor and they had ‘proofs’ that he went to brothels in Munich, Philipp had wandered over to the washbasin of the soundproof discussion cubicle and, with scrubbing brush and duster, set off an Ata snow-fest in the whole room. The door slammed shut; as he walked away Richard could hear coughing inside.

  The first censor, Meno thought, as he adjusted his tie in the mirror over one of the washbasins there were at regular intervals along the corridor. He was somewhere in the depths of the east wing of Coal Island. Up there, on the top floor, it was quiet; it was an area one needed a special permit to enter. Schiffner had made one out for Meno and signed it.

  ‘Come on in now,’ the writer Eschschloraque called, roguishly beckoning Meno with his index finger from the end of the corridor. Although the reddish wood of the purlins allowed a soft, reassuring light to filter into the corridor, Meno was somehow reminded of a visit to Frau Knabe, his dentist; in her practice, at least in the vestibule, there was the same forbearing, forgiving, peach-soft brightness (the mistake was that time passed, Meno had the impression that the ministering spirits, who camouflaged the anterooms of the pain-inflicters, knew this); even though the smell of coffee and cigarettes dribbled out of the keyholes of the doors he passed, the feeling of having to go down a tunnel with no turn-off came just as promptly as in Frau Knabe’s practice – only Meno had not expected the dramaticus (Eschschloraque wrote mostly plays). Today, on Schiffner’s behalf, he was supposed to be seeing all four senior assessors of the Dresden branch of the Ministry of Culture’s publishing section; he had previously only negotiated here with two of them, Albert Salomon, whom people called ‘Slalomon’ because of his reports that took account of every twist and turn of political developments, and Karlfriede Sinner-Priest, who was known as Mrs Privy-Councillor.

  ‘Do come in, Rohde. Do you like tea? – Good to hear. Tea drinkers are mostly good people to talk with. They’re intelligent murderers into the bargain and they mostly have something to say. I need that for one of my plays, you should know. Is it not much more effective when a torturer sips a cup of tea than when he just downs a beer?’

  ‘Aren’t you making it too easy for yourself if you have the said torturer drinking tea. The critics will say, “Oh God, a torturer drinks beer, a proletarian touch! How does a crafty author avoid that? He makes him drink tea. That is such an unsurprising surprise, Herr Eschschloraque, that it’s become a cliché.” ’

  ‘You may well be right, my dear Rohde. Should I go back to beer, then? What our critics don’t realize is
that this beer has been through all the pipes of the directorial drinks department and has reached a second innocence, a higher innocence so to speak. I would avoid the cliché by renewing the cliché … Hm. Interesting tactic, but you’d have to get the torturer to deliver a soliloquy on the innocence of beer. Despite that, I feel I can manage a tea. I can give you Earl Grey.’

  ‘I’ve brought a lemon, Herr Eschschloraque.’

  ‘Is it to have an acid taste? Acid corrodes but you don’t make anything wrong with it. I could have my torturer drink cocoa instead … Or a fizzy drink. Lemonade. I prefer people who love lemons to those who love melons, for example, basically a melon is nothing more than sugar and water and despite all the seeds is only the principle of the bellows transferred to horticulture. Anyway, you don’t need to offer me anything apart from arguments, up to now I have nurtured the illusion of being incorruptible. Sit down and let’s continue.’

  Eschschloraque made the tea and started the ‘Conjuration of Snakes’ as the presentation of manuscripts and discussion of reports was called among the editors. Meno looked round, listened and observed Eschschloraque. He asked which manuscripts Meno was thinking of fighting for. Meno knew the ritual, made a gesture that could mean everything and said nothing: keep your cards close to you chest, editor. If you name a writer, the other person might hate him and finish him off with a smile. If you deliberately name a wrong one, in order to mislead them, the other person might be happy with that and confirm the name with a smile. Cover your flanks and protect your king – and be aware that your queen can never be brought into action too soon. Sacrifice a pawn, if it’s a knight or bishop that’s threatened, sacrifice your queen so that the last pawn can checkmate the king. And remember, the other person has studied your wiles and knows your ruses.