The Tower: A Novel

by Uwe Tellkamp

  First of all they went round the general surgical wards, for Richard hardly knew the patients there at all. If he was called during the night, it was useful for him to have at least a rough idea about them. From the duty rosters he saw that capable nurses would be on night duty. He gave the late-shift nurses a routine and preoccupied ‘Good evening’, got them to show him the files of the tricky cases and studied them while Weniger joked and chatted. ‘Well then, Karin, how’s the house coming along?’ The nurses emptied the medicine basket, set out the evening doses.

  ‘How do you think it’s coming along, Herr Weniger? If only you could get some decent craftsmen. Recently I called the electrician because the geyser wasn’t working. “Payment in Forum cheques, is it?” And he wouldn’t come after six in the evening anyway – at that time he’d be enjoying his well-earned rest.’

  ‘He wanted a Forum cheque from you? The scoundrel!’

  ‘Or Western currency, Herr Weniger, which comes down to the same thing.’ The deputy ward sister on South I shook her head in outrage. ‘Recently my neighbour had the plumbers in to install wash-basins and when they heard he couldn’t pay in West German marks, they tipped concrete into his drains!’

  ‘They ought to be reported to the police, the whole lot of them!’ Weniger thumped the table.

  ‘Then you wouldn’t get another tradesman for the rest of your life.’ Sister Karin sighed. ‘That’s the way things are. The only solution would be – aren’t you feeling well?’ She looked at Richard, concerned; he waved her question away. ‘It’s all right now. Perhaps I should eat something. And a coffee wouldn’t be a bad idea either. No, that’s all right. I’ll get some in my own ward, thanks all the same. Shall we go, Manfred?’

  He could feel their eyes on his back.

  In North I they had a coffee; the nurses had put Richard’s mug out ready, an extra large tin mug with his name and the transfer of a laughing swordfish on the enamel; the coffee revived him, it was lukewarm and bitter (everyone he knew thought that was revolting); it was his favourite way of having it because he didn’t have to waste time waiting, he slurped the coffee down, like a drug, in a few greedy gulps. Weniger observed him, taking little sips, very precise, very practised, Richard found it slightly affected.

  ‘Problems?’ Weniger asked as they were going round the ward.

  ‘The usual, you know. On top of that I’ve had an exhausting day.’

  ‘Müller?’

  ‘No, no. You mean our jokes at the birthday party? Water under the bridge. We’ve other worries.’

  ‘Should I stop bothering you?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Come along, I’ll show you something.’ They went into a room; there were eight beds, each with a white-haired woman in it. A nursing auxiliary was just taking one of them off the bedpan; there was a smell of urine, faeces and Wofasept disinfectant. The women didn’t look up when the two doctors came in, they lay there, apathetic, staring into space or sleeping, their wrinkled hands on the white blankets. The auxiliary cleaned the woman with a few energetic wipes, picked up the bedpan, nodded shyly to them and scuttled out. That patient seemed to notice them. ‘Herr Doktor, Herr Doktor,’ she cried in a thin, pitiful voice, stretching out her arms. They went to her bed, sat down. Richard took her hand.

  ‘Herr Doktor, is my daughter going to come?’

  ‘She will come.’

  The woman sank back into the pillows, gave a satisfied nod, leant forward again and, with a roguish smile, waggled her index finger at them. ‘You doctors are always telling fibs. Can’t I phone my daughter?’

  ‘When you can get up. And you can only do that when your broken thigh has healed properly.’

  ‘Oh, if only I could walk, Herr Doktor –’ She turned her head to the window, began to murmur; her fine, silver-white hair was like spiders’ webs round the old woman’s face.

  ‘Your daughter will come, I’m sure of that,’ Weniger said.

  ‘God bless you, Herr Doktor, God bless you. You know,’ she whispered with a sly smile, ‘I’m not mad, as they say in the old folks’ home, I … I’m just so thirsty.’

  ‘Sit up now.’ Richard picked up the feeding cup from the bedside table and gave her a drink, Weniger supported her.

  ‘Such a long life …’ She felt for Weniger’s hand, put something in it. He shook his head. ‘Keep it. You have greater need of it than I do.’ He put the mark coin on the bedside table. ‘It’s very kind of you, but please keep it.’

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen. Will you come again. Oh, it’s not good when you’re old and alone.’

  ‘We have to go. Here, take this, in case you need anything.’ Richard put the bell in her hand and attached the cord to her sheet with a safety pin.

  ‘They come from the care homes,’ Richard said outside. ‘They fall over when they’re going to the toilet during the night, break their femur, are operated on and have to stay in bed here until the break’s healed. Two to three months, depending on how quickly it heals. Then they lie in bed and get pneumonia. And that’s what they die from.’

  ‘Just like in our wards,’ Weniger said. ‘Women from the care homes, with bedsores, undernourished, confused because they’re thirsty. They’re dismissed as old and senile but they’re not, all they need is a bit of liquid. Here they’re looked after, revive – and go back to the care home.’

  ‘It’s the natural cycle,’ said Richard. ‘They come to you as young women and give birth, they come to me as old women and die. They haven’t got enough staff in the care homes. There’s never anything about that in the newspapers.’

  ‘Is there no method that makes it possible for them to put their full weight on it and stand up immediately after the operation?’

  ‘Not yet. Various teams over there are looking into it. I read something interesting recently. The idea is a kind of oversized nail inserted between the head and the neck of the bone. I showed the article to the technical director of the factory that supplies our equipment. Just out of interest, a general inquiry, no obligation. He phoned me: “Impossible. We haven’t even got the machines to make the machines that could make this thing.” ’

  Weniger went over to the window, stuck his hands in the pockets of his white coat. ‘Cancer’s on the increase, significantly. Breast and the neck of the uterus, and the patients are getting younger and younger. – By the way, are all your patients so docile?’

  ‘She was a communist. Worked on the Red Flag, then, after the Nazis came to power, was active underground, went to Spain, to support the Popular Front. Emigrated to Mexico just before the end. Came back fairly late, when those returning from Moscow already had everything under control. Then she helped with building the Republic, once departed from the official Party line and was transferred to a subordinate position in the transformer and X-ray factory. And then she grew old.’

  Weniger nodded, gave Richard a sidelong look; he noticed it, but avoided eye contact.

  ‘Let’s see what your famous supper’s like.’

  The start of his spell on duty was unusually quiet. ‘No acute cases?’ Richard asked in Casualty.

  ‘Not so far.’ Wernstein spread his arms wide. Dreyssiger was looking after a sprained ankle, routine. The nurses were making swabs.

  ‘Slack tonight.’ Weniger replaced the telephone. ‘My difficult births are – asleep.’

  ‘Then let’s go over to my place,’ Prokosch, a senior doctor in the Eye Clinic, suggested; he’d been eating in the corner and filling in forms. He was another of the old Leipzig students at the Academy, though he’d qualified two years before Weniger and Richard. He was a brawny, stocky man who looked more like a wrestler than an eye specialist. No one could believe his short fingers, fat as cigars, had the sensitivity and delicacy of touch needed for operations on the eye that often enough, as Prokosch used to say, were as exacting as cutting a tuning fork out of a hair.

  ‘I’ve got a few cases that’ll interest you two. And we can always get some sleep.’

  �
�The god of night duty willing,’ said Wolfgang, a male nurse with thirty years’ service behind him. ‘What’s rule number one after it gets dark? Get as much sleep as you can. And be wary of those minutes of quiet – they’re the calm before the storm.’

  The three doctors walked together in silence, deep in thought – what was there to discuss? They’d known each other for a long time and at work it was not usual, unless you were friends like Richard and Weniger, to cross a certain boundary in conversation. Private matters were kept out of it, not through lack of interest but through a sense of tact that appeared as fellow feeling which, according to an unwritten code, would have been violated by too confidential a conversation between colleagues. You knew whom you were dealing with, you knew who you were (or appeared to be), gave a silent nod and that was all, that was sufficient.

  They heard hurried steps behind them, Nurse Wolfgang waved to Prokosch.

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘Ward 9D. Your on-call presence is required in Dermatology. The god of night duty doesn’t like sleep.’

  ‘There’s no point in kicking against the pricks.’ Prokosch shrugged his shoulders in resignation. ‘We’ll see each other later, I should think. Off we go, then.’

  An ambulance was approaching from the Academy gate, but without its blue light; they watched where it was going; it turned off to the right beyond the car park, heading for the Stomatology Clinic.

  ‘Not for us,’ Weniger said. They walked slowly back along the road.

  ‘May I ask you something, Manfred?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Have you sometimes thought of leaving?’

  Weniger gave Richard a quick glance, then carefully looked all round. They moved to the middle of the road.

  ‘I imagine we all have. – At the last Gynaecological conference I was offered a post.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘They’re not good thoughts.’

  ‘But you get them.’

  ‘Every person’s different. I don’t think you can live with them.’

  ‘Did you never think, when you were a student, what it’s like to be a father, to have children with a woman, bring them up –’

  ‘I can’t remember. I don’t think so.’

  ‘To love one woman in all –’

  ‘You know that.’ Weniger stared into the darkness.

  ‘And –’ Richard broke off. A woman was approaching; even from a distance he could tell it was Josta. His first impulse was to turn off onto one of the side paths, but she was looking at him and Weniger had seen her as well. ‘Still here this late, Frau Fischer? Is there something special going on in Administration – something we ought to know about?’

  ‘No,’ she said tersely, not using his name or saying good evening. ‘Just a lot of work. But nothing special. Construction plans and applications, Herr Doktor.’

  ‘How is your daughter?’

  ‘Oh, she’s in the middle group in kindergarten. She loves drawing. I think she ought to go and see the paediatrician, she keeps complaining about earache.’

  ‘Who are you with?’

  She named a name. She avoided looking at Richard.

  ‘Are you happy with him?’

  ‘Well, it’s a general hospital, there are long waiting lists and I don’t want it to drag on –’

  ‘I’ll have a word with Professor Rykenthal, if you’re agreeable. Give me a call tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll do that. Thank you, Herr Doktor. – But I won’t hold you up any longer. I wish you a quiet night. Goodbye.’

  ‘Pretty woman,’ Weniger said when she’d gone. ‘If only I were twenty years younger – and’ – he ran his hand over his bald head – ‘wasn’t as hairy as an ape. God, I can still see her little girl, umbilical cord cut and wrapped up warm, and her face when the midwife gave her the baby. That’s always the best moment.’ Weniger looked at his hands. ‘Then you know why you’re here and what these paws are for. I’m sure it’s the same with you.’

  ‘Was it a difficult birth?’

  ‘Yes, pretty difficult. But she didn’t say a word. You don’t often get that nowadays. You used to, out in the country.’

  ‘We were interrupted.’

  ‘You want to stick to the topic? – We really ought talk about it some other time, not while we’re on duty and can get called away any moment and have to break off things that would be better made crystal clear.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Richard said after a cautious glance at Weniger.

  ‘No, no, that’s OK, no one’s calling us yet,’ Weniger replied with a faint smile, ‘and we’ve known each other long enough to be able to set what’s being said against the situation in which it’s being said.’

  ‘You’re right there, of course.’

  ‘I should think so!’ Weniger exclaimed cheerfully. ‘But to go back to what you were saying … You can think about it, but that’s merely theoretical. Thoughts don’t have consequences; you can play with them, like children with building blocks, and if you build a house with them that you don’t like, then you change it … Tell me, aren’t you getting cold? I can lend you my coat.’

  ‘No, I don’t feel cold … It’s fairly warm.’

  ‘I saw it was eight degrees on the thermometer just now. – You can change the house any way you like, and with no consequences.’

  ‘Which isn’t possible in real life.’

  ‘It’s perhaps possible, Richard, but some people have the problem that they’re never satisfied with the houses they build, they keep building houses and discarding them, they do it their whole life long and never have a house that’s finished, while their neighbour, to whose house they paid no attention because it’s crooked and perhaps not very distinctive, because it’s made of cheap materials, lives in a house that’s finished –’

  ‘A nice way of describing renunciation.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. He’s made a decision, a decision to make the best of what he’s been given – and not to waste his time looking for things he can’t have.’

  ‘How does he know he can’t have them?’

  ‘By a sober assessment of his situation.’

  ‘How do you bring up your children?’

  Weniger didn’t answer immediately. ‘I tell them they’re free.’

  ‘Free? In this country?’

  ‘In that sense I don’t think people are free anywhere. What I mean is free to find out about themselves – and to build their house. – I have to say, you don’t look well.’

  ‘Could be. I’ve not been sleeping very well.’

  ‘It happens to all of us,’ Weniger said with a smile.

  ‘For example, when something happens to you that makes you furious; something that, let’s say, gives you the impression you’re pretty helpless –’

  ‘Has something given you that impression?’

  ‘No, I just mean … As an example, purely as an example to put these thoughts in context. So, if something like that happened to you, would it be better to hit out at once – or to wait and see?’

  ‘It depends very much on what kind of thing has happened to give you that impression. And what you mean by “hit out”. In this country the opportunities for “hitting out” must be limited. If you aren’t one of them.’

  ‘Just a minute, I’ve probably not put it very well. “Hit out” really does sound a bit over the top –’

  ‘Another time, perhaps,’ Weniger said calmly.

  25

  The Leipzig Book Fair

  Philipp Londoner lived in a seventy-square-metre apartment in a working-class district of Leipzig. The building bordered on a canal, the water of which had been turned gelatinous by the effluent from a cotton mill. Dead fish were floating in it, slowly decomposing, flakes of white flesh sliding off the bones; single fins, blind eyes were swept against the bank where they bobbed on the grey foam with the bare elm branches stretching over it, occupied by thousands of crows that found rich pickings there. The inhabitants of
the district had a name for the factory: ‘the Flock’; within a radius of several kilometres the streets were covered in cotton flocks that were trodden down, forming a slimy, decomposing crust in which the smell of all the dogs of Leipzig seemed to be concentrated. Drifting cotton got caught in the undergrowth, blocked the chimneys in the summer, floated up in the breezes warmed by the extracted air, formed whirling veils over the roofs, drifted down into puddles and onto railway lines, so that passengers could tell with their eyes closed when the train entered the district: suddenly the sounds were muffled and the general murmur of conversation in the compartment stopped.

  Meno went to the Leipzig Book Fair every year. Philipp put him up for those days and continued to do so after Hanna and Meno had separated, for the two men felt a liking, a quiet respect, for each other, what Hanna had once called ‘a kind of awkward friendship’. The crows were still there, their numbers seemed to have increased over the years until there were legions of them. Worse for Meno than their squabbling and squawking, their sputtering and chattering, was the moment in the evening when the gates of the cotton mill opened and the workers went home: then the crows fell silent, you could hear many shuffling steps, rhythmically interrupted by the sound of several time clocks punching cards, now and then by the grinding of a tram going round a bend or accelerating. When the wind in Leipzig turned to the north, bringing the fine brown-coal dust from the open-cast mines of Borna and Espenhain that slewed in broad sheets round the houses and dust devils the height of a man – the ‘cypresses’ – appeared in the streets, the crows would sit, silent, in the jagged black trees that were like veins of ore against the brighter sky, and look down on the workers, most of whom ignored the birds and made their way, head bowed, with sluggish gait, to the bus stop or the central bicycle racks outside the mill. Sometimes a woman would raise her fist and scold the crows in the silence or a man would throw a stone at them and swear, at which a raging, discordant swarm, an avian giant consisting of clamorous take-offs, cries of fury and the clatter of feathers, would swell up over the factory in pulsating rings that circled round in the sky, screeching, and then slowly sink, appearing to be sucked into funnels that gathered together in a thin swirl, like a storm spindle, back down into the elms; individual birds separated from the fraying downflow, folded their wings, came to rest. Meno would observe all this from the window of the little room Philipp had given him, the cotton mill was opposite; in the morning, as he was getting ready for the Book Fair, he could see the workers of the early shift at their machines, silhouettes with swift and measured movements under fluorescent lights.