The Tower: A Novel

by Uwe Tellkamp

  ‘Oh, no sense of humour.’ They gave him the book. ‘It’s OK,’ they shouted into the garden.

  There was a ring at Meno’s door. ‘Oh, he’s got visitors,’ Judith Schevola said when Christian opened the door. ‘You are –’

  ‘His nephew.’

  ‘Herr Rohde and I – we’re working together. He’s my editor.’

  ‘Do come in.’

  ‘I don’t want to disturb …’

  ‘Aren’t you Judith Schevola?’ Verena came from the house and, when Judith Schevola nodded in surprise, said, ‘I’ve read everything of yours, pity I haven’t got a book with me or I’d have asked you to sign it.’

  ‘There’s punch in the garden,’ Christian said.

  ‘What are you celebrating?’ Schevola asked, following the two others. ‘Is it someone’s birthday?’

  Verena kept talking to her, full of enthusiasm, Lange had no chance with his sailor’s yarns and made a gesture of cheerful resignation. Siegbert and he withdrew with the logbook and lantern, and soon the smoke eddies of Copenhagen vanilla tobacco were feeling their way to the iron table where the others were sitting bombarding Schevola with questions.

  ‘How does a conference like that go?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ Schevola smiled. ‘Rhubarbrhubarb …’

  ‘I think I’ve heard that before.’

  ‘And: whisperwhisperjeerjeer. – What do you like reading best?’

  ‘At school? The Adventures of Werner Holt,’ Siegbert shouted. ‘At last a book that’s fun to read.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise me. And Hermann Kant: Die Aula?’

  ‘Dishonest shit!’

  She laughed. ‘That was clear.’

  ‘And you’re a real writer?’ Reina wanted to know.

  ‘I write books, yes. But whether I’m a real writer … Sometimes I think I’ll never be one.’

  ‘Well I enjoyed your books,’ Verena said. ‘You can really get into them, and the people you describe … it’s as if they’re alive. – I think you like them a lot, even the awkward ones,’ she added quietly. Schevola rummaged round in her handbag, fished out a packet of cigarettes. ‘May I?’ she asked Libussa.

  ‘Of course, child. Meno thinks a lot of you and, believe me, he has his opinions about authors.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Do you often suffer,’ Verena hesitated, ‘I mean … You’re so successful, my sister works in a library and your books are frequently asked for and everyone I know likes you –’

  ‘Self-doubt? – Yes, I do. It’s an affliction, success and praise make no difference. You know, in the evening you’re alone in your room and the great authors, the masters, are watching you from the walls, their books are silent on the shelves and you’re sitting over a sheet of paper, scribbling away –’

  Verena’s face lit up. ‘I like you, may I say that to you? And I thought I was the only one who always had such thoughts.’

  Schevola glanced at her, blew smoke at the paper moon. ‘Nice here.’

  ‘Sometimes I think of this as Eichendorff’s garden,’ Christian said. ‘The one in his story about the good-for-nothing, near Vienna, the Countess’s castle and it all ends happily ever after?’

  Ina arrived, they could see from afar that she was frustrated. ‘Damn, damn, damn! We didn’t get in. It was a different bouncer. And d’you know who’s on? Neustadt!’

  ‘That’s why it’s so full today.’

  ‘Is it the Bird of Paradise Bar you’re talking about?’ Schevola asked. And when Libussa nodded: ‘Could I use your telephone?’ Schevola stubbed out her cigarette and went up with Christian. Five minutes later she came back down. ‘How is it then? Who’s coming?’

  ‘Wow, how did you manage that?’ Falk said in astonishment.

  ‘Vitamin C. Right then?’

  Ladislaus Pospischil’s Bird of Paradise Bar was living off its earlier reputation. In the sixties the notoriety of disrepute had shone over its parquet dance floor that bands with acceptable names, gawky youths in crocodile-yellow shoes and suits from VEB Herrenmode, authenticated by string ties, had filled with Bill Haley’s and Elvis Presley’s incendiary music, after two or three numbers the mirror wall was showing nothing but smears of colour and the outlines of bodies, was sweating condensation among the smoke from Karo cigarettes and the exudations of 500 squealing, wildly jigging bodies and warm champagne stirred with the finger. Cheap beer went flat as excited conversations were held on table telephones with pulsating red lights. In the men’s toilet there were glasses of sugar water for dishevelled duck’s-arse haircuts, between the mirrors was a warning about sexually transmitted diseases and couples that spent two hours over the same cocktail wanted mostly to listen. Representatives of order and rebels had subjected each other to hostile scrutiny across Sprelacart laminate tables, many a Dresden marriage had been arranged by the cigarette spirit in the private booths that could be closed off with bird-patterned curtains made by Tashkent weavers. Since it had been nationalized, it had gone downhill, Pospischil was no longer its owner but senior employee; the smugglers’ cave in the Schlemm Hotel ran out of smugglers.

  Christian had never been there before. The deafening noise that suddenly enveloped him like a rubber wall, the screaming, laughing stream of people, drifts of smoke and beer fumes in the air that lay on his skin like a warm, damp nappy, the cramped, claustrophobic room with the throng heaving like heavy, dark water in a tank with a few lantern buoys drifting on it; the jerky movements of the dancers on the small floor in front of the band that seemed to him like the desperate flounderings of non-swimmers: all that repelled him and he was glad to find a seat in the corner of the bench Schevola had reserved. Beside them were soldiers in their uniforms, squinting longingly at the girls, glasses of cheap champagne in their hands. ‘Poor sods,’ said Muriel pityingly, after a glance at their epaulettes, and asked the ugliest one to dance; a flush immediately twitched across his face, spreading a few fractions of a second later to the others, as if there were a connection between them, the hope of a similar piece of good fortune; but Verena and Siegbert were already on the dance floor, Ina had dragged Fabian up and Reina, after a glance at Christian, Falk; Heike simply shook her head when one of the soldiers attempted an awkward bow, and Schevola was at the bar, flanked by a man with a ponytail and a big bushy beard and a woman in a sari-like dress.

  The music was booming out of the loudspeakers; when the drummer sent his sticks flashing over his skins the impact of the sound was physically painful, Christian would really have liked to put his hands over his ears. He wondered whether the others felt the same, no, they were dancing and laughing in high spirits, expressions of liberation on their faces, and enjoyment. Libussa and Alois Lange stepped onto the floor, the bandleader smiled, leant over the mike and announced, ‘Grandad and Grandma Lange’ – a real cheek, Christian thought, and how did the guy know them – as ‘twist legends from the lejjen-derry days of the old Bird of Paradise’, then the rhythms of ‘Let’s Twist Again’ ripped out and, urged on by cheers and raised arms, Libussa and Alois put on a brilliant twist that no other couple on the floor could match; we can’t dance any more, Christian thought, and: This just can’t be true. He’d never seen the pair of them like that before and yet he imagined he knew them well. Instinctively he dismissed what he was seeing, two white-haired people who, at a click of the fingers and a few bars of rousing music, had cast off their age like a straitjacket that had nothing to do with them and into which an abusive, imperious power had forced them. Christian was shocked to observe them and began to sense that we only knew as much of other people as they were prepared to reveal. This observation hurt him, made him jealous – after all, it was ‘his’ people who were showing Verena, Siegbert and the others something they’d never shown him; they were seeing them for the first time, and in a light they had no idea was new. New for him – suddenly he couldn’t help laughing: You’re behaving like one of those artists Meno sometimes talks about; they imagine
people belong to them and feel insulted when they behave differently from the way they’d assumed in their plans.

  Christian emptied his glass. It was some cocktail for young people, tasting vanilla-ish and excited at its own alcohol content; it made his tongue sticky. Verena and Siegbert were jumping about, waving their arms as if they had a fit of the shivers. Silly! Christian thought. What was the point of looking like that? Verena’s feverish eyes; a flush creeping over Reina’s usually pale face, like red wine spilt on a tablecloth. It fascinated him. It disgusted him. The hooch tasted revolting, but what could he do except drink it. Heike was observing him, he could see her out of the corner of his eye, he couldn’t bear being observed, gave her a glinting stare but she wasn’t bothered by it, compared him with her drawing, stared back, unmoved, dissecting. He thought the music was terrible, but it was just loud, not bad, it was good. That was the stupid thing about it: it was good. Not a twist now, a take on the state-approved Lipsi dance, the cellar was filled with roars of laughter. Guitar riffs with eyes closed and rapt open mouths. That was as filthy as a dustbin, not the music they taught you at school. Music that bared its teeth, a thermometer bursts in your arse. Yes, right there, in your arse, in your arse! Christian greedily repeated the word. The lads on their instruments knew what they were doing, even if they weren’t playing the cello or piano. Five lads, at a guess just a few years older than he was. At a guess, Christian thought, perhaps I should simply take the drawing pad away from Heike? ‘You OK, Heike? You’re drawing the whole time,’ he said boorishly, grabbing her cocktail. She didn’t object, simply nodded. So he just downed it. His skin was burning. The cigarette smoke was like a smouldering shroud hanging from the ceiling. Christian imagined the drummer, with his violent up-and-down gesticulations, as a wind machine that would suddenly blow away the smoke, the voices and the laughter bubbling up over the tables, above all the laughter, it sounded like paper tearing. He checked whether anyone could see him. Heike had found other subjects. The soldiers were interested in skirts and female bottoms in jeans, he moved deeper into his shady corner, under the foggy light of a circular neon lamp from the sixties, nothing had changed, he couldn’t loosen up. He imagined playing his cello in a cathedral, the congregation frozen in devotion, Bach forcing them to their knees, these very people here, with a nervously trembling hand Libussa would change the hymn numbers on the board, the ship’s doctor, head bowed in contrition, would do penance on a hard bench, the laughter on Siegbert and Verena’s lips would die away. Silence, church-cool eternity, Bach’s harmonies, not this home-slaughtered howling with its cheap texts … Falk threw his head back joyfully and gasped for air like a carp. In his mind’s eye Christian could see him walking away after his interview with Fahner, comb in his back pocket, the dripping quiet on the stairwell, and he’d felt no pity as he watched Falk leave, his angular shoulder blades and his arms that, as Reina had said, were really too skinny for a boy. Now he was dancing like crazy and a week after the interview in the hostel room he’d still had difficulty concealing his fear: ‘He ranted and raved a bit, not actually very loudly, but … You know him. Nothing’s happened … so far. Perhaps the worst is still to come, you never know with them, and he’ll chuck me out of the school.’ That was what Falk had said, his words merged with the voices in the bar, the music. Rock ballads now. Good, good, good. Yes. He ought to get out. Perhaps go to the toilet. No, better stay here, otherwise his place might get taken. Christian observed Judith Schevola, who appeared to be having an agitated discussion with the woman but during the pauses in the conversation peered over at the tables. Make sure you don’t get under her magnifying glass, he thought. The band leader had an Armenian cap on his cropped head, a leather coat with shoulder straps and belt, and a ‘Swords into Ploughshares’ badge sewn on. Theatrical, honest gestures, so allergically sweeping that those playing guitar kept at arm’s length from him. The drummer in a Russian shirt streaked with sweat; hovering like a misty halo above his wildly jerking head was the tail of a bird of paradise made from pieces of coloured glass and illuminated from behind.

  ‘So, what d’you say?’ Ina flopped down beside Christian.

  ‘What’s the guy waving his arms around called?’

  ‘The front man? André Pschorke. Hey, wouldn’t you like a dance?’

  ‘Pschorke,’ Christian said meditatively. ‘International careers start with names like that.’

  ‘You can be pretty arrogant at times, has anyone ever told you that?’

  ‘Her over there,’ Christian said with a weary nod in Verena’s direction. ‘I don’t care. Never-ending boom-boom-boom –’

  Ina made a dismissive gesture. ‘Oh, you are a wet blanket, Cousin. You really are going to come a cropper one of these days. Your classical music is something for the old fogies. You can stick it up your arse. Uptight aesthetes, huh, to hell with ’em.’ She lit a cigarette.

  ‘Hey, Cousin, lighten up.’

  A guitar chord cut off Ina’s reply, she shook her head and, as those on the dance floor separated, went over to Siegbert. Now Muriel was dancing with Falk, Verena with Fabian, the soldiers were skipping round Reina, who was dancing alone with her eyes closed. Neustadt sang about cobblestones, about mail inspector Alfred going to his night shift along dark dreary stree–heets with his briefcase and sandwiches, about the bit of sky above the back yard as blue as Milka chocolate – the dance floor bawled along – they sang the ‘Ash Song’. ‘No, it’s not what you think,’ André Pschorke shouted to the soldiers, ‘it’s about … Ash lies over the streets / People have it in their hair / Ash that’s the colour of sleep / Ash of the things that were … // Tell me, where has the dream gone / Everyone had at dawn / Did they all get rid of it / Like a baby that never gets born …’ Christian was impressed by the words, he scribbled them on a beer mat, making it obvious so that no one would get the wrong idea about him. They sang ‘Your Eyes’, a slow number with a lot of keyboard.

  Schevola came, behind her the woman in the sari. ‘We’ve seen you’ve been drawing away industriously, may I have a look?’ she said to Heike. She opened the drawing pad, examined the drawing with brief glances, like a craftsman checking the contents of a tool chest, turned over the pages. ‘You’re still at school?’

  Heike jutted out her chin and twined a lock of hair round a finger, the woman in the sari presumably took it as a yes. ‘What do you want to do, after school?’

  ‘Paint,’ Heike said. The woman in the sari nodded. ‘If you want, you can come and see me. My name’s Nina Schmücke, during the day I sell fish, on Friday evenings we look at each other’s pictures and discuss them.’

  ‘You had the red picture in the art exhibition,’ Heike said.

  ‘For one day.’ Nina Schmücke handed back the pad. ‘Then someone with influence didn’t like it and it was taken down.’

  ‘It was very powerful,’ Heike said. ‘May I really come and see you?’

  ‘Have you something to write on?’

  Heike turned the block over, Nina Schmücke wrote her address on it. Then the two of them sank into their own universe of painters’ names and pictures and painting techniques.

  Schevola sat down beside Christian. ‘Shall we have a chat,’ she said to him in amused tones. She pointed vaguely in the direction of the steps. Neustadt were strumming furious protests.

  ‘What about?’ was the only thing that occurred to Christian. He said it no louder than normally, Schevola couldn’t have heard.

  ‘I presume you don’t dance?’

  He shook his head, then he picked up another beer mat, wrote, ‘Would you tell the others I’ve left. The door’s open.’

  How quiet it suddenly was: as if a space full of noise had been shut off and was no longer in operation here, dispersing and dissipating in the smells Christian once more perceived: from the park where a large bird flew off, startling him, from the garden, from the House with a Thousand Eyes. Bats were flitting between the treetops, visible as angular shadows against the muddy sky. Th
e barometer at home was on ‘set fair’ and Libussa had said there wouldn’t be any rain. Chakamankabudibaba emerged from the sweet briar beside the path, briefly touched his calf with his bottle-brush tail in a kind of condescending greeting noting his arrival, licked a front paw, sniffed at the depths of the garden, disappeared as silently as he had come. The Teerwagens were sitting on their balcony, a trickle of pop music was coming from open windows, perhaps it was Here’s Music with Rainer Süss, a popular show on Channel 1. Half past eleven, no, it wasn’t on at that time. It was unusually warm, he wondered about sleeping outside, then he remembered he still had to get the loungers out of the garden shed and pump up the air beds, he decided to do it right away. Everything was dark at the Kaminskis’ and the Stahls’, but when he went to the balustrade, below which the garden fell away steeply, he saw the Stahls sitting in the light of the coloured bulbs they strung up over the iron table in the summer. He went down, the engineer asked whether Sylvia had been quiet; Christian hadn’t heard anything, Sabine Stahl said she sometimes secretly watched television when they were down in the garden, the glow of the screen couldn’t be seen from down there. Christian said there could be problems with washing in the morning but Stahl replied that there were things young people had to put up with, he’d filled the tin bathtub in the garden. ‘Are you staying longer?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Meno told us you and your friends will have to go to the pre-military training camp soon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Keep your chin up. – Good night, Christian.’

  ‘Good night.’

  The Stahls got up. Christian noticed the bulge in Sabine Stahl’s stomach. She smiled. ‘Meno will soon have to let us have the bedroom.’

  They slowly made their way upstairs. Christian watched them leave, two patches of brightness going up the steps to the house. The slight feeling of intoxication he’d had from the cocktails had gone; he poured himself a glass of punch, it tasted flat, he abandoned his glass. He switched off the lights, put out the lamp, sat down in the chair where the ship’s doctor had been sitting, stared up at the Chinese lantern swaying in the currents of air, a white sphere with a clown’s grin in red drawn on it in which burnt insects were to be found in the mornings. At night the garden was a mysterious realm, the crickets sawing their soporific ‘tsik-tsik’ into the distant noises of the city and the whispering of the trees, everywhere there seemed to be eyes opened, everywhere a hunt was on. A bug crawled onto the table, it had long, backward-curving feelers that seemed to be sieving the air, Christian, startled, stood up: that was something for Meno, not for him, Meno would certainly have had a Latin name ready at once and told him something about the habits of the bug. Christian was afraid of it, for him the creature was one of the night spirits, an eye with which nature looked at humankind.