by Uwe Tellkamp
The roofing felt will be sent off to you in your cardboard box, also included is 1 packet of roofing nails they also had in stock. My father told me about the death of Prof. Staegemann’s son; my brother Robert has Prof. Staegemann to thank that he can still play the clarinet after his skiing accident on Untere Rissleite. His shattered incisor was reconstructed using a technique from the West (a transparent liquid that hardens under a lamp; I can still remember how astonished you were). What you wrote in your letter about Muriel and her family sounds ominous. My father told me that a joint letter is to be sent to the Minister of Education. Best wishes to you, to your husband (perhaps I’ll have time for a visit to the Zwinger when I’m on leave, I haven’t been there for ages), to the Krausewitzes, Herr Dietzsch and Herr Marroquin – he came to mind during our kitting-out ceremony, they call it the Masked Ball. Christian Hoffmann.
TC Q/Schwanenberg, 28.11.84
Dear Parents, Your parcel arrived safe and sound yesterday, thanks for sparing no effort or expense. The apples have all gone already. Please don’t put anything in your parcels that has even the slightest hint of the West. The parcels have to be opened and the quartermaster-sergeant (the man who deals with clothing, equipment, mail, food requirements etc.) confiscates anything that has the slightest hint of feelers ‘the enemy’ might be putting out for innocent military cadets, even if it’s a midge from the other side. Could you perhaps get me a bottle of aftershave? But not Dur that you can get in the store here – or, rather, can’t get any more since one of the regulars told us that Dur has ‘revs’ (= high-percentage alcohol – well, he is a driving instructor). That evening Irrgang and Breck were both drunk and they’ve been put on extra guard duty as a punishment. In the chemist’s recently I saw a few bottles of Tüff aftershave, that might do.
Yesterday I was the ‘cookroach’, that is I was on kitchen fatigues. I ended up in a dark place, the so-called ‘pot-sink’, the centre of washing-up as an existent reality. It starts at 6 p.m., you’re given so-called hygienic clothing (a grey coat that has strange powder-burn holes, perhaps from an unknown species of moth? and is used as a handkerchief by the cooks now and then). You keep at it until 10 p.m. The next day it starts again at 4.30 a.m. and continues until 6 p.m. The pot-sink is a place of true feeling. Pots look like officials who’ve burnt their behinds, they have that leather-trousered look that Meno once hinted at, they have ears as well, floppy as a marzipan flag, steam comes pouring out and they flutter when you’re scrubbing them. The pot-sink knows all about the mixed-fruit vat that comes back from the ‘Interhotel’ (the canteen) empty and that we cookroaches had previously filled.
Take:
150 jars of preserved mixed fruit
a tin trough of 1 m3 capacity
the ‘crocodile’: a gigantic multifunction whisk, held by two cookroaches, with a handle on the drum to which two whisks are attached and which has to be turned by a further two cookroaches. The crocodile gives the preserved mixed fruit in the preserved-mixed-fruit trough that mushy consistency that is so sought after in mixed fruit and for which the cookroaches who lug the trough into the Interhotel are rewarded with sincere compliments, to which they generally respond with a cautious raising of the middle finger. The pot-sink knows the merits of the steam-jet hose, also known as the ‘cobra’, that yellow-and-black something that now and then feels an uncontrollable desire for freedom and, with a whistling release of steam, goes its own way. That means that we, the two pot-sink cookroaches, have to ‘become fakirs’ and ‘teach the cobra to play the flute’, that is: slip through under the wildly wriggling, boiling hot snake dance and turn down the steam valve at the entrance to the pot-sink until the manometer beside it once more indicates tamed levels. The pot-sink alone allows the observer the sight of Cacerlaca superdimensionalis, known for short as ‘Super Roach’, searching through pots and pans, tubs and vats for the remains of the Komplekte – and that without epaulettes and hygienic clothing! Anyone who sees this member of the army has to shout ‘Mooncalf’. Mooncalf is the kitchen ghoul, a regular NCO, who had long since served his 10 years but couldn’t manage outside, repented and returned to the environment he was used to. He regularly throws pieces of snot in the stew pan, is stooped and carries the hygiene knapsack, on the side of which is a lever that sprays ‘some stuff’. Normally we have to ventilate the room for an hour after that and aren’t allowed in the pot-sink. But Mooncalf only does the spraying for form’s sake, the cockroaches lie on their backs and laugh. Christian.
TC Q/Schwanenberg, 2.12.1984
Dear Meno, Today is the first Sunday in Advent and the candles will be burning at home. Thank you for your offer, but please don’t send me any books. In the little free time we get I write my letters or catch up on my sleep. I brought a box of books with me but had to send it back. It’s not advisable to be seen with a book in your hand too often. Then you’re looked on as a ‘professor’ and ‘professors think they’re superior’ and they’re fair game for special treatment. Fish (that’s what we call our platoon commander, a Comrade First Lieutenant) likes to give ‘professors’ extra individual drill on the obstacle course in the evening after News Camera. And he wears glasses himself, which puzzles me (are glasses a sign of stupidity?). There are even some among my fellow cadets who have something against books. Special treatment comes from above and from below; the latter is seen as ‘internal training’ and connived at by our superiors. Cadet Burre was the object of some ‘internal training’ only a few hours ago. He’s not in Company 4, where I am (tank commanders), but in 3, tank drivers, whose rooms are one floor lower down. My room-mate Irrgang and I heard some noise and rushed down. One of the prospective tank drivers was standing facing the assembled squad reading out a love poem Burre had written. It was kitschy and I felt like laughing along with the others. But I didn’t feel like laughing when Burre grabbed the reader by the throat. With a couple of blows the reader knocked little, fat Burre to the ground (an odd sound, quite different from in films where the sounds are added on), then Burre was grabbed by four of them and debagged while the one who’d been reading fetched a pair of work mittens and a so-called ‘bercu’ (‘bear’s cunt’, it’s what the chapka we wear in the winter’s called) and, to the jeers of those around, shouted, Bread-roll (clearly Burre’s nickname) – now we’re going to play at Sigmund Freud. Father and you are always telling me I should observe carefully, should try to describe what I see as precisely as possible. But I couldn’t see Burre’s face, just heard his breathing. Burre was thrashing about, trying to jerk his lower body up and down, but the four held him tight. The one who’d been reading grasped Burre’s penis with the work-glove, held up the piece of paper with the poem and recited, ‘O Melanie, could I but kiss you by moonlight …’, all the other cadets in the corridor were urging him on. (Toss him off! Let’s see if Bread-roll can get it up. Come on, where is it? God, Fatso, you stink like a polecat!) The reader pressed the bercu against Burre’s penis and started to ‘milk the chicken’.
I went up to the reader and said, Stop it. He stared at me as if he couldn’t understand what I was saying. Irrgang supported me, That’s what I want to tell you as well, my friend. Leave him in peace. The others just laughed, the reader as well, then he went on with his ‘milking’. He’s a great hulk, I’m more of a shrimp. Then Burre suddenly said, Ooh, I feel great, let the idiots carry on. At that they laughed even louder. – Please don’t tell my parents about this letter. We probably won’t get leave over Christmas since a ‘Guard Complex I’ week of SST (‘Social Science Training’) has been arranged. How’s the Stahls’ little boy? How are things at Dresdner Edition? Are you still working on the Schevola book? Salve, Christian.
armed forces rate/Schwanenberg, 4.12.84
dear pa, birthday greetings+++unfortunately couldn’t get present+++moving out to camp+++letter follows+++love christian
TC Q/Schwanenberg, 16.12.84
Dear Parents, Today you will have lit three candles and I’m writing you the promised le
tter. Many thanks for yours that was delivered to me out in the field camp. Dear Ma – I wasn’t thinking, please excuse me. I should have realized what would be going through your mind when you saw the telegram boy at the door. But I wanted to wish Pa a happy birthday and didn’t have time for a letter.
It could well be that they read our letters but I don’t care. I know it’s forbidden to write so openly about things here. If you complain and are asked where you got the information I would probably get into trouble. As if thousands didn’t go through the same thing and talk about it at home some time or other.
Field camp. It started on the 4th at 3.30 a.m. with ‘Action stations’. Whistles, shouts, people rushing all over the place. Be ready to move off within a set time, grey blanket lengthwise over the bed. Proceed to a designated assembly point, where we wait. Suddenly Fish orders, Division – about turn! We do a 180-degree turn. Fish comes and stands alongside us, points to the horizon: Just look at that sunrise – something like that’s rare. You may never see such a magnificent one again! When the duty officer appears, the company is divided up into groups. Irrgang, Breck and I are part of the ammunition group. Off we go to the technical depot, 60 tanks, approaching from Godknowswhere, are to be shelled up. Lugging cases of ammunition. When in action, one tank has a complement of 43 shells, each weighing 50 kg. 43 × 50 = 2,150 kg. There are ten of us, so 2,150 × 60 ÷ 10 = 12,900 kg of shells for each of us to lug to the tanks. The shells have to be thrown to the tanks ‘in chain’ where a driver fits them into the racks. After that exercise I caught myself doing ‘straight-ahead-staring’, what they call ‘breathing’. You stand there and breathe. Nothing else.
The tanks that are to go to the field camp with us are loaded onto wagons at the goods depot. We travel in cattle trucks, where the Mongol allows us to lie down on the chopped straw, in the direction of Cottbus, spend hours shunted into a siding, then continue on towards Frankfurt/Oder. The field camp is in the vicinity of the Polish border, the Oder isn’t far away – as we marched into the camp we could hear the ice floes drifting down the river. The camp’s in the woods, 20 railway carriages from the war years arranged in a square, behind them a stone building for the driving instructors and the officers; the wagons are for us. In them are one table, one stove (all with the stovepipe missing); we sleep on planks of wood across both ends. There are 16 of us, 4 on top, 4 below, the same at the other end, a bare 1 metre space for each one. Where I was to sleep there was a dead stag beetle (female), unfortunately I had nothing to keep it in and didn’t know what to do with it and couldn’t put it in the letter (it would get damaged when they stamp it). Irrgang said, Give it to me, at least it’s a bit of protein and who knows, we might be dining on just Komplekte here. Frozen dust everywhere, it’s hanging down from the ceiling like a forest of dirty crocheting needles. At least there’s electricity, 1 bulb casts 1 circle of light. First of all we put our kit away, then dig the company latrine. Every year’s intake has to do it again. For washing there’s an outside tap, frozen, of course, but the driving instructors have thought of that and unfreeze it with a flame-thrower. The water is pumped out of the forest floor (and is naturally not drinking water). So washing is a true pleasure: every morning we line up in gym shorts, otherwise naked apart from our boots, in a refreshingly cool winter wind, and move off at the double: march! through the powder snow to wash in the troughs, in which the water is naturally frozen, chop away the ice with the tank axe and enjoy the plunge. What is the difference between a skunk and an army cadet after a few days at the field camp? The cadet doesn’t have any eau de Cologne. Every morning we’re woken at 5, then 10 minutes for washing, 10 minutes to put the room in order, breakfast: ‘O-tins’ (O for operations). Then march off for training, it lasts from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Shooting practice with the barrel inset (it’s stuck into the tank gun so it can take smaller-calibre shells), with the tank MG. Practise with live hand grenades. We march off with the ‘lemons’, as they’re called, in the pockets on our trouser legs to a burnt-out T34 here in the forest, climb in, pull the ring on the grenade, briefly emerge from cover and throw the grenade at a class enemy made out of sawn-off pines and already in a bad way from the lemon effect. Irrgang asks, What do I do, Comrade Corp’ral, ’f the grenade drops on my paw? – ’ve y’ already pulled the ring? Corporal Glücklich asks. – Think so, Comrade Corp’ral. – So what’re y’worryin’ about. Y’won’t have to wash it again.
Tactical training: for that we go to the Tiktak range, for tactics are as refreshing as Tictacs. And everything so near, only a few kilometres through the winter woods. Crawl, pulling ourselves along by the elbows, to the horizon, aim, crawl back, running, creeping, sliding, crawling, hauling, sprawling, oh, aren’t we having fun in mock fights with a wooden gun. Driving practice with tanks. What I was really born for. I’m the son of a time-served metalworker, I’m the son of a trauma surgeon, I’m not a ‘professor’, I tell myself again and again. I’m furniture, a dishcloth, has a dishcloth ever driven a tank badly? Right then: there’s the gas, there’s the brakes, there’s the gears, to start the engine turn up the oil pump, prime with oil then press the starter button, engine up to 500 rev/min, to steer it you have the two steering levers, one on the right, one on the left, to see there’s the observation slit. We practise on an army training course, the tank bounces up and down like a rocking chair, the driving instructor, who’s up in the commander’s hatch, roars over the intercom that’s plugged into your tank hood, Listen to the engine, you dud, put your foot down, can’t you hear it’s labouring? Double-declutch. Brackish water comes in through the hatches, the MG slit is closed, on the end of the barrel the ‘elephant’s condom’, a rubber cap for protection. Russky on the right! the instructor suddenly bawls. Have I misheard? Russky? Aren’t we fighting side by side with our comrades-in-arms of the Warsaw Pact? The tank spins to the right. Rattatatat! the instructor shrieks, he’s had it! After driving there’s cleaning and oiling the tank. Each metal part is rubbed clean and, as is well known, a tank consists entirely of wood. And of course it’s the furniture that does the scrubbing while the instructors gather round a stove drinking coffee.
Guard duty. At night the winter constellations glitter, more beautiful than on Meno’s ten-minute clock. The moon looks like a 1-mark piece, you stand guard for 2 hours, the cold creeping up from your toes to your bottom, your back (I’ve got Gudrun’s belt round my kidneys, it keeps them warm), makes your muscles start quivering, there’s a razor on your nose, and the guards’ urine forms stalagmites sticking out of the snow like bizarre yellow flowers. On the third day there was an SI (‘Special Incident’): Cadet Breck was on guard and became nervous when there was a rustling in the plantation opposite the guard post. When, after he had called out several times, the rustling grew louder (enemy agent! parachutist! NATO advance guard!), Breck raised his Kalashnikov and fired half the magazine of tracer bullets into the plantation. (Normally he should have let off a warning shot into the air first, but before going out on guard duty Cadet Breck had been at the soldier’s comforter, Dur.) Now there was a dead wild boar. Our CC (company commander), Captain Fiedler, swore at this Special Incident – after all, you can’t simply gun down a wild boar in a state forest. But Fish said, Well, since the beast’s dead, we can eat it. – Fiedler: Have you done that before, Comrade First Lieutenant? – Fish: Nah, but there’s bound to be a cook among the cadets. (There wasn’t.) – Sergeant Rehnsen: We sh’d stick it on a spit. – Inca: How? I’ve had a look. Its arsehole’s closed and where’re you goin’ to find a spit? – Rehnsen: We’ll dump it in a cauldron and boil it. – An’ where’re you goin’ to find a boiler? And the pig’s still got its bristles on. Breck, you swine, you’ll scrub the swine, it that clear? And you two, Hoffmann, Irrgang, take those stupid grins off your faces and make some sensible suggestions.
So how can a wild boar be frizzled out in the woods by people who’re hungry but completely clueless? Cadets dig a pit, chop wood and stack it in the bottom of the pit. Then tanks dr
ive up and park, one on the right, one on the left of the pit. Breck, Irrgang and I put on heavy-duty mittens and try to scrape off the bristles. It doesn’t work, they’re too stubborn. So Fish uses the flame-thrower on them. The pig now looks like a roasted doormat. A steel-wire noose with a hook is put round its neck. A steel hawser, such as every tank has, is fixed between the two ‘trestles’ that have been parked beside the pit, the hook is hung on the hawser. Then the fire is lit and the pig roasted, after half an hour the hawser’s glowing. The pig’s full of smoked parasites. Fish sticks his bayonet into the flesh and prises a few out. I don’t know who ate any of the roast pork, I’m on guard duty again, listening to the ice breaking up on the distant Oder.