The Tower: A Novel

by Uwe Tellkamp

  One of those Ulrich things, Meno thought as his brother wiped his face with a handkerchief dipped in eau de Cologne and spread his arms wide, beaming with delight: shot on target, he would later say, holding Malivor Marroquin’s photo; the Chilean had been standing around patiently with his finger on the shutter release of a Praktika and had caught both the flying Golden Delicious and Ulrich’s landing; his plate camera was keeping an eye on Meno’s balcony. Another thing was that Ulrich was thinking about sending his dentist a card on New Year’s Eve. ‘No one wishes their dentist a Happy New Year. But then no one knows how much he suffers. I always say, give a flower seller flowers and a dentist a smile for New Year. Why not? Even if it’s one of his own. And even if he’s called Frau Doktor Knabe.’ When, as now, he had sat down at the head of a table laden with good food where there was a big enough audience, he liked to impart, in tones of utter conviction, knowledge that was at best patchy and would not have withstood serious examination; but although doubt would appear on some of the faces, Ulrich’s self-assured body language, his expression of certainty that suggested that there was more to what he was saying, was convincing enough to keep any scepticism unexpressed. People withdrew into themselves, were no longer quite sure, were afraid of making fools of themselves – how could one dare to cast doubt on an authority such as the eldest of the Rohdes, the Technical Director of one of the most important firms in Dresden (making typewriters, low-power engines and springs, the latter everything from mattress springs to coach springs for railway carriages), a ‘Hero of Work’ (Ulrich had spent part of the 10,000 marks that went with it on their trip to Cuba) with intimate knowledge of the ups and downs (and, above all, the to-ings and fro-ings) of the planned economy; they didn’t dare and held their tongues, but checked up when they got home, smirked or slapped their thigh, annoyed with themselves and determined to expose Ulrich the next time. Gudrun, however, did not remain silent. ‘That’s interesting, Uli. You sound very convincing, you could easily take the part of a director in a play about, let’s say, a socialist high-speed bricklayer. It’s almost a pity that your rock-solid certainties are mistaken. For example, the Garrison Church in Dresden is called just that, the Garrison Church and not the Garrison’s Church, even though to be correct it ought to be called that. Otherwise it would be a church in the form of a garrison, wouldn’t it? But good for you, Uli, you’ve got a natural gift for it, we have to grant you that, and you’ll go far, perhaps even as far as a high-speed bricklayer.’

  At that Ulrich would pause for thought, check the effect her intervention had had on his audience, make some remark about the notorious unworldliness of workers in the cultural sphere, then just carry on. As well as that there was Uncle Shura. Neither Anne nor Meno had ever seen him, Kurt would just shrug his shoulders when asked about this dubious uncle; Ulrich insisted he had known him since childhood and even now (he was a very influential man in Moscow, he said, but one who worked behind the scenes) ‘did business with him’. It was from this Uncle Shura that Ulrich claimed to have all sorts of recipes that he described as ‘truly authentic’ and as coming to us ‘from the depths of the Russian people’, for example instructions on how to make pickled cucumbers that Uncle Shura had from his babushka, who had been given them by the witch Baba Yaga herself. His babushka had given Uncle Shura the recipe on her deathbed, as she breathed her last, her voice scarcely audible, after she’d kissed the icon and crossed herself; and Uncle Shura had then passed it on to him, his friend from his earliest years, under the seal of strictest secrecy and to promote friendship among the nations (if not on his deathbed). Similarly a recipe for kvass and the ‘ultimate method’ of repairing bicycle tyres. The vodka too, under the influence of which Helmut Hoppe was gradually becoming merry, had its source in the unfathomable depths of Russia, with which Uncle Shura was in mysterious intuitive contact.

  ‘Come on, Uli boy, tell us.’

  ‘It would be a sin, if I were to reveal it to you. It comes from Grandmother’s deathbed, that’s an obligation you accept, you don’t give it away.’

  ‘I can unnerstand that. But we’re your relatives, yer own flesh an’ blood! You refuse to share it with us, you wanna keep it all for yersel’, shame on you, my friend, shame on you. I’d never have thought it of you, no I wouldn’t.’

  ‘All right, then, since it’s you. I don’t want people saying I was stingy at my daughter’s wedding.’

  ‘Nah, you’ve never been a penny-pincher, have to give you that,’ Helmut Hoppe said, his Saxon accent becoming thicker and thicker. ‘How long did it take to put all this stuff together, eh? An’ what did y’use t’ grease their palms, the bastards? I s’pose a few mattress springs must’ve changed hands. But you’re tryin’ to wriggle out of it, Uli boy, you’re changin’ the subject again. I don’t think the old geezer would’ve liked that, him bein’ a friend of all the nations, like. Now out with it, the recipe f’ this voddy. By the way, chief’ – Helmut Hoppe turned to Herr Honich – ‘your suckin’ pig’s great, I c’d gorge myself on it, I really could.’

  ‘Right then. You take spirit, ninety-six proof, to which you add distilled water to the desired amount. Add one sugar cube and three drops of pure glycerine. Seal the bottle.’

  ‘Thass all?’

  ‘Then some blackberry leaves picked in the spring.’

  ‘Why picked in the spring?’

  ‘That’s when they’re full of juice, I assume. You put them in a little bottle with pure alcohol. Close the bottle and leave it in the warm sun on the windowsill for ten days.’

  ‘An’ what if it rains for ten days? Y’ll be left wi’ no’hing but vinegar.’

  ‘You put three drops of that extract in the big bottle.’

  ‘Jus’ three drops? Sounds a bit acupuncturic, ’f y’ask me. An’ then?’

  ‘The vodka’s ready.’

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  ‘Don’ b’leeve it.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Reelly ready?’

  ‘Really.’

  Helmut Hoppe regarded his glass. ‘Well yeh, now y’say so, the taste of a few blackcurrants does come through. Did y’hear Weizsäcker’s speech?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Hm. More’n three drops o’ blackcurrant in there. Great guy, a real Fed’ral Preziden’ he is. Looks impressive, no’ like the bigwigs here. I wonder what’s goin’ t’ happen in the Soviet Union now. They’ll have t’ keep off the blackcurrants now, so t’ speak. Y’r uncle Shoe-ra ’ll be drinkin’ water ’stead o’ vodker. Hey, look, the dancin’s startin’.’

  Richard, sitting beside Niklas at a table at the far end, only heard snatches of what people at the top were saying. He observed Josta, who, to his relief, was sitting a long way away from Anne, with Wernstein’s friends at a table under the blossoming pear trees. Lucie didn’t look round at him. The man cut up her food for her, wiped her mouth, raised his forefinger two or three times, at which she nodded and lowered her head. Richard would have most liked to get up and knock the guy flat, it took a great deal of self-control to appear uninvolved, to sip his wine and feign interest in what Niklas had to say about the re-election of Ronald Reagan, Michel Platini’s goals at the European Championships, the sudden disappearance of touch-up spray for cars from the stores (there’d been a film called Beat Street, following which trains had been sprayed with graffiti). Anne threw him a glance now and then, which made him even more annoyed, and when Herr Scholze and Alois Lange appeared, telling jokes, he excused himself and got up. As Richard was heading for the iron table, someone pulled him into the bushes. It was Daniel.

  ‘Awkward situation, isn’t it?’ The boy grinned. He’d shot up, at fourteen he was almost as tall as Christian. ‘How about a little deal?’

  ‘What kind of deal?’

  ‘Well, I won’t go up, tap my glass with a spoon and tell things about you and my mother – and you shell out a hundred marks for that.’


  Richard said nothing.

  ‘I’m serious,’ the boy said with a smile. ‘I really feel like going up to your wife and whispering things to her.’

  ‘You do, do you?’ Richard looked round.

  ‘Don’t worry, there’s no one here. Apart from a damn tomcat perhaps. Your wife would be delighted.’

  ‘She already suspects something,’ Richard replied, weary and horrified.

  ‘But you’re not sure. Are you willing to take the chance? It’d be great to drop a bomb like that in the middle of a wedding.’

  ‘So Lucie’s got a louse of a brother.’

  ‘Hey, don’t you dare touch me! Come on, let’s get this over with before someone comes. I get a hundred marks or –’

  Richard looked in his wallet. ‘I’ve only got a fifty with me.’

  Daniel looked surprised, seemed to become uneasy, then he noticed Richard’s wristwatch. ‘Then give me that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hand it over.’

  ‘No. It’s a family heirloom, my oldest son’s going to get it.’

  ‘Lange and Sons,’ Daniel read, tilting his head to the side. ‘Now I’m going to have it, otherwise in two minutes you’re a dead man, I promise.’

  Richard stared at Daniel. ‘Can’t we discuss this?’

  ‘Not interested.’

  ‘We could meet some time.’

  ‘Give me the watch.’

  ‘OK, my friend. But what do I tell my wife when she asks me where it is? She saw me putting it on.’

  ‘I don’t care. Think something up. Tell her it was stolen.’

  ‘Which would be more or less the case.’

  ‘In the Sachsenbad, for example. When you went swimming one Thursday.’

  ‘And I put it on today, before her very eyes? Come on.’

  ‘Then it was stolen here. Perhaps by the bridegroom before he sailed off to Cuba.’

  ‘Then I’d go straight over to her and we’d turn everything upside down. She’d probably also suspect you’ve got it. She was watching you before, in the church. And do you really think I wouldn’t notice if someone stole the watch off my wrist?’

  ‘Then you can bring it to the Sachsenbad for me next Thursday, then you could say it was stolen there.’

  ‘In that case that’s the end of your blackmail here. And if your attempted blackmail comes up, I might have to get divorced – but you’ll end up in the juvenile court.’

  Daniel hesitated, broke off a twig, twisted it into little pieces. Richard’s anger had gone, now he felt sorry for the lad. ‘Why do you need the money?’

  ‘I did something stupid,’ Daniel said after a while.

  ‘Does Josta know about it?’

  ‘No. Nor her new guy either.’

  Richard observed the boy. There was something funny about a blackmail attempt from someone whose voice was breaking. Suddenly Daniel took a step towards him and threw his arms round him.

  ‘There I am, walkin’ in Saxon Swizz’land, and su’nly I’m under this huge rock, a real whopper. An’ I says to myself, if that comes down you won’t be able to catch it all at once. Have a drink, Meno, then we’ll go an’ dance.’ Helmut Hoppe swayed slightly when he stood up. He went to fetch a bottle, checked the glasses on the table, as if he were trying to work out the course of an obstacle race, looked at the label, then the metal spout in the neck of the bottle, pulled it to one side, like a flag being kept away from enemy hands, and sent clear, curving jets of schnapps spouting over glasses, trousers and shoulders.

  ‘I’ve been reading your books,’ Meno said to Ulrich, who raised an ironic, wait-and-see eyebrow as he licked a few splashes he’d wiped off his suit, ‘and, as I see it, in the final analysis everything’s a question of energy. Brown coal’s our primary source of energy. But you have to be able to get at it. If I’ve understood the tables in the paper correctly, it costs more to clear away a unit of overburden than the same unit of brown coal brings in?’

  ‘Economics –’ Ulrich started to reply, but Honich broke in. ‘Where’d you read that?’

  ‘In a memorandum from the Economic Secretariat of the Central Committee.’

  ‘An internal document,’ Ulrich said. ‘It mustn’t go any farther.’

  ‘But they’ll have reserves of which we here know nothing.’ Honich nodded earnestly. ‘Some things are difficult to understand, but the comrades on the Central Committee are no fools and so far we’ve overcome all difficulties. The unity of economic and social policy –’

  ‘– costs more than we can afford,’ Ulrich said.

  ‘Surely you don’t mean that seriously?’

  ‘I do, and it’s no secret, ask in your organization. Ask the men with whom you do your exercises. Only recently I was at a meeting of the Planning Commission and people were speaking just as openly.’

  ‘Aha, private tuition again, is it?’ Gerhart Stahl asked, seeing their looks of dismay, also fear, as he walked past. ‘Just be careful what you say, the sky isn’t blue, even if that’s the way you see it, but red, and Moscow’s a long way away.’

  ‘Please refrain from these constant hostile remarks, Herr Stahl. I warn you, there’ll come a time when you suffer the consequences.’ Pedro Honich turned back to Ulrich Rohde and Helmut Hoppe. ‘You’re right, there are shortcomings. I’m not blind, even if Herr Stahl thinks I am. But just think what we’re aiming for, what our country has achieved so far, what ruins had to be cleared away, and what it could achieve if our people … These childhood diseases could be eradicated, we could work together on building a future where truly socialist life could blossom –’

  ‘D’you know what an economy is?’ Helmut Hoppe downed a schnapps. ‘I need a dustpan – an’ I can choose one from half a dozen, even if it looks like my wife. And d’you know what a planned economy is? When there’s not even any dust.’

  ‘Excuse me, but it’s always the same old story. Are things really that bad for you? If I look at the spread set out here, the presents for the couple, and compare it with what we used to have – What are you complaining about?’

  ‘OK then, y’re right there. That’s true. When I was young I sometimes didn’t have a car; an’ my Traudel an’ me couldn’t go sailin’ off to Cuba either, all we knew about Cuba was the Cuba crisis.’

  ‘I’m pinning my hopes on Gorbachev,’ Pedro Honich said. ‘I think he’s a good man.’

  ‘Openness, glasnost. If he’s for openness, great, but what’s being opennessed? That brown coal makes a mucky mess? You know that anyway, you don’t need to read about it in the paper as well. And perestroika an’ perfume both begin with a P, as my Traudel says.’

  ‘If all members of the working class were to talk like you …’

  ‘Oh, knock it off. I come from a firm that’s an existent reality. And the way things go there’s as follows: people go to work and after work there’s nothin’ left in the shops. So they do their shoppin’ during work hours. And I’m the foreman, am I to forbid them from doing that? ’s what I do masel’. We make things that aren’t there, an’ if there is something there, we make a queue. An’ even the Comrade Chairman of the State Council said there’s a lot more c’d be got out of our enterprises.’

  ‘That’s why we have the problems we have,’ Pedro Honich replied. Malivor Marroquin slipped past, taking photos. Hoppe put his schnapps glass calmly down on the table. ‘I’ve been awarded the “Activist of Socialist Work” medal several times,’ he said, slowly and emphatically, his strong dialect disappearing, ‘and as for Uli, he’s even got the “Hero of Work”. Are you trying to tell me what things are like in my firm?’