The Tower: A Novel

by Uwe Tellkamp

  DIARY

  (Tuesday)

  By now her hair is more ash blonde than grey. Kim Novak’s hair in Vertigo. Hydrogen peroxide. Don’t think Judith uses that. She asked me about Christian – and whether I’d brought my Dawn alarm clock with me. Then we talked about plums (the Old Man of the Mountain’s brought some Zibarten schnapps, a delicious speciality). I told her the Zibarte was a wild plum variety from the late Celtic period. She shrugged her shoulders. Me: ‘Best of all I like plums when they’re young and still almost green; they’re already juicy, plump but without grubs.’ She: ‘But when they’re ripe they’re sweeter, heavier, more intense. These young things, don’t they give you stomach ache?’ Me: ‘Only when you’re insatiable.’ She: ‘You’re not insatiable – as far as plums are concerned?’ I continued my lecture on the Zibarte plum, an interesting excursion into botany. Judith turned away, bored (?). And round here there are cherry plums, bigger and lovelier than I’ve ever seen on the slopes above the Elbe. As a name ‘cherry plum’ shows an odd lack of imagination; I would have called Prunus cerasifera a peach. The Old Man of the Mountain shook his head slowly from side to side, explaining that one did not rechristen something that bore the name myrobalan from the depths of time. – How does Judith know I have an alarm clock?

  (Wednesday)

  One word about breakfast, for all I have to say about early-morning exercises that here (I have to be fair) are recommended rather than compulsory is: since so far I’ve still managed to get up at five for my lauds and snip off a bit of the day’s work with the scissors of my willpower, I can observe the gathering of keep-fitters on the sports field behind Lietzenburg with an easy eye. You can borrow the army tracksuit – you have to sign for it, of course. Later on in the day the man in charge of Fun and Games (as the official name has it) is the house electrician – they say Günter Mellis, when he’s staying here, is generous in his offers of help – caretaker, messenger and boilerman in winter as well. I spent ages wondering where I’d seen him before: when I met Arbogast on the way to see the Old Man of the Mountain. The man leading the students from the House of the Teacher. Our F&G leader insisted he’d nothing to do with him, he’d always worked here, at Lietzenburg. Similarly Frau Kruke, housekeeper, charwoman and watchdog, Judith’s ‘house dragon’. She insists she’s never heard of Else Alke, even though she’s the spitting image of her. A dwarf shuffling along in slippers. – To get back to breakfast, which she’s in charge of. As Judith takes her plastic plate with the standard two slices of Tilsiter cheese, two slices of blutwurst, two slices of bologna, one little slab of hotel butter, two slices of pumpernickel (Saturdays rolls from Kasten’s bakery, Sundays a piece of cake), Lührer, the writer, who’s in front of her in the queue, says, ‘Enjoy your meal’, and apologizes that ‘recently’ he voted for her expulsion, she must understand that he had four children to provide for. – That’s all I needed! (Judith) Breakfast starts on the dot of eight. At the moment there are thirty-three of us in the house. In the canteen eight tables, each spread with a red-and-white-checked cloth and decorated with a light-green, transparent plastic vase, stand silent. In each vase there is water rising to a line marked one centimetre below the rim and pierced by a single artificial flower, style: red marguerite, from the workshops in Seibnitz. All the stems are ground like a cannula and slightly curved, inclined, as seen from the canteen door, to the right, so that the blooms all look to the east and at eight o’clock on the dot they all (assuming it’s a good day) don a little cap of light the size of your thumbnail. On every table the latest copies of Neues Deutschland, Junge Welt and the Ostsee-Zeitung, in aluminium napkin holders in the shape of a half-sun, await the guests; in addition, on the men’s tables there is Magazin and on the women’s Für Dich and Sowjetfrau. The copy of the satirical weekly Eulenspiegel is chained and on such a short chain that it can only be read at the occasional table by the entrance. There is a board with slots for strips of paper (blue and pink, typewritten) and each morning you have to check where you’re sitting. In order to make us mingle as much as possible and to ‘assure the maximum communicative contact’ (quoted from house regulations) the men and women – always separate – go from table to table. But what is the use of that when the Old Man of the Mountain spreads out his personal napkin, Philipp brings his own cutlery, Judith responds to Karlfriede Sinner-Priest’s comment that Fräulein Schevola actually had no right to be there by sweeping her plate off the table and strolling out of the room, and Lührer, the writer, all too pointedly places a jar of Nutella between himself and the poor editor, Rohde?

  (Wednesday evening)

  Notions –

  Prague ’68. The third way. Stony monumental faces on the canyons of Sacred Theories. The bare You or I that, like everything unavoidable, is not without its comic side, nor without its boring side. There, in ’68 in Czechoslovakia, a humane society seemed possible, a society that does not forget that it consists of individuals. Democracy and open discussion. Criticism, publicly expressed but not simply for its own sake.

  Schevola: ‘A dream, Herr Rohde. Crushed by tanks.’

  The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘Perhaps Dubček and his friends were just lucky.’

  Philipp: ‘You a heretic? Go on.’

  The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘The most radiant dreams are those that never need to become reality. Do you, Herr Londoner, seriously consider a capitalist socialism a possibility? Freedom of production, of reaction to the market, demands freedom of thought. Your father had something interesting to say about that recently.’

  Philipp: ‘Thought does not have to be unfree in socialism. Unfree socialism isn’t socialism. A genuinely socialist society will develop by openly naming and overcoming its contradictions.’

  Schevola: ‘That means we’re not living in socialism.’

  The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘Don’t say that so emphatically, my dear. – Dubček has become a martyr, Prague ’68 a legend. It could become a myth because it was spared failure. That was the fault of the fraternal states and we’re left with a fairy-tale flower that never had to prove in the soil of reality that its bloom would be as beautiful as promised. – You think me an opportunist. Maybe that’s what I am. Maybe I’m a coward. I’m on publishers’ advisory boards, now and then the Minister for Books listens to me – and I didn’t dare to speak up loudly for your book, Judith. I’m even prepared to look inside myself and to admit I found a nasty little piece of envy down there. I’m a censor, and not an easy-going one. I was in the SA. I was a soldier in the Wehrmacht. I was in the camp. Despite everything I saw, I believed in the good in people. I’ve remained a child. I’m afraid. For this country as well. I’m no longer young and my life’s consisted of broken dreams, day after day. I don’t believe in anything any more.’

  Schevola: ‘Amen to that.’

  Philipp: ‘You’re old, that’s all. Indigestion, itchiness, you’ve seen it all before … the whole business! But you’re making things difficult for us. There are lots of people like you in this country and, unfortunately, often in senior positions. Waving things away, weary hands, weary blood – but we need strength, encouragement, it’s not easy –’

  Schevola: ‘– to be a revolutionary? Da-da-da-da! It’s so difficult to bring happiness to mankind.’

  The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘And to stay polite as you do so. I don’t hold it against you for dismissing me as an old man. But itchiness … that’s tactless, my lad.’

  Philipp: ‘Judith Schevola: cool, cynical, ironic. Go on, open your big mouth and make fun of us. We still believe in something. And what do you believe in? Nothing! Like you, Herr Altberg.’

  The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘Yesyes, I’ve said that already. It used to be called defeatism. Carried the death penalty by firing squad.’

  Philipp: ‘Then resign if you can’t do anything any more. Your generation is hanging on to power, they’d rather die than let someone else take over. And what use to us is all the hullabaloo about young people, the reserves
of the Party, if we stay just that: reserves … Oh, what the hell, that’s not really the problem. The problem is that the gerontocracy’s leading this country to rack and ruin! We have new data, the economy’s heading for disaster – and no one seems concerned about it!’

  Schevola: ‘A priest was murdered in Poland. Popieluszko he was called. That concerns me.’

  Philipp: ‘You think that now you can say whatever you want.’

  Schevola: ‘For a while I’ll think about what I’m saying. All that’s left is to lock me up or kill me. Well, Herr Altberg, however long you look at them, the chestnut leaves above us don’t look like ears.’

  The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘Oh yes they do. Dachshund’s ears. All that is left us is precision.’

  Schevola: ‘How do you imagine your world revolution? A bit of playing Che Guevara in the jungle? You’ll only catch simple-minded girls at the university with that.’

  Philipp: ‘Make fun of us, if you like. What does it matter? – By the way, Marisa’s coming here.’

  Schevola: ‘Your Chilean whore.’

  Philipp: ‘Oh, yes. She’s neither simple-minded nor a student, so what else is there left for you to call her? What was it you said when we were going to Eschschloraque’s?’

  The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘Can you explain this garden spider’s nest to me, Herr Rohde?’

  Schevola: ‘You’re welcome to stay here, we’ve nothing to hide. It’d be a pity about the juicy bit of gossip you’d miss.’

  Herr Altberg: ‘Don’t worry, back then I just happened be in the vicinity; Herr Rohde is as discreet as Pravda.’

  Philipp: ‘ “I was never particularly taken with middle-class morality … you’re welcome to bring your little Chilean woman along.” ’

  Schevola: ‘Quack, quack, quack.’

  We saw the bay, in the haze the cliffs of Møn. Sunlight settled over the clear depths of the bay; an endless shimmer over the slow slapping of the water: as if swarms of grasshoppers were making their wings buzz. Beside it, scenes as peaceful as a jar of night-cream.

  (Thursday)

  Writers need training! But the tutor, who had come with the ferry from Stralsund bringing ice cream, sections copied from Apprentice Year in the Party and a social science periodical, was shot down by Philipp (‘a hit’, the Old Man of the Mountain said gleefully afterwards, ‘a palpable hit’), who highlighted his errors of logic and misquotations – most of what the tutor was spelling out painfully slowly from typescripts he knew off by heart, precisely, even down to the occasionally old-fashioned spelling of the original; so there the young professor sat, a strand of his long hair in his left fist, a pencil tapping out point-end-point-end in a semicircle in his right, his feet in their openwork slip-ons jogging up and down in time to the click-clack of his pencil on the Sprelacart tabletop until, fed up to the back teeth and examining his fingernails, the tutor suggested: 1) Comrade Smart-aleck should please take over and 2) what did people think of transferring the study of the classics to the beach? Philipp leapt up and wrote on the blackboard:

  Petty bourgeois (Educated) Middle class

  Cabinet with display shelf, budgerigar, knick-knacks, doilies Telephone, Insel series of books, pipe collection

  Visitors: remove shoes (slippers for guests) Can keep their shoes on

  Toilet roll in car with crocheted cover, pine-tree air freshener over dashboard, head-wagging dachshund, Smurfs Leather cover for gear lever, ‘No smoking’ sticker ‘A heart for children’ on the dashboard

  If a dog: Alsatian, Pomeranian, mongrel If a dog: poodle, Afghan hound, Great Dane

  Invites to barbecue party Invites to coffee or tea

  Works team party, punch with inhabitants of apartment block Solitary walks (with wrist bag)

  Watches football (with team scarf) Talks about football, quotes from the legendary Zimmermann commentary on 1954 World Cup

  Forward to Majorca Back to nature

  The wife cooks, cleans, goes out to work, looks after the children The wife cooks, cleans, goes out to work, looks after the children

  Garden plot, swing hammock, garden barbecue, water butt, stock of beer, portable television Dacha

  Puts his hope in the Federal Chancellor Puts his hope in Gorbachev

  The world of early rising The world of coming home late

  I belong to the working class, the tutor said icily, I stick to Marx, Engels and Lenin. He demanded, ‘Your name, comrade.’ Philipp expressed regret that fewer and fewer cadres had a sense of humour, took a brochure from the Institute of Social Sciences off the desk, searched through it briefly, twirling the ends of his moustache into the curving-up ends of a sleigh, and gave the comrade tutor an autograph.

  (Friday)

  Choice of activities (‘the house management recommends’): an excursion to Warnow shipyard in Rostock (5 votes), a sightseeing tour of Sassnitz and the smallest museum in the Republic (the goods wagon in which Lenin, a spark on a long fuse, travelled to the powder-keg of pre-revolutionary Russia, 4 votes). Beside it some joker had scribbled BATHING (19 votes). So it was the Warnow shipyard. I wrote a card to the ship’s doctor (the maritime theme of the new development at Lütten Klein outside Rostock seemed appropriate), then I called Libussa. Arbogast’s consignment of pencils has arrived. She said Frau Honich was snooping around my apartment and suggested I threaten to go to the police. I’ve given my manuscripts to Anne for safe keeping so told her to avoid confrontation even though I find it hard to bear the thought of that bitch’s fingers on the ten-minute clock – how familiar, how comforting the gong I heard over the phone – perhaps even breaking it: some people cannot stand other people’s happiness, the dignity of aristocratic and defenceless objects makes some people want to cripple them. Libussa said Chakamankabudibaba had brought up a poorly digested mouse on my copy of Schelling.

  (Saturday)

  Who wears white gloves nowadays? Marisa’s seem to be of deerskin, so finely tanned that when Marisa closes her fingers to make a fist, shiny infant’s noses form over her knuckles. She wore them with khaki drill trousers, the top of a toothbrush sticking out of the right front pocket, a bright-blue T-shirt with orange flamingos printed on, and a jean jacket casually thrown over her shoulder and held with her little finger. She arrived without luggage. When she saw me (I happened to be listening to some trees with a stethoscope, decaying ones especially are acoustic cathedrals, elms grow with different noises from beeches), she pulled off her soldier’s cap and waved it round and round, as if she were trying to swing an aeroplane propeller. I’d just had a little argument with Judith about reality – Judith’s response to my explanation was to pull up a nettle and show it to me, an impassive expression on her face: ‘That, for me, is reality’; then, still with the nettle in her hand that already had a rash and atolls of itchy spots, she saw Marisa joyfully waving her cap. Philipp was behind us, leaning back against a bent elm branch as thick as an elephant’s leg and rocking to and fro, at the same time leafing through a Reclam volume on utopian socialists (Babeuf, Blanqui); the Old Man of the Mountain was strolling up and down the west side of Lietzenburg, admiring the architectural mixture of art nouveau and English country house, the fairy-tale windows with widespread arms; now and then he would declaim some lines out loud: ‘As when the budding flowers, half dead and half alive / In the cellar’s darkness struggle there to thrive.’ – Judith saw Marisa, went up to her with a smile, embraced her, holding up the hand with the nettle.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ Marisa said. By now her German was almost accent-free.

  ‘Yes. Lovely T-shirt you’ve got on, Frau Sanchez.’

  ‘From Santiago de Chile. May I go and clean my gloves first? I was stupid enough to eat a sticky ice cream. Hello, Herr Rohde.’ I took the stethoscope out of my ears.

  Judith: ‘I’ve got a knife.’

  Marisa: ‘A good one?’

  Judith handed it to Marisa, who unclasped it and examined it with an expert eye. ‘A good knife,’ she said, giving it back to Ju
dith, ‘where did you get it? And do you also know where your thrust should go?’

  ‘Where it hurts, I assume. It’s a genuine French Laguiole, a present from a reader.’

  ‘Please – give it to me. You don’t know how to handle it.’

  ‘I’d love to give you one now. There.’ Judith raised her fist and stopped just short of Marisa’s cheekbone.

  ‘Not very effective, even though it looks spectacular. Don’t deceive yourself, most people find it more difficult than they think to hit someone in the face. I’d be quicker than you, ward the blow off upwards, like this’ – Marisa demonstrated how she would do it – ‘and then hit you there.’ Marisa stopped her little fist in its white glove short of Judith’s Adam’s apple.

  ‘First the man, then the knife.’ Judith regarded the open, stick-insect-slim blade.

  ‘You’d use it for Philipp?’

  Judith looked round at Philipp, who’d put his book down and, sitting astride the branch, had started to cut his fingernails. Now and then he cried, ‘Stupid’, pushed his cream hat back but didn’t come any closer, and I looked for the Old Man of the Mountain, who was now sitting at his typewriter in the sun, glue pot, draft paper and scissors beside him, working away at his mountain project and not looking up. Judith said, ‘You can have the knife. Your demand is so outrageous that I’m beginning to like you again. I like it when a balance clearly tips down on one side. If I have to lose, then properly, the other pan says. At least it’s empty and free.’

  ‘You want to stab from outside but that’s quite wrong. Come on, I’ll show you.’ Marisa took the knife out of her hand, linked arms with Judith and they headed for Lietzenburg, deep in conversation, their heads close together.