by Uwe Tellkamp
‘May I ask you something? – Ernsthaftly.’
‘Go ahead, my dear, if I can answer it.’
‘Philipp often says I’m not interested in the problems in this country – I mean the economic problems. That’s not true. I do keep my eyes open. Do you think –’
‘Lennin,’ Londoner broke in with a sweeping gesture of his right hand; he seemed to move away from Schevola slightly. ‘As soon as the war was over Lennin introduced a capitalist economy into Soviet Russia; he always used to say, capitalism is our enemy but it is also our teacher.’ He gave her a suspicious look, perhaps he thought he’d ventured too far. ‘And it was Lennin who said that, the man who taught us all our trade.’
Meno permitted himself a quiet grin at this ‘Lennin’; it sounded like Lennon with an ‘i’ and Jochen Londoner was a professed fan of the Beatles.
‘And since it’s Christmas I’ll just add this, my dear: Lennin’s theory of the necessity of grassroots democracy. Lennin at the head of the October Revolution, ten days that changed the world – and we’re part of the Soviet Union, we couldn’t survive alone. I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions, in regard to current politics as well.’
They regrouped; Irmtraud and Jochen Londoner fell behind. They were holding hands, looking at the road, saying nothing. Philipp would probably not have been allowed to ask his father such a question; from Meno’s experience problems of that kind were not discussed in the nomenklatura, at least not between the generations. No addresses in the house, except in the safe, no doubts that threatened to become matters of substance in their own four walls, no deviancy, unquestioning loyalty to the Party. Meno recalled Londoner’s malicious subtlety in getting Philipp to invite the Old Man of the Mountain; what a humiliation – and what a strange reaction from the old man. He had been furious with the Londoners for inviting him; he thought that in such a way they had exposed his loneliness, which – and this made it worse – must be so great ‘that it was not even possible for me to decline the invitation in a friendly way’. ‘Act-u-al-ly a substitute invitation,’ that was what he had called it, ‘the way they used to issue a kind invitation to lackeys or the children of the servants to the table with the Christmas presents from which they were allowed to take home a few crumbs.’
‘Do you want to go along with this?’ Meno asked Judith Schevola softly. Philipp was in full flight, Meno was familiar with it, Hanna had also had these ecstatic states; it was something that was alien to him but that he admired, something he’d loved Hanna for. On Philipp’s lips words such as ‘world revolution’, ‘a community in which everyone has a good life, in which no one goes hungry any more and no one is oppressed’ didn’t sound like hollow phrases, as they so often did from the hardliners. Philipp believed in the future. It belonged to socialism – and it belonged to them, the children of heroes, the children of people who had gone through unimaginable suffering for the realization of their ideals. When Philipp’s eyes shone, as they did now, when his enthusiasm at being able to take part in the struggles of this age, which according to the law of history would lead to a tomorrow without exploitation and want, put a flush on his cheeks, he was beautiful and, with his long hair, though with a hat instead of a beret and star, he did resemble his ideal, Che Guevara, a little. At this point usually a different tone broke through, for he, Philipp, and others of a similar background, were the children of the victors of history, of genuine revolutionaries that was, who had not stuck to theory but put it into practice – ‘while the petty bourgeois, the shit-scared and all the riffraff, for whom men and women like my parents put their lives at risk, had kept their heads down and betrayed everything they had worked for’. Meno bit back the question of whether the ‘riffraff’, whom Philipp dismissed with a disparaging wave of the hand, did not also belong to the people, to the working class whom he and his comrades wanted to stand by; when he was in one of these ‘states’ Philipp no longer seemed open to critical arguments.
‘Go along? You mean into the jungle? Where the true revolutionaries live? – Why not?’ Meno remained silent after this reply and with a shrug of the shoulders Judith Schevola went on, ‘It’s for a better world, I once went to Prague for that … however often Altberg might try to decry it. In the end we all have to die, and live … better to burn short and bright like a firework than to spend a long time poking around in cold ash.’ Hostile tones! Meno dropped back, flabbergasted at the way Judith Schevola had spoken, sickened by the smitten sidelong looks she was giving Philipp; it offended him, he recalled their conversation when they were going to see Eschschloraque, the part about calling each other ‘du’ and about wailing geniuses – smitten geniuses were at least equally disappointing.
‘Well, lad’ – Jochen Londoner took his arm – ‘is she the right one for Philipp, what d’you think? You know, I’m starting to get old, this morning Traudel and I were talking about how nice it would be if we had grandchildren and could play with them under the Christmas tree. Grandfather ambitions! Don’t you think a pair of old bracket funguses like us have the right to let the world go hang and just concern ourselves with happy smiling children? We had so hoped that Hanna and you … that you would get back together again. No fnuky, as my Polish friend calls the pleasures of being a grandfather, from those in front either. – Oh well, enough of that.’ But Londoner hadn’t finished yet – Meno, he said, still didn’t seem to realize what he’d lost. ‘Your country, lad, your real home!’, the things that would be possible if … days spent reading in the West Berlin State Library, there were visas for personal and for official travel; he, Londoner, had the ear of the General Secretary; with a document like that one could dip into one world and then another, like an amphibian, unchecked, and if Meno felt that went against his conscience (‘which I could understand’), then the ‘Archipelago’ would still be open to him, the Socialist Union, a continent of unsuspected richness that people ‘over there’, arrogant and with their Atlantic fixation, had absolutely no idea about … the Crimea, the Adriatic islands off Yugoslavia, Cuba, Vietnam, China, the mind-numbing oriental part of the Soviet Union … Dushanbe was wonderful; Bokhara, Samarkand awaited you on the Silk Road, you could sense the very breath of history … after all, Meno, like Hanna and Philipp, was a ‘child of heroes’ (Meno was grateful that Londoner had become ironic again); he was respected (‘oh, definitely’) by the leaders of Party and state, by some, ‘as I have it from a reliable source’, even very highly regarded! ‘You could have a very easy time of it, my dear boy. If you only wanted. That subordinate post in Editorial Office Seven …’
‘The roast hare was very good,’ Meno said when Londoner fell silent. Irmtraud Londoner said nothing.
‘Edu Eschschloraque told me that you all went to see him once.’ Londoner’s voice was firm again; the scholar, measured and well-disposed, had returned to his body. ‘It gave him much food for thought. I think he likes you.’
Meno had to laugh at that. ‘Altberg thinks Eschschloraque hates me.’
‘Oh yes, the red comma. That’s a sensitive matter with him. Like Siegfried, we all have our vulnerable spots. – Georgie Altberg, hm. What do you think of him?’
‘A brilliant essayist, supports young writers like no one else in this country.’
‘That’s not what I was asking.’
‘A man in the depths of despair.’
‘An opportunist, I think. A censor, an author but out of the limelight, an old pal.’ Tapping the fence with his signet ring, the old scholar slipped into his bizarre English again. ‘We are stränsch. Really stränsch.’
They were approaching the limit of East Rome, below them was Block A. The sound of dogs barking came up to them.
‘I go for a walk here almost every evening and they still always bark. Real brutes they are, I wouldn’t like to meet them when they’re running free. Or is it this here?’ Londoner raised his shopping bag.
‘Where are we going actually?’
‘You just wait and see,’ Londoner said with
a sly grin. By now a special lamp was burning beside the statues of the ‘Upright Fighters’ outside the House of Culture, Eternal Flames were flickering in the pylons, guarded by two sentries either side of the avenue leading to Engelsweg.
‘Look.’ Following Londoner’s eye, Meno looked over to Coal Island, lying like a wreck dotted with yellow Argus eyes in the snowy twilight. ‘That’s where the listeners-in are, they’re even busy on Christmas Eve.’
They walked along the path that the street had become until a searchlight was turned on full beam and someone shouted, ‘Password?’
‘Roast hare.’ The searchlight was turned down, Londoner signalled to Meno to follow him. They walked slowly up to the barrier, which consisted of a concrete wall with barbed wire pointing outwards on top; there was a watchtower every fifty metres. From the nearest one a rope was let down in the beam of a torch; Londoner tied the shopping bag to it, gave it a brief tug, the rope was pulled up. Meno went up to the wall. Where he could reach the stone it felt greasy and warm; there was no snow here, the brambles, which were growing all over the concrete and barbed wire, which had climbed up the watchtower and started to wrap it in a cocoon, to catch on to the tops of trees, shimmered like oiled metal.
‘We always do it, my lad. At Christmas something is smuggled up to one of the guards on the watchtower,’ Londoner said, rubbing his hands with a conspiratorial wink. They walked back. The old scholar proudly reported his illegal mercy mission to Irmtraud, who, with an indulgently loving smile, guided him round potholes.
… but the clocks struck, snow dribbled, swirled, fluttered down on Dresden, became firmer, became softer, then grey like flakes of kapok, crusts of snow formed at the crossing points of gutters, swelled up, inflamed by ash, grew into brownish coral outcrops. Between the years Meno heard the carpet beaters again, saw the ‘Persian’ carpets from Vietnam and Tashkent, the rugs from Laos and the People’s Republic of China, saw fathers and their sons brandishing carpet beaters from Zückel’s workshop (behind the little City Hall Park with its weathered statue of Hygieia, savings bank and woodland café, which had ice cream in the summer and hot sausages and grog in the winter, and the ‘Reading Room’ inviting one to peruse the newspapers), working off, beating off, thumping off, knocking down, thwacking down, battering down the rage that had built up over the year; they pounded, they struck with the elegant weapons, with the rococo loops that sat neatly in the hand and, with a crunching, willowy blow, got rid of dirt, fluff and carpet beetle larvae; Zückel would contemplate them meditatively ‘in action’ when he walked round the district … but the clocks struck, inside, in the living rooms heated with difficulty, struck at Ticktock Simmchen’s and Pieper’s Clocks on Turmstrasse; in Malthakus’s stamp shop, on the counter with the picture-postcard albums; in Trüpel’s record shop; on Postmaster Gutzsch’s table in the post office; in Binneberg’s café; in Frau Zschunke’s greengrocer’s; and in the pharmacy: inside –
outside, however, outside the wind got up again and snowstorms danced across the country.
55
The underwater drive
Life with your comrades-in-arms will give you unforgettable experiences
What It Means to be a Soldier
Whistles like that are a fatal stab to sleep.
‘Company Four: Stand to!’
Costa’s clock with the luminous dial moved on to 3 a.m.
‘Go and jump out of the window, Nip, you measly rat.’ – ‘How I hate it! How I hate it!’ – ‘You corpsefuckers, trouser-hangers, fartarses!’ – ‘You Bunsen burners, shit-for-brains, scumbags!’ – ‘Tossers, douchebuckets, cockburners, shirtlifters!’ the commanders growl, desperately trying to get dressed (underpants, field coverall, protection pack, gas mask, belt, tank hood) in the gloomy chill of their room –
‘Dear Mum, What gives you the idea I might do something silly? Because the dear comrades I share the room with keep the radio on all the time? Basically Costa’s a poor soul, his mother died from cancer at 42, she came from the “sleeping villages”, his father worked for Wismut, was retired at 45 on health grounds – bone cancer. Big Irrgang swears like a trooper – but that’s what we all are here – gets on our superior officers’ nerves with his absolute refusal to use the dative and is a real sly fox. Recently he smuggled in litres of “stuff”, his father, who works in refrigerator construction, inserted a false bottom in his travel bag, lined with metal foil, into which they poured several bottles of some sugary Romanian hooch called Murfatlar that turned an honest tank crew into seamen on deck during a storm and doubled the company. Musca, the fly, needs a girlfriend, that’s all, but here there’s only the regimental cultural officer, 130 kg of model worker, and those left on the shelf in the Dutch Courage‚ and even they don’t want to know. Which goes to show that aftershave is not for internal use. Pancake was on a charge of manslaughter but they couldn’t prove anything and now he’s my driver. Recently he waylaid the company commander, put on his lopsided grin and said, “If you want a car, Comrade Captain … you earn peanuts. All you need to do is to tell me, I just have to make a call and you can take your choice. What would you like? A Lada, a Dacia, a Wartburg – or would you go for something more high-powered? No problem.” Our CC merely laughed and said, “You’re after something, aren’t you, Kretzschmar?” – “Yes, well, it won’t be completely free, Comrade Captain; if I could just make that phone call?” A few hours later the cars drove up outside the barracks for him to have a look at. Guys in leather jackets and shades, drinking apple juice and shouting, “Why’re you running round in that uniform?” to Pancake. He put on his grin again. “Well, Comrade Captain? For you I’ll make a special price.” – why should I “do something silly” when I’ve the chance of seeing expressions like that on the face of our CC at that moment?
‘Well, well, Reina Kossmann wants to go and see you, does she?’
A whistle: ‘Company Four – fall in to receive weapons!’ Nip had unlocked the grille, waved the men of the first platoon into the armoury; this time the alert (the siren in the corridor started to wail) wasn’t one of his little jokes; Nip was stone-cold sober and really pissed-off and had stuck a steel helmet on his head; Christian took his AK-47 out of the cupboard, signed for it with the duty corporal in the armoury, dismiss, c’mon, c’mon, down the stairs at the double, Company 4 and 5 gathered outside battalion headquarters, staff officers running to and fro, gesticulating wildly; it had been raining, a mild April night, the smell of the smoke from the metal works mingled with the scent of flowers, line up, number off, march off to the technical depot –
‘Dear Reglinde, I almost envy you that you can now enjoy the view from Father’s study. I know how important it is to him, but Anne told me that it was only by concluding a tenancy agreement with you that they could avoid having someone quartered on them. Griesel set something in motion, probably to show the Herr Medical Councillor that you can’t ignore your neighbours with impunity. And now you’re working with the apes. Congratulations. At least you’ll be seeing some human faces. I remember the gorilla sitting behind the glass with a grumpy expression on its face, morosely poking round in carrots and lettuce leaves, now and then picking something up off the ground; it particularly seemed to enjoy eating vomit. We sometimes play at “zoo” as well, though to be more precise it’s called “Alfred Brehm House”: the drivers mimic chimpanzees, soldiers bound down the company corridor like chamois, traditionally the commanders are rhinoceroses or elephants: stretch out one arm, bend the other back and hold your nose and then “toot, toot”. – Thanks for the postcards you got from Malthakus, that was a really nice surprise. I have a set of Constantinople postcards and when I was on leave I also bought some of the South Sea islands – expensive, but I earn a decent amount here. Tahiti and Nouméa, New Caledonia …’
Whistles, shouts, the stamp of boots, searchlights wandering over the concrete tracks, the startled faces of the soldiers, the platoon leaders with map-holders hanging round their necks hurried over to the
company commander, who, expressionless, broke the seal on a little folder, took out a document, glanced over it in the light of a torch, then gave the platoon leaders brief instructions – Christian saw his lieutenant make windmill movements with his right arm: start engines; the sound of the oil pump, Pancake pressed the ignition, Christian plugged his helmet into the radio, adopted the commander’s position: standing on his seat above the gun pointer, chest behind the secured hatch cover, the loader wailed, ‘It’s war now, dammit, now war’s broken out’, the gun pointer said, ‘Shut your gob, you over there, you’ve more days of service left than the Eiffel Tower has rivets, my time’s almost up and now this – d’you know anything, Nemo?’ Christian’s answer became a stutter as the tank seesawed its way through the depot gate: ‘The orders the CC had were to wait’, then, as per regulations, he had to trot along in front of his tank and behind Musca’s, hatch spotlight on so that the red and yellow guide flags were visible to Pancake; along the stretch of road, it was on the edge of the town, lights splashed on in the houses that were rundown, supported by scaffolding and eaten away by brick cancer; shadows in the windows and Christian wondered: What do they think of us, do they hate us, do they not care either way (that was unlikely at that time in the morning), do they admire us or pity us with our Afrika Korps outfit: goggles on our tank helmets, a sling such as medical orderlies use to immobilize broken arms over our faces, like a bank robber’s mask, and we’re sneaking out at dead of night and along the edge of the town – going where? Alternative concentration area, the platoon leaders ordered –
‘Dear Barbara, Your package has arrived, thank you very much. Uncle Uli’s soap is particularly useful, of course, and since the Military Trading Outlet here has been closed “for technical reasons” for several weeks, the eleven tubes of toothpaste are also very welcome. Little Erik’s nine months old already … True, he’s crying in the first photo you included in the package but at least he’s standing on his own two feet, and the way he’s gnawing the bear in the second – I assume the blobs at the side are its entrails? – shows he’s at least starting to develop a capacity for empathy. You asked about two things: leave and a girlfriend. The situation with leave is that I can’t say what the situation with leave is. If you apply, then you get the notorious 6×D: derided, dealt with, declined: squaddie due for deployment. In the army leave is the great unknown … I hope I can get back in the early autumn, perhaps in September or the beginning of October, by then we’ll have the summer field camps behind us. By the way, I know what it was Gorbachev said that you and Gudrun quarrelled about. The political education here is strict, the notebooks we keep are checked. It was the report to the plenum of the Central Committee at which they were discussing calling the XXVII Convention of the Soviet Communist Party; there was no word he used more often or more emphatically than “acceleration”. Heated political argument under cold damp patches, with an opera in between that no one apart from Niklas and Fabian, perhaps Meno too, is interested in: such are the “family musical evenings” as I see from your letter. I’d give a lot to hear one of those operas. I’m glad Niklas could repair the water damage over the secretaire with the roofing felt I sent; despite that, sometimes when I’m lying awake at night in my bunk I think there’ll soon be underwater plants growing in the music room, that mermaid sopranos and an orchestra of fishes will emerge from the photos on the wall.