by Uwe Tellkamp
a restricted area full of ammunition boxes and covered vehicles in which the men were loading up, switching from the exercise rounds to the live ammunition that was here; new orders were given, by now the regimental staff had arrived; the order that it was to continue, that from now on radio messages were only to be sent in code; Christian told his crew to relax, he knew what lay ahead of them: hard work driven on by bellowing officers running to and fro, shells out, shells in without a break, camouflage the tanks, leave for the freight line at Grün station, load the tanks onto goods wagons, then transport to an unknown destination –
‘Dear Christian, Your parents have given me your address, I also learnt from them that you are in a tank regiment and things aren’t that great. That’s why I wanted to write to you and I hope you’re not annoyed with me because of that. Now I’m in Leipzig, doing medicine – nothing came of chemistry, but medicine’s not that far away from it. I often think of that evening at your uncle’s in the House with a Thousand Eyes, of the Bird of Paradise Bar. By the way, I’ve made some tapes, Neustadt have been on DT 64 recently, if you want I can send you one. The way you sat at the table in the garden when the others were in the bar and I couldn’t go over to you because you were completely self-absorbed and I had the feeling you didn’t need other people, at least not at that moment. I have a room in the student residence, sharing with three other students, one of them’s Hungarian, she’s very jolly, I get on best with her. It’s the evening now, the others have gone out, I ought to be studying but by chance I happened to see the title of a book one of the others is reading, The Count of Monte Cristo, and all at once I could hear our conversations again, the walks in Saxon Switzerland, your voice. Your father sounds similar, it gave me a start when he answered the phone, and he also takes sudden breaths in through his nose like you if there’s too long a pause in the conversation. I can tell that this letter’s getting stupid, I keep jumping from one thing to another and all I wanted to do was to make contact again. On the card I’ve put in it’s meant to be a female flamingo staring at an empty postbox. I can’t draw as well as Heike. I didn’t put the card in with the letter as a reproach to you but because the empty, lifeless postbox simply doesn’t express for me what I feel when I read your letters. You wrote three to me, I’ve read through them again and again. It isn’t very easy finding the right words to express what fascinates me so about your letters. Under philosophy I’ve always imagined Chief Red Eagle or something supernatural. Or screwballs. It was your letters that have made me want to know more about the subject – but not because I feel I have to keep up with your interests. I haven’t failed to notice with what loving care your letters are written, in contrast to mine, but I didn’t know how to reply, to make my letters more confiding, more personal. Reina shy? That’s what you might perhaps be thinking now. I know that’s not the way I seem but actually I’m quite a reserved creature. Sometimes I’d really like to say something but can’t get a word out. And in Saxon Switzerland I finally had the chance to take a “risk” and put aside the characteristics of my quiet type. My fear of being rejected, of perhaps not finding the right words, has its origin in my partial lack of self-confidence. There are people who think they have to show something and so develop into “pushy” types. Probably one of the reasons why I feel affection for you is that you’re not like all the others but have something individual about you. I’m well aware that your free time will be very limited; it’s all right if you can’t write very often. Perhaps I think too seriously about many things. I’m sure that makes it more difficult to find answers and I tend to see the situation as more critical than it really is. Can we meet some time? There is a train from Leipzig to Grün. I would really like that. (Please answer this letter.) Reina.’
a grumpy railway inspector held up his lantern in front of the tanks, no, he knew nothing about this, yes, there were goods wagons ready but they weren’t for the army; and while the staff officers got on their walkie-talkies, turned the handles of their field telephones, Christian felt for Reina’s letter, for his Constantinople and South Sea talismans; lamps were hanging like white-hot pots over the station tracks, most of the railway clocks, encrusted in fly-shit and ash, weren’t working, had shattered glass, bent hands or only one; on the passenger platforms a few drunks were staggering round, waving bottles of beer and, as soon as they saw the soldiers, flying into a rage; they shouted and swore, just about managing to stand upright, upper bodies tilting forward, shaking their bottles, until Pancake, who was looking out of the driver’s hatch, said, ‘Hey guys, they’re not angry, they want to sell us some hooch!’ and scurried across, unnoticed by the bearers of the silver epaulettes, quickly did a deal and ran back, crouching, to the tank, where he threw the spoils, a shopping bag full of beer bottles, to the loader, who stuffed it under the machine gun on his side of the tank –
‘Load tanks!’ a voice ordered brusquely, torches made circles, the sign of ‘start engines’, the tanks moved forward to the loading ramp.
Christian and Pancake changed places, the better driver gave the instructions, the worse one drove; Christian raised the seat, he hadn’t driven since cadet school, the tank moved off, Christian let in the clutch far too quickly, straight as possible up the ramp, the gun above his head threw a dark shadow, a halogen spotlight on the left was dazzling, now the slope of the ramp, the tank had to be precisely aligned with the wagon, Pancake had to get the timing of the turn exactly right, a tank had no radius of curve, it turned on the spot and on the goods wagon the tracks would stick out a good way on either side, Pancake gesticulated with the flags, Christian tugged at the steering lever, now Pancake was waving ‘Stop’, Christian realized he was going too fast but couldn’t stop, suddenly found he couldn’t reach the brakes and gear lever, his uniform trousers had got stuck, as had his upper body between the edge of the hatch and the driver’s seat, ‘Stop!’ Pancake roared, appearing and disappearing in the sharp whiteness of the halogen lamp and the shadow beside it, ‘Stop, stop!’
Christian tried to switch the engine off with the lever above the knurled section but he was paralysed, could see the lever, the brown, oval plate of hard plastic you pulled down and pushed from side to side to regulate the revs but couldn’t reach it; now others were shouting, ‘Switch off, you idiot’ and ‘Down’, he saw the soldiers leap off the goods wagon; their task would have been to wedge the hefty steel chocks with the spikes into the wooden floor of the wagon in front of and behind the T55:
He pulled the steering levers into the ‘second position’ but the tank didn’t stop, as it ought to have, an old Russian thing, Christian thought,
and:
I might not be able to answer Reina’s letter at all
and:
What shall I say to Mum?
and:
This thing’s tipping over –
Growth; a moment, gentle as a pinprick at the beginning, a break, a tear, Richard could see the shed, Stahl’s bent back and, when he turned round again, the overgrown quarry in the sudden and alarming second of an explosion after which there were smells all at once: sun-warmed stone; plants keeping their flowers at the ready, like crazy archers desperate to start shooting, a bundle of ten arrows on their bowstring; of axle-grease, chicken shit; the light swivelled like a cutting torch, hitting his face full force: it made you want to suck in the fresh spring air, fists clenched, get drunk on the colours (a postbox-yellow oil can on a black shelf) – the way all that was growing and sprouting and bursting and splitting rotten husks, the way the sap was returning to the trees, making them vibrate and the leaves, like a thousand green fingers that touched and wanted to be touched, swell out, branches hummed with bee electricity; and how it was growing, his ‘baby’, as he called the Hispano – that wasn’t a car, wasn’t a lifeless machine, it had eyes that looked now happy, now sad, it was a living being with nickel veins and character.
‘Damned useless rubbish.’ Stahl threw a wrench on the ground.
‘I can’t join yo
u, Gerhart. They’ve got me in their sights anyway.’
‘I know, you explained that.’
‘But are you really going to do it? With an aeroplane?!’
‘Crazy, yes. But there’s method in my madness. That’s exactly why it’ll succeed. They won’t be expecting something like that. And it will work, I tell you. With two MZ motorcycle engines. Fuselage wooden planks, covered in plastered fabric. Very easy to make, despite that warp-resistant. Plastic for the cockpit, I was thinking of the windscreen of a Schwalbe motorbike.’
‘Four of you!’
‘Martin will be at the back, all of us lying down. The engines ought to produce the power, I’ve done the calculations. – The only question is – can I trust you?’
‘And if you can’t.’
‘Then it’s just my bad luck. It’s not possible without outside help. And you’ve told me about your problems yourself. That wouldn’t have been very clever of you if you were going to report me.’
‘For God’s sake, I could still do it now.’
‘Like hell you would. I think I know you better than that.’ –
tipped, and Christian said, ‘Nono’, screamed:
‘No!’
felt the tank, the steel hull weighing tons, slowly sink down, so slowly that it probably looked as if it were making itself comfortable, and Christian, in the oddly uncertain light on the ramp, had time to look at everything again and take in all the details: the distressed but interested expressions of the soldiers watching, a few officers who had become aware of what was happening, Pancake’s expression that seemed to be saying, stupid, you don’t turn like that, the searchlights, the flat goods wagons along which he should have driven:
The tank fell on its track, which, since the engine was still running, dug into the ground beside the rails. Christian saw a spot of gold on a puddle, perhaps a reflection of the turret searchlight, the tank came to a stop on its side, its barrel pointing in the direction of the town, Christian felt someone grasp his shoulders and pull him out through the hatch and just let it happen, it was pleasant and the guy who’d grabbed him by the scruff of the neck would know what he was doing, it would be what was necessary; Pancake’s face, turned into a huge, black puffball by the shapeless helmet, the white side-pieces, the sheepskin of which had a bizarre glow – phosphorescence? could it be? – dangling like a dachshund’s ears: ‘Man, you could be dead!’
another voice, ‘The turret would have squashed him flat, like a mashed potato. He was sitting right at the top. Funny, a machine like that turning turtle.’
‘Must’ve been out of his mind, mustn’t he?’
‘An SI … That’s an SI … as perfect a Special Incident as you could hope to see that Hoffmann’s managed to cause … ’s he still alive?’
‘– or drowned. It probably wouldn’t ’ve squashed him but drowned him in that puddle there. I waded through it earlier on, it was deeper than I thought. Shit, I’ve got some of it in my boots.’
‘You mean head down?’
‘Head down and he can’t get out. I mean, who’s going to heave a tank up just with his feet and nothing to brace himself against?’
‘But don’t y’think it could’ve squashed him anyway? First of all snap-crack and then glug-glug.’
Then Christian was standing to one side, like an Untouchable, recalling a lesson at school when he was a child and the teacher, when there was no other way, had made him stand in a corner of the classroom (‘Facing the wall and there’ll be trouble if you move’), recalling the whispers and the quiet laughs, the idea, which made him break out in a cold sweat, that something might be wrong with his shoes, stockings, trousers, with the seat of his trousers: could he have … had his shirt gone threadbare at the back and split open, did he look funny from behind (for the first time he was made aware that others could see him from behind, could see a Christian Hoffmann he himself didn’t know); over there they were dragging the tank, the tracks of which were still going round and round, back into its normal position, organizing hawsers and the tank recovery vehicle – What’s going to happen now? Christian thought. What will they do with me? He whistled a tune. Would there be birds’ nests in this station? He’d seen a lot of bird droppings. Pigeons. He rummaged round in his pockets felt his penknife, box of matches, army ID – and something that rustled, something granular and yielding: a packet of lemonade powder, already much the worse for wear, he tore it open, tipped the contents into the hollow of his hand, spat on it, making it foam up, licked and ate the lemon-tasting powder until there was none left apart from a thin film of food-colouring on his hand that couldn’t be licked off. –
Richard waited until it was dark. On the mezzanine floor of the building, one of the typical Striesen-Blasewitz ‘coffee-grinder’ houses, the light was on, illuminating the path from the garden gate to the entrance; that would make it more difficult. Richard put on the work-jacket that he wore out in Lohmen, tightened the laces of his trainers, pulled the buckle of his belt round to the side (he’d heard that electricians working on pylons did that). It occurred to him that it would be better to creep up from the back. He climbed over the garden wall, swung himself hand over hand past an arbour, jumped down onto a concrete path. He avoided the dark, loosened soil of the flowerbed beside it, there was a shimmer of early flowers (crocuses? narcissi?) in it, pale ghosts. A trellis was no use to him, the bevelled posts were too thin and the soil below it had also been dug over. He felt the ground with the tips of his toes at a point on the wall that seemed suitable; a paving slab would provide a firm enough base for him to push off from; the slab was granite, vaguely lit by the light in the room above the window ledge: children’s room? bedroom? he didn’t know; often in this kind of house the rooms of growth and sleep were at the back, giving onto the garden. Strange how the silence seemed to fill with sounds, like a funnel sucking them in but letting too few pass through; as if the sounds were like him, waiting in the dark for a movement, but losing patience sooner since their time was limited: the crunch of a car driving out, clocks striking from the lungs of the house, garden whispers, the Sandman’s evening greeting from the television. Now a baby was crying, sobs of tired protest, it seemed to come from the other side of the apartment. Josta’s little one, Richard thought. Off we go! He jumped up but couldn’t reach the window ledge. The impact of his soles on the slab sounded unexpectedly harsh. Take off his trainers? And if he had to run for it … ? You’ll be doing that anyway, he joked. What did it matter? He took his shoes off and tried again. This time he jumped higher, reached the window ledge, dangled there. Immediately his right hand, his forearm weakened from his old injury, started to hurt. What was worse was that the window ledge was sloping and was made of smooth tiles. Richard, holding on with four fingers, started to slip. One sock got stuck on the trellis when he scrabbled with his feet on either side to try and find support; in the pale light his bare foot looked like an anaemic flatfish with fringes, the house wall was icy cold. He jumped down, his bare foot landed on a piece of gravel which made him hop around in silence for a while. The sock had been pulled off by a splinter of wood precisely between his big toe and second toe. A piece of luck. He tried again with his shoes on, hung there, swaying, couldn’t manage to pull himself up. He thought of rock climbers on an ascent but that made him feel weak all at once. In an access of rage he flung up his left leg, his foot, clenched in the trainer, stuck on something, fairly high up, fragile; Richard pulled himself up; centimetre by centimetre, his fingers trembling with the effort, until he could see in through the window. He was breathing stertorously, it sounded like a faulty compressed-air valve, his right hand found something strangely flexible to hold on to (radio cable? lightning conductor?), just at that moment he felt the urge to laugh. Daniel was sitting in the room, applying dubbin to a football; Lucie, opposite him, was sitting at a children’s table wearing a white coat and a cap with a red cross, with, above it, an examination mirror such as ENT doctors use; she was bent over a naked doll, cutting a l
eg off with a bread knife.
unload, travel, pine twigs, parts of puzzles, bizarre, unsolved. The Elbe at Torgau was awake, Christian had never seen an awake river before, large clock face numbers were drifting down it. Could Muriel hear it? The reformatory was somewhere round here. Fields, filled with surf, bursting, crackling. Swill? Wind? Ready to pounce. The wind was grimy, heavy, little slowcoaches of graphite grease in it. ‘Alight!’ was ordered. Searchlights. Playing at knitting. The Elbe at Torgau was an awake river, a livingmost giant, no: it was whispering, shivering: a ‘listening-post giant’. With rotting boots. Yes, precisely, that was it, Pancake swirling piss-flowers over the ground covered in bird feathers: a bed linen factory (cambric; he knew the word from Emmy) in the vicinity. The river had eyeballs, one after the other. Then none again. Colour? Shoe-polish black. Keep a tight hold on it. Streaks of rotten-apple-brown, there where the crêpe-paper-grey fairy rings are dotted down. Forest honey, ever so glutinous. Just don’t try it. Flapping, swallowing: nightingale-box paint, that black. Swish, swish: trees crumbling in the star-swell, on the downriver bank where the company’s taken up position. Listen. A river like that is alive, sleeps, dreams, digests, tosses and turns, lives its giant’s life. What has it got to say?