The Tower: A Novel (102 page)

‘Recently the Politburo was looking into the panties problem. There are no panties, neither in Berlin nor in the unimportant rest of the country,’ Albin Eschschloraque said, ‘so they were trying to develop a panties-problem-elimination plan. But the Women’s League had already started a newspaper campaign with patterns for making your own panties.’

‘The two Kaminskis have come as angels! God, if only virtue could be taught.’

‘But don’t listen to that Eschschloraque, Rohde. We’ll deal with him soon enough. That count with the slick, Frenchified tongue – who’s only in favour of communism because it means everyone will have time to go to his plays.’

‘Oh, Paul. Don’t say you’re jealous.’

‘And you, Lührer? Wherever you go you’re gabbling on about journeys to the West and hard-currency royalties.’

‘Herr
Schade, there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you for a long time –’

‘Oh, are you still around, Fräulein Schevola?’

‘As you see.’

‘Yes, OK, things can change. And what is it you want to say to me?’

‘You’re useless.’

‘What?’

‘Completely. You’re a functionary but not a writer.’

‘I tell you … I tell you, the Jews … they’re back in power again. They’re stirring things up against us in America, getting our loans blocked … We’ve come to an agreement with Japan. The Japanese are helping us. There are certain traits of character, national … whatsits.’

‘You’re drunk, Karlheinz. You … revolting.’

‘Just grin and bear it, Georgie Altberg. Like Comrade Londoner. Don’t get worked up. My God, this is pretty strong stuff. Almost as bad as the boss’s accordion playing.’

‘Ladies’ panties? Let them tie Pioneer neckerchiefs round them – like that Honich woman. There’s no shortage of them.’

‘Karlheinz, I’ve always kept my mouth shut when you go on like this, but now I’m asking you to apologize to Philipp and Judith.’

‘Hey, what’s got into you? Have you got something you want to get off your chest now, Georgie? Usually you’re the best at keeping your trap shut. You’re finished, I mean – dead.’

‘You may well be right. But being dead’s not that bad. You can get used to anything. If you refuse to apologize I will pass on what you said to the Party Control Commission.’

‘Oh, you’re going to inform on me, are you? All I can say is: best of luck. You’ll hear a quite different tune from those birds.’

‘Virtue, virtue! I’m asking you about virtue, my dear Altberg, and you come back to me with – virtues. Don’t keep making one thing into many – like people who break something.’

‘And
what is it, in your opinion, my dear Eschschloraque? By the way, may I congratulate you on your costume. The ass’s head suits you down to the ground.’

‘I knew you’d allude to it. Well, not everyone will go down – or should one say sink – so low as you … To take pleasure in beauty and to have it at your command. That is what the philosopher says. So this is what I understand by virtue: to be able, full of desire for beauty, to acquire it for oneself. – Herr Ritschel, over here. Please. Surely our table gets its turn. I’d love to try the marbled electric ray looking up with such a resigned expression from your fish board.’

‘According to your logic, my dear Eschschloraque, every punter who buys a pretty whore is a very virtuous person. He’s full of desire for beauty and presumably he has enough money in his pocket.’

‘You’re cynical, Altberg. That’s not you. A cynic starts to die during his life.’

‘Excuse me if I laugh, my dear Eschschloraque, but, you and a paragon of virtue! That’s ac-tu-al-ly something for Arbogast’s joke collection.’

‘I’m a paragon of virtue as long as virtue is something useful. Come on now, Altberg, I’ve often been occupied with useful things.’

‘Useful but not good!’

‘Good because useful! Dig, miner, dig deep.’

‘And always with the mighty, my dear Eschschloraque: eat and carouse with the high and mighty, sit with them, be agreeable to them.’

‘Ah, but there’s more. You will permit me to continue, my dear Altberg? From the good alone will you learn what is good, the bad will rob you of what wits you have.’

‘Panties? Pioneer neckerchiefs?’

‘My husband, well, you know. In the morning I always think I’m married to a walrus. His hair stands on end, he takes the toothbrush glass, whips the toothpaste up into foam and gargles like nobody’s business. Then he blows out the whole lot through his stubble into the
basin. I watch him and think: you’re wedded to something like that, cooped up in this marriage for thirty years. And then the constant changes of address. Free German Youth study year, extension course, advanced study in Moscow, Party Secretary in provincial holes, and I’d promised myself that we’d go to Berlin sometime … My friends have all got a house out in the country and a dacha and a car as well, most even two cars. And us? A three-room dump in a new development because he didn’t want to be in Block A and because a Party member has to set an example and he can’t stand the corrupt guys who can call themselves comrades and damage the Party’s reputation … Which means I’m sitting there asking myself, what have you made of your life, girl?’

‘The eye has a very simple anatomy, my dear Rohde. It’s as if you were to write something, in a letter say, in plain, clear language, as simply as possible, but the other person only reads what someone else’s lens system, an optical illusion, places over the sheet of paper as meaning – the one thing is written but the other is understood.’

‘Oh, if only I’d taken King Thrushbeard, oh, if only I’d taken that one.’

‘Those brain-dead bastards! Ideals? God, they never had any! They wanted to earn money, really live it up, perhaps even get themselves a car from the West, that’s the limit of their ambitions! Socialists? All they do is drag the idea of socialism through the mud!’

‘Be careful what you say, Philipp.’

‘That’s the worst thing about it, that you have to be careful what you say.’

‘Tell me where you stand –’

‘Herr Ritschel, a little more of your chemist’s punch, please. I’ll tell you one thing, Rohde. That business with the red comma – forgotten. I was even quietly amused by it.’

‘– and how you serve the land.’

‘I’m a man of the Enlightenment, that is: critical, ironic, an unbeliever
perhaps. It’s possible I don’t even believe that I believe in nothing. You’re a Romantic and that means you contribute to capitalism. For longing and homesickness drive the world but the driving force is capitalism. Utopia is being at a standstill. That’s why I want the clocks not to chime, that’s why I’m for the winter. As a Romantic you think you’re renouncing the world, escaping from it. Nonsense! You’re driving it on … the pursuit of happiness, that’s what it says in the American constitution. A Romantic principle. And the motto of the empire of the self.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, especially for you: songs by Karat! For all of you who love the “Rainbow”, Karat have lit the
“
Magic Light”: Henning and Bernd have cast a spell on their strings, Micha has drummed out his heartbeat, Herbert and Ed given of their best. And of course, the floor is still there for those who want to dance.’

‘I’ve seen a picture, my dear Eschschloraque, ice floes coming up through the frozen surface of a lake; relics they were, the past in the here and now. Will there at some time be a society consisting entirely of things from the past?’

‘Such alarm, Herr Altberg? Don’t worry, I’ve no objection to anyone daring to think that there might be something different coming after socialism.’

‘There have been times when you’ve taken a quite different line, Eschschloraque.’

‘Come with me, Judith. It will be a great time, we’ll be making history …’

‘Just stories are enough for me. Break with Marisa.’

‘I can’t, I simply can’t. I love both of you. That’s the way it is … both of you, each in a particular way.’

‘Said Casanova: I have been faithful to all of them, in my fashion.’

‘You’re accusing me of bourgeois attitudes? And yourself, Judith?’

‘And what do you say, Master Kibitzer? Should I go with him? – You remain silent. You always remain silent.’

‘He’ll
have his reasons, Judith. Come with me, I beg you.’

‘The floor is yours! Already a few bold couples are dancing their way into May.’

‘It is one of the mysteries of nature as well as of the state that it’s safer to change many things rather than just a single one –’

‘You’re suspicious tonight, Trude.’

‘Oh, you know, Ludwig, as far as thoughts are concerned, suspicions are like bats among birds – they’re always fluttering in the twilight.’

‘It’s a sickness that always eats away everything. Good evening.’

‘Ah, Herr Eschschloraque. How are your two machines coming on? Did you get the pencils I sent you?’

‘Clouds the mind, darkens the brow, distrusts sugar, calls it the sweetest of poisons, makes friends part and nourishes the nettle of suspicion. Crawls along beside time bent crooked … a forest of suspicion, full of dark creatures.’

‘That Eschschloraque – there were times when someone like that would have been arrested. What do you think? He comes from the past, doesn’t he? Yes … we ought to have been more alert. He’s absolutely convinced of his own greatness and immortality … Did you know, Rohde, that he’s had all his plays engraved on steel plates, from the Freital stainless-steel factory – in case there should be a fire? He has a bunker underneath his house and that’s where they’re kept.’

‘We can rely on the Japanese. They love German orchestras more than anything, above all our State Orchestra. Recently we had … perhaps you know this. It wasn’t in the newspapers. We had this toothbrush problem. A Russian artilleryman was drunk and fed up. And he – whee! – sent a little artillery rocket on its way. And of all places, it hit the main production plant of our toothbrush factory. There was no one in it, thank God, the workers on the night shift were playing cards.’

‘May … might I ask for a dance, Comrade Esch … sch … You do have a funny name, Herr …’

‘I
don’t think you should dance in your state, Frau Honich.’

‘Ki-king of the f-fancy fish, ha ha. That’s what they call you. Come on, you miserable lord, you … Bolshy-wigg.’

‘Herr Rohde, I think I’ll just go out for some fresh air, are you coming?’

‘Then you dance with me … Nemo … Rohde. Another o’ those funny names. Oops! My brooch’s fallen in your solyanka soup.’

‘Unfortunately I can’t dance, Frau Honich.’

‘Limp-dick … you’re both the same … no toothpaste in the tube … you –’

‘Don’t … please.’

‘– cocksuckers. The pair of you! Pansies!’

‘Yeah, the night shift. And nothing left of the toothbrushes. The news spread like wildfire right across the Republic that there was likely to be a toothbrush shortage in the near future. We had to respond! People started hoarding toothbrushes like mad so that there really was a shortage. But the Japanese helped us. Sent an aeroplane full of toothbrushes at once. In return we sent them some half-timbered houses, from the brown coal, they had to be pulled down anyway. The samurai’re very keen on ’em. Rebuild ’em, in authentic style. And we had our toothbrushes – made in Hong Kong, the Japanese import those things as well.’

‘Whether it’s possible to teach virtue, that’s the problem.’

‘Just look at the Kaminskis. The Honich woman’s just given them a clout round the ear. Does she know what she’s doing?’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please for our solidarity tombola. Don’t worry, every ticket’s a winner! A fanfare for Frau Herrmann, you will all know her from
Tele-Lotto
, where she makes sure everything’s done according to the rules … Our Comrade First Secretary is drawing the first prize – he unrolls the slip of paper – the furrows disappear from his brow – he hands me the slip of paper – he has won: a sociable get-together over coffee and cakes with veteran workers of the Elsa Fenske Retirement Home!’

‘click,’

said the Old Man of the Mountain.

‘click,

I hear the lighter strike, the blue light flares up, but the wind blows it out; to the East, to the East, the drummer boy cried and the soldier tightened the straps of his knapsack. To the East the tanks rolled on, the Greatestleaderofalltime cried Deutschland Deutschland; the soldier had a comrade, he opened his darling’s letter, laughed as he started to read, a bullet punched a hole in his steel helmet and he fell down, his eyes staring up at the sky. At once another comrade wanted to have his boots

click,

and the soldier was on guard at night when they were bivouacking by the river and he didn’t guard them very well for he was reading a book by moonlight and partisans came at night to the bivouac by the river and stabbed the other guards, who had not gone down to the river, and stabbed his comrades while they were sleeping, finally the company commander’s dog barked and those who could still see saw the soldier pull himself up, he didn’t say anything, didn’t shout anything for he could no longer do that; but the others shouted and grabbed their rifles, shots cries fire the red flashes from the muzzles, and he saw the company cook with a carving knife

you bitch you bitch you Russky bitch

cut the throat of a female partisan, and before that her chapka rolled off into the snow and her hair fell down, her soft blonde hair

click click,

an anthem rings out, hands are raised in the white oval, the Greatestleaderofalltime steps up to the microphone, declares the Summer Olympics, Berlin 1936, as open, a grammatical error the young blond man reflects on for just a second, for in a moment the camera up there on the rails with the bold young woman director will swing round to focus on his troop, the youth of Germany will perform gymnastic
exercises, the youth of classical antiquity, the youth of all ages below a sky of blue silk with an aeroplane sliding across like a slim flat-iron, the young man’s pulse is racing, he senses his movements fusing with those of the others, Gau Brandenburg, Gau Breslau, Warthegau, into something higher, hears the stadium announcer’s voice, shimmering with enthusiasm, what a magnificent day, what a magnificent life, then the blond young man seeks out his father’s eye, he’s in the delegation of the Silesian NSDAP, for the first time he looks proud and the blond young man feels something tighten his throat, go through his veins, into his eyes, a swimmer as free as the bright clouds up above.