The Tower: A Novel (103 page)

Snow. Mother Holle shaking out her eiderdowns. An old woman with a kindly face, they sometimes saw it, slumbering in the lakes, quivering and vanishing among the water lilies when the pike awoke. Snow filling the muddy furrows of Russia, soft, creeping snow. The horses’ bodies steamed, the soldier and the sergeant rubbed them dry. They whinnied, fearfully jerked their heads back, shied in their harnesses, their eyes like lumps of pitch. Flakes, hands slowly descending, white, six-fingered hands, stroked his comrades’ hair, shoulders, felt the tents, the radio truck, motorbikes, tanks. White hands cut white osiers, wove white baskets round the bivouac. White feather-hands, scattered down, plunging down, no longer melting; outside Moscow the soldier saw the towers, the Spasskaya and the red star on Lomonosov University, the colourful onion domes on St Basil’s Cathedral; outside Moscow the winter, cross-hatched by the anti-aircraft fire, tightened its frosty vice, the company was caught in its icy jaws. The snow grew coarser, didn’t caress them any more and sometimes the soldier heard scraps of songs or voices drifting towards him, the little mermaid was dead, the red flower was frozen in Malachite Mountain, the soldier thought he could hear the snow rattling, the flakes clinked like little pewter plates. A comrade passed water beside him, it froze up from the ground, he swore and broke it off. Snow packed up the jeeps, the blankets on the horses that nudged the frozen-stiff tents with their frosted nostrils.
Snow blocked the tanks heading for Moscow and then the diesel froze, then the oil froze, and the soldiers of the company saw people hurrying to and fro in the streets of Moscow, saw trams and banners.’

‘And swing to the left, then swing to the right, that keeps your eyes both clear and bright. Dance your way into May, comrade ladies and gentlemen.’

‘What is it that comes up out of the deep sleep of time,’ Meno heard Eschschloraque murmur, ‘out of the deep sleep of time and then, Rohde, this melody quivering up, this swan-white melody flickering, yes, flaring up, a star over Moscow, and Levitan spoke, but you know him, don’t you know him? You were a little boy, I know, I know your father, I knew your mother, what is it that comes up out of the deep sleep of time?’

‘click,’

said the Old Man of the Mountain, ‘goebbelstongue crackled from the radio, Lale Andersen sang Lili Marlene and Zarah Leander sang I know some day a mi-hiracle will come, Christmas on the German front line, and Goebbels shouted and the Greatestleaderofalltime shouted and the voices on Reich radio and the Russians shouted. Urrah, urrah, they broke out from Moscow, at first black dots on the white background, pinpricks, intermingling swarms, then lumps, then nests and then the tanks came at us from both sides and ours were stuck there, tracks broken by ice, and had no fuel and one comrade shot a bazooka at the oil tank of a T34 that sprang a leak, the oil a black trail in the snow that caught fire, spiders of flame ran over the tracks, but the T34 drove
on, they could drive without oil, and then over the comrade in his tank-hole, turn to the right first, the soldier emptied his magazine but it just went ping ping ping on the sides of the tank, then turn to the left, until his comrade’s cries could no longer be heard, and then across and the soldier picked up a handful of snow and looked at it, he couldn’t think of anything else

Hang him

No

It’s your turn, so

I don’t want to

Hang him, the Jew

I can’t

So you’ve got to learn, you coward, that’s an order

that was in the Ukrainian village. The captain drew his pistol and pointed it at the soldier, who saw the black hole of the muzzle aimed at his face. An order, and if you refuse to obey it, I’ll blow your brains out. And his comrades said to the soldier Come on. It’s only a lousy Jew. And they pulled the thin young man by the hair, he was a lad of twenty, the same age as the soldier, and his hat was lying in the snow and beside it his girl was whimpering, crept over to the captain and tugged at his coat, he pushed her away, she went back to him, he shot, she lay there. Then the soldier said I can’t. And the captain Oh yes you can, I’ll make you get a move on! Here! and threw the gallows rope over the branch of the lime tree beside the village well, its trunk had no bark any more, the sole lime tree, shot to a white ghost, from which the mayor and the doctor and the rabbi were dangling, it had gone round his comrades in turn, the captain hissed Get on with it, or, chambered a round and pressed the muzzle against the soldier’s forehead. And the person beside him threw his arms up and down and clutched at the empty air and tried to get to the captain and sank into the snow beside his girl and gently stroked her sleeve and shook her
head. His comrades dragged him up and tied his hands behind him, put a cloth over his face. The soldier picked up the rope, his comrades lifted the lad onto the stool, pulled the noose tight, the soldier climbed onto a stool beside it, the captain made a sweeping gesture with his pistol, the soldier carefully wiped the snowflakes off the man’s collar. His breath was blowing the cloth out and sucking it in, and then he heard the man start to bleat, disjointedly and askew like a billy goat, ugly, as the soldier thought at that moment, and as he did his spittle moistened the cloth. That sounds so silly, I want to see his mug, take the rag off, the captain laughed. But then the soldier was already pushing the stool away

click,’

‘click,’ Eschschloraque murmured,

‘… up out of the deep sleep of time: the corridors, stream of dark, and the rats not only at night, envy sending its yellow mist creeping out, it penetrates all the cracks, it knows all the doors, in dreams, at night, by day, rolling out travel destinations, lighting magic lamps as the husband of Lady Greed, the Cold Councillor, and makes the whisper-buds grow in the field of thoughts’

DIARY

At Ulrich’s place. Richard and Anne there, a party for a few relatives. Ulrich worried. He’s aged. Problems at work, difficulties meeting planned targets. Talked about meetings in Berlin, with the Planning Commission. Since the international price of crude oil, and therefore of industrial products based on petroleum, had sunk sharply since ’86, the price we had to pay the SU for oil, according to the COMECON agreement, was well above the international level. That made our products more expensive – we could no longer sell them to the West with the necessary profit margin. On which we were totally reliant. At his factory they were compelled to use the wastage produced by their suppliers – which of necessity increased the wastage
among their own products. Now we were suffering the consequences of not having released funds for investment. How often had his warnings been given a dusty answer by the Party Secretary? As a Party member, he was told, he couldn’t use that kind of argument … The department with which his firm had to cooperate for the electronic control units you need for modern typewriters now had to join in the great microchip madness. Consequently he had to procure his control elements elsewhere, at the moment from Italy. Which more or less swallowed up the amount of foreign currency one could earn with typewriters nowadays. Since, however, his firm was required to earn such and such an amount of foreign currency he, the managing director Ulrich Rohde, might possibly be faced with personal proceedings against him. In September ’88 the 1-megabit chip had been presented to the General Secretary in a grand ceremony – what the population at large didn’t know, however, but that he had learnt from Herr Klothe upstairs: that chip was a handmade specimen. What, he asked us, could one do with it? Attach the chip, as an existent reality, to the completely outdated machines, as an equally existent reality? In the hope that they would then automatically be transformed into manna-producing, miracle-working cybernetic beings? The state was subsidizing the 256-kbit chip to the tune of 517 marks per item, on the world market, on the other hand, it didn’t even cost two dollars any more. ‘And now I’m asking you, Richard, Meno, what conclusions should we draw from all this?’ Richard suggested buying bicycles. If everything should collapse, no electricity for trains, no petrol for cars, we could at least still get round on bikes. We ought to build up stocks of provisions that will keep and somehow secure them against looting, official raids and confiscation. Guard one’s valuables for which, as after the war, one could get at least something from farmers. Barbara should set aside material from which clothes could be made. I was instructed to acquire books that might be of interest to people from the West, for if our money was worthless and, as had happened before, subject to inflation, then the West German mark would be the sole currency. Anne and he, Richard, would see to medicines.

‘click
click click,

the lighter,’ the Old Man of the Mountain said, ‘the snow covered the plains, covered the villages, Argonauts saw it in Colchis, on Mount Kazbek and Mount Elbrus, over which the swastika flag flew, the soldier caught typhus and his sister’s fiancé froze to death at Stalingrad. The frozen body of a wren lay in the snow. Aeroplanes went into a tailspin and fell into rivers that burnt. Scraps of songs, of bagpipe tunes to which the troops of Marshal Antonescu went into battle. Anti-aircraft batteries, artillery, the hoarse bark of Schmeisser machine pistols, the tumbleweed whispered, balls of weed driven by the wind. The taste of sunflower seeds, whores dancing in a front-line brothel, chewing up liquorice sticks between their mouths; horses with swollen bodies in the ditches, their eyeballs screwed into stillness. The slaughtered woman in the fancy-dress shop in the little town on the Narev, chests broken open, splintered cupboards that had been kicked in, one of his comrades laughed, went out into the front garden, shot the tea rose, that was waving in the wind, off its stalk, plucked the petals she loves me she loves me not, oh to hell with it, shit, comrades, stopped laughing, chambered a round in his Parabellum, picked up the woman’s cat, which was crouching in the corner, stuck the muzzle under its chin, squeezed the trigger.

click,

the torch of the military policeman going round the hospital in search of malingerers. Bullet lodged in the lungs, the doctor said, bending over the soldier. The clatter of instruments thrown into a dish, the smell of tobacco, long missed, a surgeon in blood-soaked overalls, a nurse holding a cigarette out to him in a clamp; the soldier remembers the sweet plant-smell coming from the anaesthetist’s mask. Field hospital, shots, Katyushas blotting out the light, a tent for the wounded burning down, screams will make him start from his sleep at night. The clatter of trains being shunted, the steam whistle of an engine cuts through the fever’s curtain of heat, Rübezahl’s mocking them. Retreat during the
rasputitsa
, the muddy season. Trucks got stuck, wheels
spinning until they were completely enveloped in mud, had to be pulled out by horses and men. Yoke and bridle, soldiers and prisoners of war got into harness, tried to heave the baggage wagons out, their axles broke, the swingletrees of the forage carts broke. Mosquitos ate at their faces, crept into their ears, mouths, nostrils, bit their tongues, through their clothes, crept under their collars. Then the frost returns, it comes all of a sudden, the air seems to pause, is stretched, tautened, compressed, starts to crunch, is motionless for a while, then breaks like the neck of a bottle. The mud froze as hard as concrete, the bizarre ridges sliced through truck tyres and soles of boots. Retreat. Villages. Suitcases in the snow, locks forced open, letters, photos scattered

click,

the radio knob

Ideals! Not one, darling! not one

artillery fire, close combat, the white eyes of the Russian, then he’s on me, his panting breath and filthy collar tie, I see the sharp outline of a cloud over his knife

Not one was too much for you

the beads of sweat on the Russian’s brow, the soldier sees a birthmark and at the same time a scene from the puppet theatre he had as a child, the beautiful, colourful Harlequin’s costume, tries to thrash his legs around a bit, senses he’s going to succumb to the Russian, who’s working silently and is stronger than he is, suddenly the Russian throws his head back, his eyes widen, he opens his mouth

The German soldier’s absolute will to victory and fanatical determination will

opens his mouth in a toneless look of amazement, the captain has stabbed him from behind

Every inch of ground will be defended

blood comes pouring out of the Russian’s mouth, splashes over the soldier’s face

To the last cartridge, to the last man

You
owe me a beer, sonny

the captain said, wiping the blade in the crook of his arm’

‘click,’

said Eschschloraque, ‘the radio knob

click, and in the evening we turned into glass: in Hotel Lux, fragile in the lips of a telephone, breathless in the creak of a lift: Those footsteps, where are they going? To your door? The night was an earthly process, we lay, rigid, on the diaphragm of a stethoscope, the night was Snakekeeper’s Empire’

DIARY

In the evening at Niklas’s. Talking about Fürnberg’s Mozart story – Niklas agrees with my assessment, which truly astounded me and made me wonder about my judgement of him – when Gudrun came in: we were to come and listen to the radio. We heard: death in Peking. Demonstrations. The Square of Heavenly Peace. On the Republic’s stations: dance music. Ezzo continued to practise stoically. Beautiful weather outside. Niklas on
Ariadne
under Kempe, but I left. The smell of wisteria in the street, from Wisteria House, as Christian calls it – how will he be doing? Shimmering blossom, the whole house seemed to be engulfed in flames of fragrance
.

‘click,’

said the Old Man of the Mountain,

‘Six groschen worth of fat bacon

and graves in the snow, iron crosses with steel helmets and a rifle hung on them, open graves full of staring faces, machine-gun emplacements with gunners in white camouflage cloaks, arms round each other as if asleep

Six groschen worth of fat bacon

and in the Ruthenian forests they cut the leather off the bodies of those who’d been hanged, shot, throttled in order to boil it in snow-filled steel helmets to make it soft enough to chew and swallow down to still
the hunger, like the lumps of tallow of which the cook still had a supply; boiled leather and tallow candles the soldiers ate, and the thin-stripped bark of the aspens

click,

went the lighter from the Sertürn Pharmacy, setting the torch alight, the soldier shook his head, raised his arm

What are you doing, are you trying to stop me setting this damn Jew-dump alight, sneered the deputy leader of the Buchholz NSDAP, pointing the torch at the Hagreiter House of the Rebenzoll Brothers, the richest merchants in the town, who had regularly invited the mayor, the medical officer, the pastor and the pharmacist to dinner; now the yellow star was emblazoned on the door and on the walls between the smashed windows

Where are the Rebenzolls

Where d’you think, where they belong, in the house there’s only the pack of relatives the mayor’s been protecting, that traitor to his people, he’s just as much of a milksop as you

You will not do it

The way you’ve always been

You will not do it, or

What

the soldier raised his gun, but the Buchholz NSDAP deputy leader, owner of the Sertürn Pharmacy, just gave a snort of laughter and shrugged his shoulders, on the upper floor a woman’s voice started pleading

Stop it, these people

Jewish vermin, loan sharks, they tried to shut me down with their exorbitant interest, so

No

Perish the lot of you!

and threw the torch, the house was set on fire immediately, the flames blazed up to the first floor, where terrified faces appeared, at once
followed by a commotion in the house, clatter, screams, and the soldier looked his father in the face, that he no longer recognized, for a moment disconcerted by the grey hair and the hands hanging down helplessly

Would you raise your hand to your father

You set the house on fire

They’re only Jews

People! Human beings!

Have you joined the traitors now as well

Human beings!

You’re aiming your gun at me