The Tower: A Novel (105 page)

‘I don’t know,’ Meno said evasively. They had to be careful, that was all he could say. He’d always liked Redlich, that ‘honest soul’ as he was called at Hermes, who ‘did what he could’.

‘What about you?’ Madame Eglantine asked, flicking cigarette ends down onto the rails with the toe of her shoe.

‘I don’t know either.’ Josef Redlich shivered as he raised his shoulders.

‘Something has to change, surely you know that,’ said Madame Eglantine.

‘But where is it going to lead, Frau Wrobel, where, that’s the question,’ Josef Redlich replied quietly. ‘You went to Holy Cross Church, the two of you and Herr Klemm. The boss has put that on the agenda. As if there were still time for such kindergarten disciplinary measures. – Do you play cards?’

On the opposite platform a cloud of paper swirled up, a sweeping machine rattled past like a bug being chased. Immediately the balance of the waiting crowd shifted, a patter of feet, excited shouts, a baby
whimpering, a train wasn’t in sight yet but one just had to come since the crowd were invoking it so intensely, ‘Wishes become Reality’, Meno read in an advert torn out of a West German magazine. But all that came was an orange shunter. The driver jerked his head when the crowd’s disappointment was expressed in whistling. The police were there at once. Groups of three or four advanced, grabbed protesters, dragged them back, the main force swallowed up those who’d been arrested, here and there a shaking head, arms protesting and thrashing could be seen before disappearing in a hail of truncheons. Suddenly perceptible air pressure, swirls bouncing forward and back, the power cables over the platforms humming like the taut wires of an egg-slicer; protests flickered up out of the acoustic mush of voices, single cries slit the human cocoon of uniforms and civilians outside the exits swelling and subsiding, then swelling again. The Berlin train drew in with a provoking lack of urgency. The cries now splashed over onto that platform, Redlich and Madame Eglantine hopped into the carriage before those dashing along the platform, Meno was pushed away by the panicking knot of people the police were shoving from behind. And more bits of paper falling, a hail of scraps, some descending as if in slow motion onto a bench, Meno could make out ‘H. Kästner, condoms supplied discreetly by mail order’, exchange requests, outboard motors, laxatives. Redlich’s horrified seal’s face sank in the compartment window, in front Madame Eglantine’s hand stretched out over the platform to Meno, really to me, he thought in the buffeting and tussling, her mouth torn in a strange grimace between the desire to shout and her throat’s refusal, the loudspeakers looked blind in the snowstorm of paper that, repeatedly kicked up by furious boots, dodging shoes, was a confetti revue dancing onto the ash-brown stage of the ballast and sleepers. Meno didn’t manage to get on the train. Whistles, the guard’s baton, a hoarse ‘Close doors’. Someone knocked his briefcase over, another man tripped over it, collided with Meno, who was trying to get his case away from the trampling feet. ‘Can’t you watch
out? Fucking idiot!’ the guy shouted and drew his arm back for a punch. Meno ducked and it landed on a policeman behind him, who, like a fat, spoilt child who suddenly feels the flat of his mother’s hand, clutched his cheek and uttered a whiny, flabbergasted ‘Oww!’ Meno grinned. Two policemen plucked him out of the crowd, he was hit, in the pit of the stomach (which, since he had a travel chess set in his coat pocket, wasn’t particularly painful), then in the kidneys (at which his round-bowled pipe broke with a crack of regret), several blows, not delivered quickly but with a searching deliberation that took his breath away, then led off, together with the man who made the unfortunate punch and was bleeding from both eyebrows. There was the clatter of glass breaking, howling, pigeons shredding the air with their wings. Meno’s briefcase was left behind. A train drew in on the next platform, clearly the one expected from the Leipzig depot that was to collect those who’d occupied the embassy; it was stormed with shrill cries of panic intermingled with the screech of loudspeaker warnings and police megaphones demanding the station be cleared. In the station concourse boys were kicking balls of paper at the barricaded Intershop.

‘Clear off, man,’ the policeman said.

‘But my briefcase –’

‘Buzz off.’

(Eschschloraque) ‘But people, when they’re free, what do they do with their lives? If their aspiration is to be happy, what is then the expression of that happiness? They go hunting! The favourite pastime of the aristocracy, which had the most leisure, was to go hunting. And ordinary people have their own ordinary kind of hunting: they go fishing. What are you going to achieve with your revolution? An increase in the number of anglers. That’s all. The improved lot of the workers will consist in being able to devote themselves to that simplest form of hunting. And liberty, equality, fraternity for just that? Gosh!’

(Altberg) ‘Now you’re the one being cynical.’

(Eschschloraque)
‘I’m simply trying to avoid idealizing. Don’t make human beings more interesting than they are … Things are often too easy in life and art often imitates it as well, so what then?’

(Schubert) ‘But there must be hope! You can’t live without hope.’

(Eschschloraque) ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to learn to do that. – To stand on the Mastersingers’ shore, the place of the age-old new melody, everyone remains in his place in the firmly established order, time, the sorceress who is eternally changing everything, powerless!’

(Emcee) ‘There he is, part of that power, misunderstood, that ever evil wills and ever works for good, listen now, ladies and gentlemen, to the “Mephisto Waltz” rendered by our enchanting big band from Dresden.’

(Albin Eschschloraque) ‘Not do anything at all. I just want to … sit here and brood. I wish I were a hen.’

(Judith Schevola) ‘You’re keeping for yourself the whole repugnance people feel for a former idol.’

(Albin Eschschloraque) ‘Should I call you Fräulein Anna Lysis?’

(Eschschloraque) ‘You can’t stay calm, my son, when the world’s revolving round the quiet axis of your room.’

(Sinner-Priest) ‘You can imagine what I felt when my boss wanted to proceed according to the principle of that nation I hate. That in superstitious madness actually knocks the noses off statues so that they won’t come alive.’

(Barsano) ‘We believed that all people were basically good. If we gave them enough to eat, somewhere to live, clothes to wear, then they wouldn’t have to be bad any more. An error, what an error!’

But Meno refused to. The case in the station contained manuscripts, including one of Judith Schevola’s, with corrections; irreplaceable. A sense of duty, fear, curiosity and adventure: he circumambulated the station, went back in by a side entrance. Since he could show a valid ticket, he was allowed through. Meno’s briefcase was under a bench,
guarded by an old woman who lived nearby and had come to hand out tea and biscuits. She had seen Meno and the other man being led away.

‘Have you ever seen anything like that before?’

‘No,’ Meno said.

‘That only happened during the war and on the seventeenth of June. You’re young – in your place I’d go too.’

Meno went home. The tram was full of rumours, people didn’t hold their tongues any more, they didn’t seem bothered whether anyone who would report them was listening. Dresden lay in the chill shade, heavy with mourning, of the desolation of its autumnal days; the lamps swung over the quiet streets of the district, full of the whisper of swaying branches.

Swirls of wind twisted the treetops on Mondleite, bounced up from the roof of the House with a Thousand Eyes, which creaked and groaned. Pedro Honich had already put the flag in the holder outside his window. The television was on at Libussa’s. The scent of vanilla tobacco was feeling its way through the gaps under the doors even though Meno had put cloth draught excluders made by Anne and Barbara over them. Someone was walking restlessly up and down in the conservatory. Meno opened the door onto the balcony and went out, followed by Chakamankabudibaba, who sniffed the misty air. From the park came the smell of decaying wood, which mixed with that of humus and wet leaves in the garden. Meno stared at the city, the visible bend of the Elbe, on which a gently bobbing lighter was drifting: so that, too, was time, someone had to keep an eye open for currents and signs, people needed coal or gravel or whatever the ship there was carrying. He went back into the room. How peaceful his desk was: his microscope and the typewriter with a blank sheet of paper still in it. He sat down, tried to work, but his thoughts kept slipping away. He stood up, he had to talk to someone.

By now Libussa and the ship’s doctor, who gave Meno a vigorous wave through the wooden-bead curtain, had switched on the radio.

‘Shouldn’t you be in Berlin?’ Lange asked, surprised.

‘Couldn’t
get through, Central Station’s been closed.’

Libussa found a Czech station, translated. Hardly anything new, qualified expressions. The familiar sonorous announcer’s voice on Radio Dresden didn’t say a word about the events. Libussa switched off and remained silent. Suddenly Meno couldn’t say anything any more, he sat, hunched up underneath the collection of knots. He wanted to see Niklas.

‘Don’t endanger yourself, lad,’ Lange called out to him as he left.

The Heinrichstrasse villas seemed to have withdrawn into an ivy-wreathed dream, the few lighted windows were not looking out into the street but at the Land of Yesterday; the rhododendrons and brambles on the fences between the rusted gates seemed to be made of rampant silhouette paper. The light was on in the Griesels’ apartment; the first floor, the apartments of André Tischer and the Stenzel Sisters, was dark. Richard was on duty, Anne probably out, at a meeting of some opposition group in Neustadt or over in Loschwitz, in Kügelgenstrasse … Or at Matz Griebel’s with his more or less anarchist artist friends.

Ezzo came to the door; his violin stuck under his chin, he tightened his bow, tried a few strokes while Meno was hanging his coat on the coat hooks opposite Reglinde’s former room. Ezzo left him there. Far away in time the abbot’s clock and the grandfather clock in the living room asked the question and the silvery voice of the Viennese clock in the music room replied. Meno waited by the flowers engraved on the frosted glass of the living-room door, careful not to let his shadow fall on them, then he knocked briefly and cautiously pressed the handle down. Niklas, standing by the stove, nodded.
The Oldest German Cathedrals
was centrally placed on the table with a few Dehio volumes round it. Meno tried to say something but couldn’t. Art books open, warmth, then some music later … Niklas’s universe.

(Barsano)
‘At night the footsteps. At night the scuttling of the rats along the corridors of the Lux. A bakery at the bottom attracted them. They were there during the day as well, weren’t bothered by us. Lifts went, lifts stopped. At night we lay awake and counted the seconds the lift motor ran. Counted the seconds the footsteps were coming closer.’

(Eschschloraque) ‘A time will come when it’s diabolic for the rituals of uniformity – I’m being imprecise, Rohde, and you’re not telling me off. The concept of ritual contains within it the concept of uniformity. Heheh. Diabolus: the one who throws things into confusion. To put it bluntly: the eternal revolution is devilish, the eternal change of the existing state of things …’

(Barsano) ‘Mother was taken to be interrogated. The examining judge threatened her with the stick. The other swore. Coarse, filthy swear words. Russian is a language that’s rich in swear words. Mother asked whether she was at the Gestapo. The two started swearing at her again. Then she stood up and said, You haven’t served in the army, comrade. I’ll show you how to swear properly.’

(Eschschloraque) ‘… time, therefore. Time is the devil’s work, Rohde, for it is the instrument of change … the glue to which we’re stuck … That is why we’re living in a divinely ordained state, for we have undertaken to abolish time. Woe betide us if we fail … I see an age of the present dawning in which all change will consist of the eternal recurrence of the ever-same, Diabolus will plunge into everyday routine, his affair will no longer be change but quiescence, uniformity, the mill that grinds all great or would-be great stones to powder on the paths of an eternally unchanging present …’

(Barsano) ‘Which struck the others dumb and they stopped swearing. They started asking Mother about intimate matters, it had nothing to do with the charge, they wanted to know everything, and that in my presence.’

(Eschschloraque)
‘… which would mean that God had become the devil, had merged with him. God is the devil.’

Order and security:

But the paper, the snow-shower of scraps, falling asymmetrically, colourful as a circus. Meno worked his way through the crowd to the station exit, clutching his ticket and his case; duty called but didn’t entice him, here something beyond the usual thesis-and-antithesis games was happening, also beyond the usual answers. Luise, his undaunted mother, would perhaps have said: It’d be reckless not to stay here. The noises in the station: cavernous, with slithery, aimless echoes: was that like the way the outside world flooded into our hearing, the still unfiltered acoustic stream splashing, breaking against our eardrums, making the malleus, incus and stapes vibrate: Morse signals to the endolymph contained within the membranous labyrinth of the tympanic canal? The town was the ear, the station jutted out into the cochlea: the helix, oscillations, particles of sound rolling about, knocking, some as fine as dust, just scratching at the acoustic threshold of perception, others full of themselves, vibratory amplitudes of the authorities. Cinderella’s peas, then a clicking, a hailstorm of glass raining down, as if a hole had been punched in the store of a marbles factory, meanwhile a basic rhythm was getting into shape, boomboom! boomboom! the crude, martial, theatrical solemnity of Siegfried’s journey down the Rhine to death – perhaps the police had been trained, or was it mere chance. (But did mere chance exist in uniform in this country?) Hitting their truncheons against their plastic shields, they shooed the people in droves out of the station. Meno was carried along with them. The exits spewed out those fleeing the police, at the same time sucking in, as a whale’s stomach factory does plankton, a crowd curious to see what was going on, the background body of which was gathering in Prager Strasse and, after crossing the tram tracks on Wiener Platz, headed for the northern entrance to the station. Two forces; they collided under the
Radeberger sign (now mute and dull on this plumage-grey morning), forming a buffer zone of kicking, of gesticulations, of archaic fear and relief, a remarkably soothing ring, bubbling up like batter, with thorny wound ruptures shooting off in places where the stitches burst between the battering wedges, which immediately blunted each other with the force of thrust from behind: as Meno saw in units of time of hallucinatory alertness that had nothing to do with his attempts to keep his balance in the swirling tumult, nor with his ticket that, in mortal fear, like a fish flapping in the air, was a vague promise screwed tight in a grip that was being jogged every moment; that had nothing to do with the thought that he didn’t want to leave but to stay there, daring. I’m staying here. I want to see. I want to see (with my own eyes) what is going to happen here. Curiosity? A maternal gene that had so far remained silent, that had started to flash hesitantly on the Rohdes’ partisan horizon and wanted to have an effect? Paper, floating, hissing, tramped on, scrunched up out of rage or joy. People trickling to the passageways. Suddenly shouts: the train! the train! Fields of swimmers desperately doing the crawl. The train was said to have arrived. Where! Where? The train! The expected train, from Prague; the train to freedom. The train. Freedom! some cried at the camouflage-coloured turbine that started to throb, greedily and dangerously: batons beat out their rhythmical Clear off! Clear off! The train had not arrived. Immediately the people slipped back into waiting postures, many awake with pain and furious, even more drained and disappointed; backpacks slumped down onto paper-strewn platforms. The train didn’t come.