The Tower: A Novel (36 page)

‘The name is Munderloh. I like you. Though your answer that it depends on the situation was all too predictable. It always depends on the situation.’

‘I hate dolphins,’ Schevola said coldly. ‘They’re always so nice and kind, they save shipwrecked sailors and come to the help of the poet Arion, they dance round Bacchus’s boat and bask in the early light of the sun … but I don’t trust them.’

‘There is a school of evil dolphins,’ Redlich muttered. ‘Black dolphins who are not favourably disposed towards us –’

‘What are you on about, Josef?’ The Frankfurt press officer waved his hand in displeasure.

‘I’d like to kill a dolphin once, just to see what the other dolphins do. Whether they’re still so nice and kind, whether the cliché’s correct – or whether they’d then show their true character,’ Schevola said, not avoiding Munderloh’s hard look – from eyes that seemed like light-blue stones, a look like a rod, like a surgeon’s blunt probe, Meno thought.

‘I
will read your manuscript,’ Munderloh said after a pause during which the table had been silent, the only sounds coming from the front of the Jägerschänke. ‘I will read it if Hermes will let me have it. – Do you like swimming?’ He took out a visiting card, scribbled something on the back and pushed it across the table to Schevola.

‘Only against the tide,’ she replied after she’d read what was on the card and given Munderloh a long, hard stare.

‘Great. – So it’s not just slaves you produce in this country.’

‘Don’t say that, Herr Munderloh, please don’t.’ Redlich was leaning forward. ‘They have dealings with the darkness, Lichtenberg,
Waste Books
, notebook L. And feel the pressure of government as little as they do the pressure of the air, notebook J.’

Munderloh nodded. ‘Perhaps you have the wrong idea of conditions in our country. Perhaps I have of conditions here. Let us drink a toast to what unites us.’ He raised his glass, which he’d filled with red wine, and drank to Redlich.

‘We, who know what a valuable thing truth is … And it is also a truth to present language in its purity …’ Redlich sank back onto the bench, his chubby face with the moustache and puffy eyes that reminded Meno of Joseph Roth’s face was in shadow again. Schiffner placed his hand on his arm.

‘However that may be, you, all of you’ – Redlich indicated the row of Frankfurters with a sweeping gesture – ‘are much better dressed than we are.’ He laughed, put his hand over his mouth.

‘You don’t like swimming, with or against the tide, is that right?’ Munderloh leant forward, clasped his hands. They were strong, peasant’s hands with hair on the back of the fingers; Meno was sure Munderloh would be able to crack walnuts between his thumb and forefinger. He would survive the camp – that angular head, the nose that looked as if it had been hewn with an axe, that lumberjack’s back, the liberators would see all that when they opened the gates; he’s a man that survives, Meno thought and frowned because he was irritated
at connecting Munderloh’s appearance with the camp; it seemed a perfidious thought. Redlich didn’t reply to Munderloh’s question. The party broke up. Philipp Londoner was waiting outside the Jägerschänke and greeted Eschschloraque and Schiffner familiarly, Schevola had disappeared.

It was warm at Philipp’s, Marisa had turned the heating up; Meno and Eschschloraque soon took their jackets off. Philipp seemed to feel cold, he walked up and down restlessly, rubbing his hands, occasionally doing a knees bend when he stopped beside the little Azerbaijani copper table in front of the wall with the thousands of light-brown, blue, white and red spines of Reclam paperbacks. Eschschloraque knew about Meno’s relationship with the Londoner family but had still expressed surprise that he was spending the night at Philipp’s place. Meno had said nothing and on his part was wondering why Eschschloraque was there. Jochen Londoner knew him, Meno also knew that he was a frequent guest in the house on Zetkinweg in East Rome but was surprised at the familiar relationship between Philipp and Eschschloraque.

‘That nightwatchman,’ Eschschloraque said, slowly turning the glass of tea Marisa had given him round and reflectively watching the particles floating in the red liquid, ‘that nightwatchman in the Jägerschänke. Anyone who can write about spiders will notice a nightwatchman as well. What do you think, Philipp, does communism need nightwatchmen? I’m sure friend Rohde here would say yes, he relies on the immutability of certain affairs, especially those of humans – but who knows?’

‘Nightwatchmen? Rubbish. We’ve other problems.’

‘But it would be a rewarding question for your institute. It’s not as humorous a one as you might think.’

Philipp shrugged his shoulders, started walking to and fro again. Marisa came in, made herself comfortable on the sofa beside Eschschloraque, lit one of Philipp’s cigarillos.

‘Tell
me instead what the evening was like, with the people from Frankfurt.’

‘A pretty mixed-capitalist soirée. They look on us with both pity and envy. Pity because we are so terribly naive and refuse to give up our belief that the written word can change the world. Envy because, at least in this part of the Fatherland, we are absolutely right. There’s also an element of fury. They don’t like it when we catch them slackening off. Their manufacturing conditions are not determined by the state. The fact that they keep going on about our generally mediocre paper confirms your thesis that under free-market conditions the spirit is like a cow grazing on superficialities. How are things at the Institute, anyway?’ Philipp worked as a lecturer at a Leipzig branch of the Institute for Social Sciences.

‘Nothing special. I’m not getting anywhere.’

‘Because you’re too young?’

‘No, that’s not the problem.’

‘Didn’t you apply for a professorship?’

‘I’ll probably get one but … the Institute’s losing its influence, it’s hardly taken seriously any more.’

‘Then go into politics.’

‘It’s a good thing to know your limits. I’m better off on the theoretical side.’

‘Which doesn’t necessarily say anything against you. Which doesn’t necessarily say anything for the practical side either.’

‘Yes. Theories can be powerful agents of change. And I’m not a demagogue, as old Goatee was, despite everything.’

‘A little more respect, if you please. He wasn’t that bad a politician, taking everything into account. Much better than him up there.’ Eschschloraque jerked his shoulder at a portrait of the General Secretary on one of the shelves.’

‘As a politician – maybe. As a human being … My department’s being cut back a little.’

‘What’s
the reason?’

‘My name, I think, paradoxical as it may sound. And probably also because we were in England.’

‘Do you think so? A bit simple, if you ask me. Still, it is possible. They’re not exactly philosemitic, the comrades in the Politburo.’

Philipp broke off. ‘No more of that.’ He looked across at Marisa, who was calmly smoking and staring out of the window. ‘What did you mean with that about the nightwatchman?’

There was something of the clown about Eschschloraque’s face when he smiled. His wrinkled cheeks and the clearly defined bags under his eyes seemed to be part of a mask behind which cunning features were just waiting to leap out like jacks-in-a-box and perform somersaults in the momentarily clear space; also Meno had the impression that, for all his fine speeches, Eschschloraque’s greatest desire was to get up and do a backflip over the table. ‘So he’s made you think, has he, our nightwatchman? Well I’ve got one in the play I’m working on at the moment. I believe a nightwatchman is an idealist out of despair. There’s no one out in the streets any more – at least not officially – apart from him and the darkness. I don’t know, perhaps I’ll have a cat appear as well. His lantern is the only light in the dark. For it is dark, of course, – and not some cosy fairy tale in which the stars turn into silver thalers – and he’s awake. He carries his lantern through the darkness. And has to make do with that. He denies nature, more than that: he hates it – in his official capacity.’

‘Is that another of your defences of classicism against Romanticism?’

‘Why should I defend classicism against something that was cooked up by the English secret service? Unfortunately stupidity seems to be … a metaphor for immortality.’

Philipp burst out laughing. ‘Do you still keep dossiers on your enemies?’

‘That doesn’t concern friend Rohde,’ Eschschloraque replied. ‘Thank you for the tea, madam.’ He stood up and bowed to Marisa.

‘Do you believe truth exists?’ Verena adjusted the pullover that she’d tied across her chest by the sleeves. Siegbert took his time replying. It was warm, April seemed to have taken out a loan from May. They were lying in the grass on a slope above Kaltwasser reservoir, Christian was watching the changing characters inked on the apple-green of the dam by wind and waves. A train of the Erzgebirge railway, small as a model train, was chugging along the opposite bank, steaming up the fir trees along the line.

‘Hey, Verena, I believe in Pink Floyd,’ said Jens Ansorge in bored tones, pulled one hand out from under his head, took the blade of grass he’d been chewing out of his mouth and inspected it suspiciously. ‘You know everything, Chrishan, can you tell me what that is? Tastes as bitter as anti-fever pills, yeuch.’ He pulled a face and spat out.

‘You watch what you’re doing, you mucky pup! Your slobber almost landed on me.’ Reina Kossmann threw back her head in disgust, Jens smirked, bursting imaginary balloons with this forefinger. Falk Truschler let himself fall onto his back and laughed his soft, hoarse, shoulder-twitching laugh. His movements were so shambling Christian felt as if Falk had only borrowed his body for a while; Christian tried to think of the
mot juste
: clumsy came to mind, and then he remembered sports lessons and Herr Schanzler directing a green-and-white-clad horde round the sports hall with geometries of Prussian precision; Falk’s angular movements as he drew back to throw the Indian clubs for hand-grenade practice, his way of running: legs sticking out sideways like a girl’s, his expression, wavering between despair and self-mockery, at the moment of releasing the club, his hands and fingers waggling, as now at Jens Ansorge’s little joke. Ungainly, he thought,
that actually describes him even better than clumsy. But, as Meno said, ‘actually’ is a word to be avoided.

‘Truth,’ Siegbert said, drawing the word out, ‘I don’t know. Just watch out that you don’t turn into a blue-stocking. Intellectual women don’t get no men, then no children, my old mum always says, an’ then they’re unhappy. There’s a truth for you.’

‘You arrogant male chauvinist pig!’ Verena exclaimed indignantly. ‘It’s
my
mother who’s right: what this country needs is a women’s movement.’

‘Ooh, no one’s got anything against women’s movements,’ Jens Ansorge interjected coolly, ‘as long as they’re nice and rhythmical.’

Grunts of laughter came from Falk and Siegbert.

‘Stick to the point for once.’ Christian felt himself blush as Verena looked up, immediately turned his eyes away and stared at his shoes. ‘What do you understand by truth?’

‘Certainly not Schmidtchen Schleicher’s class standpoint –’ That was what they called Schnürchel after a character in a pop song: Schmidtchen Schleicher with the ee-lastic legs …

‘Ansorge showing off his cynical side again,’ Reina Kossmann mocked, ‘it’s just courtship display, Verena. What was it Dr Frank told us about peacocks fanning their tails?’

Jens Ansorge leant up, gave Reina a worried look, puckered up his lips. She slapped her forehead and blew a kiss back.

‘So there you are,’ said Jens, satisfied.

‘Have you heard? The commitment rigmarole is going to start up soon. Fahner wants it done before 1 May. Then we’ll get a heavy roll-call –’

‘And turn into nice and tidy, frigging statistics,’ said Jens, cutting Siegbert short. He frowned, threw the blade of grass away, suddenly serious. ‘Three wasted years … God knows how awful it’ll be, guys. “Every male graduate of this school commits himself to voluntary service in the National People’s Army,” ’ he said, imitating Fahner.

‘Not
me,’ said Falk.

‘It’ll be good for your muscles.’

Christian was surprised at how coolly merciless women could be, especially since Reina then pinched Falk’s biceps. Women for whom we did everything – oh the heroes in books, in films! – who mourned us when we fell in battle, who before that wept handkerchiefs full of tears for their beloved on the famous platform to the hiss of steam from the engine preparing to depart – and then this callousness from Reina, whose pale, delicate features with the mouth turned down slightly to the left, he liked looking at –

‘Hey, you look horrified,’ she said, brushing back her hair in a challenging gesture. ‘We don’t often see you look like that. I must have been really good.’

‘She’s keen on you, Chrishan,’ Jens drawled, holding up his hand for a high five with Falk.

‘Get lost, you idiot,’ Reina snapped, throwing up her arm. ‘I don’t want to catch pimples.’

A thrust with a bare bodkin; Siegbert and Jens surveyed Christian, he had the feeling his face had been set on fire, tried a smile.

‘You can leave my muscles out of it,’ said Falk. ‘I’m not going to enlist. Three years … I’d have grey hair by the time I got out. And then … all those tanks and guns … I’m not going to shoot at anyone.’

‘Just let Chief Red Eagle hear that,’ Reina said quietly and Christian realized she’d said it to him as a kind of offer in the group that had fallen silent, an offer he rejected because he didn’t see why he should make the effort to break the silence; he stared down at the bay below them, wondering whether it would be worth coming fishing here with Ezzo and Meno, he’d have to join the local section of the German Angling Association; funny, these nicknames. They had inherited the name ‘Red Eagle’, as they called Herr Engelmann, their civics teacher and principal of the senior high school, from long-departed
generations of pupils and accepted it unquestioningly. Did that indicate their lack of imagination or the aptness of the name – Christian decided in favour of the latter. It was true that when Engelmann spread his arms wide and told them, his lips moist with enthusiasm and his fiery red jug-nose shining above them, about the Great Socialist October Revolution, in which his father had taken part under Trotsky’s leadership, when he started to wave his hands, his eyelids behind his thick lenses drooping so he could immerse his gaze in the great times of the past, at such moments Engelmann did resemble an old, ponderous eagle that swept round the class dictating April Theses with words appearing to fall out of his colourless, bubbling chain-smoker’s voice and plop like early plums on the pupils’ cowering heads.

‘First Red Eagle will put the squeeze on you, then Fahner … I’m going away for four years anyway.’

Verena stared at Siegbert in alarm; he was picking up pebbles and, unmoved, flicking them up into the bright blue sky.

‘Four years … Are you crazy?’ Jens scrutinized Siegbert as if he’d been wearing a mask all the time that had now slipped to reveal the face of a monster. Siegbert smiled coolly.

‘Just realistic. I want to be a naval officer. I was in Rostock last summer. They don’t take anyone who hasn’t done a period of service in the People’s Navy.’

‘I thought you wanted to join the merchant navy?’

‘Unfortunately that doesn’t make any difference, Montecristo.’

‘The Count of Montecristo.’ Her lips pursed affectedly, Verena imitated Christian’s habit of brushing his too-long quiff out of his face: she put her head on one side, turned her eyes up and, with an exaggeratedly camp gesture, pushed back an imaginary quiff, a kind of habitual tic that he had and that he would have to get rid of immediately if it looked the way Verena had demonstrated. ‘What an appropriate title for His Dresden Highness –’

‘Shut it,’ Christian growled. The two girls snorted with laughter.

‘Take
it easy, old man,’ Jens said soothingly, ‘the women are going through puberty and the nickname won’t last anyway. Much too long and too much trouble to say. – But, my God, Siggi: four years!’

Siegbert shrugged his shoulders. ‘I want to go to sea. They want four years in the navy. So I go into the navy for four years.’

‘Oh, great,’ Verena said. There was a touch of contempt, it seemed to Christian, in her voice, a touch of anger. He thought about Siegbert’s answer, as the others appeared to be doing, they’d fallen silent. He imagined Fahner, who summoned the boys one by one to the principal’s office, which was guarded by his wife at a heavy Optima typewriter; Fahner would definitely be – as he always was when you turned the handle after he had barked ‘Yes!’ – sitting at his desk, writing without looking up, so that you had plenty of time to observe the light cut into strips by the Venetian blinds on the highly polished PVC floor, the severe, shadowed faces of Wilhelm Pieck, Walter Ulbricht and the female Minister of Education on the wall over Fahner’s head, not knowing what to do, for Fahner didn’t say ‘Come in’ or ‘Sit down’; Fahner said nothing at all, just sat there writing, in his elegant suit with the silk oversleeves in the blue of the Free German Youth that he would eventually, with measured movements of his fingertips that spoke of conflicting thoughts, take off and place on the table beside the needle-sharp pencils arranged precisely according to size. In the music class with Herr Uhl they’d recently talked about the English composer Benjamin Britten, and Christian had been amazed at the similarity between Britten’s head and Fahner’s: the same profusion of caterpillar-like locks, the same boyishly soft features; the similarity was so pronounced that Christian had done some research to see whether Britten had had a son in the Erzgebirge … his research had produced no result.

Verena broke the silence. ‘You could just as well say: I want to go to sea, they demand that I kill a person – so I’ll kill a person.’

‘Gentlemen,’ said Jens.

‘Just
a minute,’ Siegbert said. ‘I’m the one this is about, I’m the one taking on the four years. Anyway, it’s easy enough for you to talk, Verena, it’s not a problem for you, there’s no military district command awaiting you.’

‘Killing people … that can happen to you in the forces … They say the army units on the border are still on high alert and if you end up there … Enlisted today, invading Poland, gun in hand, tomorrow … Or in Angola. My father says Castro’s troops are supposed to be there, the Russians as well … You can count me out,’ Falk said.

‘You’ll stick to that? And if they throw you out?’

‘Now wait a minute, Verena,’ Jens said pretty sharply. ‘It was pretty good recently when you handed in an empty sheet of paper, but you did back down eventually –’

‘You must be out of your mind, Ansorge!’ Reina tapped her forehead. ‘Come on, Verena, what are we doing here?’

‘You’re right,’ Verena said after a while. They looked at each other in surprise, for she’d said it to Jens Ansorge.

Three years in the National People’s Army. Christian knew he would never forget that moment, that 24 April 1983; the day before yesterday. The three of them had been waiting outside Fahner’s office, Jens Ansorge had tried to cover up the situation with jokes, for Falk had come out, a touch paler than usual, his right hand clutching the worn, imitation-leather briefcase with VEB GISAG Schmiedeberg on that he’d got from his father; he nodded and smiled his way past them into the light-grey corridor of the senior high school that was decorated with flags and pennants for the ‘Karl Marx Year 1983’. Jens remained silent, Christian avoided Siegbert’s eye that was trying to make contact with his, none of them called after Falk, asked him to stop, to tell them what had happened; they just watched him, the way he walked: it was a little less shambling than usual, he kept close to the banister, suddenly a fissure seemed to open up between Falk and them, the ball of his
hand pounding the rubberized stair rail, the thrumming noise echoing round the stairwell, the trousers that were too big for him with the green plastic comb in his back pocket and its curving handle, shaped like a drop of water, sticking up cheekily over his belt, his angular shoulders under the Free German Youth shirt: it was something they’d let go of, all three of them, though probably each in his own way, and the fissure Christian sensed came from the fact that he felt no pity. It wasn’t just because of the discussion that he would never forget that day.

It had gone differently from the way he’d expected, in an almost friendly atmosphere. Perhaps Fahner had been in a good mood because Siegbert had gone before Christian and signed up for four years, proof of the peace-loving attitude of young citizens with their consciously progressive outlook; once more there was the performance with paper and pencil and silence, the irresolute wait by the door until Fahner, not looking up, murmured ‘Hoffmann’ and, a few seconds later, as if he’d only just remembered his first name, ‘Christian’ and, again after a pause, ‘Sit down.’ Then he’d stretched out his hand and abruptly looked Christian in the face but, with the same motion, pointed to a chair, as if he’d made an error with the gesture, that could be interpreted as impermissible, or at least incompatible with his position as overall principal of the Maxim Gorki educational complex. Christian was embarrassed because Fahner looked good with his tan from holidays in Yugoslavia, his blue eyes and Benjamin Britten hair. ‘From what I hear about you, Hoffmann, you don’t seem to be making a particular effort,’ Fahner had said, his hands clasped over a sheet of paper, at the top of which Christian deciphered his name, below it notes, some typed, some handwritten; among them Christian recognized Dr Frank’s illegible scribble. ‘Medicine,’ said Fahner reflectively, ‘the most sought-after, the most difficult subject. Your marks are good, apart from mathematics. It looks like you’re heading for a disaster there. But grades alone don’t make the medic. What use to us are traitors, who
attend the senior high and the university at our cost and then have nothing better to do than to think only of themselves and get out? A sense of social responsibility, Hoffmann, that’s important too. Indeed, it’s more important than anything else. The committed standpoint. The people here make it possible for you to acquire knowledge free from worry, and we have an obligation to those people: you, by doing your best – and me by helping you, if you show goodwill; and by recognizing those who turn out to be parasites, who cannot or will not comprehend what our Workers’ and Peasants’ State is doing for them, by recognizing them as that type of character and treating them for what they are. Our nation invests hundreds of thousands of marks in your training. You must show yourself worthy of that trust and that generosity. That is why I expect your assent to three years’ service in our armed forces, by which you will give back to it a little of what it is doing for you. Especially since, as agitator, you have an exemplary role for your class collective. Your response, please.’ Fahner put down the pencil, the point of which he’d been stabbing at the desk to emphasize what he was saying. Christian had intended to make some objection, to dispute at least one of Fahner’s points, to make it less easy for him, but he couldn’t, he had to agree with Fahner. He could sense that there was a decisive error in Fahner’s arguments, but he couldn’t pin it down, however hard he tried; a discussion would end up with the question as to how he could deny this country a right that all other countries probably demanded, how he could – and at this point the discussion would have become dangerous – make a distinction between the defence of the country over there and here, between the Bundeswehr and the National People’s Army. In his mind’s eye he could see the horrified expressions on the faces of his parents, who had rehearsed this discussion and possible lines of argument over several weekends; he had mentioned the undemocratic character of the armed forces over here that earned him, for the first time after many years, a clip round the ears from his father. You hold your tongue, Christian, understood! And
for a moment Christian had hated his father – even though it was Fahner he ought to have been hating; but he didn’t hate him and wondered about that as, sitting in front of him on the edge of his chair, he looked past Fahner with understanding at the faces of the comrade rulers; he didn’t feel hatred, instead he felt a need to agree with Fahner and to do so not only with lukewarm words that the principal would certainly have already heard a hundred times over, their emptiness forming a repulsive combination with the zealous promptness with which they were produced; a kind of bimetallic strip, the fear flowed through it as a current, created warmth, the metal curled and the bulb of the lie lit up. Christian felt the need not to disappoint Fahner, to cooperate with him, to support him. So he avoided the empty phrases and started to lie honestly.