The Tower: A Novel (44 page)

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You need someone to look after the children.’

‘Forgive me for coming to you with …’

‘No problem.’ She poured out two glasses of brandy. ‘I’ve quite often helped Frau Fischer. I know where everything is, what they eat and what they don’t, I can take the little girl to the kindergarten.’

‘That’s good of you.’

‘You wait and see.’ She came over to him with the two glasses. He was so baffled that he took the glass she handed to him. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Do you smoke?’

‘N-no –’ He’d almost said: Of course not – and she’d have responded with: Of course not? Why? and perhaps guessed he was a doctor. Perhaps she knew that anyway. He wondered how much Josta had told her.

‘Have a sip, it calms you down.’

‘Don’t you work in a fish shop?’

‘As a sales assistant, true. It’s not so bad there. Now and then you
have to kill a fish. You’ve got something to exchange, to bargain with, as a painter I was worse off in that respect. – You’re not a person who tries out different things?’

‘I’ll go now. Please, you must see that I’m not in the mood for a chat at the moment. I’m sorry. Another time – with pleasure, but not just now.’

‘So what are you in the mood for.’ She gave him a rather challenging look. He avoided her eye, stared at her feet. ‘To be honest, I don’t know.’ He held the glass away from him, as if it were infectious, clutched his forehead nervously. What a stupid answer. I must have gone completely mad.

‘You’d like to sleep with me.’

‘What?’

‘Did you think I didn’t notice you looking? In the hall and in the mirror just now?’ She emptied her glass. ‘You were horny and I am too now.’

‘Are you …’ Richard gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘… are you mad?’

‘No. Just alone.’

He took a mouthful of brandy after all. It was good brandy. He hated himself for noticing that.

‘I’ve sometimes been listening when you and Josta … She seemed to be pretty happy.’

‘Oh come now, that’s –’

‘Enviable. I’d like to be like that again for once.’

‘… completely mad –’

‘And now I have the opportunity. You can take off your “uncle” mask.’

‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’ Richard couldn’t help laughing.

‘Call it what you like. I call it seizing the occasion. I don’t want to die an old maid regretting missed opportunities.’

‘You don’t want to …’ He still had to laugh. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Not
at all. And certainly not from this bit of brandy. I have that effect on people, I know. I’m a bit … what do people say? – woozy. I’ve always been like that. Grew up in the uranium mines. We were called “the sleeping village”.’

‘What would you say if I told you I couldn’t care less about your blackmail threat?’

She took his glass and threw it on the floor. ‘I would say: You don’t know what you’re missing.’ She came over to him, treading in the splinters of glass.

But then they sat there, silent. After a while she lit a cigarette, drew on it, held it out to him, he waved it away. Her feet were bleeding. Splinters of glass in the feet were difficult to find if they weren’t stuck in superficially, you couldn’t see them on X-rays.

He left the apartment. Said goodbye to Daniel, who had put Lucie to bed, where she was sleeping with her mouth open.

The girls trotted along a bit behind them and were less mocking than usual, perhaps because Christian had invited them: they were to spend the night in Meno’s apartment in the House with a Thousand Eyes, Meno was in Berlin. Perhaps it was because of the voices from the gardens, the scent of jasmine that was overpowering in the evening, cutting through the other smells: resin on the plum trees, warm asphalt, all the bubbling ferment coming out of the open windows that subsided with the twilight and the blossom-inflamed slope above the Elbe with its whispering – Niklas said: balsamic – delicacy. Christian and Falk did handstands but only Siegbert managed to keep going to the
advertisement pillar at the Mondleite–Lindwurmring crossroads, to the shouts and applause of the Russian officers who had been playing volleyball outside the Villa Clair, where they lived. The piano in the Roeckler School of Dancing repeated ‘The Blue Danube’ with mindless patience. Heike had brought her drawing pad and Christian was amazed at the swift sharpness with which she caught Siegbert’s triumph: his precarious balance as he crossed the road on his hands in front of a honking car, his trousers slipping down to reveal his brown, brambly calves and tennis socks, his jacket that had turned inside out like an umbrella, his face as he tried to look casual and breathe calmly when he stood up and brushed the dirt off his hands, then Heike drew a halo over him and Reina’s and Verena’s faces with expressions between the craving for an autograph and an approaching swoon. The history and geography exams were behind them.

‘Hey, Christian, it’s really great that you’ve arranged this with your uncle,’ Reina said. ‘What did you say for question three? I thought it was pretty beastly and I don’t know –’

‘Hey, no more about school, you’ll just have to wait and see what you get, you can’t do anything about it now.’

‘Was it you I asked for your opinion, Falk Truschler, or Montecristo?’ Reina retorted pertly.

‘Can’t you give up these stupid nicknames?’

‘We mean it in the nicest way,’ said Reina.

‘It looks good, your blue dress,’ Falk said when Christian didn’t reply. They made a detour along Wolfsleite, Christian wanted to pick up Fabian and Muriel; when he rang at Wolfstone, no one came.

‘I think they’ve gone already,’ said Herr Krausewitz. He was weeding and paused a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow. ‘We’re going to have a summer like we haven’t had for ages,’ he said, more to himself than to Christian, ‘I bet it’ll be even crazier than last year. – Where are you off to?’

‘To the Langes’, we’re spending the night at Uncle’s.’

‘He’s
gone to the Association congress, so I heard. Give him my best wishes.’

There was a fountain in the garden of Dolphin’s Lair, a stone dolphin reared up over the mossy rim, a jet of water came out of its mouth and splashed into the basin, the rippling bluish water of which reflected the five-fingered leaves of a horse chestnut. The girls stopped and listened, Heike drew the scroll ornament over the cornice, the door flanked by sandstone pillars with the bee lily above it, and Christian dug up secrets about Frau von Stern, the former lady-in-waiting who had known Kaiser Wilhelm and the last Russian Tsar, going into raptures about her apartment and her souvenirs when he saw he was making an impression; only Verena remained suspicious and asked how he came to be familiar with her apartment. Christian told them about the evenings, with the invitations to the soirées written by hand or on typewriters, when they would gather together, when ice-patterns spread over the windowpanes and Plisch and Plum in Hauschild’s coal store were only weighing out damp brown lumps that didn’t heat the apartments at all; when they all sat together in Guenon House, in Roeckler’s School of Dancing, in Elephant opposite the House with a Thousand Eyes or at Frau von Stern’s listening to a talk by the music critic, Däne, on Weber’s oboe concerto or by Hoffmann, the toxicologist, on poisons; when they discussed the latest rumours from town and country over sandwiches and mineral water. But only Reina was still listening when he looked up, Verena had gone on ahead to join Falk and Siegbert, and Heike was immersed in the perspectives of a shoe dangling from a rhododendron by the remains of its lace. Ina was standing outside the Italian House with a few of the ‘long-haired individuals’ Barbara complained about, one was holding a stereo recorder to his ear that was emitting the boom of tender, brutal music. Ina waved. ‘Hey, cousin of mine, what are you doing here?’

‘Celebrating the end of exams. We’re going to the Bearpit, sleeping at Meno’s. What’s that you’re listening to?’

‘Yeuch,
the Bearpit,’ one of the long-haired group drawled, giving Christian’s summer suit a disparaging scrutiny. ‘’s called
Feeling B
.’ The one with the stereo recorder turned it up louder. Christian introduced the others.

‘Hi, pretty man,’ Ina said brightly. ‘Siegbert’s something different, most of the ones I know are called Ronny or Mike or Thomas. – Your girlfriend?’ Verena put her hands behind her back.

‘Perhaps we’ll see you later, you never know. You’re going to the Langes’? I like the old geezer with his sailor’s yarns, haven’t seen him for ages. – The Bearpit’s a waste of time today, we’re heading for the Bird of Paradise.’

‘Heading’s good, getting in’s the problem,’ muttered the one with the recorder and he pressed stop.

‘We’ll make it, you can trust me. I know the bouncer, I just have to let him see a bit of leg. – If you make it there, pretty man, I’ll reserve a dance for you.’

Siegbert put on his most unfathomable smile. Falk raised his hand but one of the long-haired lads pushed it back down: ‘She says for him, not for you. Right?’ Falk blew out his cheeks. As they went on, Christian heard laughter and ‘Village clodhoppers’ and ‘Hey, guys, look at him, home-made gear.’ Siegbert, who was a few paces in front of Christian, turned round. ‘Does that bother you?’ He grabbed the youth, who gave a yelp of surprise, by the hair and pulled him towards him, grasping his earlobe with his free hand and twisting it, the other dropped to his knees, Siegbert thumped him. It all happened very quickly; Ina was the first to recover. ‘Hey, we didn’t mean it that way. – I like you even more, pretty man.’

‘Stupid bitch,’ Verena, who had come to stand next to Christian, fumed. ‘Are all your relations that arrogant?’ Ina said nothing, looked her up and down, seconds during which the two groups subjected each other to hostile scrutiny. ‘She’d be the one, cousin dear.’ Ina burst out laughing; it wasn’t malicious, it was like spraying water by holding
the end of the garden hose tight on a hot day, the long-haired youths laughed as well, even Reina and Falk. Siegbert shrugged his shoulders. Verena and the one he’d thumped didn’t laugh. He checked his trousers, switched the recorder back on.

‘Sorry,’ Christian apologized when they reached Mondleite, ‘that’s just the way she is.’ He nodded to Siegbert. ‘And what was said about your things isn’t what she really thinks, her mother makes clothes as well herself. I’d be glad if I could do so,’ he added. Siegbert didn’t respond.

‘We have to wait for Heike, our slowcoach.’ Reina was being nasty: Heike hadn’t seen anything of what had happened and was surprised when the others exchanged glances.

‘How’s your application going? When will you hear if they’re taking you?’

Heike squinted at Falk, rolled her shoulders, blew a lock of hair out of her face. ‘No idea.’

‘What was it you had to draw?’ Verena asked.

‘A shoe –’ She leafed through her sketchpad and showed them the shoe she’d discovered in the rhododendron. ‘They wanted it from all possible perspectives. Stupid but int’resting.’ The sketchpad was handed round, they admired the strictly naturalistic drawings of the shoe. Seen from the front, it had blue eyes. Siegbert was now walking a few paces ahead of them. Christian closed his eyes and opened them abruptly, as if they were the shutter of a camera, as if he wanted to retain snapshots of Siegbert in his memory: a slim young man in light-coloured clothes such as a ship’s officer or a member of Louis Alvarez’s entomological expeditions could have worn, had it not been for the bizarre details: Siegbert had sewn a purple button on the left leg, at the calf, triangles of green cloth under the armpits and a zip running diagonally across the back. Eyes open-shut, open-shut, on the inside his eyelids were orange, Christian saw Siegbert kicking away a stone, Siegbert raising his head when a tug’s siren boomed from the Elbe,
Siegbert throwing a stick to knock an apple, wrinkled by the winter frost, off the tree and lobbing it to Verena; Siegbert and Verena, who was walking beside him and placed the apple on a fence after one bite and dropped back to Reina and Falk, walked on in front again, looking at the street through a monocle of green glass she carried on a string round her neck. The windows in Elephant were open, Frau Teerwagen was putting a bowl of punch on the balcony table. Doctor Kühnast was washing his Škoda. Heike was looking at the rose hedges, covered all over in blossom, of the House with a Thousand Eyes and shaking her head.

‘What is it?’ Christian asked, ringing the Langes’ bell; Meno had left the key with them.

‘No, no, I won’t paint that, that’s kitsch,’ Heike declared.

‘But it is there,’ Falk said teasingly.

‘That there is there.’ Heike pointed to the copper beech that was breathing like a rust lung.

The Langes had laid the table out in the garden, had set up the round iron table, which hibernated in the garden shed with flower pots, the chopping block and sawing horse, in the overgrown lower part as they did every summer; the round iron table at which the ship’s doctor and Meno, sometimes Libussa and Niklas Tietze, would tell stories.

In Meno’s apartment it smelt of books, tobacco and plants. He’d left the door with the pointed arch open for Chakamankabudibaba. Reina went out onto the balcony, leant into the climbing roses growing in profusion on the trellis from the conservatory up to the windows of the Kaminski twins. There was a sheet of paper stuck in the typewriter: ‘Greetings, make yourselves at home. If anyone happens to have forgotten their toothbrush, there are two new ones on the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet. Light bulbs (should one go, it’s been happening quite often recently) are in the hall cupboard. I’ve put out towels and soap. If there aren’t enough, ask Libussa Lange. Two can sleep in my bed; there are loungers in the shed, also a pump for your air beds.
Please don’t forget Chakamankabudibaba, there’s ground beef and mackerel in the fridge, in the newspaper with the smiling Secretary General. Have a good time. Meno Rohde.’

The ten-minute clock chimed. Siegbert examined the engravings on the signs of the zodiac, Verena perused the titles in the bookshelves, Falk peeped down the microscope.

‘Pity we’re not going to meet your uncle,’ Verena said. ‘Great books.’

‘Just have a look at those floorboards.’ Heike was drawing again: the grain of the larchwood, knots, patches of sunshine.

‘I think they’re waiting for us,’ Reina shouted. When Christian went out he saw Libussa by the garden shed, waving. He held up both hands: ten minutes. Libussa nodded. Reina leant over the balustrade, Christian was amazed at all the freckles on her arms.

‘Do you go there often?’ She wasn’t looking at him; shading her eyes with her hand, she pointed at a pale blue mountain in the hazy distance.

‘The Wilisch,’ Christian said. ‘Not often any more.’

‘Sorry about what happened at Kaltwasser reservoir.’ She looked away, there was a scar on her neck.

‘Where did you get that?’

Reina brushed her hair over it. ‘Accident.’

‘Just a minute –’ He picked a dog rose and put it in her hair. It didn’t stay there, he tried again. Then he felt alarmed, looked down at the city, the curve of the Elbe by Blasewitz, a glider was slowly circling in a thermal. Reina didn’t say anything; he went back into the room.

‘Is that your uncle?’ Verena and Falk were standing looking at the photos and pointed at the one with Kurt Rohde and Meno on a botanical expedition.

‘My grandfather. The boy’s my uncle.’ He picked up the photo of Hanna. ‘His divorced wife, my Aunt Hanna. And on this one here there’s my mother, Meno and my other uncle, Ulrich. The father of Ina we met just now. – If you like I can show you round the house.’

But
he told them nothing about the djinn, as they walked round the corridors, nothing about the secrets of the runner in the hall and the leaden shadows that appeared in the mirror in the evening when Meno’s living-room door was open. Heike described the toucan as ‘wicked’. The ten-minute clock struck.

‘We ought to go down.’ Christian saw that the key to the door in the salamander wallpaper wasn’t in the lock. Verena avoided his eye, he decided to say nothing about the spiral staircase and the conservatory, nothing about the photos; though Falk and Siegbert seemed to have discovered them, for they were calling out to the others from the stairs that they really ought to see this. Reina had stayed in the living room.

Fabian and Muriel were sitting between a lantern and a paper moon in front of the dog roses that completely obliterated the other garden smells in that part; they had presumably sat there deliberately, opposite Libussa and Alois Lange, whom they knew: for as long as he had known them there had been something formal, an element of studied affection, in their behaviour towards each other that they didn’t want to expose to the hurried looks of strangers for a casual judgement. Whenever he saw Fabian, his long hair and the unusual shirts he affected – with frills and much-too-long cuffs that he turned back – Christian thought: All he needs is a wig, a sword at his side and a three-cornered hat to go with them and he’d be a vicomte from one of those epistolary novels full of perfume and poison from the second half of the eighteenth century; Barbara had grown thoughtful at one of their Sunday lunches, because Ina’s expression had darkened at Fabian’s name, had said ‘enoeff’ and that in her opinion Fabian was ‘on the other side’, of which his shirts – theatre props, fancy dress – were more than just a cautious indication, and she thought that his parents ought to talk to him about it even though in their place she wouldn’t have been overly worried, after all, that kind of thing did
happen and Fabian was only fourteen or fifteen, nothing was finally settled yet. At that Ina had bent her head over the bowl of stewed fruit and snorted. Moreover, she went on, in his own way he had taste, as did his sister. Then Fabian raised one hand to rest his chin on it elegantly while with the other he gave his sister a caterpillar and closed her hand over it. They wanted to be artists; ‘Yes,’ Meno had said without smiling in response to Barbara’s look of exasperation, ‘that’s the result of a youth spent among aromas, poems and conversations about Chopin’s nocturnes, that’s what one dreams of after reading a passage in which Hermann Hesse meditates on evening clouds in the Ticino. Perhaps Hans talks about poisonous plants too much as well.’ – ‘But Iris Hoffmann’s an engineering draughtswoman with Pentacon.’ – ‘True,’ Ulrich had said in response to Barbara’s interjection, ‘but you have to admit that there is something about those theatrical evenings in their house, and Cuddles only forgot her lines twice in the role of the almost-mute; they were great, those evenings, and the beer was good!’ Muriel was sitting with her legs crossed, she was wearing button boots from the days of Lucie Krausewitz’s youth, saved from the wardrobe of the Albert-Theater, which had been destroyed during the bombardment of Dresden, together with a peach-yellow double-breasted suit with black stripes that could have been worn in
The Importance of being Earnest
or by Maurice Chevalier in one of his roles, a beret right on the back of her head. They went to school dressed like that and were the strangest pair in Robert’s class; but since they were twins and Muriel held the school record for the sixty-metre sprint and Fabian saved penalties spectacularly as goalkeeper for the Fürnberg High School handball team, they were left in peace. And Robert told them that some pupils secretly envied them their things: it was the period of Wisent and Boxer jeans, status-symbol clothes from ‘the other side’ or from Exquisit, compared with which there was a certain odd dignity about the things Fabian and Muriel wore. Siegbert scrutinized the pair of them and they scrutinized him; Fabian’s eye kept coming back to the purple button,
Siegbert’s to Muriel’s hair, gleaming black like a wire coil. Lange pulled a yarn out of his sailor’s kitbag, it was about conserved hydrangeas and their use as an antidote to seasickness, at which Siegbert remarked that that was new to him.