The Tower: A Novel (50 page)

‘Wernesgrüner’s drunk by artists and people who don’t really care for things that are centralized, accepted, popular, but have retained their scepticism: can something that is generally recognized and the centre of attention for the general public, as Radeberger is among beers, really be the best of all? Your Wernesgrüner men look for what is hidden, they look for the
éminence grise
. They’re often
éminences grises
themselves – or think they are. In musical terms Wernesgrüner men are those who’re sceptical about the Berlin Philharmonic and put the Vienna Phil. at the top. Niklas is a Wernesgrüner. They also believe in conspiracies. And Wernesgrüners will always prefer an Erzgebirge landscape to any far-away country, however exotic it is.’ Richard raised his glass to Meno. ‘The country of quiet colours. That’s what they love. It’s just the same with me, I only need to look at the Querners. Even though I’m a Radeberger guy.’

‘Well I prefer the State Orchestra.’ Meno emptied his glass. The beer tasted fresh as a mountain spring and was cold as an old key.

‘The amethyst looks good in front of the Insel volumes. – So in mineral terms the Radebergers would stick to diamonds, the Wernesgrüners to emeralds?’

‘Yes, because deep down inside they believe emeralds are the real
thing,’ Richard said. – Basically, Ulrich and Meno are Reds. The only thing that surprises me is that Anne is completely free of that. Or seems to be. What do brothers and sisters know of each other? What do husbands and wives know of each other? He is a bit unworldly, my brother-in-law, with his insect research and his writing he doesn’t show anyone. Can’t be any good, otherwise he’d be reading some of it to us from time to time, they’re all supposed to be vain, are authors. Spends his days at the publisher’s poring over paper with writing or printing on, what difference does it make whether they use commas in this way or that? But everyone’s made the way they are. ‘Tell me, Meno, there’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for ages, you know the Faun Palace, there’s a plant in the foyer I call a snake plant because it has striped leaves. Do you know what it’s really called?’

‘Have you any idea whether Christian’s all right? I wrote to him but he’s not answered yet … They could still conscript me, you know. My last spell with the reserves was only three years ago.’ – Richard with his calculations: practice prevails, theorists are cripples who know nothing of life and the world. And yet we all have our feet firmly immersed in our dreams. What he’s saying is that Wernesgrüners don’t really count. What nonsense. And just because doctors are important. Demigods in white, huh! They make people healthy again, so what? If a patient’s stupid, he’s just as stupid when he’s well again. And if I were to suddenly start drinking Radeberger beer, so what? ‘Do you happen to have a bottle of Felsenkeller?’

‘He has to see the training camp through, we told him that. We can’t get him out of it and if he wants to go to university, he can put up with the two weeks,’ Richard said.

‘It could be a
Vriesea splendens
, a bromeliad,’ Meno said.

One evening in the pre-military training camp Christian was reading a book, an autobiographical account with the cover wrapped in the newspaper of the Party’s youth organization. Gothic print on foxed
wood-pulp paper; someone shouted: ‘Attention!’ Stools were shifted and before Christian could react the book was snatched out of his hand. Christian stared at Hantsch’s triumphant expression. He wanted to jump down from his bed and take the book back but he couldn’t move. The book was called
My Way to Scapa Flow
, written by the U-boat commander Günther Prien. Naturally Hantsch opened it at the last picture: Hitler awarding Prien the Knight’s Cross; Hantsch closed the book again, lifted it up. ‘Who did you get this from?’

Christian said nothing even though fear clutched at his throat. It had been a serious mistake to read that book, especially there, and he wished he could turn the clock back to the moment when Siegbert had given it to him and say ‘No’, to refuse it on the grounds of the uneasy feeling he’d had and that he’d ignored.

‘I’m asking you who you got this book from.’ Hantsch went out into the hall and called in the boys who were outside cleaning their boots.

Christian said nothing. Siegbert, standing by the door, pale, said nothing, avoided looking at anyone. Hantsch said, so quietly that Christian thought he might be dreaming and his classmates would dissolve into thin air like an apparition, ‘So it’s yours, as I assume from your silence. You will pay dearly for this, Hoffmann. You read Nazi books, you who are studying to qualify for university. At a socialist senior high school. That’s something I’ve never encountered before. – All of you here’ – he gestured right round the room – ‘are witnesses to this. There will be an investigation. This time you’re not going to get away with it, Hoffmann. You two’ – he designated Siegbert and Jens – ‘are to make sure Hoffmann doesn’t run off or do something stupid. I will report this to the Commandant.’

‘Herr Hoffmann? – Frank, Christian’s class teacher here. Can I have a word with you? – A private word. It’s about your boy, something’s happened.’

Frank had called him at the clinic, in the ward. Richard sat down.

‘On
the telephone there was talk of him having read a Hitler book. I’ve tried to speak to my colleague who’s in Schirgiswalde but they’re still all with the Commandant. They’ve set up an investigation.’

Richard listened as Frank made a suggestion but it was only after some seconds that he realized he was being asked to go and pick up Frank and drive with him to Schirgiswalde.

He called Anne at work but couldn’t get through to her. He called home, but when Robert answered he immediately put the phone down again, he hadn’t worked out whether it would be wise to tell the boy something to pass on to Anne; he’d picked up the phone without thinking and now he had doubts whether it would be right to inform Anne, she might perhaps crack up; then he saw her in his mind’s eye and thought he could hear another voice inside himself telling him that he just had to get through to her, it would be better if she came with him; he looked up and saw the nurses eyeing him and thought, Where’s your decisiveness, surgeon? Then he rang home again. ‘Listen carefully to what I’m saying, Robert’, and he told him that he was going to Schirgiswalde with Christian’s class teacher; ‘Tell Anne. I’ll call back as soon as I know what it’s about.’

Frank was already waiting for him in Waldbrunn; he told him that in the meantime Stabenow had called and given him the details; not a Hitler book but one from the Hitler period; he felt it was a serious matter. Richard drove like a madman; the inhabitants of Schirgiswalde didn’t respond to questions about the training camp; only when he stopped two policemen in a patrol car by waving and honking was he told the way, not without first being asked to show his driving licence and to take an alcohol test. Now Richard would have liked to have had Anne with him, for he felt capable of killing the policemen; Frank tried to calm things down, showed them an identity card that, however, didn’t impress the two policemen.

Christian
saw his father come out of Major Volick’s office with Dr Frank, his short, sandy hair still showing the mark of the scrub cap; the dark-blue eyes didn’t look at him.

‘Come with me,’ was all Richard said. They went outside. The flags on the parade ground were fluttering in the wind. A platoon of boys from the School of the Cross were practising the goose step. Christian observed his father, suddenly the fear returned that he hadn’t felt during the interrogation by Volick and Hantsch. ‘You’ve really got yourself into a mess,’ Richard said wearily, turning to look at the gate, where two guards were letting a few pupils in on the camp road; laughing and babbling tipsily, they strolled off towards the huts.

‘Been allowed out,’ Richard said, with a nod in their direction.

‘They were in Wilthen, where the brandy comes from.’ If Anne and Richard had come to visit him on a normal day, Christian would have felt ashamed for the drunken schoolboys, now he felt nothing but indifference.

‘Didn’t we tell you not to do anything stupid?’

Christian hunched up, made himself as small as possible; he was determined not to say anything. Richard raised his arms, mentioned Erik Orré, saying his efforts must have been pointless, a pure waste of time; he dropped his arms. ‘How could you, my lad … you know very well what kind of place this is.’

‘Yes.’

‘So? Why did you do it? My God, there’s a swastika in the book! I sometimes wonder –’ Richard clasped his forehead. ‘I’ve never seen you with a book like that, but what does that mean? Where did you get it from?’ This seemed to represent a hope and he clutched at it, suddenly grasped Christian’s shoulders, shook him. ‘Where from? From Lange, that old fool? Did someone lend it to you? You can’t be that stupid. I just can’t imagine that.’

Christian remained silent, hunched up even more.

‘And we’re left to get you out of it. I’ve got into this mess, now you
get me out of it. You’re not just stupid, you’re selfish too. What d’you think Anne’ll say? She doesn’t know yet, or perhaps Robert’s telling her at this very moment. Did you think of that? – Of course not. My son doesn’t think, he just acts without thinking. Have you any idea what all this means?’ Richard shook Christian again. ‘No, you haven’t. They were talking about the military prosecutor, about a juvenile court. They believe we haven’t brought you up properly and you’d be better off in a reformatory. Your class teacher has persuaded them to agree to let your case be dealt with by the school. They’ll call a staff meeting.’

‘Yes,’ Christian said tonelessly, he had to keep hold of himself.

‘Now you just listen to me, my lad. We have to work out a strategy. You’ll say you read the book because you wanted to find out about the fascists’ way of thinking. Because you wanted to understand how it was possible for Hitler to seize power. You hoped you would get some information about that out of it. Have you understood?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you say something different before?’

‘No.’

‘Did they want to know why you read it?’

‘No.’

‘Good. That’s the version you’ll tell them. And you’ll stick to it whatever bait they put out for you. They’ll definitely want to try and pin something on you. You’ll use the Red Front argument. Have you understood? – I’m asking if you’ve understood!’

For
expulsion: Schnürchel, Kosinke, Schanzler, the two principals: Engelmann and Fahner. Against expulsion: Frank, Uhl, Kolb, Stabenow, Baumann. Five–five. Christian’s case was to be brought before the District Schools Officer.

‘Did you manage to find anything out about him?’ Ulrich asked when Barbara, Anne, Meno and Richard met before leaving for Waldbrunn. It was a Saturday. Christian’s grandfather was going to come by bus from Glashütte; he knew the Schools Officer, who also came from Glashütte.

‘He’s building a house,’ Richard replied.

‘Good. That means that in the first place he’ll have trouble getting supplies and, in the second place, problems with the tradesmen. Anything else?’ Ulrich had turned up in his Sunday best and with the ‘sweet’, the Party badge, in his buttonhole; Barbara had been to Wiener’s and was wearing a flamboyant white dress with large black flowers on it. After the meeting with the District Schools Officer they wanted to make the most of their outing together and go for a meal.

‘He drives a Saporoshez.’

‘Then he’ll need dates with a garage – and any amount of spare parts. Anything else?’

‘He’s sixty-four.’

‘So he’ll be retiring next year at the latest. Firstly that means he won’t want to saddle himself with another difficult case. He’ll want to make it short and to cover himself. He’ll probably pass Christian’s case on up the line. Minus point. Secondly that means that he’ll be all the more interested in help with building his house. What use is a retired Schools Officer to anyone? That’s what the tradesmen will be telling themselves. Plus point.’

‘And
if the house is finished before next year?’ Barbara objected. Ulrich gave a knowing smile. ‘What are you thinking of, Bubbles. We’re living in a planned economy.’

DIARY

Sunflower wallpaper, hardboard table, beige telephone, on the wall the Comrade Chairman of the State Council, the grim-faced likeness of the lady Minister of Education, opposite a portrait of Makarenko. We were sitting in a semicircle facing the desk and the fact that the Schools Officer stood up to lower the blind over the only window could be an escape mechanism on the part of the short, tubby man, perhaps also an attempt to gain time: six pairs of eyes staring at him expectantly, narrowly, anxiously, restlessly, disparagingly, six times bodily odours on this hot day, which had not yet reached its zenith; Barbara’s heavy and Ulrich’s light perfume (eau de Cologne, he’d soaked the handkerchief in his breast pocket with it and kept taking it out to wipe his bald head, a damp patch on his jacket pocket slowly grew larger) in competition from either side, and when the Schools Officer, who had fished a sign with the name Röbach out of a drawer, sat down again, Richard said, ‘My son’, Ulrich said, ‘My nephew’, Arthur Hoffmann said, ‘My grandson’; then for a while no one said anything and Anne started. – I sat and waited to see how she would proceed. I was interested in that. The researcher into spiders, Barbara would have said, if at that point she’d felt like a diversion: observing me instead of the Schools Officer. They were being a little mean and Anne alone wasn’t aware of it (I’m not entirely sure of that but my sister’s never been devious); that’s why they let her speak – also, of course, because they knew it would make a greater impression if it was the mother who spoke: she who was generally reserved, at least when faced with all these men present, sitting on the edge of their chairs, just managing to control their inner urge to speak; even Arthur Hoffmann, sitting upright like a retired officer who has to balance the weight of the medals on his chest, seemed to be waiting impatiently for Anne to finish, as if the mother were not the best person to
speak up for her child; as if he, the experienced officer, were watching the young folk using playground tactics against a hard-boiled enemy interpreting gifts brought by Greeks. Richard and Arthur Hoffmann had greeted each other briefly: cheek-to-cheek embrace, short discussion of the table reservation in the restaurant, no ‘How’s things?’ or ‘Not seen you for ages’ (a Christmas card, that was all, as I knew from Anne, pre-printed with angels and gold lettering, Arthur’s signature neat and precise, the dent made by the pencil still visible under the letters); no ‘Hi, my son’, or ‘Hello, Father’, just the terse assurance that there was no problem with the table reservation; then Arthur shook Barbara’s hand, ignoring for the moment Ulrich’s proffered hand, gave Barbara a charming, ceremonious, friendly nod, and yet with a touch more emphasis than his greeting for Anne, hat and umbrella in his left hand. I hadn’t seen him for two years, he didn’t seem to have changed at all: the thick, cropped, snow-white hair with the whorl Richard and Christian also had, the gold-rimmed spectacles, big blue eyes behind the ground glass, a coolly friendly cornflower gaze; the deliberate, measured gestures, the slender hands that Richard had inherited and that dealt with clocks without sentimentality yet appropriately: without kid gloves such as people wore for whom clocks, especially valuable ones, were just highly prized ornaments; without the thoughtless roughness of those who saw clocks as mere objects of practical use and who couldn’t care less what kind of ticking thing they wore on their wrist as long as it performed its function of measuring time as precisely as possible and as reliably as possible. Röbach didn’t interrupt Anne, even though he must have been familiar with the case. He’d put a file with Christian’s name on the table, nodded at Anne’s halting explanations that, with many repetitions and tear-choked assurances, begged him to regard Christian’s deed as a silly, childish escapade. – He was sorry, Röbach said, but that was precisely what he was still in doubt about. Principal Fahner had sent him Christian’s file and in it there was this and that element that indicated that … Röbach was sweating and gave Ulrich’s handkerchief ploy a long look. ‘You’re welcome to open the window, if you want,’ Barbara said. Röbach declined;
no, no, he said, that would just mean the hot air from outside would come in and it was the same with the fans, they just swirled the warm air round the room, did nothing to cool it down. – ‘Yes, at this time of the year it ought to be cool in a room, in an apartment!’ Ulrich exclaimed. The people in the Dresden apartment blocks were really sweating, that was the way it was with concrete slabs and asphalt joints and tin roofs and you couldn’t remedy it just with eau de Cologne … ‘Although,’ he went on brightly, that was worth thinking about, he’d have to have a chat about it with his colleague, the Technical Director of the Karl Marx Combine, man-to-man, one director to another: eau-de-Cologne atomizers in every newly built apartment. It wouldn’t do much good though, might even just encourage allergies, joking aside: anyone who had a house could consider himself fortunate, with the new methods of insulation it was on the one hand pleasantly warm in winter and on the other refreshingly cool in summer, even our forefathers with their clay-brick buildings had known that and in the Combine they’d partly relearnt it, partly developed something new, just have a look at this. Ulrich took a piece of paper and with a This-is-the-house-that-Jack-built, he’d drawn a house that looked like a lantern in a single line: ‘Very simple when you know the principle.’ – Yes, of course, you had to know that: Röbach seemed to be sweating even more, ‘that you can do it just like that, off the cuff, so to speak, I presume you have experience of this?’ He was familiar with the game, he said, there were several methods of drawing a house in one line; he was building a house, a real house, and in that case it wasn’t, unfortunately, just a matter of a pencil and paper. Ulrich nodded: ‘If you could draw the workmen’ – he picked up the pencil and doodled a few, one was even pushing a wheelbarrow – ‘who simply just do what they’re supposed to’ – ‘If only!’ Röbach’s face was shining. ‘But where on earth can you find them? And modern insulating materials as well?’ Yes, if everything was as easy as on the sheet of paper where you could draw a line from the matchstick man to the house-that-Jack-built with a pencil! – ‘Yes,’ Ulrich said with a laugh, ‘like that’, and drew an arrow. – But insulating materials weren’t the only
thing, Barbara said, when Röbach slid the file back and forward a bit, then left his hands above it without touching it. True, they were important, but there were other kinds of insulation, and not purely theoretical, she just happened, as a furrier who was also a qualified dressmaker, to have a few samples of lovely insulating material with her, ‘Just feel’, and she handed Röbach a swatch card of materials across the table. – ‘But I’m sure we’ve taken up too much of your time already,’ Arthur Hoffmann said; the effect was like a blade cutting the air between Röbach’s hand (still close to the file) and Barbara’s swatch card; it was Saturday, the Schools Officer reassured them, glancing at his watch, he’d no other appointments until twelve; now, as he turned his wrist to look at his watch to see the time, he picked up the swatch, felt the materials between his fingers; above all now, in summer, Barbara went on, they said it was going to be a hot summer, you could sense it already and her customers sensed it too, and the ventilation that was possible in suits made from that quality of cloth; according to his watch there were still twenty-two minutes left, the Schools Officer said, nodding; Arthur Hoffmann pulled back the left sleeve of his jacket, two watches could be seen, pieces from his collection that was known in other countries as well; he took one off, handed it to the Schools Officer, ‘Nineteen minutes precisely, if you would like to check it for yourself … forgive me for speaking frankly, yours is by Poljot, not too bad, designed for everyday use in Russia, but … that cosmonaut on the face.’

They waited
.

‘Right then.’ The District Schools Officer gave a deep sigh, pushed the drawing, the cloth samples and the watch away from him. ‘I’ll have to pass it on to the Regional Schools Officer.’

Downriver, enclosed by arms of the Elbe, was the Ascanian Island. That was where Richard and Meno were heading after a fruitless meeting with the Regional Schools Officer. He had turned out to be a timid, indecisive man who dropped Christian’s file like a hot potato. ‘Oh God, oh God, what’s this that’s being loaded on me again, always
these difficult cases, Herr Doktor Hoffmann. You’ve no idea of the stuff that arrives here every day. Only yesterday we had a similar case … What’s the matter with our young people? What’s going on? I can’t do anything, anything at all. It has to go to someone higher up. I’m sorry but I can’t make a decision on this.’

That left the lawyer, Sperber.

‘Thanks for arranging this,’ Richard said to Meno. They were standing at the entrance to Grauleite, part of Arbogast’s Institute behind them. ‘Did it take a great effort to persuade him – I mean, was he annoyed? After all, I’m not part of the family and you aren’t married to Hanna any more.’

‘He picked up the telephone right away.’ Meno lit his pipe with the spherical bowl and glanced through the papers again. ‘Can we trust Sperber, what d’you think?’ Richard seemed nervous, they were already within sight of the guards in Grauleite, one could see them both from Sibyllenleite and from Buchensteig, which met the road there. The streets were empty, apart from a few children playing football in the square outside Rapallo Castle and the Sibyllenhof restaurant, but the funicular would soon be bringing up people who were coming home from work in the town. But it was already starting to get dark, the implacable July sun was sinking; by day it was like a disc of boiling milk in the stone-white sky, recognizable only by pressure marks, circles of waves pulsing out; as if the air were a body that had been gashed by the low-lying rays, it had been covered with lines of reddish metallic discoloration, light rubbed raw: haemoglobin that was dispersed and deposited in layers on the fences, the shiny surfaces of dark car roofs hot enough to fry an egg on, the cracked asphalt of the streets, that surrendered its living red first and the iron molecules, glittering rust that remained.

‘Of course, he has contact with them.’ Meno nodded in the direction of the grey concrete block on Grauleite. With all its aerials it looked like a larded roast that had gone wrong, left mouldering in the deep
terrine of the ring of walls. The clatter of a typewriter could be heard from one of the windows. ‘Londoner says if anyone can help us, it’s him. He called Joffe as well, but he declined: no accused, no defender. Such affairs had no business in a lawyers’ chambers.’

‘They’re all hand in glove with each other. There’s no lawyer in the country who isn’t in cahoots with them. We simply have no choice.’

The guard at the entrance patiently checked all their papers, made a few telephone calls and let the two men through with an imperious nod. At the end of the road was a black-and-yellow-striped sentry box with a barrier, the soldier on duty glanced briefly at their identity cards and gave them two one-quarter permits. If it was Sperber who had arranged for that, they had a long discussion to look forward to. They set out across the bridge.

‘Have you been here before?’ Richard asked; he was walking in front of Meno, there was scarcely room for two people side by side on the bridge. It was made of iron and its railings were closed off with wire netting; a weathered sign said ‘Grauleite’ with ‘Min njet’ beneath it in Cyrillic characters that the soldiers of the Red Army had put on buildings after the war.

‘Once with my senior editor and an author, once with Hanna,’ Meno replied, ‘but each time we went to see Joffe, not Sperber.’ Joffe, the bald lawyer with horn-rimmed glasses whom many people knew from television: with heavy rings on his fingers, that he spread out to emphasize his measured speech, he presented the fortnightly programme
Paragraph
, during which he discussed difficult and spectacular cases and answered viewers’ questions. Joffe also wrote in his free time and had published two love stories with Dresdner Edition, brilliant pleas, the response to which had in many cases been a deafening silence. Eschschloraque and Joffe hated each other, the relationship between Sperber and Joffe was said to be difficult as well.