The Tower: A Novel (65 page)

‘Do you want peepul to see liddel gold-finsh or not?’ Marroquin came out from under the black pharaoh’s cloak and pointed to Ina’s belly. ‘Then plizz lukk at home of stirrup of imperialism.’

Magenstock’s response was a bored raising of the eyebrows.

‘Hold breath. Ready … Two liddel brrats have stuck tongues out – once more? But that will cost extra.’ Wernstein and Ina declined with a wave of the hand, despite Barbara’s objections and the fact that Traudel Hoppe hadn’t been able to repress a sneeze. The bride’s posy was caught by Kitty Stenzel.

The party was to be held in the House with a Thousand Eyes. Two days before the wedding, demijohns with kvass that Ulrich had started had burst in the house; he had been impatient, had placed heaters beside them, the pressure of fermentation had sent circular discs of glass, that looked as if they’d been cut with a glazier’s diamond pencil, shooting out of the bottles. The Afghan rugs, the Tibetan runners and the big Persian carpet from Vietnam, Barbara’s walking tour of distant lands and daily vacuumed pride, were soaked through and sticky; Meno and Ulrich took them out into the garden and dipped them in tin bathtubs filled with hot water. The kvass had seeped through into the apartment below – they had to get a device to draw the dampness out of the walls (Herr Kothe, who was sitting on his balcony dunking a biscuit in a glass of tea as the carpets splashed about in the garden like colourful seals, knew someone who knew someone); a team of painters had to
be arranged and courage screwed up for a contrite ring on the bell of a firmly closed door: would the Scholzes be prepared to accept an invitation to the wedding as interim compensation? Now Herr Scholze was standing on the washing area in front of the balustrade with the eagle exchanging tips about the preparation of sucking pig with Pedro Honich. He favoured
le porcelet farci
but Honich could not find a butcher who could supply the ingredients for stuffing the piglet (‘Boiled ham? A hundred and fifty grams? No chance!’), a shop that had fifty chestnuts in stock in May, nor a dairy that sold Parmesan or mature Comté cheese, and you couldn’t get saffron, not even in Delikat shops. Pedro Honich stuck by Serbian (he said ‘Yugoslavian’) sucking pig. Helmut Hoppe and Noack joined them, made wise comments and bore the responsibility as Honich prepared sausage meat, sliced peppers, rubbed salt on the inside of the piglet, warmed up Puszta sauce and beer. Meno kept apart. The Kaminski twins were away and had locked their apartment, otherwise all the doors in the house were open. In the shed Meno and Stahl had set up one table with bread and one with a cold buffet from the Felsenburg; Adeling, the waiter, and Reglinde’s friend who now had a job in the Felsenburg were serving dumplings in Danish sauce.

A smell came from Arbogast’s chemical laboratory, at first of peaches, then of slurry. Christian looked for Fabian and Muriel but couldn’t see them, their parents weren’t there either, but had sent a camera (K16 model, Christian knew it from his period of work experience with Pentacon) that was on a table with the other wedding presents in the summerhouse; Alois and Libussa had put them there in case it rained. Records, books (historical pigskin-bound medical tomes from Ulrich’s collection, a complete
Treatment of Fractures
by Lorenz Böhler, all the surgeons present envied Wernstein for it); then a dkk refrigerator with a two-star freezer compartment from Anne, Richard and Meno; from the Hoppes a perambulator and baby clothes (‘A Baby-Chic nappy makes any mother happy’); Barbara had made both a winter
and a summer suit for her son-in-law; Kurt and Ulrich had given a voyage (on MS
Arkona
to Cuba, Ina had been beside herself with joy); Christian saw a washing machine, vouchers for furniture (the Tietzes; Niklas had added one of his St Petersburg stethoscopes); from Noack, the furrier, a marten fur muff ‘for Madame’ (a suggestion of a kiss on the hand), a lambskin coat collar ‘for Sir’ (sketching a bow); a canoe from Wernstein’s colleagues.

Compared with all these useful things, his present … Christian, not knowing quite how to put it, recalled the hours looking at the saturniid moths in Caravel with Meno: an awkward, somewhat clumsy but touching child in the company of grown-ups – that’s what the green jug he’d bought, without a long search, in a potter’s studio in Neustadt seemed to be; he’d only had two hours between arriving at the station and the start of the marriage ceremony in the registry office and he’d wasted a good hour, desperate and undecided, in a second-hand shop, nudged by greedy elbows, jostling his way from an unusable tailor’s iron to a television set in need of repair (and still priced with three zeros after the 2). The jug had been surrounded by rolls of wallpaper and buckets of emulsion paint, brushes were being kept soft in it. – ‘No, that jug, if it’s for sale,’ he’d said to the potter, who was wiping her hands on her apron in astonishment and was offering to show him what she had on display. The jug wasn’t one of hers but she wasn’t insulted, even though Christian had expressed a desire to buy it without hesitation; perhaps she was impressed by his insistence, his spontaneous decision, perhaps by his explanation that he was going to his cousin’s wedding (he was wearing walking-out dress); she took the brushes out of the jug, washed it and wrapped it up in a smudged copy of
Union
; Christian had paid the price she asked without hesitation. Most of all he would have liked to keep the jug for himself. The green was the green of holly leaves, the rich, dark tone immediately appealed to him, also the simple, ancient jug shape with subtle asymmetry; there was something about it that had said, I’m for you, I’m a
part of you in another world. Christian was struggling with himself; when the houses on Lindwurmring were already in sight he recalled that Meno had once said to him that presents you give should be precisely those you can least bear to be parted from. He had handed the jug to Ina exactly as it was, still wrapped in the smudged newspaper.

‘The disadvantage would be that we’d have to accept any dump we’re offered. A fellow student knows someone in the accommodation directorate and says teachers are supposed to get preferential treatment. We’ll see. At least it’s in Berlin and you suggested Thomas’s prospects might be better there than here.’

‘Yes, that’s something I wanted to discuss with the pair of you. I can say “
du
” to you now, can’t I?’ Richard gave a playful tug on the sleeve of Wernstein’s tailcoat, which Barbara had altered; you could tell from the cut that it must have been handed down and all the oil of lavender from Barbara’s secret stock couldn’t overpower the smell of mothballs coming from the swallow tails and shiny lapels enclosing a pink bow tie with black dots on a white frilled shirt. ‘As long as Müller’s head of surgery I can’t imagine you’re going to get anywhere. Grefe’s the assistant in South One and that’s where the real careers have started ever since I’ve been with Müller. I can offer to put in a word for you with Orthopaedics or in Friedrichstadt; Pahl’s a man you can get on with, one of us.’

‘I’d still only be an assistant there, I wouldn’t be any farther on,’ Wernstein said after a few moments’ thought.

‘If they separate trauma from general surgery, as Pahl tells me they’ve been working towards for some time, he’ll become head and you could apply for a post as senior physician. Of course, there’s always the possibility they’ve already earmarked the post for an internal candidate. And you said you don’t want to move into orthopaedics.’

‘You could take the job in Buch?’

‘I’d be stuck there, my dear spouse. I wouldn’t be able to develop.
Their main focus of research is in different areas and I want to do my post-doc qualification in traumatology. We’ve already talked about that and we don’t need to go through it all again. Especially not today.’

‘You’d be earning considerably more than at the Charité Hospital in Berlin.’

‘Maybe. But I’d be at the Charité … Sauerbruch, Brugsch, Felix, Frey, Nissen … I could continue my research there. Here Müller won’t let me get on.’

‘You’ll soon be a father, let me remind you. Even if your wife isn’t that important to you, you ought to be able to give your son something. – Yesyes, we’re coming,’ Ina shouted to some of the guests in the lower part of the garden.

‘When is it due? Do you already know –’

‘It will be a boy,’ Ina said emphatically.

‘No, it’ll be a girl.’ Wernstein laughed. ‘By the way, we’re with Weniger. – What d’you think of him, Herr … er … Richard?’

‘One of the best gynaecologists I know. One of the old school.’

‘The fifth of July,’ Ina said. ‘It will be a boy. You may have your clinical wisdom, but I’m the mother, I know it’s going to be a boy. Uncle Richard, would you write a reference for Thomas?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Richard said, nonplussed by Ina’s direct approach.

‘May I ask you something? What do think of him as a surgeon?’

Richard gave her a searching look. Wernstein had flushed bright red and tried to wave away her question; she shook her head. ‘I know it’s tactless of me but I’d really like to know. I want you to give me an honest answer and if you think it’s not for his ears, we’ll send him away. – And, by the way, Christian doesn’t look too good. Perhaps he’s exaggerating? He’s always tended to overdramatize a bit.’

‘I don’t think he’s exaggerating. He’s in the army, in Grün, it’s just a little place.’

‘He gave me a jug. It’s really nice of him.’

Richard clasped his hands behind his back. He could sense that both Ina and Wernstein were curious, which he found embarrassing, he felt it was a little improper; he was also disturbed by the eagerness, the hint of calculation, in Ina’s question, as if she suspected that under these circumstances – alone with the newlyweds – it would be impossible for him to avoid answering. ‘I wouldn’t answer your question if I had to lie because it’s your wedding day. I’d have managed to wriggle out of it, believe me. But since it won’t spoil your day, as I hope, I can give a straight, honest answer to a straight, honest question. I think your husband’s a born surgeon and expect great things of him. I’d be proud and happy if my boys had his abilities. I can also say that I regard him as a kind of son. What I was actually hoping, Thomas, was that you’d succeed me but, as I can see, you have other plans. If you want my opinion: in your place I’d do exactly what you intend to do. Unfortunately Müller’s allocated Kohler to me as assistant, not you.’

‘Him!’

‘Not a bad surgeon, but not a patch on you. I’ll have to see what I can do for you. I know a few people at the Charité. Though, of course, you could always wait and see, Müller’s retiring next year – though that doesn’t mean things will be any easier. – Perhaps we should discuss this later, or another time, your friends are getting impatient already. What did you think of the sermon?’

‘You shouldn’t be intransigent, Uncle Richard. Pops was also against a church wedding, but I wanted it. For a man who has to preach the word of God in the middle of atheism, I think he does it very well.’

‘Certainly, certainly,’ Richard said in placatory tones. He watched the pair of them go as they headed for the summerhouse. They exchanged a few words with Josta and her husband; Josta was holding Lucie’s hand, not letting go, and Richard turned round and quickly left before his daughter could look at him. She’ll be starting school this year, he thought.

Meno puzzled over the custom of sawing a tree trunk at a wedding. Two people joined together in marriage and affirmed this union by, of all things, putting a frame saw to a trunk the diameter of a telegraph pole and starting, as Ina and Wernstein were now doing to the encouragement and raillery of those around, to heave it back and forth. Ina soon wearied and, with a laugh, begged for someone to replace her. Helmut Hoppe shouted that that was the beginning of infidelity and she couldn’t have a replacement for the birth, ‘So keep sawing, child’, otherwise what they’d just heard was the bride herself calling for her rival.

‘You’ve got things completely wrong again, Meno. To get through a trial together, that’s what it means. You always insist on spending so long thinking things over until they get distorted and a cat suddenly becomes a dog. Which is more or less the case with your Chakababa or whatever he’s called, the name’s completely unpronounceable. I’m sure even Arbogast’s monsters are afraid of him. And isn’t it outrageous to stink the street out with toxic gases. Yes, toxic gases, I know exactly what I’m saying. A very shady character, that Baron, they say that with the Russians … I can believe anything of him. Toxic gases. It stinks – and that when we’re celebrating a wedding. After all, we did put up notices spelling it out clearly. It’s criminal, the stench the people in that dubious Institute of his make. Enoeff.’ Barbara waved away any possible objections Meno might have with a vigorous gesture. He was standing beside Gudrun, trying to keep both bride and groom in sight while Barbara took out a clothes’ brush and wiped the dandruff off his jacket. ‘What d’you think of him? Isn’t he a fantastic man? So attractive! And he’s got a head on his shoulders, too, a doctor, a surgeon, he’ll never starve and Ina won’t want for anything.’

‘As long as he’s faithful.’ Gudrun insisted on putting a damper on things. ‘In Ina’s place I’d have made him have his palm read. A colleague of mine does it, doesn’t cost a lot.’

‘Do you really believe in that?’ Barbara’s bracelets tinkled as she
let go of Meno and ran her fingers through her hair, one of Lajos Wiener’s experimental creations of impressive stability (Western all-weather hairspray, one of Ulrich’s barter enterprises he’d been pursuing surreptitiously and pretty successfully recently); her look swung from one of Gudrun’s eyes to the other, but Gudrun took her time selecting a sausage kebab from her plate before answering, ‘You can believe in it – or in something else, it all comes down to the same thing. At least it was a point that could have been taken into account so that you wouldn’t need to reproach yourself for having neglected it later on. And so far my colleague has always been right.’

‘Really? Well I never! And does she read palms in general or just for weddings? Could I, for example, ask her how long I’m going to live?’