The Tower: A Novel (73 page)

The Hoffmanns had been going to Fuhlendorf since 1972; Richard shared the practice with colleagues (for a long time Hans had joined them), which allowed him to give his family holiday on the Baltic, which were much sought after, and also earn an extra month’s salary. Only once had the family managed to get a holiday that wasn’t associated with Richard’s work: at a German Trades Union holiday hostel in Born, on the Darss lagoon. The food was poor, the weather even
worse and that year the lagoon had been full of jellyfish and seaweed. A bell in the corridor to wake them and a radio that couldn’t be switched off. They preferred Fuhlendorf, even if the bungalow beds had horsehair mattresses that were turned over from one doctor to the next, and steel springs on which Richard, who slept in the lower bunk, regularly tore his scalp when he got up. The Tietzes had Room 1, the Hoffmanns Room 2. That room looked out onto the village street and Christian knew it was a disadvantage, for often drunks coming from ‘night angling’ in Redensee Café would go past the bungalow bawling, hammer on the door demanding nurses and booze. Some years previously a soldier from the Soviet forces had appeared and, Kalashnikov at the ready, demanded the practice motorbike, an elderly Zündapp, and zoomed off on it, lurching from side to side, only to be brought back several hours later, bound and held on either side by grim-faced officers in order to have various broken bones seen to.

Christian immediately felt at home again in Fuhlendorf. The storks’ nest on the reed-thatched cottages. The continuous barking of the spitz next door. The light-blue dovecote full of snow-white doves whose cooing and fluttering the Tietzes counted against the risks of the village street. The holiday camp: the dozens of bungalows in rows down the slope with children’s faces looking out of the windows. The gravelled paths edged with white stones, lit by welded toadstool lamps. Wakey, wakey at six in the morning from the camp loudspeakers. Once a week the siren was tested. Roll-calls, the clatter of cutlery at set times in the camp canteen. Socialist competition: races, games of football, volleyball, table tennis on concrete tables, the nets could be collected, after having been signed for, in the camp office. Flags fluttering in the summer breeze.

Christian was on leave, much longed for by members of the army. He didn’t talk very much. What did it smell of in the bungalow? Dry air, aniseed drops from the shop in the Mail holidaymakers’ canteen, twenty pfennigs a tube, the drops always stuck together. There was
the smell of the toilets that always had daddy-longlegs sitting on the cistern. Vita-Cola didn’t smell, but tasted good, ice-cold from the humming refrigerator in the recreation room. There, as in the previous thirteen years, was the Junost television with the irrevocably faulty aerial, showing GDR 1 and 2 plus a semolina image of West German Channel Two that suffered additional interference from the military’s Baltic transmissions. It smelt of the wood lining the outer walls that was badly affected by the winter weather, of Florena sun cream, sand, heather: beside the bungalow, shut off from it by a chain-link fence, was a path going to a little pinewood. Floor polish, insect repellent, medicines. Acetate of alumina for wasp stings, Ankerplast spray as a substitute for plasters, Panthenol for sunburn, Sepso tincture. The glass syringes tinkled in the enamel kidney bowls, sweated out strepto-and staphylococci in the cylinder sterilizer. The very sight of wooden spatulas made you feel sick. Scissors and scalpels were submerged in disinfectant solution. Bandages, Gotha adhesive plaster, the smell of rubber: the brick-red, washable sheet on the examination couch, the enema bags, the footplate of the scales, gloves drying off to be used again, dusted with talcum powder. It smelt of brackish water, the air from air pumps, the lemon mist that Gudrun sprayed to combat all the other smells in the bungalow.

‘Hiddensee!’ Lange had exclaimed in both envy and appreciation. ‘We’ve never had a holiday there. Send us a card.’

Without the offer from the Association’s trade union, Meno would have gone to Saxon Switzerland again, would have taken his little room, inserted a sheet of paper in his Fortuna typewriter; but this year, he had been informed, it was his turn to have one of the rooms in Lietzenburg, the Association’s rest home, ‘for the purposes of vacation’ as it said in officialese; attached was a three-page list of house regulations. Meno knew that this was probably the only time he’d have the privilege of staying in Lietzenburg. It was offered in rotation over a cycle
of thirty years. Meno’s application had originally been made in 1974, so he’d been lucky. Especially since married couples were given preference. Editors were the lowest of the low in the Association. Only the head of Editorial Section 1 in the central office of the publishing house was said to have managed to get to Lietzenburg twice.

The ferry chugged its way north from the Sound of Strela, above which the needled outlines of St James’s, St Mary’s and St Nicholas’s rose up into the leaden sky, past Altefähr on Rügen, meadow-flat Ummanz. For a while Arbogast’s ship kept alongside with shortened sail, then the wind freshened; the Baron, at the wheel, nodded to Meno, who was standing by the ferry rail watching the manoeuvres that Herr Ritschel, a bosun’s whistle between his lips, piped up to the sailors climbing the rigging with even movements. The sails caught the wind, billowed out, the black-caulked yacht cut across almost silently and disappeared in the haze. Meno filled his pipe, staring at the bottle-green waves flickering with phosphorescence, offered his Orient cigarettes first to Judith Schevola, then to Philipp Londoner, listened to the stories, scratched by loudspeaker noises, that the grey-bearded captain was telling about the steamer, the
Caprivi
, the author Gerhart Hauptmann had brought to Hiddensee, about Gret Palucca and her longing for dance in the flaxen light of the north that they greeted at dawn, naked and worshipping the sun. Between announcements of lentil stew with sausages, the captain asked if all the passengers had a coin in their pockets, for the deceptive glitter on the waves could be the golden roofs of Vineta, the lost city that emerged every hundred years, seeking deliverance. It had appeared to a boy called Lütt Matten, offering him all its treasures for a mark, a ten-pfennig piece, any coin at all, but the boy had been wearing his swimming trunks and had no money on him at all, so the town had sorrowfully sunk back down.

‘Perhaps our General Secretary ought to go diving here.’ Philipp had spoken to Judith Schevola but she remained silent, lips pursed,
blowing smoke rings that the wind blew away. Streaks of cloud, tinged with ochre and pink, announced the approach of the island.

It was evening by the time the ferry berthed at Kloster. Philipp Londoner and Meno carried their cases to the Lietzenburg handcart. They waited until the last day-trippers had gone on board, the few visitors who were staying on the island had disappeared inland. The ferry cast off, turning into the channel for Schaprode. Judith Schevola did a handstand on the harbour edge.

‘Risky,’ Meno said when she dropped back down. ‘I wouldn’t have fancied fishing you out.’

‘We’ve already had a conversation about risks.’ Judith Schevola frizzed her hair until it stuck out like the bristles of a bottle-brush. ‘The gentlemen will pull my luggage.’

‘How is it that you got a place? If I may ask.’

‘Socialist bureaucracy. The Association threw me out but I’m still a member of the trade union with a right to a vacation place. And since I had nothing planned anyway –’

‘How are you making a living now?’ Philipp asked rather brusquely; perhaps he was just annoyed because he had to struggle with the handcart, the tyres of which dragged slackly over the paving stones. Of the ten pieces of luggage, six belonged to Judith Schevola.

‘You won’t believe it. I’m a nightwatchwoman now.’

‘What hare-brained idiot appoints a woman to a job like that?’

‘Someone who can’t even get pensioners to do it. – At a crematorium and graveyard. “Too much future, too many acquaintances,” my seventy-year-old predecessor said as he gave me the keys.’ Taking off her shoes and socks, she threw them into the cart, which Meno was helping to pull, rolled up her jeans and splashed though a puddle. Horse-drawn carriages came in the opposite direction. Cyclists rang their bells for them to make way. It was getting cool, the wind came off the sea. The mosquitos buzzed, with an oath, Philipp slapped his neck, examined what he’d killed with an expression of disgust. The
old chestnut trees along the main street of Kloster mingled their scent with that of cow dung and hay coming from the extended meadows between Kloster and Vitte. A Schwalbe moped approached, stopped the three of them; the section representative demanded to see their room confirmation. When he read Lietzenburg, he reminded them that no kisses from the muses were allowed after 8 p.m. The road became a sandy track when they turned off north from the main street, past Kasten’s bakery. Holidaymakers came towards them, bronzed creatures from another age. Women in flowing batik dresses, lots of wooden ornaments, bangles made from coloured leather straps, sandals with strings of glass beads; pipe-smoking men with artists’ locks, the Jesus look, less often short hair and proletarian donkey jackets à la Brecht. Reed-thatched houses beneath the spreading chestnuts, the first lights flashed on.

He could have gone out and perhaps Anne wouldn’t have followed him. Christian sensed that she wanted to talk to him but he hated sentimentality: tears, confessions of weakness, despair – all that women’s stuff, he thought; he imagined his mother on a walk like that, softening him up with sobs and moans or, even worse, with nothing like that, just with
sympathetic silence
: why? What difference would it make? They were sitting outside the bungalow with a lantern but not enough light for Regine’s letter that Richard wanted to read out; Niklas switched on the light over the door.

Christian didn’t go. He was tired, it was nice that no one asked him anything, it was a mild evening, crickets were chirping sleepily, it was comfortable lying in the lounger. Gudrun suggested they visit Ina on their way back to Berlin, little Erik was over the worst, visitors weren’t a nuisance any more. Anne had made some tea. The shrill of a whistle chopped up the calm of the holiday camp, children came out and stood in two rows in front of the bungalows. Richard didn’t read any louder.

‘… the
door was slammed shut from outside. The train was already setting off. We stowed the luggage away. No embraces before the frontier, we were superstitious. The train stopped between stations. Outside there were little men in uniform running up and down, I thought, they’re Russians: lots of scurrying and pattering, already there was one in the compartment. “Passports and customs”, in the Vogtland dialect. The fear returned: is everything going to be all right? First of all he rummaged round in my handbag. “What’s this then?” It was Philipp’s wish list, I’d written it out for him. It said: Papa. A peach as big as a football. The uniform put the piece of paper in his pocket. “And this?” I’d made a driving licence for Philipp with a passport photograph and a stamp drawn on it for his Liliput three-wheeler (he was a master on his scooter, could park backwards better that I can in the car). I stammered out an explanation, I was pretty overwrought. He shut the little folder, put it back in my bag, handed it to me. “Have a good journey”, and he was gone. For a while longer there was noise out in the corridor, clattering, disgruntled voices. Then the train started again. Hansi was annoyed that the guy had stolen the wish list. Philipp slept calmly through everything. We were so exhausted we both dropped off too. The screech of brakes, “Landshut”, from outside, Bavarian dialect this time. Around 11 o’clock the family was reunited in Munich Central Station.’

Robert went into the bungalow; he wanted to do some night fishing in the lagoon. The lantern crackled with diving, fluttering insects. The toadstool lamps lit up, one after the other, each one pouring out brightness, Christian thought, like milk out of a jug in a girl’s hand. There was a vortex in the wall of pines beyond the holiday camp, a frenzy of dissolution on the sky that was being dragged into darkness. Christian felt uneasy. Niklas lit his pipe. Gudrun gargled with tea, leant back, both arms on the arms of her deckchair, began to recite, lines Christian didn’t know:

‘ “Sleeplessness.
Homer. Taut sails. I read

The catalogue of ships but halfway through:

That youthful brood, the cranes in retinue

That Hellas saw, once long since, overhead.” ’

Said, ‘Mandelstam.’

Now Niklas took his pipe out of his mouth and declaimed:

‘ “A golden frog, the moon’s bright ring

Floats in the lake’s dark night.

Like apple blossom in the spring

My father’s beard is turning white.” ’

Said, ‘Yesenin.’

Said Anne:

‘ “Like that wedge of cranes to distant lands,

Your princes’ heads becrowned with godly spray,

You sail. Had Helen not been torn away,

What would Troy be to you, Achaean band?” ’

Said, ‘Mandelstam.’

Said Robert, ‘Now I’m going fishing.’

Christian said nothing.

Richard fetched his accordion, sang:

‘ “Goodbye, my friend, no hand nor word,

And let not tears your cheeks bedew.

To die is nothing new, I’ve heard,

And living, yes, that’s old hat too.” ’

Broke off, said, ‘Yesenin.’

Said Gudrun:

‘ “The sea and Homer – both by love impelled.

Which shall I listen to? Now Homer’s fallen silent,

And the black sea, with its heavy swell,

Breaks on my pillow, thunderously eloquent.” ’

Said, ‘Mandelstam.’

Christian said nothing. Anne cried.