The Tower: A Novel (9 page)

‘Meno …’

‘We all chipped in,’ Anne broke in. ‘It’s a present from the family to you. Everyone gave what they could afford and if we hang it up in the living room, on the wall over the television, I thought, we’ll all get something out of it, won’t we?’

Richard embraced Emmy and Meno, kissed Anne, then his two sons, who both made a face – it was embarrassing for them in front of all the others, above all in front of Reglinde and Ina.

‘Well,
thank you, thank you, all. Such a beautiful present … Thank you. And I thought I was going to get a pullover or two, a tie or something like that … You’ve all gone to such expense for me …’

‘Come on, everyone, sit down,’ Anne said. Meno carefully packed the barometer in the bag and put it down on the table.

‘A fine piece, delicate work.’ Niklas nodded in appreciation. ‘Now you’ll always know what the climate’s like, Richard.’

‘Landscape during a thaw?’ Sandor asked with a grin; so far he had hardly taken part in the conversation at all.

‘Hm, we shall see.’ Niklas wiped his massive aquiline nose, on which the red mark of the bridge of his glasses could still be seen. ‘We shall see,’ he repeated, nodding and furrowing his brow.

The conversation split up into little groups. Ulrich and Kurt Rohde talked together quietly; Emmy, Barbara and Gudrun were listening to Alice; the two girls had gone into a huddle, whispering and giggling. Adeling, the only waiter left in the room, brought some wine, Radeberger and Wernesgrüner beer, mineral water and glasses; Anne, bowls of biscuits and nuts. Ezzo and Robert were talking football, chatting about some of Dynamo Dresden’s recent matches; Christian was listening to the men, who, as almost always on such occasions, were talking politics. Richard especially was in his element there.

‘When you think about what that Andropov said … Did you read it? It was splashed all over the newspapers … The usual blah-blah, of course. Sandor, Alice, do you fancy a crash course in “How to fill three pages of a newspaper – Berliner size – without saying a single word that means anything”? You have to pick out the juicy bits and make sense of them yourself. I recommend you have a look at our sausage- and cheese-wrapping papers, namely the
Sächsische Neueste Nachrichten
, the
Sächsisches Tageblatt
and, above all, the
Sächsische Zeitung
.’

‘Not so loud, Richard,’ said Anne, looking round anxiously.

‘OK, I know. Have you read it?’

‘You
couldn’t miss it,’ Niklas growled. ‘I tend to avoid the dreary acres of newsprint, but it did strike me that he intends to continue the course prescribed by the Twenty-Sixth Party Conference.’

‘Did you expect anything else?’

‘No. In the band they’ve made various jokes about it – for example, that he should have said, “Keep going forward on a quite different course …” ’

‘And away from hard liquor. Just look at the guys marching past Brezhnev’s coffin. The puffy faces! All alcoholics, I swear. Twenty-five years on nights. Socialism equals ruined livers, varices of the oesophageal veins.’

Anne grasped Richard’s arm. He lowered his voice so that they all had to lean forward, even though he was speaking clearly.

‘Varices of the oesophageal veins? What’s that?’ Reglinde was trying to change the subject and when Richard started out on a detailed explanation, Christian thought it was stupid to go into it out of politeness, since going into it looked like falling for her diversion.

‘I also took the trouble to read it,’ Meno said. ‘I thought it was interesting that they didn’t say that Comrade Andropov was head of the secret service,’ he went on reflectively.

‘And why should they? Look, it’s self-evident. Brezhnev ruled for a good twenty years. Now he’s dead. Who’s going to be his successor? The one who knows the country best, of course. The head of the secret service.’

‘Be careful, Richard, not so loud, who knows, perhaps even here …’ Anne glanced suspiciously at Adeling, then waved him away when he looked as if he were about take a step towards them. ‘No, it’s nothing, I don’t need anything, thank you.’ She shook her head. ‘But all of you? Perhaps you’d like … ?’ She looked round. ‘There’s still ice-cream sundaes.’

‘Oh yes!’ Ezzo and Robert cried simultaneously.

Adeling
tapped his fingertips, rocked on his heels and nodded to Anne. He and another waiter brought the ice cream.

‘But tell me, Alice and Sandor,’ Niklas murmured in a conspiratorial voice, lifting his long spoon, on which a piece of Neapolitan ice cream the size of a plum glittered, ‘what about this Helmut Kohl? All we hear is lies.’

‘Yes, he’s … better, wouldn’t we say, Alice?’ Alice blinked in irritation when she heard her name, adjusted her glasses and nodded vaguely in Sandor’s direction. Emmy was talking about her many health problems with such eloquence that Gudrun, Barbara and Alice were spellbound. The men listened attentively as Sandor, in his mid-forties with an olive complexion and a full head of very grey hair that ran across his forehead in a tight wave, told them about the events in the West German parliament that had led to the vote of no confidence in Helmut Schmidt and his fall as chancellor. He and Alice had been living in South America for twenty years, which meant that he sometimes had to search for words when he spoke, and he hardly ever left the pauses between the harsh consonants that the German words ended with; instead he would soften them by adding an ‘eh’ that joined the words together. No one would have taken him, neither from his appearance nor from his accent, for a man who had been born in Dresden.

‘The development-eh-will not suit-eh-your superiors and-eh-I think-eh-that Kohl will make-eh-radical changes to the policy of rapprochement to which the Social Democrats-eh-had committed themselves …’

‘I hope so,’ said Niklas with a meaningful nod. His left hand twitched nervously as he stuck the long spoon into the strawberry layer of the Neapolitan ice cream with his right. ‘It’s about time there was an end to the policy of seeking change by ingratiating themselves that the gentlemen over there pursued and that Brezhnev and his gang just laughed at. The way they went crawling to the Russians and their henchmen was embarrassing to see. Peace was what they wanted to
bring, and détente – I ask you!’ Niklas brushed away a few drops of ice cream that his vehemently outraged pronunciation of the ‘ch’ in ‘henchmen’ had sprayed over the table.

‘Wimps, Niklas, wimps the whole lot of them! Middle-class revolutionaries from ’68 who’re still pursuing some daydreams or other but have no idea about the real world … They should come over here and live with us, or in beautiful Moscow, if the reality of socialism is that wonderful. But that’s not what these gentlemen want either, they’re not
that
blind.’ Richard had flushed red with anger and slapped his forehead several times. ‘They want to recognize the GDR, for God’s sake! We have to accept the division of Germany, they say, it’s a historical fact, they say, and the GDR is a legitimate state like any other! Don’t make me laugh! This state, huh, whose only legitimacy comes from the Russian bayonets holding it up. A state that would collapse at once – at
once
I tell you – if there were free, genuinely free elections …’

‘Richard, please.’

‘You’re right, Anne. But I do get worked up about it. These doves who’re soft on communism – against those hardliners! Reagan’s got the right idea, he has no illusions, tough talking’s the only thing the Russians understand … force them to keep up the arms race till the country collapses.’

‘But – Richard, the arms race … what if one side cracks up and presses the red button? Is what Reagan is doing right then – even at that price?’ Meno, a reflective look on his face, was poking around in his sundae. Reglinde, Ina, Ezzo and Robert, who were familiar with this kind of discussion from many family gatherings, were talking among themselves without bothering to follow the course of the argument. By this time Emmy had got to her hip operation, though the only one listening now was Gudrun, while Alice was showing the Rohdes, whom she hadn’t seen yet, photos of their four sons and their last holiday.

‘Yesyes,
the red button, that’s the argument that’s always used by our hypocritical press. They write that because they’re afraid. They’re well aware that they’re starting to run out of steam. What are the four main enemies of socialism? Spring, summer, autumn and winter. Or why do you think they keep feeling it’s necessary to urge us to increase our productivity … Without competition nothing works, that’s what I’ve always said.’

‘But, Richard, surely you’re not disputing that the more weapons are stockpiled – and they’re here, all those rockets, they’re deployed in our country – the greater the danger of war. When there are no weapons, war is impossible. All your talk can’t make that go away.’

‘Oh, war.’ Richard made a dismissive gesture. ‘That’s what I’m talking about, Meno. I don’t think anyone really wants one. They’re not all idiots. Our media always draw a parallel between stockpiling armaments and war. And conversely between disarmament and peace. However, the paradoxical thing about it is – man has clearly been carved from such crooked timber that he’ll use his fingernails to scratch people’s eyes out if he has no other weapons. If, on the other hand, he possesses rockets and knows that the other tribe, over there behind the palisade, also possesses rockets – he’ll calm down and go and till his field. Odd but true.’

‘No, I’m sorry, that’s not true, it’s nonsense, Richard.’ Meno frowned and shook his head. ‘No weapons – no war, and that’s that. Fingernails, to stick to the terminology, could be weapons or, if you like, could be used as such. I would like to emphasize that. But what does surprise me is that you of all people, as a doctor, a surgeon, are speaking in favour of the arms race –’

‘Just a minute. I’m speaking in favour of humanity. And I’m wondering what is the best way of getting out of an inhuman system. These systems have their own laws … Once they’ve been set up and are firmly established, the principles of common sense are turned upside down in them! You don’t get rid of dictators by sucking up to or even
hobnobbing with them. For that kind of person there is only one law: the law of force, my friend.’

‘But, I repeat, increasing the stocks of armaments only increases the danger of war breaking out, and where the
danger
of war is increased, then the danger of something actually happening is increased, you surely won’t deny that … A rocket heading in our direction will put an end to all discussion! Is that what you want – as a doctor?’

Richard was getting worked up. ‘As a man who thinks about politics, my dear brother-in-law! And one who doesn’t switch off his common sense and his observations when he puts on a white coat.’

‘What worries me,’ Ulrich interjected – he was sitting beside Christian and was presumably trying to calm things down a little – ‘is what Chernenko and Andropov said more or less in the middle of their speeches. One can’t beg peace from the imperialists, only defend it by relying on the strong power –’

‘Invincible,’ Niklas broke in raising his ice-cream spoon, ‘invincible power! I underlined it in the
Tageblatt
.’

‘Right, then. By relying on the invincible power of the Soviet forces. Sounds pretty bellicose. That worries me.’

‘You see. So there you are,’ the triumphant look Richard gave Meno seemed to say. His dish was empty, even though he’d had a large helping of ice cream and spent more time speaking than concentrating on eating it. Christian suspected that in the heat of debate his father hadn’t noticed what he was eating. Richard waved his spoon. ‘And what that means is crystal clear. That Moscow intends to continue to keep us on a short leash and that there will be no relaxation, quite the contrary. I read both speeches very closely. Anyway, Meno, it’s not true that they didn’t say Andropov had been head of the secret service. They did say that, only between the lines. Chernenko said … let me think a moment … yes: Yuri Vladimirovich had experience from his varied activity in domestic and foreign affairs in the field of ideology. In the field of ideology, I ask you, what’s that supposed to mean? Domestic
and foreign affairs, if you put the two together I can see three fat Cyrillic letters shining: K, G and B … Moreover Chernenko says that Andropov has done great work in the consolidation of the socialist community and in the maintenance of the security – as a man sensitive to language, Meno, what do you think of the repeated genitives? – of the security of our state. And where do you think he performed that service, certainly not on a collective farm … This Andropov will not deviate one millimetre from official dogma, I can tell you. And Chernenko!’

‘He says that all the members of the Politburo are of the opinion that Yuri Vladimirovich has mastered Brezhnev’s style of leadership well,’ Christian replied. The adults looked at him in astonishment. ‘We went through the article at school, in civics. However,’ he added with a smile, ‘not with your deductions.’

‘We keep those to ourselves, Christian, d’you hear?’ Anne warned him in a low voice.

‘Yes, exactly. Mastered well, that’s what it said. In a word: a hard line! And when I read what else this Andropov said, what was it now, oh yes, something like: “Each one of us knows what an invaluable contribution Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev made to the creation” – to the creation, oh dear me, these abstract nouns always seem to crop up in the rubbish they write, sometimes you get the impression they do it deliberately to discourage people from reading on, and then they put the bit that matters in the last third …’

‘I know what you mean, Richard, it left a nasty taste in my mouth too.’ Niklas gave an outraged nod.

‘ “… to the creation of the healthy moral and political atmosphere that characterizes the life and work of the Party today” … that is the worst kind of cynicism you can get, if you exclude Mielke’s call to the comrades in the Stasi, that really takes the bacon, Chekists, he calls them, Chekists, it makes you feel sick; that’s the justification for the camps …’

The political discussion soon subsided once Anne, realizing that
the tension was increasing and Richard was getting more and more worked up, had given Niklas and Meno a sign and changed the subject. Moreover Christian could see that as hostess she was unhappy that the party had split up into three or four groups that were pursuing quite separate conversations. So Alice had to take out her photos again and Sandor had to tell them again about the Galapagos, where they had been on a cruise; Niklas then talked about the Dresden State Orchestra’s tour of West Germany, on which he had been the accompanying doctor.