The Tower: A Novel (94 page)

‘But to no avail, they still haven’t found the child.’

‘How old was the boy?’ Herr Kühnast asked.

‘Eight months. The other child was about the same age.’

‘But they ought to be able to find out about it. The child must have
been operated on by a specialist, surely he can be found, Frau Knabe. And he would know who the mother was.’

‘I heard that the trail goes cold somewhere on the Russian border.’

‘A cover-up. And the Roeckler lad’s growing up as a Russian, with no memory of his real parents, unable to speak their language. But you can’t leave an eight-month-old child by itself like that. I don’t understand it.’

‘Yes, and then there was that solidarity bazaar, on Lindwurmring. The commander of the military hospital was devastated; although it’s not certain it was someone from the hospital, or a Russian at all, there were visitors there as well, it still happened on his patch. You can’t imagine what went on … they turned everything upside down and the guard who was nearby’s been arrested.’

‘Oh, God, yes, that solidarity bazaar with the matryoshka dolls, chai from the samovar and accordions … the stuff they happen to have.’

‘That’s rather condescending, don’t you think, Herr Kühnast? It’s not their fault,’ Meno said.

‘All right, Herr Rohde. We all know where you come from. And you don’t have any children either.’

Meno remembered: the Russian women had cooked some food, a whole cauldron full, and stood there waiting, anxious and embarrassed. A lot of local people had come to the solidarity bazaar. They had walked up in silence and spat into the cauldron one after the other.

‘Yes, and then Magda Roeckler went over to the Russians and said just the same as you, Herr Rohde. “It’s not your fault.” And then she said to the others, “Please, please don’t do that.” ’

While the story was being told the blind Herr Unthan wound bucket after bucket of warm water up into the storage tanks.

Meno wrote,

rooms, one above the other, linked by thin bridges and the cables for clunky, black Bakelite telephones. Father said, ‘Beware of countries where poems are popular. Places where people recite lines in the trams, others join in until eventually whole compartments are echoing with rhymes, office-workers with tears running down their cheeks, holding on to the strap with their right hand, in their left their ticket for the conductor, who keeps reciting to the end of the poem before he clips the tickets’, he doesn’t miss either a line or a ticket and manages to issue penalty notices while weeping at the beauty of Pushkin’s lines, ‘places where, before the teams line up in the ice-hockey stadiums, Mayakowski is recited’, the stadium announcer reads it out and the crowd chants it after him, ‘everywhere in that country there is cruelty and fear, falsehood rules. Beware of the country where the poets fill stadiums … Beware of the country where verses are a substitute.’ Truth, truth … the choruses echoed across the Elbian river, Scholars’ Island came in sight. The major educational project … The enlightenment had been brought in, the structure grew, layer upon layer. Many years had passed since the building of the wall that enclosed the country and divided the capital, the Copper Island of the government. For many years the roses had grown, slowing down time, and when I stepped onto Scholars’ Island, the paper republic, where Hermes-Verlag was going to one of the weekly editorial and committee meetings, the speed with which the water was dripping from the leaking pipes, the undiminished effect of gravity, which made the contents of the ashtrays from the smoke-ridden rooms of Editorial Office II float down into the oily puddles covering the inner courtyard, seemed unreal to me, as unreal as the figures moving with measured tread in the oddly dry, sepia light, my colleagues, my superiors; specialists who wrote a report;
staff of the institutes that give us backing against the demands of the censors, against the ideological stomach ache of strict comrades, the narrow-mindedness, the pitfalls, the unpredictable twists and turns of the Book Ministry. It was in the depths of Scholars’ Island, only accessible with a special card, an escort who knew his way around and nimble surfing of the paternosters. Creatures I found interesting from an anthropological point of view, categories of cave-dwellers, pale as plants grown out of the light, pawing at the world above ground with knuckles that were the jangle of telephones, muffled voices that seem to be creeping up out of sealed rusted catacombs and reprimanding us for hiding pieces by Musil, Joyce, Proust in an anthology in the hope that they wouldn’t notice this trial balloon, no bigger than a lemon, so that we could say, when we applied for permission to publish
À la Recherche, Ulysses, The Man without Qualities
, that these were authors who had long been in our list … They were, we were informed, the spearhead of Western decadence, inappropriate for ‘our people’ (they mostly said ‘our people’) … We devised afterwords that were like waybills declaring the harmless nature of the goods on 100 pages; we wrote blurbs like lead palisades to ward off the arrows of the unfathomable attackers; we sent one well-loved caravel floating along in a phalanx of battleships, staring apprehensively at the telephone that would announce the discovery of our ploy, order the destruction of the caravel and an increase in the number of battleships … Creatures like hermit crabs in rooms with the acoustics of screw tubes, twitching feelers at every deviation, seismically sensitive antennae running over the lines of text; clown fish in sea anemones, darting through their tentacles, afraid they’re no longer able to produce the semiochemical that camouflages them and keeps them safe from the voracious appetites of their host plant; hammerhead sharks furiously after blood, tearing to pieces everything the food-providing hand tipped in front of their mouths; sea cucumbers that never come to a decision, slithery and glassy, like conserved fruit; electric eels and moray eels in the reefs, lying in wait for their prey; remoras holding on tight with their suckers to the great whale shark called Socialist Realism … Hermes-Verlag wasn’t a publisher, it
was a literary institute. In the silence of smoke-filled lamps, of cigarettes flaring up and dying down, in the galvanic crackle of the aquarium of reading eyes in which pieces of paper catch the light like the white bellies of fish drifting past, the geographers of horizontal and vertical planes pursued their researches, let down plumb lines into the voices of the past, plucked at meridians and waited for a response. We gave the people bread for the spirit; we were a window on the world … The wall wrapped itself round Scholars’ Island, this socialist Castalia, triply secured: inwardly, outwardly and against smiles; the barbed-wire roses sprouted up the building, only the birds didn’t get caught; searchlights scanned the wall, dogs on long chains prowled the no-man’s-land between the circular walls. Everywhere relics of lost cultures, signs waiting to be deciphered, seamarks on mouldering maps, but the old captains were dead, the astrolabes or sextants, with which the signs could have been read, sold or lying forgotten in the storerooms of the museums beneath the city. At the Hermes offices there was a sign in the vestibule, a left-over, like so much else in the houses of Atlantis, that read: ‘ “The bourgeoisie has squandered the literary heritage and we must bring it together again carefully, study it and then, having critically assimilated it, move forward.” A. A. Zhdanov at the 1st conference of the Writers’ Union, 1934’; ‘Education, education,’ was the whisper in the corridors, the crackle from the telephones, the repeated message from long-abandoned archives of discs that seemed to be fed by electric leakage from sources above ground level, so that they were able to continue revolving endlessly and, perhaps illuminated by the gleam of ‘on air’ lamps, keep on sending the sound pickup into the scratch from which the old principles came like the same workpieces filling box after box as they dropped down from a punch that couldn’t be switched off. But we enjoyed making discoveries; knowledge was our food and we couldn’t get enough of it; books were sacred and there was nothing we feared more than the heat smouldering in the cellar, the sparks that could suddenly, without advance warning, without anyone being able to foresee them, fly out from the heating appliances that were still under control, from the steaming valves, the butterfly nuts screwed down
tight on tow sealant and plain washers, the cracked welds and mangy fireclay, the worn-out threads and filthy chimneys, their bricks eaten away by the acid smoke; we were afraid of fire, some of us had already seen books burning. In the editorial offices there were people playing the glass-bead game, they had set up telescopes that looked out through mildewed portholes, through well-disguised hatches in the barbed wire, at the culture of foreign countries; periscopes that saw manuscripts when they were still drying on the writers’ desks; with extreme love and care we selected what seemed important, right and valuable … A drifting head, a Jupiter head, floated across the paper republic on a tour of inspection. We anchored in Weimar, our umbilical cord attached in the house on the Frauenplan, where our sun, a disc of placenta, was rising, Goethe our fixed star … People imbued with the love of literature, of language, of the well-made book (endless discussions over tea and Juwel filter cigarettes about the disadvantages of staple binding and the advantages of sewn binding, print space, ligatures, the colour of cases and endpapers, the quality of linen for bindings), sat in the cabins of Scholars’ Island and spent years bent over Romanian and Azerbaijani poetry, translations from Persian, Georgian, Serbo-Croat, the quality of which (only that of the translations) had been checked by editors, wondered with specially appointed style editors whether someone could enter literature on ‘Jesus flip-flops’ or rather on ‘Christ sandals’, while behind them, in the walls, in the radiators with steam being let off in their wrinkled, rumbling pipes that brought up strange digestive noises from the depths, in the antique typewriters, the busy manufactory of glue pots, scissors, bone folders and pots with Barock iron-gall ink (sometimes I thought I could hear the scratch of goose-quills on their paper from the VEB Weissenborn paper factory, but it was only the standard ATO nibs with which the glass-bead-game players scribbled notes or the draft of a report), the clocks scraped away in the grinding and, depending on the season, slurping noises of the river, measurable time, terrible and submarine, fermented, while the pendulum of the other time, which gives things development and change, slowly swayed to and fro, like a metronome rod with the weight at
its highest point … Whom did we reach? Sometimes we had the feeling we bounced off people or, worse still, threw things that went right through them; saw not them but ourselves, when we tried to look out of the windows of the island into the apartments of Atlantis. Who were the others? How much of the things that we considered important reached them? Philosophers in scholar’s studies high above the wall pursued research on utopian socialists, I thought of Jochen Londoner, who spent his exile in England, to whose daughter Hanna I had been married, now he was brooding in his institute, which resembled a baroque wooden screw, over the history of the working class, reflecting on the problems of a planned socialist economy, specialist workhorses were producing commentaries on the canonic works, were connected up to the system of blood vessels
– The Complete Works of Marx and Engels –
helping to make the sun of the Only Ideology rise. The working party of professors meets. The working party of verbal erotomanes meets. They talk themselves up into a state about a decisive, indispensable, life-saving aspect of existence in Atlantis: the colour of house walls – was it floorcloth-grey or dishwater-grey? Which dishwater? That of the Interhotels or of works canteens? Of nationally owned or private ones? Were the charred caryatids on palaces in Leningrad the colour of window putty? Fauns’ ears, stone plants, the plaster pockmarked by bullet lumps (lymph nodes, cancerous growths from the last war) – what shade of grey was it that they had taken on over decades of decay? We thought of grisaille painting. Of worry-grey. Grisette-grey. Argus-eyes-grey. Prison-inmate-grey. Of men’s-fashion-grey, snail-grey, groschen-grey, oyster-grey, tree bast, wolf-grey, pencil-grey, elephant-grey. This colour, wasn’t it a brown? Ash-coloured. Powdery-clayey, flat, wooden, produced by time, exhaust fumes, acid rain; the plaster looked flea-bitten like a camel’s rusky fleece. We were getting into the zone of justification. What was the Great Project? The reconstruction of reality so that we would be able to shape it according to our dreams
…

Herr Pfeffer took off his gold-rimmed spectacles and, eyes narrowed to slits, scrutinized Christian. His glasses had left a dark-red impression on the bridge of his nose. ‘Let’s see what your boss has sent me. You graduated from senior high school?’

Christian said yes. Pfeffer wiped the lenses of his glasses with a crisply ironed white silk handkerchief.

‘You wanted to study medicine?’

Again Christian said yes. Pfeffer checked the lenses of his glasses, rolled up one corner of his handkerchief into a cone the length of his finger and used it to clean the fine streaks along where the bevelled edge of the lens ran under the gold frame. ‘I’m not all that fond of medics. Arrogant, in general artistically inclined and therefore in general of the mistaken opinion that artistic ability comes from, or is the same as, laissez-faire. Though admittedly there are different specimens of the species. Perhaps you’re one of those different specimens. We will have the opportunity to establish that. I’ve had really good experiences with philosophers and modelmakers, with many artists of the Saxon school. What does precision mean to you?’

In the middle of the harsh winter of ’86/87, during which he was to be transferred to a different job, Christian had no answer to that question.

‘Precision, young man, is love. I will give you a chance, even though it’s likely that the carbide will have completely ruined you for the kind of work that is done at my place.’ He breathed on his spectacles, checked and polished them until they were gleaming and spotless.

Traugott Pfeffer, formerly in a managerial position in the Republic’s Mint, now a foreman in VEB Phalera, which some quirk of fate had
made part of the consumer goods production department of the Chemical Combine, had his own methods of convincing himself of the ‘outstanding quality of work’ that was done in his company – the certificate was hung over his desk in the foreman’s office, a bird’s nest of corrugated iron that allowed an all-round view of the shed. Below him, sitting at a circle of workbenches that allowed a view of the barred windows of the shed, were the ten men of A shift, all in the faded but spotlessly clean prisoners’ dress supplied by VEB Phalera – the state coat of arms the size of a saucer sewn on over the heart – busy making decorations, medals and badges from unfinished metal or polyester workpieces. In order to keep a close eye, both clockwise and initial-wise, on his men, one of whom Christian now was, Traugott Pfeffer, former master craftsman in the Mint, used a swivelling telescope suspended on gimbals, like a ship’s chronometer; it was made by the nationally owned ‘Enterprise with outstanding quality of work’ Carl Zeiss Jena, and belonged to him personally, which fact was lovingly engraved on it. A second method of control, the unspectacular one, as Traugott Pfeffer, for whom the unspectacular was as much a part of art as bread is of our daily diet, lay in the examination of the workpieces. For that he took a special gauge out of the right hip pocket of his grey overalls, which were always neatly ironed, placed the scale, which measured in hundredths of a millimetre, along the diameter of the Medal for Exemplary Service on the Border, the Clara Zetkin and Hans Beimler medals, checked the distance between the awns of the three ears of grain on the medal for Distinguished Inventors, counted the rays of the rising sun of the pin for Outstanding Service to the Union, on which, right in the middle, there was a very bushy ear of wheat, checked the number of radiating needles of the ten-pointed star of the Patriotic Order of Merit.

Christian’s tasks included the following operations:

Mondays: take unfinished Grand Star of the Friendship between Nations, version for wearing on the chest, from palette of materials
on right, check quickly, take bronze pin from VEB Solidor from palette of materials on left, check briefly, pick up soldering iron, solder pin to Grand Star of the Friendship between Nations, check, polish five-cornered star, polish coloured enamel coat of arms of the Republic in the middle, shine and deburr curved oak leaves between the points of the star using polishing awl, clean dove of peace stamped on top point of star.

Tuesdays: take unfinished Faithful Service medal of the German Post from palette of materials on left, briefly check. Take Solidor steel pin from palette of materials on right, briefly check, pick up soldering iron, solder pin to clasp-bar of Faithful Service medal, polish front, especially post-horn and two jagged electric flashes sticking out either side of the horn’s cord. This medal was one of Traugott Pfeffer’s favourites and he urged Christian to work carefully, for: ‘Always remember, young man, it’s mostly older people who get medals and decorations, their whole life is symbolized by the piece of metal, so you ought to get yourself to solder the pin on really straight, not everyone likes to see their life engraved crookedly or hanging askew.’

Wednesdays: Christian was standing at the cutting and embossing presses where the unfinished medals and decorations were produced from little sheets of tombac, brass and aluminium.

Thursdays: Christian washed the grease and oil left over from embossing and deburring off the medals with a solution, used a brush to apply enamel to the indentations – pulverized glass that was mixed with distilled water and adhesive and then fired. After the lunch break Christian moved either to the mordant bath, where the scale left over from firing was removed with acid, or to electroplating, where the medals and decorations were lowered into baths of electrolytic gold beside Traugott Pfeffer’s Solingen
oak leaf
control spoon that, at the end of the procedure, had to be covered up to the handle with a clear layer of gold; only then did Traugott Pfeffer go for lunch.

Fridays:
Christian was back at the workbench, mostly occupied with making Sailor of Outstanding Merit decorations, in bronze, gilt, edge smooth; Sailor of Outstanding Merit, in bronze, edge milled; the Decoration for Outstanding Achievements in Fire Protection; the Golden One children’s decoration; membership badges for the Association for Sport and Technology, Pigeon-Racing Section; the Drop of Blood badge of the German Red Cross for giving blood; the Free German Youth Harvest Pin; the Pin of Merit for Workers in the Administration of Justice, bronze, enamel and gold versions, coated with polyester.

Every day pins of the attachment systems from VEB Solidor had to be filed sharp with a triangular file. Using a doll in uniform which, for the purposes of demonstration, had decorations in the correct position, Traugott Pfeffer explained, ‘The uniform, which is the clothing with which phaleristics in this country is mostly concerned, is made of coarse material and the pins of our decorations must penetrate it easily despite that. Just imagine if the Comrade General Secretary could not attach the Karl-Marx Medal to the chest of the man or woman receiving it, or not in the time allowed, because the pins, which are unfortunately often blunt when supplied by our partners at Solidor, bent out of shape.’

The A shift had to complete 150 per cent of the planned target every day; Herr Pfeffer only put 100 per cent in the account book. Christian learnt the reason three months later.

Traugott Pfeffer did not like fog; he liked knots and Marcel Proust. Christian had worked ‘satisfactorily’, he could – having practised with the ship’s doctor – tie knots and he had at least heard the name of Proust.

‘Good,’ Traugott Pfeffer said, ‘I can see that you’re ready for the B shift.’

On the B shift, which worked at night, neither medals nor decorations were produced, instead the seven volumes of the Rütten & Loening edition of Proust’s
Recherche
were read. ‘Sometimes you have
to force people to do what’s good for them,’ Traugott Pfeffer said. ‘This is my realm and all those who, one after the other, go through my night shift, read the
Search
– page by page, volume by volume. Sleeping is not allowed. I will test you, to see if you are worthy because you are thorough. With this.’ Out of the left hip pocket of his overalls he took a case, from which he extracted a tiepin, gilded in the electrolyte bath and filed sharp till it shone. Traugott Pfeffer, Christian learnt from a philosopher on the B shift who had been sent on probation to work in industry, would stick this pin into
Lost Time
, open it at that page, read and start to ask questions. ‘It’s best if you make notes,’ the philosopher said. ‘Anyone he finds worthy of reading Proust doesn’t come off the night shift until he’s read the whole book.’

There were five of them; the other four on B shift were all philosophers, though from different schools, and would spend the whole night in silent but bitter arguments, hastily scribbled in pencil on rough paper, about alienation in a Developed Socialist Society.