Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘So, in your opinion, what are the Russians doing in Afghanistan?’

‘Responding to a request from the government, for help against the counter-revolution.’

‘Of course. Just as in ’68 in Czechoslovakia. They also asked the Russians for help. Funny that the population wasn’t of the same opinion.’

‘That’s Western propaganda again. The people cheered the Soviet soldiers, we saw that on TV. Christian, you really ought to think about what you’re saying.’

It didn’t sound threatening, just puzzled, but it brought him back down to earth at once. But he was interested in the topic, he couldn’t leave it just like that; there was also the urge to be right, so he changed the subject. ‘You told me your brother’s homosexual. He doesn’t have any problems?’

‘My father threw him out. And for Mother he doesn’t exist any more. She says she never had a son. Otherwise — not as far as I know.’

‘There used to be a law according to which your brother would have had to go to prison. Just because of his nature. He can’t help it.’

‘The Yanks have racial discrimination. Anyway, that law was abolished. — And my brother’s going into the army for three years.’

‘Because he believes in it?’ Christian asked dubiously.

‘What are you suggesting?’

He had to laugh. ‘It wasn’t meant as a suggestive remark.’

‘I’d wait for you,’ Reina said.

Turgenev’s pounding heart after all; he knew he’d blushed and stuck to the dim light of the path; Reina’s armpits, her body the sheet had slipped off, how simple it would be to touch her now, to seek the lips of her wry, freckled face, to stammer the usual things, but he resisted: her fingers, stroking the pus-capped bumps of his acne, would say: a nasty rash; a shudder of nausea, I don’t want to catch acne, then, out of consideration for him, she’d murmur something soothing, yet still feel nauseated: a lead balloon the whole thing; what would it be like to sleep with Reina, he longed for it, feared it.

‘Would you stick to your convictions whatever happened?’

‘I’d try to,’ Reina replied after a while, without looking at him; the distance between them was more than her outstretched arm; his hand would have had to do its bit.

‘Even if you were blackmailed or tortured?’

‘If I say yes, you’ll think I’m bragging or overestimating what I’m capable of resisting. Who can know that? — Do we have to talk about this?’ Reina was getting irritated, he could tell from her voice and yet he continued to provoke her, now because it gave him a certain pleasure. ‘And if they didn’t torture you but someone you love?’

Reina took a deep breath. ‘Who should torture you?’

‘Beware of Reina,’ Verena said one evening, ‘I think she’s one of them. Be careful about what you say.’

A magnetic needle swinging round the compass, indecisive fluttering, floundering movements; Verena seemed out of reach, she now openly held hands with Siegbert, and Christian could stare at the musical-instrument brown of her hair for so long that he noticed streaks of sweat and a powder of dandruff on the shoulders of the dark velour pullovers she wore; he could bear her looking at him without feeling he immediately had to make a contribution to the ongoing discussion or conceal the directness of this exchange of looks with some fidgety gesture — clenching his fists, scratching his head — firmly push everything away from him. Suddenly the magnetic needle had come to a halt.

Beware of Reina.

But now he had to be where she was; he hated it when she lost her balance going downhill and Siegbert or Falk grasped her flailing hand; when they had a rest he stared at the down on the nape of her neck, that vulnerable hair bent in bright whorls that exuded a dangerous attraction: several times already he’d stuck out his finger because there was a mosquito on them or he needed to check something, he also thought that the scar must hurt and the pain would go away if he touched it. He remembered in time that Falk was keeping an eye on his movement and it was only a matter of seconds before the conversation would die away and Reina sit there, mortified; in the evenings he wished she were still on the mattress next to him and he could decide where she should feel the shudder of his first kiss — but she’d moved to a different place well away from him. On her back, the side of her shoulder, the spot with the whorls of hair (too predictable, he told himself, perhaps she’d have forgotten later on when he asked her: Where was my first kiss, do you remember? or another boy had already kissed her there, immediately he assumed that must be the case, probably on the scar, that’s what happened in pirate films — he didn’t even know whether he’d be Reina’s first boyfriend; it was unlikely, there must have been crushes in her earlier years at school; did she actually have a boyfriend? he decided to give him a good thrashing, the swine); perhaps on the scar after all or, better still, a point on the line the sheet had made, where her back merged with her pelvis; her earlobe (the right or the left? both were well perfused), her navel (at the thought of that he gave a soft cry of pleasure: just before the kiss her stomach would draw back as if electrified, as if an ice cube had been dropped on it, would slowly come up again, as when you breathed out, and he would hold his lips precisely over that rising movement so that her navel would touch his lips, not the other way round), her elbow (unusual, but dry, the way he imagined model-railway enthusiasts kissed), the tip of her nose (but she wasn’t a cat after all), or better still her ring-toe, the one next to the little toe (no one ever placed a kiss there, but would she realize that? perhaps that was too far-fetched, too complicated?), her breasts (sure, where else? he went on walks feverishly visualizing the colour of her nipples, whether they were pink or light brown like milky coffee, whether he could nibble at them delicately without hurting her, whether they would respond to his tongue, his lips, possibly even his nostril — that when he snuffled particularly lasciviously), or the back of her knee?

No.

He would kiss her armpit. Of course there was always her mouth as well but that was out of the question for his first kiss, he’d go there later. His first kiss, he decided, would be on her armpit, that shaven, sweating, bread-roll-white dove-bellied cove under her left arm.

Kurt didn’t have a telephone, invitations came to him by post; Lene didn’t have one either; Christian went into the town to ring Barbara. He didn’t want to worry Anne and he could well imagine what Richard would say. As he dialled the number, he could see the dilapidated balcony of the Italian House in his mind’s eye, the staircase windows with the dame’s violets he and Meno had admired during the winter, the night of the birthday party. It was Friday, Ina would be out; it would have disturbed him very much if she’d answered. Barbara often came home earlier on Fridays, she’d probably be in the kitchen, cooking. She answered. He told her about Reina.

‘And you’re asking whether you should fall in love with the girl? Tell me, have you gone soft in the head? Now you just listen to me. Do you think we were interested in politics when we were your age? Do you think Ina gives a damn about the politics of whoever’s her latest?’

Perhaps she ought to, Christian thought.

‘But that’s something you get from your father. Just between you and me, Christian, your father’s a bit … well, how shall I put it? Inhibited? Recently we were talking … oh, but now I remember it’s something you’re not to know about. Enoeff. You need a girlfriend, a boy of your age without one, if I were your mother I’d be wondering. — Why haven’t you rung Anne?’