Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

Summer came. The twelfth grade have their final exams. Final parade: We wish you all the best for your future in our socialist society. Flowers, handshakes, one last visit to a disco together, booze and cigarettes, partying.

Muriel was sent to a reformatory. She had been warned but she still insisted on saying what she thought in civics classes.

Hans and Iris Hoffmann are accused of having failed in their upbringing, they are stripped of their parental rights. The guidelines say: ‘The aim of a reformatory is to overcome individualist personality developments, to smooth out peculiarities of thought and behaviour in children and young people, thus creating the basis for normal personality development.’

Jolting and creaking, illuminated by the murky light of the upper station and a few lamps in the interior of the car, the suspension railway left the passenger bay and sank on its rail under the horseshoe steel supports into the open and down towards the valley. It was a cool evening in late autumn. Judith Schevola was shivering in her thin coat, Philipp Londoner had lent her his scarf, which she had wound round her neck like a ruff so that only the tip of her nose and her coolly observant eyes were visible; with an oversized flat cap, such as UFA film stars used to wear with knickerbockers, her head threw a bat-like shadow.

‘If the guard at the top had asked to see my identity card one more time —’

‘— you’d have exploded.’ Pulling down the scarf, Schevola gave Philipp a mocking glance. ‘Perhaps he could tell that and decided not to risk it. Who knows, perhaps that’s a reaction that’s become more frequent recently from people who’ve been to see Barsano.’

‘They dismiss these things as if they were nothing. Barsano didn’t even look at the document. As if he were getting that kind of stuff daily now. He smiled and gestured towards the buffet like a … bourgeois old fogey. And you …’ He nodded at Meno. ‘… hang back, say nothing and keep your head down when one of your superiors —’

‘You know very well you’re talking nonsense, Philipp,’ Meno broke in calmly. ‘What is there I could say about your theses and figures? I haven’t even read them.’

‘I must speak up for him. He really stood up for my book and just because Redlich supported him doesn’t make that any less courageous. You came barging in with your position paper.’

‘Came barging in my arse! I’ll tell you something. The meeting was actually arranged to discuss points that came up in the Institute’s paper. What you writers had to do with it is a mystery to me; perhaps he just invited you out of cowardice, as a let-out … After all, one or other of his reptilian secretaries will have prepared him on the subject.’

‘Philipp …’ Meno nodded a warning in the direction of the conductor sitting, motionless, at the controls at the other end of the car. Philipp was unimpressed. ‘OK, if you insist, they’re not reptiles, just toadies, jellyfish! — And that’s a standard answer anyway: I’m not familiar with this, I don’t understand it, submit it to those whose responsibility it is.’

‘Is it Barsano’s responsibility?’

‘Don’t you realize what’s at stake here, Judith?’

‘You call her Judith, aha,’ Meno broke in, surprised. ‘You’re getting loud,’ he hurried to add when he saw the two of them exchange glances.

‘Eschschloraque would have a witty response ready for that. Something like: Beethoven is still Beethoven no matter at what level the volume control is set,’ Philipp said in a fairly arrogant tone of voice. Schevola breathed on the window, wiped it, tried to see out. ‘And you think he’ll be happy to see us. Not everyone likes unannounced visitors. Especially not here in East Rome. Perhaps he’s an evening type and is working on one of his plays in which nightwatchmen are chairmen of the State Council in disguise.’

‘That I’m coming, he knows, that you’re coming, he doesn’t. Surprises stimulate him, he says. — And you haven’t answered my question, sweetheart.’

Philipp, Meno thought, had a peculiar sense of humour now and then. Judith Schevola seemed amused by the nickname and the use of the familiar ‘ du’ , perhaps she’d heard them more than once already. ‘We’ll continue the discussion outside, Comrade Professor, we’ll be there in a moment.’ Lifting up her face, she mimicked the hard-boiled vamp: ‘Baby.’

Philipp rang the bell when Kosmonautenweg came in sight. The car slipped into the stopping bay, shuddered as it came to a halt; the car going in the opposite direction had stopped on the other side. Meno saw two passengers sitting in it; they nodded to him: Däne, the music critic, and Joffe, the lawyer, who seemed to be having an animated conversation. Perhaps about the Semper Opera House, which was due to be reopened on 13 February, perhaps Joffe was asking Däne about a composer for an opera since he’d written a crime libretto from which Erik Orré had performed some gory street ballads the previous winter. The doors creaked open, Philipp gave Judith his hand to help her alight, one of his inconsistently bourgeois courtesies, as Marisa would have said; Meno was tempted to ask after her but decided not to. After a short wait, during which no other passengers appeared, the conductor set off again with the empty car. Gesticulating vigorously, the critic and the lawyer glided on uphill.

‘Since we’re talking about modes of address, shouldn’t we use the “ du ” to each other?’ Judith Schevola sat on the handrail and tried to slide down but the drizzle had made it tacky. Philipp Londoner laughed, gave Meno a friendly, condescending pat on the shoulder, ‘Want to bet he says no, Judith? With me he was as coy as a young virgin even though I’m the brother of his ex-wife. I’ll never forget what you said to me: “There’s nothing we’ve been through together that would justify such a step, we haven’t fought together yet, we don’t yet know what we should think of each other.” Meno, our little warrior. What made you say that?’

‘As long as it doesn’t give you another opportunity to mock me — experience. I don’t like being disappointed, that’s all. And I don’t like disappointing other people either.’ He turned to Judith Schevola. She was watching the other car disappear like a brightly lit bathyscaphe in the tangle of the steel supports. ‘I don’t want you to feel insulted but I think it’s better if a certain distance between author and editor is retained. What would you do if, while addressing you as “ du” , I tore one of your chapters to pieces?’

‘I’d say, “You arsehole” — using the familiar “ du” — and bear it with a smile.’

‘Why don’t you give it a try, Meno? Vain as she is, she certainly won’t laugh.’ That evening Philipp was clearly enjoying provoking her.

‘Vanity’s when you can say to your image in the mirror: so you had a bad night too? What about it?’ she said, turning impatiently to Meno.

‘I’d prefer to sick to the more formal “ Sie ”. You just wait and see, you’ll be grateful to me for it one day. Moreover I never want to see you as a moaning minnie. There’s something off-putting about wailing geniuses, they lose status, and familiarity leads to the sight of rooms with dog ends and mouldy biscuits lying all over the place. Not something for me.’

‘Well, that’s that sorted out then,’ Judith Schevola replied, somewhat put out.

‘I suspect a man’s never refused you something in such a matter-of-fact way before.’ Philipp grinned. Suddenly his expression darkened again. ‘Let’s get on. If we’re going to surprise Eschschloraque, then at least let’s do it punctually.’