Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

We sing it every evening when we march to dinner, the tune doesn’t matter, everyone bawls it out however they like, the main thing is that it’s loud. The other companies sing the same song but change the colour, instead of pink (Tanks) they put green (Chemical Services), black (Engineers), red (Artillery), white (Motorized Gunners), gold (Intelligence). It doesn’t really flow but it still comes out nice and loud.

The answer to your question about the swearing-in ceremony, Ma, is unfortunately no. Our tank unit can’t invite any family members, the accommodation available in Schwanenberg couldn’t cope with the numbers, they say. You’ll just have to wait until I get leave, I’m afraid. Have you heard anything from Muriel? And is it true that Ina’s got engaged? Keep me informed. Love to all, Christian.

Hans Beimler-TC / Schwanenberg, 19.11.84

Dear Tietzes, There’s a smell of chocolate, the Schwanenberg sweet factory’s making chocolates. Our company’s cleaning the rooms and the rest of the building and above all that means sweeping up cocoa powder: the wind blows the brown dust over from kilometres away. But I’m sitting on the loo quickly writing this letter to you.

The bottled pears arrived safe and sound, many thanks for your gifts in the parcel my parents sent. The kidney warmer you knitted for me, Gudrun, will come in useful when I’m on guard duty or camping out; I just hope it doesn’t get stolen or forbidden as being against regulations.

At the moment we’re being instructed in the subtleties of communication within the military sphere, especially saluting and swearing. It’s done by a sergeant we call the ‘Mongol’.

Permission to speak, Comrade Rank, sir.

Permission to go past, Comrade Rank, sir.

Permission to dismiss, Comrade Rank, sir.

Permission to join you, Comrade Rank, sir.

My room-mate Irrgang puts up his hand. I’ve a question there, Comrade Sergeant. What if I need to go and the Comrade First Lieutenant’s sittin’ next to me on the toilet? Permission to join you, Comrade First Lieutenant?

The Mongol’s reply: Cadet Ammofeed, Cadet Irrgang, will never have a shit next to the Comrade First Lieutenant. Never ever.

Irrgang puts up his hand again. There’s another question I have. If I meet the Comrade First Lieutenant and the comrade doesn’t give me permission to speak, how can I ask for permission to go past?

The Mongol shrugs his shoulders, continues with the lesson. We practise saluting.

Irrgang raises his hand again. I’ve an important problem there. ’f I meet the Comrade First Lieutenant an’ along comes another Comrade First Lieutenant, that is two comrades at the same time, one on the left an’ one on the right, should I put both hands up to my thinkpot at the same time.

At the moment Cadet Irrgang is busy on the obstacle course.

Dear Niklas, Have you been to the Semper Opera? What does the building look like? Best wishes, Christian — who’s looking forward to receiving letters.

TC Q/Schwanenberg, 24.11.84

Dear Parents, Ina’s engaged to Herr Wernstein?? How did that come about! Thank you for all the news and the parcel. You must have put yourselves to some expense for that, I don’t know how we’re going to eat it all up in our room without getting really fat. If you want to send me some books, Ma, then please wrap them in the paper I showed you (incoming parcels have to be opened for checks).

Today was the day we were sworn in. After the official ceremony (I crossed my fingers when taking the oath) I had, on the order of the company commander, to propose a toast in the ‘House of the National People’s Army’ in the barracks (before I did, he read through it for mistakes and ideologically unsound remarks); after that I went back to our block and not into Schwanenberg with the others, so at least I had a quiet afternoon, I locked myself in the lav and wrote replies to a few letters. Anyway, I saw Schwanenberg a few days ago when I went with a corporal to buy stuff for the company staff officers in the store there. Schwanenberg’s a garrison town, mostly bare and rectangular, qualities my ‘noggin’ also possesses since the ‘Masked Ball’; but my hair’s growing again. Send my love to Aunt Iris and Uncle Hans, to Fabian as well. And to you, of course. Christian

TC Q/Schwanenberg, 25.11.84

Dear Parents, Robert thinks I’m exaggerating when I write that we only have three hours’ free time on Sundays. Our daily schedule is, with minor variations, as follows: 06.00 hours: wake, put on red/yellow tracksuit in 2 min, 06.02: go out, early-morning exercises until 06.30: return to building, wash, dress, put sports things away by 06.40: fall in, at the double to canteen, breakfast until 07.00: at the double back to the company, 07–07.30: make beds, clean room, 07.30–15.00: training, lunch jammed in somewhere (bolt it down, what else), 15.00–16.00: ‘big’ cleaning of rooms and building (each of us has his own patch that he has to keep clean), 16.00–18.00: parade practice and extra physical training (on top of the morning 3,000 m comes the obstacle course, 500 m with 22 so-called chicanes, plus weightlifting with the 50 kg weight, standard 6 times, exercises with the tank-track weight); return at the double, no time to wash, 18.05–18.20: supper, after that daily cleaning of rifles and care of personal protective equipment (protective mask and protective suit), 19.30–20.00: communal viewing of News Camera , 20.00–21.30: outdoors work (cleaning the tanks, painting fences, cutting the grass, with nail scissors if the Mongol feels like it, brushing facility paths), 21.30–22.00: cleaning rooms and building, make up sports pack, wash, check rooms, 22.00: night rest. I can only write letters during night rest or on Sundays. There’s only one time during the day when we can relax a bit: News Camera , which we watch in the club room, where we’re not allowed otherwise. At least we see something civilian once a day. Once a week we have showers, we go into the shower hall in sections, 200 men under 150 showers and we have 10 minutes to soap ourselves and wash everything off — that’s assuming the NCOs in charge of the showers don’t amuse themselves by turning off the water or only letting cold through. They’re discharge candidates and can do as they like; we’re the new boys, we’re ‘order-receivers’, that’s why they call first-year conscripts ‘earholes’. Love to all, Christian, on the way to an ARDSP (All-Round Developed Socialist Personality)

PS: Of course, I’m exaggerating, otherwise you might end up believing me.

Schwanenberg, 25.11.84

Dear Frau Doktor Knabe, Many thanks for your letter of 23 Sept., the metre-long parcel with the brochure on ‘Keeping Your Teeth Healthy’ that you and Prof. Staegemann have edited. Odile Vassas and Dr Vogel from the Museum of Hygiene have put a lot of work into it. Sensi the dwarf is easily recognizable, likewise his enemies Dirtfinger, Stinkifoot, Nosedrip, Blackear and, of course, Lazitooth. Whenever they invaded the socialist kindergarten, Sensi was there with his toothpaste machine gun and face-cloth-grenade. I think every Dresden class must have seen the cartoon with the dwarf; I remember that he checked whether his exhortations were really being followed — he watched the lazy children on his surveillance monitor, had a telephone to inform the primary school teachers and a magic telescope. If he were to focus it on our Training School, he could study our feeding habits. We go (but to go means to run, going at the double is the natural mode of progression for members of the armed forces) to the ‘Interhotel’. At long, Sprelacart-topped tables, on stools, after the polite invitation to sit down and ‘proceed with the meal’, we bend over the Komplekte , savour the finest unsugared tea with its faint hint of peppermint which, under the nicknames of ‘bromide’ or ‘Impo-tea’, is said to have a certain calming effect and which waiters with grey coats and choice manners heave onto the table in tubs; on Sundays, if you are quick (and who isn’t?) there’s hot milk and 1 piece of cake for breakfast. Ah, Komplekte … How should I describe it? O delicious mixture of atomic bread and cosmonaut’s groats and steadfastness against the aggressor! As yielding as dough, you stick, O friend from the Soviet Union, to the soldier’s teeth, making him replete and sending him to ride the porcelain bus. Let me embrace you, tastebud, you cry from a distance and, rest assured, we love you too. How fine it must be to lie there, round, sharp and contented as a peppercorn, then to gradually turn into a balloon, to sing your backfiring song as you dream, simply releasing all ballast with a sound like thunder, then bray no more. Everything is in motion, but Komplekte is so through thick and thin. Even its fragrance gilds our noses, does not splash around pointlessly in dromedary rumens, plunges through cackroaches, swirls round strips of sandpaper, twangs the balalaika carved out of knackwurst, trills its lovelorn song through the exhaust of a Trabbi — only in the end to drop nothing but flour bombs; but it dances on the congresses of Vienna steak, sweats attar of roses and swings, as it dips its Big Toe in the water of a smile, the propeller of our hunger. Complex is Komplekte , a true miracle, and no cook worth his salt will ever reveal the recipe to you …