Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

The roofing felt will be sent off to you in your cardboard box, also included is 1 packet of roofing nails they also had in stock. My father told me about the death of Prof. Staegemann’s son; my brother Robert has Prof. Staegemann to thank that he can still play the clarinet after his skiing accident on Untere Rissleite. His shattered incisor was reconstructed using a technique from the West (a transparent liquid that hardens under a lamp; I can still remember how astonished you were). What you wrote in your letter about Muriel and her family sounds ominous. My father told me that a joint letter is to be sent to the Minister of Education. Best wishes to you, to your husband (perhaps I’ll have time for a visit to the Zwinger when I’m on leave, I haven’t been there for ages), to the Krausewitzes, Herr Dietzsch and Herr Marroquin — he came to mind during our kitting-out ceremony, they call it the Masked Ball. Christian Hoffmann.

TC Q/Schwanenberg, 28.11.84

Dear Parents, Your parcel arrived safe and sound yesterday, thanks for sparing no effort or expense. The apples have all gone already. Please don’t put anything in your parcels that has even the slightest hint of the West. The parcels have to be opened and the quartermaster-sergeant (the man who deals with clothing, equipment, mail, food requirements etc.) confiscates anything that has the slightest hint of feelers ‘the enemy’ might be putting out for innocent military cadets, even if it’s a midge from the other side. Could you perhaps get me a bottle of aftershave? But not Dur that you can get in the store here — or, rather, can’t get any more since one of the regulars told us that Dur has ‘revs’ (= high-percentage alcohol — well, he is a driving instructor). That evening Irrgang and Breck were both drunk and they’ve been put on extra guard duty as a punishment. In the chemist’s recently I saw a few bottles of Tüff aftershave, that might do.

Yesterday I was the ‘cookroach’, that is I was on kitchen fatigues. I ended up in a dark place, the so-called ‘pot-sink’, the centre of washing-up as an existent reality. It starts at 6 p.m., you’re given so-called hygienic clothing (a grey coat that has strange powder-burn holes, perhaps from an unknown species of moth? and is used as a handkerchief by the cooks now and then). You keep at it until 10 p.m. The next day it starts again at 4.30 a.m. and continues until 6 p.m. The pot-sink is a place of true feeling. Pots look like officials who’ve burnt their behinds, they have that leather-trousered look that Meno once hinted at, they have ears as well, floppy as a marzipan flag, steam comes pouring out and they flutter when you’re scrubbing them. The pot-sink knows all about the mixed-fruit vat that comes back from the ‘Interhotel’ (the canteen) empty and that we cookroaches had previously filled.

Take:

150 jars of preserved mixed fruit

a tin trough of 1 m 3capacity

the ‘crocodile’: a gigantic multifunction whisk, held by two cookroaches, with a handle on the drum to which two whisks are attached and which has to be turned by a further two cookroaches. The crocodile gives the preserved mixed fruit in the preserved-mixed-fruit trough that mushy consistency that is so sought after in mixed fruit and for which the cookroaches who lug the trough into the Interhotel are rewarded with sincere compliments, to which they generally respond with a cautious raising of the middle finger. The pot-sink knows the merits of the steam-jet hose, also known as the ‘cobra’, that yellow-and-black something that now and then feels an uncontrollable desire for freedom and, with a whistling release of steam, goes its own way. That means that we, the two pot-sink cookroaches, have to ‘become fakirs’ and ‘teach the cobra to play the flute’, that is: slip through under the wildly wriggling, boiling hot snake dance and turn down the steam valve at the entrance to the pot-sink until the manometer beside it once more indicates tamed levels. The pot-sink alone allows the observer the sight of Cacerlaca superdimensionalis , known for short as ‘Super Roach’, searching through pots and pans, tubs and vats for the remains of the Komplekte — and that without epaulettes and hygienic clothing! Anyone who sees this member of the army has to shout ‘Mooncalf’. Mooncalf is the kitchen ghoul, a regular NCO, who had long since served his 10 years but couldn’t manage outside, repented and returned to the environment he was used to. He regularly throws pieces of snot in the stew pan, is stooped and carries the hygiene knapsack, on the side of which is a lever that sprays ‘some stuff’. Normally we have to ventilate the room for an hour after that and aren’t allowed in the pot-sink. But Mooncalf only does the spraying for form’s sake, the cockroaches lie on their backs and laugh. Christian.

TC Q/Schwanenberg, 2.12.1984

Dear Meno, Today is the first Sunday in Advent and the candles will be burning at home. Thank you for your offer, but please don’t send me any books. In the little free time we get I write my letters or catch up on my sleep. I brought a box of books with me but had to send it back. It’s not advisable to be seen with a book in your hand too often. Then you’re looked on as a ‘professor’ and ‘professors think they’re superior’ and they’re fair game for special treatment. Fish (that’s what we call our platoon commander, a Comrade First Lieutenant) likes to give ‘professors’ extra individual drill on the obstacle course in the evening after News Camera . And he wears glasses himself, which puzzles me (are glasses a sign of stupidity?). There are even some among my fellow cadets who have something against books. Special treatment comes from above and from below; the latter is seen as ‘internal training’ and connived at by our superiors. Cadet Burre was the object of some ‘internal training’ only a few hours ago. He’s not in Company 4, where I am (tank commanders), but in 3, tank drivers, whose rooms are one floor lower down. My room-mate Irrgang and I heard some noise and rushed down. One of the prospective tank drivers was standing facing the assembled squad reading out a love poem Burre had written. It was kitschy and I felt like laughing along with the others. But I didn’t feel like laughing when Burre grabbed the reader by the throat. With a couple of blows the reader knocked little, fat Burre to the ground (an odd sound, quite different from in films where the sounds are added on), then Burre was grabbed by four of them and debagged while the one who’d been reading fetched a pair of work mittens and a so-called ‘bercu’ (‘bear’s cunt’, it’s what the chapka we wear in the winter’s called) and, to the jeers of those around, shouted, Bread-roll (clearly Burre’s nickname) — now we’re going to play at Sigmund Freud. Father and you are always telling me I should observe carefully, should try to describe what I see as precisely as possible. But I couldn’t see Burre’s face, just heard his breathing. Burre was thrashing about, trying to jerk his lower body up and down, but the four held him tight. The one who’d been reading grasped Burre’s penis with the work-glove, held up the piece of paper with the poem and recited, ‘O Melanie, could I but kiss you by moonlight …’, all the other cadets in the corridor were urging him on. (Toss him off! Let’s see if Bread-roll can get it up. Come on, where is it? God, Fatso, you stink like a polecat!) The reader pressed the bercu against Burre’s penis and started to ‘milk the chicken’.

I went up to the reader and said, Stop it. He stared at me as if he couldn’t understand what I was saying. Irrgang supported me, That’s what I want to tell you as well, my friend. Leave him in peace. The others just laughed, the reader as well, then he went on with his ‘milking’. He’s a great hulk, I’m more of a shrimp. Then Burre suddenly said, Ooh, I feel great, let the idiots carry on. At that they laughed even louder. — Please don’t tell my parents about this letter. We probably won’t get leave over Christmas since a ‘Guard Complex I’ week of SST (‘Social Science Training’) has been arranged. How’s the Stahls’ little boy? How are things at Dresdner Edition? Are you still working on the Schevola book? Salve , Christian.