Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘You really want to invite me over for Christmas? I didn’t know, Herr Londoner … Oh, then I’m in your debt,’ Altberg said and Meno was irritated by the formal way Altberg had suddenly started to address Londoner until he realized he was talking to Philipp, ‘but then has your father … aha. However, please understand me … can I speak to him? Hm. I find that a little embarrassing, I have to say it comes as a surprise, of course I’m very grateful, you can … What? You’re right there again … Would you pass on a message to your parents from me?’ Then Altberg expressed — Meno hadn’t intended to observe him but he felt a strange satisfaction to see Altberg in this situation, so he remained seated — Altberg was trying to express something, was struggling to find the right word and, since it didn’t occur to him immediately, cast a number of rhetorical nets to try and fish it out: Would Philipp be so kind as to inform his parents of his, Georg Altberg’s, decision … no, ‘decision’ sounded inappropriate, too familiar, Philipp would know what he meant and should remember how condescending … At the moment he was working on a story that had a beggar in it, not anything that took place here and now, of course — where were there beggars in our country? — but there happened to be one in his story and what a nice discordant note it would strike if he were to make this beggar decide to accept the alms the other had been so kind as to offer; was his father working or had he been urgently called to the Academy? — However that might be, he wanted to inform him of his intention, ‘Hm’ — Altberg smiled, scratching his head, which he held on one side as he walked up and down — ‘hm … my intention, good God, please forget that slip of the tongue, my dear Philipp’, when you thought about it the telephone was a really strange business, you were speaking into the mouthpiece to another person who was nothing but a voice and whose physical appearance you had to imagine to go with the voice, which didn’t always work satisfactorily, naturally Philipp knew that it wasn’t his, Altberg’s, intention, that was, it was that of course, only he didn’t intend with the self-confident overtones that went with the word, ‘intend … my God, Altberg, you’re in highfalutin mode again today’, stretched out his hand and fanned the air round the receiver as if in that way he could reduce the unpleasant word, which had unfortunately been spoken and heard by the other, to fragments that would make their original shape unrecognizable; ‘that means quite simply, I want to, that is, I’d like to … Would you tell him I’m coming?’

Meno was too much taken up with his reflections to see Altberg’s look and silence, after he’d put the telephone down, as aimed at him; it was one of those searching looks behind which thoughts are going round and round seeking something, and suddenly present it as a possible answer to the unspoken question; it was the silence that knows it is the final barrier before something possibly ill-considered is said — ill-considered because spoken in too hasty confidence — the silence before the uncertainty about to what extent the other person is what he appears to be, about whether one will come to regret it bitterly if one says the word that at the moment is still well-guarded in the depths of the complicated machinery that is needed to put a stamp on it, to turn it into the currency of language and speech; one doesn’t know whether one’s initial impulse, to let the word slip out right away, is really worth following or whether the word, once and therefore irrevocably spoken, will turn into a coin that will bribe the sentry guarding the other’s silence or blood money for the unknown Judas inside oneself that for one brief, dangerous moment abandoned its excellent camouflage. In his mind’s eye Meno could see Londoner, sitting at his desk copying down extracts from something, beside him a slip of paper with names on it that he weighed against each other and against considerations you go through as you contemplate your fingernails; could see Londoner, on coming to Altberg’s name, perhaps reach out for his telephone but leave his hand hovering and then call Philipp and tell him to convey the invitation to Altberg; and after Philipp had left the room Londoner had, perhaps, sat there, legs crossed, tapping his chin with the rubber on the end of his pencil in cool calculation for a few seconds before tearing the slip of paper into little pieces on which not even the letters of the names were legible any more.

Touching the glass. Sticking a knife into a kilo packet of sugar full to bursting. Breaking the bird’s egg they’d taken from the nest when they were children. First clear white, the yolk on glassy threads, then yellow, soft as a Dall clock, spilling over the jagged edge of the shell and into his mouth. Dreams like that.

When he couldn’t sleep at night and Anne was at work, Richard wandered round the living room. He woke up quite often now, would lie awake for a while then put on his dressing gown. When she was on night shift and he wasn’t on call, Anne took the car. If it was parked outside, he would get dressed and drive somewhere or other. He didn’t stay out for long. When he got back she didn’t question him, just asked him to be quiet and not to wake Robert. Sometimes he would wake up bathed in sweat and with cramp in his hands, stare round the room, in which a street lamp cast a pale silver veil, feeling afraid. The contours of the bedroom wardrobes, the washing basket, the candelabra with the light discs were drawn in thin lines; the wardrobes were blocks, darker than the rest of the room, at the foot of the two beds, which had been pushed together and seemed to him like a rectangular island, a raft on which he and Anne had found refuge. It didn’t move. The town, the country were asleep, sometimes the distant sound of a manoeuvre could be heard from the Russians’ firing ranges. Anne slept well, he no longer did, a consequence of the nights on duty, riddled with telephone calls, knocking at the door, the disturbance. Sometimes he would feel for Anne and she reacted, murmured in her sleep, which moved but didn’t calm him. When she wasn’t there he had the feeling figures were coming closer, that the blocks were not wardrobes but secret doors through which they came in. He opened and closed his hands, in these hours of wakefulness the right one with the healed tendons felt as if it were under a sewing machine, the needle of which was slowly, as if the current transmitter were being cautiously tested out, piercing the jagged suture.

Sometimes he took out one of Christian’s letters, which Anne kept in a file with the things that had to be immediately to hand should there be a fire (an air raid, as had happened to Emmy and Arthur; an arrest, as with Kurt and Luise). He would read one or two and then put them back. He would have liked to tear them up or given the boy to understand, in a way that didn’t hurt him or cast him down, that he shouldn’t write any more for it pained him to see the way they made Anne suffer. He had no idea whether it was all true or whether the lad was exaggerating for some particular reason — a desire to attract attention, a need for tokens of love, a certain emotional extortionism, a masochistic tendency (look how I’m suffering)? Because of his injury, Richard had not been conscripted, Ulrich and Meno had spent their time stuck in orderly rooms, Niklas had been called up to the reserves and had spent eight weeks sweeping the runways of a military airport.

He was probably being unjust to the lad.

When he heard the sound of an engine he would start and wait. The front door was locked, Griesel made sure of that, but that wouldn’t bother them, they could get through any door. They came at night, when everyone was asleep, like their fellows in their bomber jackets and sharply creased trousers everywhere on the islands of the socialist archipelago.