Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

On New Year’s Eve 1984 an inspection team from the Communal Housing Department arrived. They established that Meno Rohde and the Langes had too many square metres of apartment and that the Langes’ use of Meno’s bedroom for their son Martin was unauthorized. A new apartment, with the right to use the Langes’ and Rohde’s bathroom, was set up, consisting of the bedroom, the cabin and Alois Lange’s study on the corridor side, that is of rooms in different parts of the house. In the basement, beside the laundry room, was the former scullery (where Libussa preserved her fruit); that too was allocated to the new apartment. The Stahls, Langes and Meno protested, but it was futile, the Housing Department was not open to reason and insisted on its right to allocate living space. At the beginning of January a middle-aged married couple moved in and caused even greater disruption to the lives of the other tenants than the Kaminski twins had done with their uninvited appearance in the conservatory.

In the middle of January, Regine received a letter from Coal Island. In plain terms she was informed that her application to leave the country had been refused.

‘What are you going to do?’ Anne asked. They had gathered at Niklas’s to discuss the situation.

‘I’ve renewed my application every two weeks and I intend to continue doing so.’

‘Then you’ll be committing an offence,’ Richard said. ‘I talked with Sperber, the lawyer, who strongly advises you not to make any more requests. Your request has been refused and they can arrest you, if you start again.’

‘The bastards,’ said Ulrich.

‘But what happens next?’ Regine covered her face with her hands. She was emaciated and had dark shadows round her eyes. Gudrun went out to make her a cup of tea; it wasn’t warm in the living room, she was wearing knitted cardigans over several pullovers or waistcoats she had made herself out of scraps of fur from Harmony Salon; Ezzo was practising in the next room. Reglinde, in gloves, woollen scarf and bobble hat, was ill in bed, in her little, icy-cold room beside the Tietzes’ second toilet, which froze over in winter.

‘If they send you to prison, they’ll take the children away, perhaps even beforehand,’ Anne said. She was pale, her nose sharp; Christian had been writing fewer letters.

‘It was good that Jürgen simply stayed over there. I know someone in the orchestra whose brother took their social security card with him; it meant his wife couldn’t prove she’d known nothing beforehand; she was accused of complicity and her son ended up in a children’s home.’

‘Shh!’ came from several sides. Index fingers pointed at the walls.

‘Oh, don’t exaggerate.’ Niklas waved away their warnings.

‘I have to sell the car. The pittance I can earn as an untrained secretary … Over the last year I’ve sold a few pieces of furniture, we managed, more or less. Hans is getting on for sixteen and grows out of everything so quickly and Philipp needs new things all the time … Pätzold will give me twenty thousand for the car.’

‘For a Wartburg with less than a hundred thousand on the clock? And it’s in good condition, Jürgen looked after it really well. Don’t you want to put an ad in the paper and wait for a better offer. I’ve been to Pätzold too … the crook!’ Niklas exclaimed indignantly.

‘The Valuation Section sent me to him. And I have to give the state half the money. Anyway … Pätzold gave me an advance on the car, in January, I needed the money. Five thousand marks.’

‘Why didn’t you ask us?’

‘Money and friendship don’t go together,’ Gudrun reminded Anne, putting a cup of tea down in front of Regine. ‘You may sneer at me, but it’s true all the same.’

Richard pointed to the Sächsisches Tageblatt that was lying open on the table at a picture of a confidently smiling Barsano beside the General Secretary of the Central Committee. ‘Have you read the stuff they’ve been spewing out again. I heard Chernenko’s supposed to be in a pretty bad way … Why’s Barsano in Moscow, I ask myself. By the way, it’s true that his daughter has an application to leave the country being considered. The way she ranted and raved! I can still see it as if it were yesterday. Did you notice anything?’

‘No,’ Regine said, ‘she was quiet in the room. Perhaps it was a put-up show?’

‘I can’t see that.’ Niklas said. ‘Why should the daughter of the First Secretary dress up as a punk just to intimidate all you in the queue? There are easier ways of doing that. No, the bigwigs’ own children are running away from them. They don’t believe in it themselves any more.’

‘I know someone who knows her,’ Meno said. ‘A colleague is a close friend of her boyfriend — her boyfriend, by the way, is the same one who got Pätzold’s daughter pregnant, you were talking about that at the party in the Felsenburg … Now he’s living with Alexandra Barsano. She was also friendly with Muriel, did you know that?’

The abbot’s clock struck clear as a little bell.

‘How are Hans and Iris?’ Gudrun asked Richard.

‘Can’t say, we hardly see them. If we do happen to meet, it’s just, Hi, Hans — Hi, Richard. They don’t open when we knock either. And if we call them they’re rather brusque, won’t talk.’

‘We still haven’t had an answer to our letter.’

‘We won’t get one, brother-in-law. — Have you got a cold? You sound blocked up.’

‘But you did pinch plenty of wood, you rogues.’ Niklas gave an approving laugh. ‘But just you make sure they don’t catch you. Do you think no one notices? Kühnast asked me about it recently, while we were queuing for sparking plugs at Priebsch’s.’

‘We must think about how we can help Regine,’ Anne said, changing the subject to help her brother.

‘For me there’s not much to think about. I’ll keep turning up there … I’ve applied for family reunification, Jürgen and I have been separated for four and a half years …’

‘And the children? Remember Sperber’s warning,’ Gudrun said.

‘I know how to proceed.’

‘How?’ The question came from several mouths simultaneously.

‘Don’t get me wrong. But it could be that … I mean, Niklas, can you be sure? And Richard, you have at least admitted that they …’

‘You think I’d tell on you?’

‘Sorry, that wasn’t how I meant it. My nerves are all to pot.’

Pedro Honich was a man for whom order was all-important. The day after he moved into the House with a Thousand Eyes he asked who it was who kept the house register: Lange, who had neglected to keep it for ages.

‘But that can’t go on, Herr Doktor Lange. Rules are rules,’ Honich, who was the commander of a paramilitary Combat Group of the Working Class, told the ship’s doctor, and offered to keep the register himself in future. ‘There are no entries for Herr Rohde and yet he often has visitors.’

‘Yes, you know Herr, er, Honich —’

‘Comrade Honich. I am a member of the Socialist Unity Party.’

‘I’m not. We’re not spies and whether Herr Rohde has a visitor or not, and who it is and how long they stay, is his business alone, that’s my opinion.’

‘That’s your opinion, is it?’ Herr Honich went on about bourgeois arrogance and loopholes that had to be closed. A few days later he called a meeting of the house community.

‘Do we have to go along with this?’ Stahl asked. ‘What does the fellow actually want? Does he take us for members of his combat group?’

‘Let’s listen to what he has to say,’ Lange said.

Because of the lack of a room big enough, the meeting took place in the upstairs corridor. Frau Honich had put out some liver sausage sandwiches, beer and mineral water that only the Kaminski twins touched.