Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘All right, then, since it’s you. I don’t want people saying I was stingy at my daughter’s wedding.’

‘Nah, you’ve never been a penny-pincher, have to give you that,’ Helmut Hoppe said, his Saxon accent becoming thicker and thicker. ‘How long did it take to put all this stuff together, eh? An’ what did y’use t’ grease their palms, the bastards? I s’pose a few mattress springs must’ve changed hands. But you’re tryin’ to wriggle out of it, Uli boy, you’re changin’ the subject again. I don’t think the old geezer would’ve liked that, him bein’ a friend of all the nations, like. Now out with it, the recipe f’ this voddy. By the way, chief’ — Helmut Hoppe turned to Herr Honich — ‘your suckin’ pig’s great, I c’d gorge myself on it, I really could.’

‘Right then. You take spirit, ninety-six proof, to which you add distilled water to the desired amount. Add one sugar cube and three drops of pure glycerine. Seal the bottle.’

‘Thass all?’

‘Then some blackberry leaves picked in the spring.’

‘Why picked in the spring?’

‘That’s when they’re full of juice, I assume. You put them in a little bottle with pure alcohol. Close the bottle and leave it in the warm sun on the windowsill for ten days.’

‘An’ what if it rains for ten days? Y’ll be left wi’ no’hing but vinegar.’

‘You put three drops of that extract in the big bottle.’

‘Jus’ three drops? Sounds a bit acupuncturic, ’f y’ask me. An’ then?’

‘The vodka’s ready.’

‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

‘Don’ b’leeve it.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Reelly ready?’

‘Really.’

Helmut Hoppe regarded his glass. ‘Well yeh, now y’say so, the taste of a few blackcurrants does come through. Did y’hear Weizsäcker’s speech?’

‘No.’

‘I did.’

‘And?’

‘Hm. More’n three drops o’ blackcurrant in there. Great guy, a real Fed’ral Preziden’ he is. Looks impressive, no’ like the bigwigs here. I wonder what’s goin’ t’ happen in the Soviet Union now. They’ll have t’ keep off the blackcurrants now, so t’ speak. Y’r uncle Shoe-ra ’ll be drinkin’ water ’stead o’ vodker. Hey, look, the dancin’s startin’.’

Richard, sitting beside Niklas at a table at the far end, only heard snatches of what people at the top were saying. He observed Josta, who, to his relief, was sitting a long way away from Anne, with Wernstein’s friends at a table under the blossoming pear trees. Lucie didn’t look round at him. The man cut up her food for her, wiped her mouth, raised his forefinger two or three times, at which she nodded and lowered her head. Richard would have most liked to get up and knock the guy flat, it took a great deal of self-control to appear uninvolved, to sip his wine and feign interest in what Niklas had to say about the re-election of Ronald Reagan, Michel Platini’s goals at the European Championships, the sudden disappearance of touch-up spray for cars from the stores (there’d been a film called Beat Street , following which trains had been sprayed with graffiti). Anne threw him a glance now and then, which made him even more annoyed, and when Herr Scholze and Alois Lange appeared, telling jokes, he excused himself and got up. As Richard was heading for the iron table, someone pulled him into the bushes. It was Daniel.

‘Awkward situation, isn’t it?’ The boy grinned. He’d shot up, at fourteen he was almost as tall as Christian. ‘How about a little deal?’

‘What kind of deal?’

‘Well, I won’t go up, tap my glass with a spoon and tell things about you and my mother — and you shell out a hundred marks for that.’

Richard said nothing.

‘I’m serious,’ the boy said with a smile. ‘I really feel like going up to your wife and whispering things to her.’

‘You do, do you?’ Richard looked round.

‘Don’t worry, there’s no one here. Apart from a damn tomcat perhaps. Your wife would be delighted.’

‘She already suspects something,’ Richard replied, weary and horrified.

‘But you’re not sure. Are you willing to take the chance? It’d be great to drop a bomb like that in the middle of a wedding.’

‘So Lucie’s got a louse of a brother.’

‘Hey, don’t you dare touch me! Come on, let’s get this over with before someone comes. I get a hundred marks or —’

Richard looked in his wallet. ‘I’ve only got a fifty with me.’

Daniel looked surprised, seemed to become uneasy, then he noticed Richard’s wristwatch. ‘Then give me that.’

‘No.’

‘Hand it over.’

‘No. It’s a family heirloom, my oldest son’s going to get it.’

‘Lange and Sons,’ Daniel read, tilting his head to the side. ‘Now I’m going to have it, otherwise in two minutes you’re a dead man, I promise.’

Richard stared at Daniel. ‘Can’t we discuss this?’

‘Not interested.’

‘We could meet some time.’

‘Give me the watch.’

‘OK, my friend. But what do I tell my wife when she asks me where it is? She saw me putting it on.’

‘I don’t care. Think something up. Tell her it was stolen.’

‘Which would be more or less the case.’

‘In the Sachsenbad, for example. When you went swimming one Thursday.’

‘And I put it on today, before her very eyes? Come on.’

‘Then it was stolen here. Perhaps by the bridegroom before he sailed off to Cuba.’

‘Then I’d go straight over to her and we’d turn everything upside down. She’d probably also suspect you’ve got it. She was watching you before, in the church. And do you really think I wouldn’t notice if someone stole the watch off my wrist?’

‘Then you can bring it to the Sachsenbad for me next Thursday, then you could say it was stolen there.’

‘In that case that’s the end of your blackmail here. And if your attempted blackmail comes up, I might have to get divorced — but you’ll end up in the juvenile court.’

Daniel hesitated, broke off a twig, twisted it into little pieces. Richard’s anger had gone, now he felt sorry for the lad. ‘Why do you need the money?’

‘I did something stupid,’ Daniel said after a while.

‘Does Josta know about it?’

‘No. Nor her new guy either.’

Richard observed the boy. There was something funny about a blackmail attempt from someone whose voice was breaking. Suddenly Daniel took a step towards him and threw his arms round him.

‘There I am, walkin’ in Saxon Swizz’land, and su’nly I’m under this huge rock, a real whopper. An’ I says to myself, if that comes down you won’t be able to catch it all at once. Have a drink, Meno, then we’ll go an’ dance.’ Helmut Hoppe swayed slightly when he stood up. He went to fetch a bottle, checked the glasses on the table, as if he were trying to work out the course of an obstacle race, looked at the label, then the metal spout in the neck of the bottle, pulled it to one side, like a flag being kept away from enemy hands, and sent clear, curving jets of schnapps spouting over glasses, trousers and shoulders.

‘I’ve been reading your books,’ Meno said to Ulrich, who raised an ironic, wait-and-see eyebrow as he licked a few splashes he’d wiped off his suit, ‘and, as I see it, in the final analysis everything’s a question of energy. Brown coal’s our primary source of energy. But you have to be able to get at it. If I’ve understood the tables in the paper correctly, it costs more to clear away a unit of overburden than the same unit of brown coal brings in?’

‘Economics —’ Ulrich started to reply, but Honich broke in. ‘Where’d you read that?’

‘In a memorandum from the Economic Secretariat of the Central Committee.’