Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘An internal document,’ Ulrich said. ‘It mustn’t go any farther.’

‘But they’ll have reserves of which we here know nothing.’ Honich nodded earnestly. ‘Some things are difficult to understand, but the comrades on the Central Committee are no fools and so far we’ve overcome all difficulties. The unity of economic and social policy —’

‘— costs more than we can afford,’ Ulrich said.

‘Surely you don’t mean that seriously?’

‘I do, and it’s no secret, ask in your organization. Ask the men with whom you do your exercises. Only recently I was at a meeting of the Planning Commission and people were speaking just as openly.’

‘Aha, private tuition again, is it?’ Gerhart Stahl asked, seeing their looks of dismay, also fear, as he walked past. ‘Just be careful what you say, the sky isn’t blue, even if that’s the way you see it, but red, and Moscow’s a long way away.’

‘Please refrain from these constant hostile remarks, Herr Stahl. I warn you, there’ll come a time when you suffer the consequences.’ Pedro Honich turned back to Ulrich Rohde and Helmut Hoppe. ‘You’re right, there are shortcomings. I’m not blind, even if Herr Stahl thinks I am. But just think what we’re aiming for, what our country has achieved so far, what ruins had to be cleared away, and what it could achieve if our people … These childhood diseases could be eradicated, we could work together on building a future where truly socialist life could blossom —’

‘D’you know what an economy is?’ Helmut Hoppe downed a schnapps. ‘I need a dustpan — an’ I can choose one from half a dozen, even if it looks like my wife. And d’you know what a planned economy is? When there’s not even any dust.’

‘Excuse me, but it’s always the same old story. Are things really that bad for you? If I look at the spread set out here, the presents for the couple, and compare it with what we used to have — What are you complaining about?’

‘OK then, y’re right there. That’s true. When I was young I sometimes didn’t have a car; an’ my Traudel an’ me couldn’t go sailin’ off to Cuba either, all we knew about Cuba was the Cuba crisis.’

‘I’m pinning my hopes on Gorbachev,’ Pedro Honich said. ‘I think he’s a good man.’

‘Openness, glasnost. If he’s for openness, great, but what’s being opennessed? That brown coal makes a mucky mess? You know that anyway, you don’t need to read about it in the paper as well. And perestroika an’ perfume both begin with a P, as my Traudel says.’

‘If all members of the working class were to talk like you …’

‘Oh, knock it off. I come from a firm that’s an existent reality. And the way things go there’s as follows: people go to work and after work there’s nothin’ left in the shops. So they do their shoppin’ during work hours. And I’m the foreman, am I to forbid them from doing that? ’s what I do masel’. We make things that aren’t there, an’ if there is something there, we make a queue. An’ even the Comrade Chairman of the State Council said there’s a lot more c’d be got out of our enterprises.’

‘That’s why we have the problems we have,’ Pedro Honich replied. Malivor Marroquin slipped past, taking photos. Hoppe put his schnapps glass calmly down on the table. ‘I’ve been awarded the “Activist of Socialist Work” medal several times,’ he said, slowly and emphatically, his strong dialect disappearing, ‘and as for Uli, he’s even got the “Hero of Work”. Are you trying to tell me what things are like in my firm?’

‘Over here,’ Kurt Rohde shouted from the balcony. ‘The king of the dance floor gets a kiss from the bride, the queen one from the bridegroom.’

Josta and her husband left, Richard went into the summerhouse. In one corner Robert was kissing one of Ina’s fellow students. Richard was taken aback for a moment, then said, ‘Don’t mind me, I’ll be gone in a minute.’ He checked the foot pump for the air beds. When he looked up he saw that the girl’s blouse was undone. ‘Is this something serious between you? I mean, I’m going to have to change the nameplate on our apartment door anyway. — Are you on the pill?’

‘Are you always that direct?’ The girl, flabbergasted, was smoothing her hair. Robert put his hand in his pocket and held up a packet of Mondo condoms.’

‘Hm, I didn’t want a practical demonstration,’ Richard muttered. ‘Just be careful, sometimes the things burst.’

A yellow leather glove atop a fencepost, beside it a note wrapped in cling-film: ‘I lost the other one here. Reward for the finder: this left glove’, a pair of scissors on a garage window ledge, the rusty nautilus at Philalethes’ View. Christian looked up at the sky, which was turning a darker blue from the south. A few boys were preparing to play football and were arguing about names: ‘I’m Pelé.’ — ‘Rubbish, you’re Zoff and you’re in goal.’ — ‘But I’m Beckenbauer.’ — ‘OK, then I’m Rummenigge.’ Some men had lugged buckets of water out to wash their cars and were discussing the look of the sky, arms akimbo. Others were standing in their slippers by the street letter boxes nodding, waving away remarks, tapping the newspaper they’d brought with the back of their hand. The elms along Mondleite drew in their green, then released it, like old ladies letting out their breath after the tensest moments of a tragic opera; the wind died down, freshened again, sending blossom and winter ash swirling up in fine sashes — undecided, like a child playing with sand and getting bored. The first raindrops spattered the brightness of the street with blots of slate-grey. Christian went back to the House with a Thousand Eyes, while the sky looked like a swimming pool of ink edged with flailing treetops; in the gardens tables were hurriedly cleared away or covered with plastic sheets, portable radios and children brought under cover. A little dog came running down a garden path yapping angrily, whirling round at the gate on its tiny paws. How mysterious it all was.

The dance; without interrupting a single number, the band from the Roeckler School of Dancing retired, instrument by instrument, to the shelter of the tarpaulin under the canopy of oak leaves: first the cello, then the violin; last of all the grand piano, together with the pianist on his chair, was rolled under the trees. Then the rain fell so heavily that the paper streamers over the sweet briars tore and there was a moment of uncertainty. But Herr Adeling stayed standing in the doorway, ramrod straight in his tails and white shirt, which was gradually becoming transparent, in his left hand a tray with champagne glasses, over his right a napkin hanging down like a dead stoat. Gudrun held Niklas tighter; Herr Honich, the best dancer, stuck it out with Traudel Hoppe; Barbara and Ulrich threw off their shoes, for puddles were already forming. ‘Kalimba de luna’, ‘Über sieben Brücken musst du geh’n’, ‘Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday’. Meno watched the rain gradually taking over from the champagne in the glasses until the contents were like clear water. To whoops and cheers Gudrun Tietze and Pedro Honich were crowned the best dancers. But they went unkissed: Ina and Thomas Wernstein had gone.

From now on proving yourself as a socialist in the National People’s Army, always thinking and acting in the spirit of the working class, means subordinating yourself to the rules of military life.

What It Means to be a Soldier

‘Yes?’ came the surly grunt from the tank commanders’ room when Christian knocked.

‘Permission to come in, Comrade Sergeant.’

‘Oh, look, our earhole’s come back from leave.’ Sergeant Johannes Ruden, senior soldier in the barrack room, was a 24-year-old man with grey hair. ‘Before he has to, even. He gets leave, the lucky bastard, and then he’s stupid and doesn’t stay out until the very last minute. Get this into your thick head: a dogface don’t give the army nothin’. Don’t just stand there like an idiot, put the wood in the hole. What d’you think, Rogi?’ Corporal Steffen Rogalla, like Ruden in the sixth half-year of service and therefore a discharge candidate, put his thumbs under the braces he was wearing over a civilian T-shirt and thought while Christian put his bag on his bed and went to his locker to change his walking-out uniform for fatigues.