Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘Christian Hoffmann, Comrade Sergeant.’

‘No. You’re no one. Nemo, that is. From now on you’re called Nemo.’

The drivers had prepared slices of bread for their earholes : one had been spread with mustard, another with shoe polish, Burre’s with excrement. When he refused to eat it, they held him and pushed the slice of excrement bread into his mouth. ‘Eat shit. You’re in the army now, comrade.’ They baptized him Nutella, after the spread from the West.

‘Baptism’: Irrgang was Aquarius. He was given a teaspoon. There was a bucket full of water on the ground floor of the battalion, an empty one on the second floor in headquarters company.

Christian’s turn came during the night, when he was already asleep. He was tied up in a blanket, dragged out into the depot and laid down in front of a tank. Popov started the engine and drove over Christian, who was unable to move. He watched the tank pass above him, saw bolts, the emergency exit flap. The game was called ‘hot dog’. Then Rogalla untied him, handed him a water bottle. ‘Have a drink, comrade, we all had to go through it. They made Ruden lick the company corridor and once almost knocked his eye out. And for me there was piss in the bottle. Oh, by the way, you get clean bedding in a fortnight’s time.’

Talk to her.

Lars Dieritz, known as Costa, the rib, was the saddest soldier doing his penultimate six months Christian knew. He was wretchedly thin, like a baby bird, though tough and with great stamina, only Christian was a match for him at the 3,000 metres. Costa, the rib, had all the privileges of his status but none of the higher ranks respected him. ‘You’re a milksop,’ Ruden said, ‘you’re not a warrior, you’re just a mummy’s boy. And something like that’s in the cavalry! We’re the vanguard of the army. I’d chuck you out if you were younger.’

‘Oh, shut your trap.’ Costa just wanted to get it over with, just wanted to go home. He couldn’t stand Ruden and Rogalla’s muscleman boasting, he had no time for playing the hero.

‘So why did you sign up for three years, then? Nemo did it to get to university, me too. But you? No one was forcing you.’

‘I believed their promises. I had a soft spot for the state, can you imagine? And no idea how lousy things are here.’

‘Hey, Rogi, when we’ve gone, everything will collapse here. Costa in his final six months …’ Ruden made a dismissive gesture. ‘Can’t imagine how he’s going to maintain the proud tradition, the rights and privileges of the discharge candidates. Ah well, Wanda’ll sort things out.’

Costa liked music, best of all Leonard Cohen’s melancholy ballads; since he was in his final year of service he was allowed a record player. ‘My God, Ruden, you are limited. Aren’t you going to go to university? Always coming out with bits of Latin and Greek … I’m just an electrician but it could be I’ve got more candlepower in my upper storey than you.’

In political education they were told about the clear ideological position of socialist members of the army, the danger of an atomic war threatening the existence of humanity caused by imperialism, of the tasks facing them, the comrade NCOs and privates. Socialism needed class-conscious, well-trained and steadfast men who were ready to fight for it and to fulfil their military duty at any time, thus assuring the peaceful future of mankind and victory over war even before it broke out through the strength of socialism. They sang. Sang ‘The Song of the Foe’. The Political Officer had asked who could play an instrument. Costa and Popov could strum a guitar a bit. ‘Soldier, you hold a gun in your hand, / And a worker it was who gave it you. / You carry your gun for the Fatherland, / So the workers’ life stays safe and true. / Our foe is ruthless, crafty, vile, / He took some comrades from us through the years, / He has no thought for love, for wife and child, / Nor for the tears they shed, such bitter tears …’

In their free time they sat in the company recreation room for a communal viewing of TV News , made tanks out of matches for the solidarity bazaar for a Pioneer group the company was sponsoring, wrote letters. Musca had to stand in posture with all his gear for one of the soldiers to do his portrait for the battalion diary: ‘The Tanker’. In the Free German Youth group the achievements of the comrade army members were evaluated. Christian, who was still inexperienced and couldn’t control the tank properly yet, was delegated to the technical circle run by his platoon leader. After their duty was over, the technical circle went out into the depot. ‘There’s only one guarantee / The aggressor can be contained / To be better equipped than he, / Better armed and better trained.’

Staff Sergeant Emmerich, known as Nip, swayed as he distributed the mail and when he read out the names, when he gave out orders, he didn’t articulate correctly, his voice scraped over the outlines of the words, grunted out the short ones and stirred the polysyllabic ones into a linguistic mush, out of which the soldiers’ attuned ears fished what he, the sergeant, wanted. Nip had the dull, lifeless hair and stretched-looking skin of heavy drinkers and the blackheads in his large, slanting pores sat deep and inaccessible as wasp-grubs in their breeding cells. He had been in the army for fifteen years and been given an honourable discharge but he hadn’t known what to do with himself at home, in a flat in a new development in the little town of Grün. The company had been his empire, the soldiers the charges in his care, and morning, noon and night he had dealt with clean underwear, requests for leave, repairs, had the boilers heated, organized tea and sandwiches for his men when they came back, tired and filthy, from field camps to the barracks. He could no longer say how many field exercises he’d taken part in. He’d been at the legendary ‘Comrades-in-Arms’ manoeuvres, he knew Kapustin Yar in Kazakhstan, where battalions of Tank Regiment 19, ‘Karl Liebknecht’, in which Christian was serving, were going with artillery units of other regiments; he knew all the training areas of the Republic, knew about the little difficulties of their shooting and driving ranges. He handed out the wax for polishing the corridors, he sanctioned radios, he had the cassette slots on cassette recorders sealed, he marked with felt tip the tuning for the permitted radio stations. Subordinate to him were the duty sergeant and his assistant, whose attention he personally drew to ‘crud’ in the rooms (Christian learnt that that was what dirt was called, another word was ‘gunge’), whom he personally instructed as to how the two stoves in the battalion staff office — when the trees along the roads turned yellow — were to be stoked; he carried out the inspection of rooms and lockers personally, searching for alcohol, magazines from the West or secret radios; when the day’s work was done he personally pressed the aluminium seal into the crown corks filled with modelling clay on the doors of us soldiers, the bearers of secrets. And he personally saw to it that before the visit of any bigwig even the trunks of the birch trees outside the battalion building were washed. At morning roll-call he checked the tunic collar binds and gave a look of disgust when he found a dirty one. He, as did the officers, knew very well how the young soldiers were treated; complaints dragged on and on until they fizzled out or were dismissed, Nip believed the unofficial privileges exercised by the senior recruits were part of the men’s psychological training. One of his favourite amusements was to come into the barracks secretly at night. When Christian was on duty he could smell the reek of schnapps before Nip came stomping up the steps. According to regulations he should have reported his arrival but Nip would put his finger to his lips and pat a bag that was hanging from his shoulder. In the bag was the ‘drake’, Staff Sergeant Emmerich’s personal hand-siren. Drunk and happy, Nip staggered along the unlit corridor, and after having unlocked the armoury turned the handle of the ‘drake’ like a hurdy-gurdy man and bawled out, ‘Comp’ny Four — action stations!’