Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

Schevola: ‘— to be a revolutionary? Da-da-da-da! It’s so difficult to bring happiness to mankind.’

The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘And to stay polite as you do so. I don’t hold it against you for dismissing me as an old man. But itchiness … that’s tactless, my lad.’

Philipp: ‘Judith Schevola: cool, cynical, ironic. Go on, open your big mouth and make fun of us. We still believe in something. And what do you believe in? Nothing! Like you, Herr Altberg.’

The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘Yesyes, I’ve said that already. It used to be called defeatism. Carried the death penalty by firing squad.’

Philipp: ‘Then resign if you can’t do anything any more. Your generation is hanging on to power, they’d rather die than let someone else take over. And what use to us is all the hullabaloo about young people, the reserves of the Party, if we stay just that: reserves … Oh, what the hell, that’s not really the problem. The problem is that the gerontocracy’s leading this country to rack and ruin! We have new data, the economy’s heading for disaster — and no one seems concerned about it!’

Schevola: ‘A priest was murdered in Poland. Popieluszko he was called. That concerns me.’

Philipp: ‘You think that now you can say whatever you want.’

Schevola: ‘For a while I’ll think about what I’m saying. All that’s left is to lock me up or kill me. Well, Herr Altberg, however long you look at them, the chestnut leaves above us don’t look like ears.’

The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘Oh yes they do. Dachshund’s ears. All that is left us is precision.’

Schevola: ‘How do you imagine your world revolution? A bit of playing Che Guevara in the jungle? You’ll only catch simple-minded girls at the university with that.’

Philipp: ‘Make fun of us, if you like. What does it matter? — By the way, Marisa’s coming here.’

Schevola: ‘Your Chilean whore.’

Philipp: ‘Oh, yes. She’s neither simple-minded nor a student, so what else is there left for you to call her? What was it you said when we were going to Eschschloraque’s?’

The Old Man of the Mountain: ‘Can you explain this garden spider’s nest to me, Herr Rohde?’

Schevola: ‘You’re welcome to stay here, we’ve nothing to hide. It’d be a pity about the juicy bit of gossip you’d miss.’

Herr Altberg: ‘Don’t worry, back then I just happened be in the vicinity; Herr Rohde is as discreet as Pravda. ’

Philipp: ‘ “I was never particularly taken with middle-class morality … you’re welcome to bring your little Chilean woman along.” ’

Schevola: ‘Quack, quack, quack.’

We saw the bay, in the haze the cliffs of Møn. Sunlight settled over the clear depths of the bay; an endless shimmer over the slow slapping of the water: as if swarms of grasshoppers were making their wings buzz. Beside it, scenes as peaceful as a jar of night-cream .

(Thursday)

Writers need training! But the tutor, who had come with the ferry from Stralsund bringing ice cream, sections copied from Apprentice Year in the Party and a social science periodical, was shot down by Philipp (‘a hit’, the Old Man of the Mountain said gleefully afterwards, ‘a palpable hit’), who highlighted his errors of logic and misquotations — most of what the tutor was spelling out painfully slowly from typescripts he knew off by heart, precisely, even down to the occasionally old-fashioned spelling of the original; so there the young professor sat, a strand of his long hair in his left fist, a pencil tapping out point-end-point-end in a semicircle in his right, his feet in their openwork slip-ons jogging up and down in time to the click-clack of his pencil on the Sprelacart tabletop until, fed up to the back teeth and examining his fingernails, the tutor suggested: 1) Comrade Smart-aleck should please take over and 2) what did people think of transferring the study of the classics to the beach? Philipp leapt up and wrote on the blackboard:

Petty bourgeois (Educated) Middle class Cabinet with display shelf, budgerigar, knick-knacks, doilies Telephone, Insel series of books, pipe collection Visitors: remove shoes (slippers for guests) Can keep their shoes on Toilet roll in car with crocheted cover, pine-tree air freshener over dashboard, head-wagging dachshund, Smurfs Leather cover for gear lever, ‘No smoking’ sticker ‘A heart for children’ on the dashboard If a dog: Alsatian, Pomeranian, mongrel If a dog: poodle, Afghan hound, Great Dane Invites to barbecue party Invites to coffee or tea Works team party, punch with inhabitants of apartment block Solitary walks (with wrist bag) Watches football (with team scarf) Talks about football, quotes from the legendary Zimmermann commentary on 1954 World Cup Forward to Majorca Back to nature The wife cooks, cleans, goes out to work, looks after the children The wife cooks, cleans, goes out to work, looks after the children Garden plot, swing hammock, garden barbecue, water butt, stock of beer, portable television Dacha Puts his hope in the Federal Chancellor Puts his hope in Gorbachev The world of early rising The world of coming home late

I belong to the working class, the tutor said icily, I stick to Marx, Engels and Lenin. He demanded, ‘Your name, comrade.’ Philipp expressed regret that fewer and fewer cadres had a sense of humour, took a brochure from the Institute of Social Sciences off the desk, searched through it briefly, twirling the ends of his moustache into the curving-up ends of a sleigh, and gave the comrade tutor an autograph .

(Friday)

Choice of activities (‘the house management recommends’): an excursion to Warnow shipyard in Rostock (5 votes), a sightseeing tour of Sassnitz and the smallest museum in the Republic (the goods wagon in which Lenin, a spark on a long fuse, travelled to the powder-keg of pre-revolutionary Russia, 4 votes). Beside it some joker had scribbled BATHING (19 votes). So it was the Warnow shipyard. I wrote a card to the ship’s doctor (the maritime theme of the new development at Lütten Klein outside Rostock seemed appropriate), then I called Libussa. Arbogast’s consignment of pencils has arrived. She said Frau Honich was snooping around my apartment and suggested I threaten to go to the police. I’ve given my manuscripts to Anne for safe keeping so told her to avoid confrontation even though I find it hard to bear the thought of that bitch’s fingers on the ten-minute clock — how familiar, how comforting the gong I heard over the phone — perhaps even breaking it: some people cannot stand other people’s happiness, the dignity of aristocratic and defenceless objects makes some people want to cripple them. Libussa said Chakamankabudibaba had brought up a poorly digested mouse on my copy of Schelling .

(Saturday)

Who wears white gloves nowadays? Marisa’s seem to be of deerskin, so finely tanned that when Marisa closes her fingers to make a fist, shiny infant’s noses form over her knuckles. She wore them with khaki drill trousers, the top of a toothbrush sticking out of the right front pocket, a bright-blue T-shirt with orange flamingos printed on, and a jean jacket casually thrown over her shoulder and held with her little finger. She arrived without luggage. When she saw me (I happened to be listening to some trees with a stethoscope, decaying ones especially are acoustic cathedrals, elms grow with different noises from beeches), she pulled off her soldier’s cap and waved it round and round, as if she were trying to swing an aeroplane propeller. I’d just had a little argument with Judith about reality — Judith’s response to my explanation was to pull up a nettle and show it to me, an impassive expression on her face: ‘That, for me, is reality’; then, still with the nettle in her hand that already had a rash and atolls of itchy spots, she saw Marisa joyfully waving her cap. Philipp was behind us, leaning back against a bent elm branch as thick as an elephant’s leg and rocking to and fro, at the same time leafing through a Reclam volume on utopian socialists (Babeuf, Blanqui); the Old Man of the Mountain was strolling up and down the west side of Lietzenburg, admiring the architectural mixture of art nouveau and English country house, the fairy-tale windows with widespread arms; now and then he would declaim some lines out loud: ‘As when the budding flowers, half dead and half alive / In the cellar’s darkness struggle there to thrive.’ — Judith saw Marisa, went up to her with a smile, embraced her, holding up the hand with the nettle .