Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘Go and jump out of the window, Nip, you measly rat.’ — ‘How I hate it! How I hate it!’ — ‘You corpsefuckers, trouser-hangers, fartarses!’ — ‘You Bunsen burners, shit-for-brains, scumbags!’ — ‘Tossers, douchebuckets, cockburners, shirtlifters!’ the commanders growl, desperately trying to get dressed (underpants, field coverall, protection pack, gas mask, belt, tank hood) in the gloomy chill of their room –

‘Dear Mum, What gives you the idea I might do something silly? Because the dear comrades I share the room with keep the radio on all the time? Basically Costa’s a poor soul, his mother died from cancer at 42, she came from the “sleeping villages”, his father worked for Wismut, was retired at 45 on health grounds — bone cancer. Big Irrgang swears like a trooper — but that’s what we all are here — gets on our superior officers’ nerves with his absolute refusal to use the dative and is a real sly fox. Recently he smuggled in litres of “stuff”, his father, who works in refrigerator construction, inserted a false bottom in his travel bag, lined with metal foil, into which they poured several bottles of some sugary Romanian hooch called Murfatlar that turned an honest tank crew into seamen on deck during a storm and doubled the company. Musca, the fly, needs a girlfriend, that’s all, but here there’s only the regimental cultural officer, 130 kg of model worker, and those left on the shelf in the Dutch Courage‚ and even they don’t want to know. Which goes to show that aftershave is not for internal use. Pancake was on a charge of manslaughter but they couldn’t prove anything and now he’s my driver. Recently he waylaid the company commander, put on his lopsided grin and said, “If you want a car, Comrade Captain … you earn peanuts. All you need to do is to tell me, I just have to make a call and you can take your choice. What would you like? A Lada, a Dacia, a Wartburg — or would you go for something more high-powered? No problem.” Our CC merely laughed and said, “You’re after something, aren’t you, Kretzschmar?” — “Yes, well, it won’t be completely free, Comrade Captain; if I could just make that phone call?” A few hours later the cars drove up outside the barracks for him to have a look at. Guys in leather jackets and shades, drinking apple juice and shouting, “Why’re you running round in that uniform?” to Pancake. He put on his grin again. “Well, Comrade Captain? For you I’ll make a special price.” — why should I “do something silly” when I’ve the chance of seeing expressions like that on the face of our CC at that moment?

‘Well, well, Reina Kossmann wants to go and see you, does she?’

A whistle: ‘Company Four — fall in to receive weapons!’ Nip had unlocked the grille, waved the men of the first platoon into the armoury; this time the alert (the siren in the corridor started to wail) wasn’t one of his little jokes; Nip was stone-cold sober and really pissed-off and had stuck a steel helmet on his head; Christian took his AK-47 out of the cupboard, signed for it with the duty corporal in the armoury, dismiss, c’mon, c’mon, down the stairs at the double, Company 4 and 5 gathered outside battalion headquarters, staff officers running to and fro, gesticulating wildly; it had been raining, a mild April night, the smell of the smoke from the metal works mingled with the scent of flowers, line up, number off, march off to the technical depot –

‘Dear Reglinde, I almost envy you that you can now enjoy the view from Father’s study. I know how important it is to him, but Anne told me that it was only by concluding a tenancy agreement with you that they could avoid having someone quartered on them. Griesel set something in motion, probably to show the Herr Medical Councillor that you can’t ignore your neighbours with impunity. And now you’re working with the apes. Congratulations. At least you’ll be seeing some human faces. I remember the gorilla sitting behind the glass with a grumpy expression on its face, morosely poking round in carrots and lettuce leaves, now and then picking something up off the ground; it particularly seemed to enjoy eating vomit. We sometimes play at “zoo” as well, though to be more precise it’s called “Alfred Brehm House”: the drivers mimic chimpanzees, soldiers bound down the company corridor like chamois, traditionally the commanders are rhinoceroses or elephants: stretch out one arm, bend the other back and hold your nose and then “toot, toot”. — Thanks for the postcards you got from Malthakus, that was a really nice surprise. I have a set of Constantinople postcards and when I was on leave I also bought some of the South Sea islands — expensive, but I earn a decent amount here. Tahiti and Nouméa, New Caledonia …’

Whistles, shouts, the stamp of boots, searchlights wandering over the concrete tracks, the startled faces of the soldiers, the platoon leaders with map-holders hanging round their necks hurried over to the company commander, who, expressionless, broke the seal on a little folder, took out a document, glanced over it in the light of a torch, then gave the platoon leaders brief instructions — Christian saw his lieutenant make windmill movements with his right arm: start engines; the sound of the oil pump, Pancake pressed the ignition, Christian plugged his helmet into the radio, adopted the commander’s position: standing on his seat above the gun pointer, chest behind the secured hatch cover, the loader wailed, ‘It’s war now, dammit, now war’s broken out’, the gun pointer said, ‘Shut your gob, you over there, you’ve more days of service left than the Eiffel Tower has rivets, my time’s almost up and now this — d’you know anything, Nemo?’ Christian’s answer became a stutter as the tank seesawed its way through the depot gate: ‘The orders the CC had were to wait’, then, as per regulations, he had to trot along in front of his tank and behind Musca’s, hatch spotlight on so that the red and yellow guide flags were visible to Pancake; along the stretch of road, it was on the edge of the town, lights splashed on in the houses that were rundown, supported by scaffolding and eaten away by brick cancer; shadows in the windows and Christian wondered: What do they think of us, do they hate us, do they not care either way (that was unlikely at that time in the morning), do they admire us or pity us with our Afrika Korps outfit: goggles on our tank helmets, a sling such as medical orderlies use to immobilize broken arms over our faces, like a bank robber’s mask, and we’re sneaking out at dead of night and along the edge of the town — going where? Alternative concentration area, the platoon leaders ordered –

‘Dear Barbara, Your package has arrived, thank you very much. Uncle Uli’s soap is particularly useful, of course, and since the Military Trading Outlet here has been closed “for technical reasons” for several weeks, the eleven tubes of toothpaste are also very welcome. Little Erik’s nine months old already … True, he’s crying in the first photo you included in the package but at least he’s standing on his own two feet, and the way he’s gnawing the bear in the second — I assume the blobs at the side are its entrails? — shows he’s at least starting to develop a capacity for empathy. You asked about two things: leave and a girlfriend. The situation with leave is that I can’t say what the situation with leave is. If you apply, then you get the notorious 6×D: derided, dealt with, declined: squaddie due for deployment. In the army leave is the great unknown … I hope I can get back in the early autumn, perhaps in September or the beginning of October, by then we’ll have the summer field camps behind us. By the way, I know what it was Gorbachev said that you and Gudrun quarrelled about. The political education here is strict, the notebooks we keep are checked. It was the report to the plenum of the Central Committee at which they were discussing calling the XXVII Convention of the Soviet Communist Party; there was no word he used more often or more emphatically than “acceleration”. Heated political argument under cold damp patches, with an opera in between that no one apart from Niklas and Fabian, perhaps Meno too, is interested in: such are the “family musical evenings” as I see from your letter. I’d give a lot to hear one of those operas. I’m glad Niklas could repair the water damage over the secretaire with the roofing felt I sent; despite that, sometimes when I’m lying awake at night in my bunk I think there’ll soon be underwater plants growing in the music room, that mermaid sopranos and an orchestra of fishes will emerge from the photos on the wall.