Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘Damned useless rubbish.’ Stahl threw a wrench on the ground.

‘I can’t join you, Gerhart. They’ve got me in their sights anyway.’

‘I know, you explained that.’

‘But are you really going to do it? With an aeroplane?!’

‘Crazy, yes. But there’s method in my madness. That’s exactly why it’ll succeed. They won’t be expecting something like that. And it will work, I tell you. With two MZ motorcycle engines. Fuselage wooden planks, covered in plastered fabric. Very easy to make, despite that warp-resistant. Plastic for the cockpit, I was thinking of the windscreen of a Schwalbe motorbike.’

‘Four of you!’

‘Martin will be at the back, all of us lying down. The engines ought to produce the power, I’ve done the calculations. — The only question is — can I trust you?’

‘And if you can’t.’

‘Then it’s just my bad luck. It’s not possible without outside help. And you’ve told me about your problems yourself. That wouldn’t have been very clever of you if you were going to report me.’

‘For God’s sake, I could still do it now.’

‘Like hell you would. I think I know you better than that.’ –

tipped, and Christian said, ‘Nono’, screamed:

‘No!’

felt the tank, the steel hull weighing tons, slowly sink down, so slowly that it probably looked as if it were making itself comfortable, and Christian, in the oddly uncertain light on the ramp, had time to look at everything again and take in all the details: the distressed but interested expressions of the soldiers watching, a few officers who had become aware of what was happening, Pancake’s expression that seemed to be saying, stupid, you don’t turn like that , the searchlights, the flat goods wagons along which he should have driven:

The tank fell on its track, which, since the engine was still running, dug into the ground beside the rails. Christian saw a spot of gold on a puddle, perhaps a reflection of the turret searchlight, the tank came to a stop on its side, its barrel pointing in the direction of the town, Christian felt someone grasp his shoulders and pull him out through the hatch and just let it happen, it was pleasant and the guy who’d grabbed him by the scruff of the neck would know what he was doing, it would be what was necessary; Pancake’s face, turned into a huge, black puffball by the shapeless helmet, the white side-pieces, the sheepskin of which had a bizarre glow — phosphorescence? could it be? — dangling like a dachshund’s ears: ‘Man, you could be dead!’

another voice, ‘The turret would have squashed him flat, like a mashed potato. He was sitting right at the top. Funny, a machine like that turning turtle.’

‘Must’ve been out of his mind, mustn’t he?’

‘An SI … That’s an SI … as perfect a Special Incident as you could hope to see that Hoffmann’s managed to cause … ’s he still alive?’

‘— or drowned. It probably wouldn’t ’ve squashed him but drowned him in that puddle there. I waded through it earlier on, it was deeper than I thought. Shit, I’ve got some of it in my boots.’

‘You mean head down?’

‘Head down and he can’t get out. I mean, who’s going to heave a tank up just with his feet and nothing to brace himself against?’

‘But don’t y’think it could’ve squashed him anyway? First of all snap-crack and then glug-glug.’

Then Christian was standing to one side, like an Untouchable, recalling a lesson at school when he was a child and the teacher, when there was no other way, had made him stand in a corner of the classroom (‘Facing the wall and there’ll be trouble if you move’), recalling the whispers and the quiet laughs, the idea, which made him break out in a cold sweat, that something might be wrong with his shoes, stockings, trousers, with the seat of his trousers: could he have … had his shirt gone threadbare at the back and split open, did he look funny from behind (for the first time he was made aware that others could see him from behind, could see a Christian Hoffmann he himself didn’t know); over there they were dragging the tank, the tracks of which were still going round and round, back into its normal position, organizing hawsers and the tank recovery vehicle — What’s going to happen now? Christian thought. What will they do with me? He whistled a tune. Would there be birds’ nests in this station? He’d seen a lot of bird droppings. Pigeons. He rummaged round in his pockets felt his penknife, box of matches, army ID — and something that rustled, something granular and yielding: a packet of lemonade powder, already much the worse for wear, he tore it open, tipped the contents into the hollow of his hand, spat on it, making it foam up, licked and ate the lemon-tasting powder until there was none left apart from a thin film of food-colouring on his hand that couldn’t be licked off. –

Richard waited until it was dark. On the mezzanine floor of the building, one of the typical Striesen-Blasewitz ‘coffee-grinder’ houses, the light was on, illuminating the path from the garden gate to the entrance; that would make it more difficult. Richard put on the work-jacket that he wore out in Lohmen, tightened the laces of his trainers, pulled the buckle of his belt round to the side (he’d heard that electricians working on pylons did that). It occurred to him that it would be better to creep up from the back. He climbed over the garden wall, swung himself hand over hand past an arbour, jumped down onto a concrete path. He avoided the dark, loosened soil of the flowerbed beside it, there was a shimmer of early flowers (crocuses? narcissi?) in it, pale ghosts. A trellis was no use to him, the bevelled posts were too thin and the soil below it had also been dug over. He felt the ground with the tips of his toes at a point on the wall that seemed suitable; a paving slab would provide a firm enough base for him to push off from; the slab was granite, vaguely lit by the light in the room above the window ledge: children’s room? bedroom? he didn’t know; often in this kind of house the rooms of growth and sleep were at the back, giving onto the garden. Strange how the silence seemed to fill with sounds, like a funnel sucking them in but letting too few pass through; as if the sounds were like him, waiting in the dark for a movement, but losing patience sooner since their time was limited: the crunch of a car driving out, clocks striking from the lungs of the house, garden whispers, the Sandman’s evening greeting from the television. Now a baby was crying, sobs of tired protest, it seemed to come from the other side of the apartment. Josta’s little one, Richard thought. Off we go! He jumped up but couldn’t reach the window ledge. The impact of his soles on the slab sounded unexpectedly harsh. Take off his trainers? And if he had to run for it …? You’ll be doing that anyway, he joked. What did it matter? He took his shoes off and tried again. This time he jumped higher, reached the window ledge, dangled there. Immediately his right hand, his forearm weakened from his old injury, started to hurt. What was worse was that the window ledge was sloping and was made of smooth tiles. Richard, holding on with four fingers, started to slip. One sock got stuck on the trellis when he scrabbled with his feet on either side to try and find support; in the pale light his bare foot looked like an anaemic flatfish with fringes, the house wall was icy cold. He jumped down, his bare foot landed on a piece of gravel which made him hop around in silence for a while. The sock had been pulled off by a splinter of wood precisely between his big toe and second toe. A piece of luck. He tried again with his shoes on, hung there, swaying, couldn’t manage to pull himself up. He thought of rock climbers on an ascent but that made him feel weak all at once. In an access of rage he flung up his left leg, his foot, clenched in the trainer, stuck on something, fairly high up, fragile; Richard pulled himself up; centimetre by centimetre, his fingers trembling with the effort, until he could see in through the window. He was breathing stertorously, it sounded like a faulty compressed-air valve, his right hand found something strangely flexible to hold on to (radio cable? lightning conductor?), just at that moment he felt the urge to laugh. Daniel was sitting in the room, applying dubbin to a football; Lucie, opposite him, was sitting at a children’s table wearing a white coat and a cap with a red cross, with, above it, an examination mirror such as ENT doctors use; she was bent over a naked doll, cutting a leg off with a bread knife.