Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘Fuel three-way tap set to interior container unit,’ Pancake reported.

‘Checking driver guide system.’ Christian pressed the buttons to activate the device with which he could guide the driver should radio contact fail. Port red, starboard green, as on a ship.

‘Left. Right.’ Pancake repeated Christian’s commands.

‘Right then. Shitting yourself?’ One of the driving instructors had stuck his head into Pancake’s hatch.

‘I’ve never drowned yet.’

‘Keep an eye on the auxiliary transmission. Forgot the cover plate last time, just a tiny leak and it poured in like a mountain stream. Hey, Nemo,’ the driving instructor shouted. ‘Pancake’s to go over, to One, the CC’s driver’s unwell.’

‘And who’s his replacement?’

‘Nutella.’

Christian switched on the command frequency, on which the CC could communicate with the tank commander, and the recovery frequency, which called the recovery tank. The next tank, Irrgang’s, hooted twice, a diesel engine roared into life. Christian looked across: the gun pointer was controlling the fuel with the Bowden cable through the closed driver’s hatch, the driver watched the manometer, Irrgang, holding a stopwatch, raised his arm. They were already on the low-pressure-leak test — and had come through it to go by Irrgang’s expression. They had hardly anything to do with each other any more; each went his own way and tried as far as possible to get the upper hand … Say nothing, keep your head down, be invisible. Lie. Christian had not told Anne the truth in his letter. The art of knowing how to lie — how to praise enthusiastically, how to keep a serious expression when saying stupid things that are empty of meaning but please the person you’re flattering, how to encourage illusions. Herr Orré had taken great pains. And Irrgang had lost his witty repartee. After duty he mostly lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to Costa’s melancholy music that he’d copied onto cassettes before Costa was discharged. If he had a pass, he came back drunk. That was presumably what was meant by being brought into line. Big Irrgang, never at a loss for a quick saucy response, now jumped smartly to attention for every officer, didn’t argue any more, said what was expected in political education, secretly cut the monthly seal off the string of seals the more junior soldiers used to count the days until they were due for discharge … Leak test OK, they continued. Thirty seconds had to pass before the pressure fell from 1,200 to 200 mm of water. Since he had been commander Christian’s tank had never managed that; like most of the tanks in the regiment, his T55 was an ‘old banger’, a ‘rust bucket’ and the best servicing could do nothing about it. Tank 302 remained watertight for twenty-five seconds, despite the layers of UD putty that had been smeared over it, actually five seconds too few for the forthcoming exercise, but what did they say: Actually the sun’s shining, you just can’t see it for all this rain.

Burre. All the sympathy Christian felt for him couldn’t alter the fact that he was a lousy driver.

He reported for duty: ‘I’m to join you.’ He attempted a grin, tilted his head, climbed aboard the tank.

‘C’mon, c’mon, time’s passing,’ the platoon leader urged them. ‘The drive’s still open, shut the thing, get your finger out.’

Burre disappeared down the driver’s hatch.

‘Slats position five,’ Christian ordered, shining the hand lamp. Moths flew out, the pines smelt of resin. ‘Position two!’ The gun pointer and he stamped the lock on the drive unit shut. ‘Lock!’ Check the lugs — the drive unit was closed. Musca had already collimated the UD pipe, transferred the recovery hawsers, tied on the floating buoys, white in front, red at the back. During the first UD exercise Christian had put them the wrong way round and had had to suffer the bawling-out of the tug commander: should there be an accident, a tank was pulled out by the stern hawser to which the red buoy was tied — ‘if you’d got stuck I’d ’ve had to drag your bow round ’n people ’ve drowned when that happens, dickhead!’ –

‘Dear Christian, Comet fever has broken out here, everyone’s humming Halley, Halley; even Herr Honich, whom we know as a dyed-in-the-wool materialist, had none of his dismissive remarks based on scientific dialectics for the Widow Fiebig in the queue for rolls recently — it was so impressive in the night of the comet (I spent it in Arbogast’s observatory with the Urania group, Ulrich was there, Barbara and Gudrun came along later) the way, just at the moment when the sky cleared and such a wealth of constellations appeared, that we felt like Babylonian astrologers — the way that at that moment the clocks all struck, all at the same time it seemed, from near and from afar; a jingling, tolling, tinkling, pealing, gonging, Westminster-chiming, as if all their hands were in collusion and all that despite the fact that this time the comet couldn’t be seen in the northern hemisphere; only the Widow Fiebig refused to believe it, craned her neck and shouted, “There, there! That’s it’s sulphur tail!” But it was only one of Herr Malthakus’s jokes, he’d set off an anachronistic New Year’s rocket from the roses below Arbogast’s Institute. We also thought it was a joke, something we couldn’t really take seriously, when Professor Teerwagen was arrested recently. He was supposed to be a spy, it was said; dubious dealings in Mexico; his wife seems to have known nothing at all about it and now she’s in the Academy, being treated by Dr Clarens. — Lange’s turning strange. On the evening of the comet, after the talks (Stahl spoke about reservoir dams, Ulrich about the Babylonians) Arbogast organized a guided tour of his estate, as smiling and inscrutable as ever, and Lange suddenly groaned and started to ramble, pointed to a sealed bottle, saying, “Lead, it’s made of lead, and the seal on top, encrusted with gold — King Solomon’s bottle!” — “But Herr Lange,” Arbogast laughed, “who believes such fairy tales? That’s an eighteen-twelve cognac trapped in ethyl alcohol from Kutusov’s supplies, he took it from the French general staff as they were retreating across the Beresina.” Sometimes Libussa comes down and takes me to one side. Alois, she says, is spending all their money on sailing ships: photographs, ships in bottles, books; sometimes in his sleep he mutters the names of the captains of the Laeisz Line, the names of the ships, he knows all the legends, every one of their sails — and that when he’s never been on a sailing ship himself. And what does he say to her? “My little Brunetka,” he replies, “I have to know all about it for when the great hell-ship comes and the press gang tell me to join the crew …” That’s the latest from up here. Let me know if you need any books. Libussa’s just shouted for me to send you her best wishes. She’s going to make up a package of preserves for you. Frau Honich has started a Timur Assistance project for the elderly here, does the shopping for them, deals with the authorities (commendable, you can’t deny), her husband’s carrying coal, also has a package to take to the post office. Perhaps it’ll include socialist greetings for you. You have the honour of guarding the peace for us. You should look on it as experience, Libussa’s just shouted. Worth recording, says Adeling the waiter, alias Skinny. Best wishes, Meno.’

Twenty-five seconds for the leak test, the platoon leader had called the company commander over, he waved the objection away, ‘Drive on. They’ll be on the other side before the tank’s full.’ Christian was sitting on the loader’s side, from now on it was radio traffic over the command frequency of the UD route; he was worked up, he could only see an occasional gleam of light through the periscope, perhaps from the regiment in the woods, perhaps from the Elbe already, from the recovery armoured personnel carrier, the engineers’ boat or the motor tractors. They’d passed the initial checkpoint and were travelling along the line of departure, Musca’s tank in front of them, the goldsmith behind; Burre accelerated too much and didn’t steer smoothly enough, the UD tube, which was now extended, scraped against twigs. The direction indicator, a gyro compass, added its hum to the crackle of the radio. He hoped Burre was familiar with the direction indicator — if not, the tank could veer off course if Christian couldn’t manage to guide it by the periscope. Vision: a disc the size of a saucer, no more. Across there, on the other side of the Elbe, floodlights had been set up, he had to focus on them before the serious business started.