Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

Checkpoint. Musca stopped. The other tanks continued steadily on their way. Christian heard shouts, someone closed the shutter valve on the exhaust; footsteps, stamping, flap 6 over the drive was closed. ‘Idle at eleven hundred revs,’ Christian ordered, Burre repeated.

‘Line up on floodlights.’

‘Is lined up.’

‘Unlock direction indicator.’

‘Is unlocked.’

‘… foor-ward!’ Christian heard the company commander order over the radio. So now the serious business was starting. His diving goggles were pinching. Was the glass misting over? That ought not to happen. Gun pointer, loader, driver — they all wore diving goggles over their padded helmets. The black life-saving equipment over their chest so that the loader, who was on Christian’s seat above the gun pointer, could only twist and turn with the greatest difficulty. The light filled the forward area with a misty ochre. Was the turret really lashed tight? Burre let the clutch in gently, the shutter valve made a snort of irritation. That wasn’t the earlier noise, the one they’d listened for with tense expressions during the leak test; the sucking in of the outside air at the turret race ring, almost ending in a slurp. The company commander wasn’t replying; the noise floor of the radio, a crackling, as if from slight electrical discharges. The tank tipped forward. Christian could see through the periscope that they were nicely lined up on the floodlights, were going down the UD track. The river was known there, but not on either side of it. Musca’s tank was already in the middle of the river. No one knew anything about underwater obstacles. Nip had told them a story from his time as an ensign: when recovering a T54 that had got stuck, a motor tractor had struck an unexploded bomb. It was here at Torgau that the Americans and Russians had met; the Elbe was silent about what had been before. There were channels and potholes in rivers, Christian knew that from fishing, treacherous deeps, wash-outs made by the current where the old fish liked to stay. There were shoals, places where the bank had been undermined, others where the river bed would give way, inner and outer banks at bends. He switched over to internal radio. Burre was muttering, the gun pointer was muttering.

‘Coolant temperature?’

‘Ninety.’

‘Brief report, Jan.’ A hundred and ten degrees was the maximum temperature for coolant, more than that and the tank could be damaged. A slight draught — the diesel engine was taking in air from the cockpit. Woe betide them if the UD tube went under water. Water from above, the air sucked out from behind.

‘Report, three-zero-two,’ it crackled over the radio. Christian switched over, then the radio went off. The internal radio too. Christian guided the driver via the driver guide system. ‘To the left. To the right. Not so far! To the left!’ Burre made the correction. Christian could hear him talking. The tank creaked, the struts at the back were being wrung by hydraulic forces, the wind got caught in the periscope tube, swirled up and down making an odd rumbling noise, perhaps there was sand in it, as the ship’s doctor had told him about the old sailing ships: in a storm the captains would stay on the poop deck and if they felt sand scouring their face, they would know the ship was in danger of running aground, there must be land or a sandbank out there. He couldn’t see anything. The navigation light on the other bank had disappeared.

‘Report direction indicator.’

No reply from Burre.

‘Position!’ Christian bawled. The loader raised his head that he was apathetically leaning against the gun pointer’s shoulders, as if the latter were giving him a piggyback; his eyes were large dark splodges.

‘Ze-hero,’ Burre sang out. He was actually singing. Anything that occurred to him, it seemed: the ‘Internationale’, the hymn of the German Socialist Party, a setting of a Goethe poem and the song of the Thälmann Column in the Spanish Civil War. The sound of flowing water changed, suddenly the tank slipped to the right, sank down, took a knock.

‘What are you doing, arsehole?’ The gun pointer stamped down but his boot caught in the MG cartridge holder; he stamped down again, directing a stereotyped ‘arsehole, arsehole’ at the space between the optical periscope and the cylinders of compressed air, where Burre’s back must be. And now water burst in. Before that the tank had been sweating, Christian had observed drops swelling up in the join of the turret race ring, thinking, OK then, it’s sweating as well, it’s pretty hot in here. A sauna. Warm sweat from his feet was going through his grey military socks into his boots, where it sloshed about for a while; sweat dripped from the extensor side of his thigh to the flexor side, built up, dribbled down when he moved, mingling with the sweat from his feet; sweat was trickling down from his back into the groove between his buttocks, he was sitting in warm soup. The cover plate of the intermediate transmission, Christian thought. He hadn’t checked it. Pancake had climbed through to the back but shortly afterwards the order to change drivers had come. Criminal, really, Christian thought, you don’t split up a crew used to working together and certainly not just before a night UD. The loader caught some drips and rubbed them between his hands. Christian looked at the gun pointer. He didn’t even know his full name, only his surname and that he came from a village in Thuringia and was a mechanic for farm machinery. ‘Pump out.’ The bilge pump began to spin, bubbling, smacking noises, reassuring. Funny that a tank had similarities to a U-boat. The bilge pump couldn’t cope with all the water, by now it was also coming from the drive into the forward area, Christian was surprised the engine was still running. The radio still wasn’t working. The water was rising. It was up to the gun pointer’s boot. Burre must be right in it. And the smell: a mixture of burnt rubber and fossil hen’s eggs. The tank tilted further down. Christian tried the periscope, found a floodlight far to the left. They must have come off the route. They’d be doing something up there — if they’d noticed, which Christian hoped they had. ‘Left, left,’ he shouted as the tank went further to the right. His diving goggles were gradually misting over and his view of the others was blurred. And then the stupid tank hood with its fleece getting wetter and wetter. Where was all the water coming from? The bilge pump couldn’t cope with it –

‘Dear Christian, There’s not much that’s new to tell. I hope you can read my “gentian script” (as Gudrun calls it); I prefer phoning to writing, but since you haven’t got a phone I’m sending you these brief items of news. Please excuse the “case history” sheet, I’m writing this between seeing two patients. Our veranda’s almost completely rotten by now, perhaps Meno told you. It’s also sunk so that the windows are squint and the glass has cracked. The glazier cut the new ones to fit the slanting frames. We had to supply the material ourselves. We went all round the town. The leak in the roof hasn’t got worse, thank God — the roofing felt you got us is worth its weight in gold. The roofer said, Have you got an allocation for roofing felt? One for adhesive? No? Then let the rain come in, pal. Not long ago I was sitting in my favourite chair with a pipe and Tannhäuser (Max Lorenz, State Orchestra, Fritz Busch) and there was a crack! then plaster crumbling, one of the wall ties had come out. I thought: well, to sink slowly down into the spruce tree along with the veranda, listening to Tannhäuser (and that recording above all), having just got my pipe going and enjoying a nice little glass of liqueur, that could definitely be a source of new insights. For three and a half months now, since the severe frost in January, it’s been like living on a farm here, both toilets were frozen up, only the water in the kitchen was still working, we have to get water from there to fill the buckets we use to flush the lavatories. The Schwedes below us have this ingenious water-pipe-heating-ring (one of Herr Stahl’s brilliant inventions) that has just the one disadvantage — it’s dependent on electricity. If there hadn’t been a power cut the pipes wouldn’t have frozen. The Communal Housing Department immediately wanted to copy the water-pipe-heating-ring — but, God, who’s going to do that? The next time you’re here, pop in to the practice to see me; I’ll take you with me on my rounds. Or to the Friends of Music, we’ve managed to find some more lovely records. Since Chernobyl old Frau Zschunke’s been stuck with all her vegetables. The accident to the reactor’s the big topic of conversation in the town. Officially it’s played down, but the Valley of the Clueless borders on the hills that can receive Western television. See you soon. Best wishes, Niklas.’