Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘You just be careful you don’t get sidelined. That sometimes happens after change-overs. — It’s an absolute disgrace, this Chernobyl, I’m really getting worked up about it. The dirty liars, that gang of criminals, no, no. Where’s it all going to end? You tell me, where’s it all going to end? There’s a little space here, Lindy.’

‘You know Sperber, don’t you, Niklas?’

‘Not personally and not particularly well. Why?’

‘He’s invited us round. To his house.’

‘Tricky business. A dubious character, if you ask me. A go-between — and he doesn’t get stung by either side, as my teacher Rudi Citroën used to say. — Y’know what? I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee.’

‘I’ll make some more.’

‘Oh, I’m bein’ a nuisance, putting you to all this bother. I’ll toddle along at once. If things go on like this we’ll have to get out, Richard. ’s not the money, you know. But you have the feeling … as if you’re slowly being drowned. But wouldn’t that be betraying our patients?’

‘That keeps on cropping up: the doctor as a bastion of morality. There are patients on the other side as well.’

‘Yes, but you’re here to make the patients here well again.’

‘With what? What should I do if the health service is ailing itself? Use empty syringes? Is that moral?’

‘I didn’t even get any more plasters the last time. You’re right, y’know, it’s all very well for them to talk about it being morally unprincipled for a doctor to skedaddle over there. You never hear anything about how morally unprincipled it is to be a doctor with nothing to give your patients here. I’ve been havin’ to prescribe Julie from the riding school cold-water treatment that she doesn’t even administer to herself. It wouldn’t be ’cause of the money. That’s jus’ what they say it’s about. An’ then havin’ to tell your children to lie so they don’t get into trouble. An’ to tell the “firm” what you hear from your patients. Oh yes, that’ll be moral all right, won’t it? Not that I do that, though.’

‘Dad.’

‘OK, OK. But that’s the way things are. You get drowned here, slowly and thoroughly. Y’have to breathe through y’r ears, keep y’r trap shut with y’r eyes, an’ you’re s’posed to stay here into the bargain. All right, all right, I’m on my way.’

‘Reina?’

‘Richard?’

‘— I do too.’

You will include the woman or the girl you love in all these considerations, wishes and dreams. You will write to her and receive mail from her. Through her love she will help you to meet the high demands and master the strains of military life.

What It Means to be a Soldier

He stood on the platform, between two dustbins that were full to overflowing, thinking. He was thinking about how it had come about that he was stuck here and had had to steal a pass. Reina would arrive on the 4 p.m. train from Leipzig. Philosophy. It was about power and nothing else. You’re to go there and there, and if you don’t do that we’ll lock you up. And then two men will come and arrest you and if you kick out with your legs you’ll get a thump on the head. And if you knock the two of them down, four will come. And even if you can deal with them, a fifth will appear. Christian was sweating in his walking-out uniform but didn’t roll up the sleeves of his blue-grey shirt — the military patrols carried out checks here at the station above all, and presumably first and foremost on soldiers with a pass who were not dressed according to regulations. He felt like smoking, he’d allowed himself a cigarette now and then, to relieve the pressure, but he’d stink of it and he didn’t have enough mints to cover the smell. Moreover, when he smoked he could see Ann’s worried expression in his mind’s eye; it spoilt the pleasure of smoking and he was annoyed at that.

Officers came and went, passenger trains stopped with a squeal of brakes, no one waved to him. Perhaps Reina looked different — a new hairstyle, her face no longer that of a girl, a year and a half could be a long time. He was twenty-and-a-half years old and when he thought back to their conversations by Kaltwasser reservoir, to his mania for learning as much as possible, his delusion about becoming famous, he felt he could smile like an old man. He’d had light work during the day, Nip had chased him round the company a bit, tidying up, polishing floors, cleaning weapons, heating the bathroom stove (for four men: himself, Pancake and two sick soldiers on barracks duty). Breathing space. Burre had died in the military hospital, there had only been a brief interruption to the exercise, during the initial questioning by the military prosecutor; Burre’s mother had only been informed after the death of her son. That was the ‘Burre case’, the ‘Hoffmann case’ was still pending. But that was a dream, it couldn’t be anything else. All that just wasn’t right. Burre’s slack body, still half stuck in the hatch while the recovery tank was already pulling. The gurgling darkness, the gun pointer helplessly flailing round above him until he gave him a kick: Get out of the way, crawl over to the loader’s side or behind the gun, open the hatch and climb out, but let me get at Burre. If that was true, then how could he be out here on Grün Station waiting for a train from Leipzig in his walking-out uniform? People stared at him. You couldn’t wear these things, even in a small garrison town like Grün, without getting hostile or contemptuous looks. But I’m not one of them! he wanted to cry out. I hate these things just as much as you do. Surely you must realize that, lots of you have done military service. The blue-grey shirt made of poor-quality material with the dull aluminium buttons and the ‘Monkey’s swing’, the silver braided marksman’s cord, dangling down; some, who had shown greater ambition than he, had the military sports badge, the marksman’s bar, pinned to their chest; the cap with its stiff plastic peak and cheap cockade, the grey felt trousers and the black shoes; the plastic arch of the sole had to be polished — an old Wehrmacht tradition, as Christian had been told at cadet school: there were seams on the arches of their military boots and woe to thee, Russia, if they hadn’t been greased. You had to have your sewing kit with you as well: torn trousers, always a possibility, would be detrimental to the dignity of the member of the army and therefore to the armed forces as a whole, so had to be mended immediately.

The train, a grumpy voice that sounded as if it were made of felt announced, was delayed. But now the light was falling, withdrawing, seemed to be saying, Come on, it’s up to you now, to the twilight. This was the hour of the day Christian liked best. He used to like the early morning just as much, when the air was still fresh and had a silky dampness, like a sensitive photo that had just been taken out of the fixative; but those hours no longer belonged to him, for eighteen months now they had been the hours of whistles and shrill shouts, of the start of terrible days. This wilting, this hardly perceptible waning was something different. The station, with its grubby concourse, the sleepers with their dusting of ash, the smell of toilets, Mitropa snack bars and coal, seemed to be drinking in the thinning light, gradually filling itself with it until, with its rusty red dusting of ash, it had entirely become non-poisonous copper bloom. At this moment it would be enough to spread your arms to be able to fly — as he knew and it filled him with joy and satisfaction. The other people on the platforms seemed to feel the same, he saw workers throw out their chests, stride up and down with a bouncing gait, then, when they once more became aware of being watched, pluck at their overalls in embarrassment; he saw the down-and-outs hold up their bottles of beer assessingly to the light; and all at once the two men in the uniform of the transport police were casually swinging their batons. And he — he had cyclamen. Bought at Centraflor on the station forecourt where a supply had just been unloaded from a lorry; hundreds of pots of cyclamen; no cut flowers.