Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘What a lovely prek-fest!’ Libussa clapped her hands together with joy. ‘Krishan, Gerhart, let me remind you of that before you start eating like horses. We can thank God that at least we can get enough rolls and bread in this country. When I think back to the war …’ She went round filling their second cups with hot milk that she got from a collective farm beyond Bühlau, on the Schönfeld plateau; very little fat had been taken out of the cow’s milk — it was more like white soup than milk and Christian found it nauseating; but Libussa thought he didn’t have enough muscle, and that he was at the stage that would decide ‘whether he would turn into a man or a pencil’. Therefore she refused to be put off by his expression and filled his cup.

‘Thanks again for the roses, Libussa.’ Meno, who had switched on Radio Dresden, bent over a tub with Maréchal Niel roses. ‘All the wives were envious of them and insisted I give them the address of the market garden. Did I perhaps get the flowers from the Rose Gorge or from Arbogast’s greenhouses? How did I manage to bribe the grower?’

The ship’s doctor came in. He’d put on a dressing gown and was carrying Chakamankabudibaba, who blinked in the light, arched his back and climbed into a basket that was next to a magnificent sago palm. Lange and Stahl rubbed their hands expectantly and licked their lips. There was the smell of tea, coffee, freshly made cocoa, there were preserved quinces and cherries, plum jam and forest honey, and beside the basket of rolls covered with a cloth was one of Libussa’s specialities: apricots that had been dried to make a kind of firm pastry and cut into thin strips that Christian (who kept squinting over at the plate, bringing a grin from Stahl, whose chair was much closer to the delicacy) thought would do a lot more to promote his growth and physical development than hot cow’s milk. Libussa and her husband put their hands together for grace: ‘By Thy hands we all are fed, give us, Lord, our daily bread.’ Radio Dresden was broadcasting a poem by a senior functionary of the Writers’ Association who had fought valiantly for socialism. Meno listened, a pained look on his face, while Christian and the others, unmoved, helped themselves to what was on the table. The poem was about ideals, a bright future, Lenin and Marx, about heroic deeds on the building site of tomorrow, about shaping communism and ‘About you, comrade, blithely breakfasting, / free of the cares of those / on guard!’ Stahl paused as he was cutting his roll open. ‘Tell me, Meno, do you have to read that kind of stuff every day? O blithely breakfasting book-editor …’

‘Theodor Fontane?’ the ship’s doctor suggested, pursing his lips as he looked for his Heilpunkt digestion tablets. Meno still had the pained look on his face. The engineer put his knife down and, his elbow on the table, rested his chin on his hand to listen, chortling now and then, the sides of his nostrils quivering. Seizing the opportunity, Christian speared two slices of apricot with his fork.

‘That’s what those in East Rome like to hear. If it was up to them, writers would only produce that kind of stuff.’

‘Do they have to broadcast it? So many verses from blithely breakfasting bureaucrats per month? For once they could’ — Stahl looked round, searching — ‘celebrate something quite ordinary in their verse. We have to do it! Four fuel engineers fashion fire from faeces. Celebrate the common things, comrade.’

Meno laughed, picked up his roll and examined it for a while, a glint of mockery in his eye. He stood up, stretched out his hand with the roll in a histrionic gesture:

‘Thee will I sing, O thoroughbred Dresdner bread roll,

Splendidly chubby-cheeked promoter of gluttony.

But, tell us, cam’st thou from Elysium’s Konsum?

Did Bunn, the baker, take thee out of a state-owned oven?

Cam’st thou from Wachendorf’s cosily floured emporium?

Or from Walther’s or George’s baskets, morose in the dawn’s early light?

But tell me, O dough-born culinary marvel from Dresden,

How should the bard’s greedy-gluttonous mouth name thee,

He whose longing lips laud thee in lustful lines?

Pert and pliant as a young girl’s bosom thou lurest

To taste thee, but is it merely a taste thou wilt grant

When the bard’s one desire is to sink

His teeth into thee as deep as a ravenous wolf,

To tear, with beastly maw and howling, juicy lumps

Out of thy flavoursome flanks — O how!

How shall I name thee, freshly baked, toothsome bagpipe,

Taste-buds tickler, O Dresdner dulcimer,

Manna of the muses, who suffer in silence

The oven’s hellish heat, thou acme of Saxon genius,

O bread roll?’

Their laughter broke off abruptly as applause came from the door to the spiral staircase and the hall. They all turned their heads. The two young men who lowered their hands and slowly put them in their trouser pockets looked by no means unsure of themselves. The flush on their cheeks seemed to come from participation in the amusement rather than from embarrassment, and Christian, who kept looking back and forth between the twins and those sitting round the table, would never have managed the lack of inhibition with which they, giggling and praising the condition of the plants on either side, sauntered towards them. They were identical twins, and they added to their confusing similarity of appearance by wearing the same clothes: white, fine-gauge, cable-stitch roll-neck pullovers, rather worn jeans and trainers.

‘This is a private room, Herr … Kaminski?’ Stahl was the first to recover from his surprise and pointed round the conservatory with his knife, which had a little blob of butter on the tip.

‘That is correct, Kaminski is our name. And to distinguish between us, I’m René and this is Timo.’ The closer of the two jerked his chin in the direction of his brother, whose cheerful expression turned into an inviting smile at the words ‘distinguish between’, which his brother had accompanied with an explanatory, but not mocking gesture. No one returned the smile or interpreted it as the invitation to a friendly response, as it might have been intended; Libussa and her husband sat there, stiff and silent; Meno, who was still standing, blinked in irritation then, after an exchange of looks with the ship’s doctor, sat down as Kaminski, perhaps in order to get over the oppressive silence, came towards him. The news was on the radio now; Christian heard the ten-minute clock chime in Meno’s living room. Chakamankabudibaba had woken up and was eyeing the two brothers suspiciously; their blond hair, combed this way and that over several cowlicks, was struck by the irruption of light and looked like frothy sunshine.

‘Oh, you’ve got two more chairs, that is nice.’ The twin whose name had been given as Timo pointed to two folded garden chairs that were leaning against the tub of roses. Stahl cleared his throat and dropped his knife on his plate with a clatter. The bafflement on Lange’s face had given way to outrage. ‘This is a private room, as Herr Stahl said, and I cannot remember having invited you to join us for breakfast. Would you be good enough to explain your behaviour, gentlemen? You are in the apartment of Alois and Libussa Lange and I am not aware that the Communal Housing Department has made any new decrees or amendments —’ The ship’s doctor broke off as Kaminski quickly raised his hand. ‘New decrees or amendments are not necessary, Herr Lange. At least not insofar as you are referring to existing tenancy agreements.’

‘This is home invasion!’ thundered the engineer. Timo Kaminski had unfolded the chairs and placed them on the chessboard floor under the sago palm. His brother took out a packet of Jewel cigarettes, sniffed the air and asked, with a suggestion of a bow in Libussa’s direction, whether he might smoke. She nodded, speechless with surprise, as it seemed to Christian. Kaminski flicked his lighter, lit the cigarette, drew on it with relish. ‘No, it is not a case of home invasion, Herr Stahl. The concept doesn’t apply here … We are the new tenants in the attic apartment in this building. We were very pleased to be allocated that apartment … You know the difficult housing situation. And then we are assigned the attic apartment in a quiet house on a slope with excellent views … Can you not imagine our delight? And can you not imagine that in such a case one does not simply move in, as into any old accommodation, but makes enquiries about the conditions here, finds out as much information as one can in city departments, in documents at the land registry, and about you as well, of course, our future neighbours? That is right and proper, is it not? We’re not moving just anywhere but here, into this district above Dresden, to Mondleite, into the former property of a manufacturer of fine soaps whose renown, in his day, had spread far and wide beyond the confines of the country …’