Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

At times there was a coffee percolator snorkelling away somewhere in the depths of the Museum, at times there was a knocking in one of the painted, uncovered heating pipes running along the wall, at times a drop of water, falling from the damp patches that spread like parasitic flowers on the pale yellow ceiling with its root system of decades-old craquelure, went ‘plop’. When the snow was melting or there was heavy rain, Meno was told, the water didn’t just go ‘plop’, it poured and streamed, cheerfully babbling, through the damaged roof and down the walls of the building that had formerly housed the Saxon Parliament. At times he also fell asleep, for in the cubicle where he was working the midday temperature on a sunny day was 40 °C. And yet he was still as strangely moved by these living beings (even when they were dead they weren’t just things) as he had been as a child: musing on the ravages of time, he stood looking at Steller’s sea cow, which was just as extinct as the Tasmanian wolf, the Carolina parakeet, the passenger pigeon, the huge flocks of which Audubon had described so impressively and that once used to darken the sky over the fields of American farmers; he didn’t dare smooth the turquoise feathers of one of the European rollers he had seen as a boy on expeditions with Kurt and Anne in Saxon Switzerland. Now it had long been extinct in the country, as a card beside it said.

But it was the fate of a fish that moved him most of all, though he couldn’t say why: the Saxon sturgeon, the Latin name of which, Acipenser sturio , he murmured to himself like an incantation. Recorded on the Elbe as far up as Saxony and Bohemia, the sturgeon had long since vanished from the region’s rivers; the Zoological Museum possessed the only remaining specimen and even in the lodge of the Association of Elbe Boatmen, where Hoffmann’s barometer came from, they would have looked on it as a tall story, had there not still been an old document over the bar listing their privileges that included the right to fish for sturgeon. — So Meno sat there in the silence, surrounded by little colourful pharaohs stuck on pins, the remains of long-forgotten expeditions to nearby and distant tropics, read, his heart aching with a yen for faraway places, where the lantern flies and other beetles were found (the Museum had an important collection of weevils, Curculionidae, nailed up in stubborn sleep), studied the little maps for the birds lined up in drawers, murmured the names: Philippines, New Guinea, knowing he would never get there; he tried to decipher the regular characters, which looked as if they’d been drawn with a fine brush and seemed to speak of light and bright matters, of shells from Andaman, New Caledonia (or could it be a sound-scanning system, music?), as he searched for a language that expressed what he felt at the sight of these treasures washed up on the shore of time. Thus he lived in those days. Thus he dreamt.

Christian was back with his unit in Grün. He’d been in the army for over three years now; in normal circumstances he would have been discharged in the autumn and would have started to study medicine in Leipzig. Now he was a soldier, had his school-leaving certificate and nothing else, was doing the extra service that was part of his punishment and that would last until the spring of 1988, to be followed by another year and a half of regular service: discharge autumn 1989. Apart from Pancake there were none of his old comrades left; he saw unknown faces; Nip and the regular officers remained. Nip greeted them with ‘Hoffmann and Kretzschmar — one more incident and you’re back where you’ve just come from. Understood?’ Christian was now squad-room leader, the others looked on him with a mixture of shyness and respect; he had the feeling he was out of synch, a living anachronism, as Meno would have called it. No one asked about Schwedt or Samarkand; he’d had to sign a document that he would say nothing about them. Talking had become foreign to him, if it was unavoidable he restricted himself to what was absolutely necessary. He had signed. He didn’t want to go back. He liked the bread. His comrades were nice, especially the goldsmith. The tanks were good. The sun was lovely.

In the winter of 1988 the theatre evenings started again. It was freezing in the rooms, in the ramshackle buildings, and what better way to get warm than with a glass of grog or a cup of tea while watching a play put on by Erik Orré or Joffe in the Schlemm Hotel, the Tannhäuser Cinema or a private house? Christian was granted extended leave. Before he went, he had to show Nip his fingernails, his tunic collar bind and sewing kit. It was already dark when he arrived at Dresden Central and he stood waiting for an 11 at the tram stop in his walking-out uniform, his patched kitbag over his shoulder, freezing. The wind was playing in the lamps suspended over the rails, ruffling the edges of poorly stuck posters on the advertising pillars. Country buses went from Leninplatz out to Waldbrunn, Zinnwald, the Westergebirge; the 11 approached from the hill on Juri-Gagarin-Strasse outside the Russian Church and buildings of the Technical University, a bobbit worm with two chemical antennae. Christian sat in the single seat on the right in front of the middle door, it was his favourite seat in the tram: it was good for observation, no one could sit next to you, there was underseat heating that usually worked. The lights were flashing on Prager Strasse. People were rushing past the Lenin memorial in both directions. Robotron , the fluorescent writing on the multistorey factory building on Leningrader Strasse promised. The Round Cinema, left behind. ‘Drink Margon Water’ a neon sign on Dr-Külz-Ring recommended. Left behind. Left behind: the Ring Café, Otto-Nuschke-Strasse, Postplatz with its after-work bustle, Thälmannstrasse with the House of the Book. A white banner was hanging from the theatre on which it said, in red letters: ‘ANATOMIE TITUS FALL OF ROME’. ‘Socialism will triumph,’ neon writing on a high-rise building proclaimed. The Zwinger Crown Gate, the wing with the Porcelain Collection were mourning in the brash light of a few construction floodlights, there were gaps in the row of putti on the Long Gallery, there were schnapps bottles and disappointed-looking swans on the Zwinger moat. Rome, Christian thought. No, Troy. This here is Troy. The city seemed cold and alien as never before, the people going home sat there in the unpadded seats, heads bowed, worn out by worries and their days of work, the cardboard signs with the names of stops clattered, knocking against the scratched Plexiglass windows; get on, get off, a swill of lights, of human exudations, regularly interspersed with the expressionless voice of the driver announcing the stops.

Christian slept in the House with a Thousand Eyes. He had the apartment to himself, Meno was in Berlin for committee and editorial meetings, contentious points in Hermes’s annual programme and outline programme for the future had to be fought through, one of the books Meno had prepared for the acceptance procedure was threatened with being cancelled. The living room was cold, the ash pan hadn’t been emptied; Christian lit the stove, fed Chakamankabudibaba; he purred round his legs, he’d grown old and infirm. The television was on in Libussa’s apartment. Christian wondered whether to go up, but he wanted to be alone. The Stahls’ little girl was crying, the engineer’s powerful voice arguing with the Honichs could be heard on the stairs; the woman’s voice sounded shrill and outraged. When Christian had said hello, Stahl had responded with a curt and, as it seemed to Christian, indignant nod. ‘You’ll have to go to the Querleite bathhouse for a shower, Meno’s registered you with Herr Unthan. Our bathroom and toilet have a schedule of use.’ The last words he shouted upstairs, his hand beside his mouth. The ten-minute clock struck. How soothing the sound was, like something in a dream … In the pool of light from the lamp on Meno’s desk were periodicals ( Sinn und Form, Neue Deutsche Literatur, Reichenbachia ), the two Schelling books, two of Plato’s dialogues, the Timaeus and Critias , and, open in the middle of the literature wing of the desk, Judith Schevola’s The Depths of These Years . Christian carefully closed it after he’d read the handwritten dedication to Jochen Londoner on the title page. Perhaps the ship’s doctor is in the conservatory, Christian thought, leafing through books about sailing ships and puffing away at a pipeful of Copenhagen vanilla tobacco. Christian went up through the concealed door but found not Alois Lange but the Kaminski twins smoking and watching a colour television. ‘Aha, young Hoffmann. The conservatory’s no longer accessible to all. It’s now part of our apartment. But if you feel like watching a James Bond video we’ll make an exception this time,’ said Timo or René, casually taking his feet off a chair and offering him it with a gesture of invitation. Without a word Christian went back down the stairs. There was a ring at the door.