Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘Evenin’,’ two furniture movers mumbled. ‘We’re supposed to be collecting Herr Rohde’s ten-minute clock.’

Surprised, Christian said nothing.

‘It’s all right. It’s for the play. It’s being put on tomorrow. Herr Rohde said you’d been informed.’

‘One moment, please.’ Christian went to Meno’s desk, found a sheet of paper in the typewriter. A few notes and comments such as Meno always wrote for his guests when he wasn’t there. A PS mentioned the furniture movers. The only strange thing was that, contrary to his habit, Meno had not left a telephone number where he could be contacted. The men waited.

‘Have you any papers?’

The driver handed down a folder. ‘Don’t make difficulties, young man, we have other things to collect. It’s been arranged with your uncle.’

‘I simply can’t imagine my uncle would leave his grandfather clock in the care of complete strangers,’ Christian said. ‘I’ll call him and check.’ He went back in and waited a while. When he came out, the men and the lorry had disappeared.

In the house the noise rose and subsided, there was the clatter of footsteps, a kettle whistled in the Langes’ kitchen, the scratching and scraping behind the walls moved up and down. Herr Honich seemed to be calling someone who was hard of hearing, in his powerful voice he kept bellowing, ‘What? How?’ into the receiver. Christian decided to go for a short walk. Light rain had started, making the black of the copper beech shine, whispering in the gutters. The Bhutan pines were giving off a tangy scent. From the depths of the park came the ‘too-wit’ of an owl. Christian set off for Caravel, went down Wolfsleite, crossed Turmstrasse, where, grunting and squealing, accompanied by regular chanting of individual syllables by a few of the staff from Arbogast’s institute, a procession of fluorescent fire salamanders the size of crocodiles was going down the street.

‘Well, well, Herr Hoffmann’ — startled, Christian turned round to see Sperber dressed as a weather-glass seller. ‘Have you been given leave? As you can see,’ he went on, nodding towards the salamanders that crunched past on wooden wheels and shouting ‘Good evening, Herr Ritschel’ to one of the figures accompanying them, ‘Joffe’s play’s made a big impression even before it’s started. We’re doing The Golden Pot . Your cousin Ezzo’s playing Anselm and Muriel the snake Serpentina — I’ve even seen her laugh again. But now you must excuse me, I have to go to the rehearsal. Ah, our Archivist. Good evening, Herr Lindhorst,’ he said to a man in a long black coat. ‘How was your flight in this weather?’

Falling in with the joke, Arbogast spread out his arms; the material of his sleeves was ribbed, like a bat’s wings. ‘Herr Marroquin had to dig deep in his props box and what he didn’t have the Institute ordered from Herr Lukas and Harmony Salon. The scenery comes from Rabe’s, the joiner’s. Worked out well, hasn’t it? In another place they call it sponsoring. I’m really looking forward to our little play.’ Arbogast waved his stick cheerfully. ‘Best wishes to your father,’ he called out to Christian before he and Sperber, the clink-clank of whose weather glasses was quickly swallowed up by the rain, disappeared in the gloom of Turmstrasse; the yellow patches of the salamanders still glowed in the dark.

Christian turned back. Caravel would be dark and deserted, perhaps there’d be a light on in the Griesels’ living room, on the garden side, or at André Tischler’s; the Stenzel Sisters went to bed early. Anne and Richard were away, Robert in the army, Reglinde at the Tannhäuser Cinema, where the play was to be put on.

Summer 1988 began with red spots. Shaking his head, Herr Trüpel wiped them off the record sleeves. In Binneberg’s café they crawled over the Black Forest gateau, custard pies, marzipan slices and cream puffs, ruining the old ladies’ coffee morning, and formed a crust on the bottles of syrup in the greengrocer’s. They squatted on the picture postcards in the window of Malthakus’s philately shop, lay, weary unto death, between the covers of Postmaster Gutzsch’s books of stamps, crept across his pre-war Pelikan inkpads and sent his St Bernard into itchy spasms. They buzzed in through the open windows of the Roeckler School of Dancing, found Korra’s Paper Boat and Priebsch’s stock of spare parts, hid under Lamprecht’s gentlemen’s hats, sprinkled spots over the cloth at Lukas’s, the tailor’s, were squashed under the characters of the secretaries’ typewriters, ruined Lajos Wiener’s wigs (Meno had never seen the Hungarian in a frenzy of rage: red as a beetroot, hairnet askew, he was holding the fair and dark toupees in both hands and smashing them down again and again on a fire hydrant). They made Pastor Magenstock’s cassock look as if it had scarlet fever. Gave choirmaster Kannegiesser’s organ pipes sore throats. The Rose Gorge below Arbogast House vibrated with dry rustlings and cracklings, like short-wave interruptions to hair electricity, became an infected system of blood vessels; fat bunches of red were stuck to the rose buds and stems: Frau von Stern had never, she said, not even with the Tsar in the summer of ’17, seen so many ladybirds. ‘Where you have ladybirds, you also get greenfly,’ said the pest controllers as they fanned out but could not get the plague under control.

Christian’s unit was to contribute to the national economy, was put on work detail. It was Samarkand again, but this time the open-cast brown-coal mines and he wasn’t there as a convict. The company was allocated a shed in the treeless lunar landscape churned up by excavators and lorries. The beds were made with fresh lemon-yellow linen. Christian’s job was as an assistant on a power shovel. The soldiers were collected from the shed by a lorry and, when the shift was over, brought back from the shovels and slag-transporters. Christian had been put on night shift, that was where they were most short of workers.

The summer drew on, the ladybirds disappeared as suddenly as they had arrived. The City Cleansing Department swept up the remains of the seven-spot beetles, whole tons of red wings and black bodies. The eating and cooking apples ripened, there promised to be a good crop of Gute Louise, even though that year the pear trees on the slopes of the Elbe from Loschwitz to Pillnitz had been attacked by rust. Herr Krausewitz stood in the garden of Wolfstone, chin in hand, a look of concern on his face, unable to agree with Libussa what could be done about it: water mixed with crushed walnuts and poured round the trunks of the affected trees did nothing to get rid of it, nor did any of the pesticides from the chemist’s. Clouds of Wofatox enveloped the trees, leaving a grey deposit on the leaves.

The message in Meno’s typewriter had been a forgery.

In September Ulrich was fifty, Niklas in October. The parties were held at home, with just family and friends.

And on one of the sunny, almost windless days in the late autumn, filled with calm warmth, like an Anker glass with cider, Richard took the postbox-yellow oilcan off the black shelf, went over to the Hispano-Suiza, poured a drop here, smeared some over a running part there, while Stahl, his hands in the pockets of his work overalls, stood staring up at the sky spread out over Lohmen quarry like a silk parasol, said, ‘Finished. Really, it’s finished, Gerhart. Can’t wait to see how it works.’

Sputnik magazine, a digest of the Soviet press, was banned.

And on another late-autumn day, which would turn into a sunny, almost windless late-autumn day, there was loud knocking on the door of the House with a Thousand Eyes at four in the morning. Still half asleep, Meno groped his way into the hall, where he was pushed aside by a squad of men in uniform demanding to see Herr and Frau Stahl. Stahl came out of their bedroom, bleary, his sparse remaining hair tousled, Sabine behind him.