Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

The whole town seemed to be in motion, pushing and shoving, things quickly breaking out in the darkness, violence kept under control by the street lamps, perhaps also by the civilizing power of other people’s looks (violence, Meno thought, that grew remorselessly since you couldn’t see the eyes of the people you were swearing at, elbowing, jostling, hitting); groups formed but only to disperse within the next few minutes; the streams of people seemed to be following the most cautious changes in conditions, perhaps just a murmured rumour, a correction in the magnetism (pushing, hoping), and at the same time to be moving aimlessly, disturbed bees whose hive had been taken away. Screaming and groaning, shouts across the dark streets, the tinkle of broken glass: had looting started already? Meno wondered, trying to keep his composure. Clinging on tight to his briefcase, he crossed the Old Market, heading for Postplatz, where he hoped to find a tram that was working. There were still a few lights on in the Zwinger restaurant, contemptuously called the ‘Guzzle-cube’ by Dresdeners, as also in the House of the Book and the fortress-like Central Post Office, built by Swedish firms. Meno was caught up in a rapidly growing swarm of people who seemed to be drawn, with moth-like instinct, to the lights, heliotropic creatures that would perhaps have been better off in the dark. A blizzard started. The theatre was in darkness, the ‘Socialism will triumph’ sign on the high-rise building had gone out. The trams had stopped, marine mammals, frozen in a ball of snow.

‘Replacement bus service,’ one of the conductors kept shouting resignedly, carefully wrapping himself up in a blanket, to the people crowding round. The bus for the 11 route left from the Press House on Julian-Grimau-Allee and was crowded; Meno saw Herr Knabe, the Krausewitzes, Herr Malthakus in his good suit with a bow tie, even Frau von Stern, who waved her senior citizen’s pass in sprightly fashion as Dietzsch helped her onto the bus and to a seat that had been vacated for her. ‘The opera, the theatre — all shut down,’ she shouted angrily to Meno. The bus took them as far as Waldschlösschenstrasse.

‘And the rest of the route? Are we to walk?’

‘Yes,’ the bus driver replied with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘I have my instructions.’

After walking for a few kilometres the little cohort that was left halted at Mordgrundbrücke. The hill before them wasn’t steep but, as they could tell in the strange brightness of the driving snow, covered with a milky sheet of ice. Halfway up a tram was stuck, frozen fast up to the top of its wheels; long, bizarrely shaped icicles were hanging down from the wires and the steep slope on the Mordgrund side of the hill.

‘A water main must have copped it,’ Malthakus said in an appreciative tone. ‘The question is, how are we going to get up there. Given that no one’s going to pull us up —’

‘A belay such as they have with roped parties in the mountains,’ said Frau von Stern. ‘We had that during the war when it was icy.’

‘— otherwise we’ll all have a nice slide and they can hack us out of the stream in the morning.’

‘I’m not going up there with my instrument anyway,’ a double-bass player from the State Orchestra declared; a French-horn player agreed. ‘Our valuable instruments.’

‘Why didn’t you leave them at the Opera, then,’ Herr Knabe asked exasperatedly.

‘What a … excuse me, but I have to say it: stupid question. I’m sure that even in these conditions your Mathematical Cabinet will be well secured, but our miserable artists’ dressing rooms?! Do you think I’d leave my instrument by itself?’

‘OK then, but have you another suggestion?’

‘We’ll just have to go up by Schillerstrasse.’

‘But the water mains run along there too. They could well have burst as well … And Buchensteig is even steeper. But don’t let me stop you going to reconnoitre. Or you can simply stay here with your valuable instruments,’ Herr Knabe said scornfully.

‘What the hell, we can just turn round and go to a hotel,’ said Herr Malthakus. ‘I’ve got a few marks on me, perhaps they’ll let us stay in the Eckberg with a down payment.’

‘You’ll be lucky,’ Meno said, ‘they’re already full with evacuees from the Johannstadt district.’

‘Look — a snow blower.’ The French-horn player pointed to the stretch of road before Kuckuckssteig.

The cold bit deeper, the cold crushed up the white clouds from the cooling towers of the power station that usually bloomed like a drunken dream: finding heaven here on earth and swelling up, with explosive clarity, thrillingly, fantastically into short-lived atmospheric mushrooms; the cold gave the iron of the pickaxes a different sound; the power station cables, usually buzzing with electricity, whispered like the strings of instruments with mutes on, seemed raw and sensitive to pain under the coating of ice; made by humans. Christian had been working for seventeen hours continuously. The trains bringing brown coal were lined up outside the power station, but the coal was frozen fast in the goods wagons and had to be blasted out; the detonations briefly drowned the rattle of the power hammers that had been hurriedly brought from the Federal Republic. It wasn’t pleasant to be one of the squad whose job it was to move the wagons out of the way when the explosive charge hadn’t detonated.

‘We’ve two candidates,’ Nip said to the drivers, who were getting their bachelors to draw lots.

‘Hoffmann or Kretzschmar, who’s going?’ He tossed a coin, said, ‘Kretzschmar.’

‘Stay here,’ Christian said, ‘I’m going.’

‘Why?’ Nip asked, flabbergasted.

‘Things’ll go wrong with him.’

‘All right then,’ Nip said, ‘it doesn’t bother me. I’ve nothing against heroes.’

‘Don’t fool yourself, Nemo. Your knees are trembling.’

‘Yes, but you’re staying here all the same.’ Nothing was going to happen, Christian decided. –

A helicopter landed, letting out a few big shots, who went here and there, waving their hands about nervously, clicking walkie-talkies, talking with the crisis committee of the Brown Coal Combine (plans were unrolled, held their attention for a moment, then there was something new and the plans, hurt, rolled up again and just stayed there); decisionmakers whose movements in front of the power station and the setting sun behind it seemed to Christian like a ritual dance of Red Indians. Before the decisionmakers climbed back into their helicopter, they stood motionless, arms akimbo, by the coal wagons, a collection of sad, impotent men.

30 December: the evacuees came out of the town on army lorries labouring up the track that had been chipped free up the Mordgrund; more water kept running down the hill and freezing; gravel and ash didn’t stop the route from turning into a dangerous skid-pan. Richard saw companies of soldiers and some of the staff from Grauleite swinging pickaxes to keep the way clear; some acquaintances were spreading grit. Where was the water coming from? The power cut — it was the south of the Republic that was said to be affected, the capital with its special fuse protection was still bathed in the pre-New Year glow — had allowed the water to freeze in many of the pipes, causing them to burst. But that was ice? Richard thought, as he strode through the snow beside Niklas observing the water flowing over the road; more kept bubbling up and quickly turned to ice, those spreading grit couldn’t keep up with it. Niklas was pulling a handcart with bandages and medicines they’d taken from his practice. Richard was quietly cursing, he’d thought he was going to spend a relaxing New Year with punch, conversations, some post-Christmas reflections, a walk to Philalethes’ View to watch the blaze of rockets over the city and to drink to the New Year … Anne was still at Kurt’s in Schandau and of course there were no trains running; they’d arranged for Richard to phone the pastor of St John’s (Kurt still wasn’t connected) but the line was dead — that too, then. Now Anne was stuck in Schandau and he was trudging through ice and snow with Niklas to attend to the sick — and there were probably some waiting there already. They were going to the military hospital, that was where Barsano and his crisis team had set up their base, people were being evacuated there from the new developments: Prohlis, Reick, Gorbitz, Johannstadt.