Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘Rosenträger’s going to speak,’ Meno said cautiously.

‘It’s good to hear something different for once. Schiffner’s forbidden us to go but, my dear colleagues’ — Klemm stopped and lifted up his face — ‘I for my part have finally decided to start being brave.’

The Church of the Holy Cross, a programme of music by the choir’s former director, Rudolf Mauersberger. The people were so tightly packed that a middle-aged woman close to Meno fainted but didn’t fall down. The motet: ‘Now is the town laid waste’. But (and that was characteristic, Meno thought) the terrible things had to be beautifully expressed, resolved in euphony — the transparent tongue of the boys’ choir started to beguile their ears — and harmony, within a framework of elegant proportions and established modes; people then called it traditional, even though it could well be something different. Ethereal voices, the simplicity of the burnt-out church a contrast, the roughcast walls, in the candles’ halo above the boys’ heads the measured gestures of the conductor evoking mourning, negotiating hurdles, which the choir’s veil of transfiguration around the supporting tones of the Jehmlich organ followed with childlike innocence.

Rosenträger entered the pulpit. A perceptible movement went through the people who had been gripped by the music, upper bodies leant forward (like the ominous, tumescent turn of a carnivorous plant towards a potential prey that has unknowingly touched the outer signal circuit), necks were craned, hands nervously felt prayer books, fingered the brims of hats as if they were prayer beads; the clouds of breath from their mouths became invisible and passed, when the clearly articulating voice of the preacher was at last heard, like a sigh of relief through the flickering gloom of the nave. He spoke about the thirteenth of February. Meno sensed that that wasn’t what people had hoped for — and what Madame Eglantine had perhaps meant with the hesitantly spoken word ‘events’; they had expected memories of the air raid, war, devastation and the past, but had hoped for words about the present. When they did come, it was as if a flash of lightning went round the galleries, so quickly did the congregation lift up their faces to look at Rosenträger, whom Barsano, as Meno recalled, had designated a ‘main enemy’. The lean man with the straggly, casually combed hair calmly said things people would previously only have dared to whisper in private or have kept to themselves. Meno kept being made physically aware of the way people froze when Rosenträger spoke of ‘aberrations’, of the sole and indivisible truth that could only be found in God and not in political parties; when he used the comparison of a mirror that didn’t reflect fine wishes but realities people would prefer not to see (out of ingrained habit Meno was not sure whether the image worked). The man, Meno decided after some time observing him, was neither a gambler carried by the wave of presumed gratitude beyond the sands of inhibition necessary for survival, nor a self-important windbag for whom, when he mounted the pulpit as God’s representative in ecclesiastical dress, a little sun of vanity rose. He expressed simple truths in simple words. That he was doing it here, in Holy Cross Church in front of an audience of a few thousand, was a necessity and it was by no means merely the way of seeing things of an ‘isolated clique’, as Barsano called those who attended services in the church. Here someone was breaking through the barrier of silence, of looking the other way, of fear; Rosenträger was afraid, Meno could tell that from the pastor’s movements, which were more agitated than might in the long run be good for his authority in the eyes of cool observers — but the people, as Meno could see, sucked in his words in greedy silence. Perhaps it was precisely the fact that Rosenträger’s bearing was not that of a Party official crudely and dictatorially handing down judgments from the clouds of the laws governing the progress of history; Rosenträger adjusted his spectacles, spoke without notes, searching for words, in an upright posture, the people heard no empty words; he was afraid — and still spoke.

Richard had asked Robert to stop before the bend to the quarry. He wanted to do the last few metres on foot, with Anne’s sarcasm behind him, true, but, to make up for that, in glorious anticipation of enjoying a long eye-to-eye; and he also wanted to amaze Robert, his seen-it-all son (being overwhelmed was good for people). How clear the air was — spring sketches; a bird on a branch shook its feathers, sending down a shower of alarmed drops of water.

Jerzy, the sculptor, was hanging from a pulley, busy on the ear of his giant Karl Marx, and waved to Richard. From the other end of the quarry came the sound of furious hammering: Dietzsch was shaping his ‘work in progress’ as he called it, ‘The Thumb’, but didn’t wave back to Richard. The shed was in the lovely disorder of children’s games. Stahl, in reflective and self-ironic mood, had once commented on work that was done with enthusiasm and for its own sake because it was being done by grown men disguised as boys; brightness threaded in through the gaps in the planks. His car was waiting under the tarpaulin. ‘Hispano-Suiza,’ Richard whispered, the very sound delighted him. Repeating the name, his eye fell on some pliers Stahl had used. Nothing was left of his aeroplane, the ‘SAGE’ as Gerhart had christened it after the first letters of ‘Sabine’ and ‘Gerhart’, but a few chalk marks, partly washed away by the rain that got in, partly scuffed by Richard’s shoes, indicating the former places of tools and material. The children had been sent to children’s homes, in different towns, that much Richard had learnt from Sperber. Which towns? Embarrassed, Sperber had looked away and shrugged his shoulders.

For a few seconds Richard enjoyed the sight of the postbox-yellow oilcan on the black shelf. The way it shone. How immediate it was and how calm its immediacy. Then he went to the car and pulled off the tarp.

The Hispano-Suiza had been demolished with professional precision. The leather seats had been slit, the steering wheel, the column sawn off, had been stuck into the upholstery of the driver’s seat. Richard opened the bonnet. The leads, the copper arteries that seemed so alive, the nickel-plated fuel veins, had been hammered flat and cut up — with enjoyment, oh yes, one could sense that. The engine — concreted in; lying in the solidified mass as if in a stone case — Richard could take them out easily — were the bolt cutters he’d lost when they’d tried to steal a Christmas tree. Dangling from them, neatly attached between the two blades as if they were a birthday present, was a note on which ‘With socialist greetings’ had been typed.

Splints, padded protection for legs, leather straps: even though it was an old-fashioned version, Christian had already seen the seating along the tiled walls during his periods of practical experience in hospitals, similarly the glass cases with neatly arranged instruments: steel cylinders of various sizes cut off at an angle, dressing forceps, kidney bowls, clamps. From the next room, the warmly heated kitchen gleaming with copper, came the rich sweet smell of cakes. The honey extractors rattled and rumbled as Pancake and Christian turned the cranks to remove the wax. Towards evening Schanett let them go with a shoebox full of vanilla slices topped with caramelized almonds.

One April evening, there were more people than usual out for a walk, Pastor Magenstock put up the call to action of an environmental group in the glassed-in board outside the church, a bright orange notice, a magnet to the eye, between quotations from the Bible and another one about donations for the Third World. Meno stopped and watched Herr Hähnchen, the district policeman, reluctantly approach, looking down at the ground and up at the sky fading in floral colours, placing his hands alternately behind his back or over his imposing stomach, thumbs in the Adidas braces visible under his uniform jacket. ‘You know that you shouldn’t do that,’ Herr Hähnchen said after he’d read the notice thoroughly through the spectacles he’d made heavy weather of unfolding. By now Herr Kannegiesser, the organist, his face bright red with alarm, had come to stand in front of Pastor Magenstock, taking deep breaths as he protected him; the tall, fat district policeman and the short, skinny church musician looked each other up and down in amazement for a while.