Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

(Schubert) ‘But there must be hope! You can’t live without hope.’

(Eschschloraque) ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to learn to do that. — To stand on the Mastersingers’ shore, the place of the age-old new melody, everyone remains in his place in the firmly established order, time, the sorceress who is eternally changing everything, powerless!’

(Emcee) ‘There he is, part of that power, misunderstood, that ever evil wills and ever works for good, listen now, ladies and gentlemen, to the “Mephisto Waltz” rendered by our enchanting big band from Dresden.’

(Albin Eschschloraque) ‘Not do anything at all. I just want to … sit here and brood. I wish I were a hen.’

(Judith Schevola) ‘You’re keeping for yourself the whole repugnance people feel for a former idol.’

(Albin Eschschloraque) ‘Should I call you Fräulein Anna Lysis?’

(Eschschloraque) ‘You can’t stay calm, my son, when the world’s revolving round the quiet axis of your room.’

(Sinner-Priest) ‘You can imagine what I felt when my boss wanted to proceed according to the principle of that nation I hate. That in superstitious madness actually knocks the noses off statues so that they won’t come alive.’

(Barsano) ‘We believed that all people were basically good. If we gave them enough to eat, somewhere to live, clothes to wear, then they wouldn’t have to be bad any more. An error, what an error!’

But Meno refused to. The case in the station contained manuscripts, including one of Judith Schevola’s, with corrections; irreplaceable. A sense of duty, fear, curiosity and adventure: he circumambulated the station, went back in by a side entrance. Since he could show a valid ticket, he was allowed through. Meno’s briefcase was under a bench, guarded by an old woman who lived nearby and had come to hand out tea and biscuits. She had seen Meno and the other man being led away.

‘Have you ever seen anything like that before?’

‘No,’ Meno said.

‘That only happened during the war and on the seventeenth of June. You’re young — in your place I’d go too.’

Meno went home. The tram was full of rumours, people didn’t hold their tongues any more, they didn’t seem bothered whether anyone who would report them was listening. Dresden lay in the chill shade, heavy with mourning, of the desolation of its autumnal days; the lamps swung over the quiet streets of the district, full of the whisper of swaying branches.

Swirls of wind twisted the treetops on Mondleite, bounced up from the roof of the House with a Thousand Eyes, which creaked and groaned. Pedro Honich had already put the flag in the holder outside his window. The television was on at Libussa’s. The scent of vanilla tobacco was feeling its way through the gaps under the doors even though Meno had put cloth draught excluders made by Anne and Barbara over them. Someone was walking restlessly up and down in the conservatory. Meno opened the door onto the balcony and went out, followed by Chakamankabudibaba, who sniffed the misty air. From the park came the smell of decaying wood, which mixed with that of humus and wet leaves in the garden. Meno stared at the city, the visible bend of the Elbe, on which a gently bobbing lighter was drifting: so that, too, was time, someone had to keep an eye open for currents and signs, people needed coal or gravel or whatever the ship there was carrying. He went back into the room. How peaceful his desk was: his microscope and the typewriter with a blank sheet of paper still in it. He sat down, tried to work, but his thoughts kept slipping away. He stood up, he had to talk to someone.

By now Libussa and the ship’s doctor, who gave Meno a vigorous wave through the wooden-bead curtain, had switched on the radio.

‘Shouldn’t you be in Berlin?’ Lange asked, surprised.

‘Couldn’t get through, Central Station’s been closed.’

Libussa found a Czech station, translated. Hardly anything new, qualified expressions. The familiar sonorous announcer’s voice on Radio Dresden didn’t say a word about the events. Libussa switched off and remained silent. Suddenly Meno couldn’t say anything any more, he sat, hunched up underneath the collection of knots. He wanted to see Niklas.

‘Don’t endanger yourself, lad,’ Lange called out to him as he left.

The Heinrichstrasse villas seemed to have withdrawn into an ivy-wreathed dream, the few lighted windows were not looking out into the street but at the Land of Yesterday; the rhododendrons and brambles on the fences between the rusted gates seemed to be made of rampant silhouette paper. The light was on in the Griesels’ apartment; the first floor, the apartments of André Tischer and the Stenzel Sisters, was dark. Richard was on duty, Anne probably out, at a meeting of some opposition group in Neustadt or over in Loschwitz, in Kügelgenstrasse … Or at Matz Griebel’s with his more or less anarchist artist friends.

Ezzo came to the door; his violin stuck under his chin, he tightened his bow, tried a few strokes while Meno was hanging his coat on the coat hooks opposite Reglinde’s former room. Ezzo left him there. Far away in time the abbot’s clock and the grandfather clock in the living room asked the question and the silvery voice of the Viennese clock in the music room replied. Meno waited by the flowers engraved on the frosted glass of the living-room door, careful not to let his shadow fall on them, then he knocked briefly and cautiously pressed the handle down. Niklas, standing by the stove, nodded. The Oldest German Cathedrals was centrally placed on the table with a few Dehio volumes round it. Meno tried to say something but couldn’t. Art books open, warmth, then some music later … Niklas’s universe.

(Barsano) ‘At night the footsteps. At night the scuttling of the rats along the corridors of the Lux. A bakery at the bottom attracted them. They were there during the day as well, weren’t bothered by us. Lifts went, lifts stopped. At night we lay awake and counted the seconds the lift motor ran. Counted the seconds the footsteps were coming closer.’

(Eschschloraque) ‘A time will come when it’s diabolic for the rituals of uniformity — I’m being imprecise, Rohde, and you’re not telling me off. The concept of ritual contains within it the concept of uniformity. Heheh. Diabolus: the one who throws things into confusion. To put it bluntly: the eternal revolution is devilish, the eternal change of the existing state of things …’

(Barsano) ‘Mother was taken to be interrogated. The examining judge threatened her with the stick. The other swore. Coarse, filthy swear words. Russian is a language that’s rich in swear words. Mother asked whether she was at the Gestapo. The two started swearing at her again. Then she stood up and said, You haven’t served in the army, comrade. I’ll show you how to swear properly.’

(Eschschloraque) ‘… time, therefore. Time is the devil’s work, Rohde, for it is the instrument of change … the glue to which we’re stuck … That is why we’re living in a divinely ordained state, for we have undertaken to abolish time. Woe betide us if we fail … I see an age of the present dawning in which all change will consist of the eternal recurrence of the ever-same, Diabolus will plunge into everyday routine, his affair will no longer be change but quiescence, uniformity, the mill that grinds all great or would-be great stones to powder on the paths of an eternally unchanging present …’

(Barsano) ‘Which struck the others dumb and they stopped swearing. They started asking Mother about intimate matters, it had nothing to do with the charge, they wanted to know everything, and that in my presence.’

(Eschschloraque) ‘… which would mean that God had become the devil, had merged with him. God is the devil.’