Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

Meno said yes.

‘It will be at one of their meetings. We will contact you. Two Mondleite, isn’t it?’ Again the smile appeared and again Meno had the impression it was a foreign body hanging on Arbogast’s waxen features. ‘Or do you have a telephone?’

‘Only one that is used by all the tenants.’

‘Then we’ll write. We have nothing free for the rest of this year or next January, if I have remembered aright. But there should be something in February and certainly in March.’ Arbogast waved his stick up and down and clicked his tongue at Kastshey, who shook himself vigorously, sending out a whirling spray of white that plastered Arbogast’s face and spectacles with patches of snow. Then Kastshey dashed off. The Baron waved his stick angrily at his departing rear and left Meno without saying goodbye.

Our friend Arachne? An odd choice of words, and Meno, who was walking on, confused but also pleased by the meeting, would have spent a long time thinking it over had a squad of soldiers not appeared out of the snowstorm when he was level with Arbogast’s observatory. A corporal with a thick Saxon accent was in charge. ‘Right wheel! — March!’ The squad turned off the street onto the path that led to the bridge, followed by the bored and arrogant look of a first lieutenant. A few cars, which Meno only noticed now, were held up behind the soldiers. The soft snow absorbed the echoes of the noises, the voice of the corporal and the tread of the boots seemed to be packed in cotton wool.

‘Detachment — halt!’ the first lieutenant ordered. ‘Get the men to repeat the manoeuvre, Comrade Corporal. That wasn’t a precise right wheel. That was as slack as an old tart’s tits.’

More cars joined the queue, pedestrians too who had come out of Sibyllenleite and Fichtenleite and were on their way to work. They waited in silence as the squad performed an about-turn, stamping across the whole width of Turmstrasse as they did so. Meno watched them. Some of them waited with their chins jutting out aggressively, watching the soldiers’ manoeuvre out of eyes screwed up into narrow slits. Most, however, stood there with heads bowed, hands buried in their coat pockets, making patterns in the snow with the toes of their shoes. The driver of the car at the front of the queue looked at his watch irritatedly several times, drummed with his fingers on the steering wheel. One of the cars behind sounded its horn impatiently. The lieutenant broke off the manoeuvre again and strolled, clapping his hands together behind his back, as if undecided what to do, towards the car whose horn had sounded. A brief exchange could be heard, imperious on the part of the lieutenant, abashed on that of the driver. The lieutenant returned, putting a notebook back into the inside pocket of his coat, nodded to the corporal, at which the squad continued the right wheel. When the soldiers set off down the path to the bridge, the traffic jam was released. Intimidated by the behaviour of the lieutenant, whom he would meet again at the control point at the end of the path, Meno checked the papers in his briefcase again: ID card, invitation from the old man, certified hectographic copy of the contract. He had a quick look around — anyone setting off along the path to the bridge was going to East Rome and there was very little that was regarded as more suspicious in the district than a visit ‘over there’, as they would say, their scorn expressed in the avoidance of its real name. People had no great opinion of that district, or of anything connected with it — in general people avoided Grauleite; it was on the corner of Fichtenleite and Turmstrasse and it was where the barracks for the guards stood — they were called ‘the Greys’ after the street name; there also, hidden behind some trees, was a concrete bunker with tall directional antennae on it. People said they oversaw all those who marched along Grauleite, they saw through all those who walked along Grauleite.

Three-metre-high walls ran along either side of the path to the bridge. After twenty metres there was a gate, the surrounds of which reached as high as the walls, and, beside it, a red-and-white-striped sentry box; the guard had shouldered his Kalashnikov as soon as Meno appeared and shouted, demanding to know what Meno wanted and to see his identity card. Then he pressed a bell push in the sentry box and the door opened.

‘Who are you going to visit?’ The lieutenant gave Meno, who was standing at the window of the checkpoint holding his hat, an appraising look and, with a casual gesture, took off his gloves.

‘I have an appointment with Herr Georg Altberg, eight o’clock.’ Altberg was the real name of the Old Man of the Mountain, but hardly anyone in the literary world in Dresden used it when they talked about him among themselves. Meno was surprised at how strange the name sounded, unfamiliar and oddly unsuitable. The lieutenant stretched out a hand for a binder that he was given by a corporal who was sitting at a telephone table below a board with light diodes. Rumour had it that the binder listed every one of the inhabitants of East Rome, with their name, address, function and photo, making them easy for the duty officer to identify, so that no unauthorized person could slip in. The lieutenant ran his finger down the page and showed something to the corporal, probably a telephone number, since the latter immediately drew one of the beige phones to him, dialled and handed the receiver to the lieutenant, who, after a short exchange, nodded and pushed Meno’s identity card back out on the little turntable. ‘That’s in order, you may pass. Make out a permit for him Comrade Corporal. How long will your visit last?’ the officer asked, turning to Meno.

‘I can’t say at the moment, it’s a business meeting.’

‘Take a one-third form,’ the lieutenant ordered. The corporal took a form out of a pigeonhole that was full of neatly ordered papers, inserted it with a carbon and a sheet of paper in the typewriter and started to hack out the permit, letter by letter, on the machine beside the red telephone, which was on the far right, below the light-diode board. There were one-eighth, one-quarter, one-third, one-half and full permits; they were for fractions of twenty-four hours. As far as Meno knew, only residents had unlimited permits. He waited. The two-finger system of the corporal, a well-fed, sandy-haired lad with peasant’s hands, did not seem very efficient. If he mistyped a letter the whole process would begin again, and he would be given another chance to watch the typist’s tongue gradually make his cheek bulge and the lieutenant twitch slightly every time the corporal hit a key. The officer was standing there quietly, sipping coffee out of a plastic mug, and observing Meno. The corporal then began to fiddle with the light-diode board. Behind him were a shelf with keys, a sealed cabinet, a portrait of Brezhnev with a black ribbon across the upper left corner. On the table beside the lieutenant was Snow Crystal , a volume of short stories by Georg Altberg.

‘Signature, one-third permit, eight-hour stay.’ The corporal rotated the form and a ballpoint pen through the window. ‘In the box under “Permit-holder”.’ Meno put his hat back on, picked up the pen but was so agitated that his signature came out as a scrawl. He folded the carbon copy and put it in his briefcase with his identity card. The barrier beyond the checkpoint was raised.

At the other end of the bridge a few soldiers were engaged in shovelling snow and knocking off ice. Meno pulled his hat down tighter and kept his coat collar up by fastening the button to the loop on the lapel; there was a bitter, raw wind, constantly blowing snow over the studded cast-iron plates on which he was walking, playing with the bare bulbs that hung down from the wires between the railings, which were well over six-foot high, plucking at the steel hawsers that secured the arch between the slopes as if they were harp strings, and producing a dark, singing sound, now and then shot through with a violent crack, as when ice breaks.