Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘Dear Herr Rohde, I can’t get our discussion out of my mind. I became agitated and you, or so it seemed to me, remained unimpressed in a way that disturbed me because I am familiar with it from situations that make me seem powerless and the person facing me fairly powerful. You had to reject my pieces, you said, and left it to me to read, between the lines and behind the reason that was clear to both of us, a different one, less edifying for the modicum of author’s vanity that remains to me, for you did not state it expressly and, on the one hand, I don’t know you well enough to see your restraint as other than reserve, on the other you are an author yourself; and an author who, as far as I am aware, works precisely, so you know how, at this sensitive stage — the book is finished but not yet out — one weighs every word. I would like to tell you again, this time in writing, what your ability to listen at our meeting instigated (I apologize that that turned it largely into a monologue); it is important to me that it should not remain in the transient medium of the spoken word. A story that I, rather presumptuously, do not call my own for the sole reason that, with variations, it applies to so many people of my age. — No. I must break off. Please excuse me. I will not continue this letter … I’m so tired, I find all this so exhausting … Yet I will still post this letter to you; I know that sounds confused but, to be honest, I hope you will visit me again … Do you really consider the book a failure?’

Meno lowered the letter. He thought. The Old Man of the Mountain had not had a fit of anger, Meno hadn’t noticed the agitation he mentioned or it had arisen after he’d left. On the contrary, the old man had nodded and put on a dreamy smile which had given his face with the high, Slav cheekbones a mischievous touch; the parchment-pale skin, creased with many wrinkles, had even started to glow as if the old man had not merely expected but had hoped for Meno’s restraint. Yes, Meno thought, it was as if he had hoped for Schiffner’s shake of the head — like an accolade, an honour. ‘You … don’t regret that a year’s work has been for nothing?’

‘Well, Herr Rohde … no. Of course I suspected it might happen, you know that, your words, so carefully chosen to break it to me gently, tell me that … And now you’re wondering why I’m laughing? Because once again I’ve noticed how much vanity there still is inside me. How the rejection rankles, despite the tactfulness with which you step delicately round it, how it gnaws at me and festers. Festers, yes, that’s the right word. It was three years’ work, by the way, hard work; I’m pretty exhausted. And then I have to laugh. Just laugh. At myself, at my face, that’s staring at you, at my head, that looks as if it’s made out of papier mâché, a real rag-and-bone ghost’s head fit only for the puppet-theatre, with fluffy bits of wool instead of hair — don’t you think?’

‘Please, Herr Altberg, I’m …’

‘Yes, yes, I know, you’re sorry. Incidentally, so am I. I can imagine how hard it must be to have to come and tell me … Who enjoys being a bearer of bad tidings, eh? But I’m forgetting my duties as host. Would you like coffee or tea?’

‘Now I am able to continue the letter. I don’t want to send it as it is. I’ve had a temperature, I had to stay in bed when it was at its worst. Dr Fernau, my GP, will make a house call, but after that he won’t come again if it’s under forty degrees. Mere trifles, he says, up to that limit the body can help itself. I was tired and exhausted, had to think a lot. Now I’ve more or less recovered and I don’t want to give up that soon. Your questions have brought so many things back to mind …

‘Am I outside, with no one to watch over me? In a landscape of deep snow? For I dig my hands into the white and see myself sink to my knees trying to match my father, who lifts up the ball and carefully places it on top of the other one, giving the snow-woman a torso; with a large wooden comb she made herself, my sister has already traced the pleats in her skirt, now she’s waiting for the third ball, mine, to fix straw hair into it, make the eyes with little lumps of coal, stick a carrot nose in and cover it with a battered pot that’s usually in the shed and full of bulbs in the summer. The enamel has split off in several places, the patches look like black islands, which makes me say: Gundel, we’ll sail to the South Sea in it. With no one to watch over us. No one to keep a watch on us. But Father’s standing beside me, my face is still stinging from the smack he gave me, because it won’t do that I, the son of the district pharmacist Hubert Altberg, do not have the strength to lift a measly little ball of snow up onto two others. His big red hand. On the back of his hand dry skin from freckles, tufts of sandy hair on his fingers, thick; Father’s fist (just catch a sniff of that, one tap and you’re done for, eh?) looks as if it’s got fur on. Education with cats: he throws the kittens in the rainwater barrel behind the house — either they manage to scramble out of the water, which is so good for the flowers in the beds in the front garden, or they’re sucked down into the depths, in which soft shadows play for minutes on end. The kitten that managed it is grasped by the scruff of the neck and held over the water again; Father looks seriously at the struggling paws, seems to be wondering whether my sister and I, who have to stay by the barrel, understand what he’s telling us; finally he swings his arm out to the side (but not always; sometimes he throws the kitten back in and holds it under water with his thumb until the end), opens his fist over the ground and only then may we pick the cat up and rub it dry.’

Meno was impressed by Altberg’s ability to transform his look. The thousands of wrinkles and creases seemed to be there for the sole purpose of producing every possible facial expression with the precision of a woodcut; the light in the spacious study, which cast imperious shadows, only served to intensify that impression. A piece of acting? That was not how it seemed to Meno; every emotion that appeared on the old man’s face seemed to be genuinely there at that moment and every one was unmistakable. Essences of emotion: at those words he could see in his mind’s eye the walnut pharmacy cabinets beside which the old man had walked up and down, the brown and white phials with their many-coloured contents, labels with rounded corners and ornate inscriptions in iron-gall ink, the precision balance on a shelf above the desk. The old man threw the manuscript into a drawer, muttering something in a tone of contempt rather than resignation that alarmed Meno. The housekeeper came, bringing coffee, hot milk and a basket with biscuits, reproachfully held out to Altberg a scarf that he wound round his neck with an expression of disgust, took a china mortar and pestle off a shelf, ground tablets. ‘Your medicine, you haven’t taken it again,’ the housekeeper said in a voice weary of reminding him, of her fruitless struggle with the old man’s obstinacy. He grimaced, waved her away, went over to the window, slurped the milk after having tipped the contents of the mortar into his cup.

‘I’m not supposed to get up yet, that’s why she was so short with you. My doctor has forbidden it. She’s his ally and begrudges me the pleasure of having a visitor,’ the old man croaked with a conspiratorial expression. ‘But you can only believe half of what doctors say and if they write something down you should be extra suspicious.’ He laughed quietly to himself. ‘It was my father who said that, the owner of the Sertürn Pharmacy in Buchholz, a little town in the Riesengebirge. Unreadable prescriptions, outrageous potions! “Quacks with degrees the lot of them!” was his stock phrase. Of course, it was partly jealousy. Fernau sounded my lungs, tapped me on the chest and back: “You’ve got pneumonia, Altberg, you should be in bed, right? You’re wheezing like an old alarm clock.” And I said, “Yes, sir, Major Doctor, sir!” ’