Uwe Tellkamp: The Tower

The lamp above him flickered on again. From above, out of the darkness below the tunnel and the Sibyllenhof, the descending funicular crept towards them, reaching the loop where the track split and one could move out of the way of the other. The driver was a motionless shadow in the passing capsule, which had no passengers, and he replied to the greybeard conductor’s greeting with a brief nod before the carriage continued down and disappeared from view.

Christian remembered that it was in Cobweb House that he had first heard something about Poe; Meno and Vogelstrom had been looking at illustrations to one of Poe’s stories. He particularly remembered one print — Vogelstrom’s needle had etched an elaborate picture of a castle rising up into the darkness of the nocturnal countryside; then one of Prince Prospero and his retinue of a thousand ladies and knights in the castle with the welded bolts on the doors; he saw them again, as he had all those years ago under Vogelstrom’s thin, slim-fingered hand, strolling and chatting, as if the company were alive and playing their merry games, while outside the plague was raging, devastating the land, as if Prospero were passing through the rooms amid the frenzy of a masked ball — music swelled, and the chimes of the ebony clock in the black chamber echoed and faded in the vastness of the castle, and in the six other chambers the people were dancing, for Prince Prospero would not countenance sadness, and the cries of the despairing populace could no longer be heard over the music, the singing and laughter, the barking of the dogs outside the gates.

The carriage was slowing down, coasting the last few metres. Lost in his thoughts and memories, Christian had hardly noticed it enter the upper tunnel, which, with its whitewashed walls, was brighter than the lower one, he had merely glanced automatically, but without really taking anything in, at the upper station with its cheerful bright paint and gracefully curving roof, the red-brick building with the neon sign: Funicular Railway , the machine room and the waiting room where you could examine photographs of earlier models and technical details in a glass display case. The funicular came to a halt, shuddering gently. The doors opened with a clatter. Christian slung his bag over his shoulder and, still immersed in thought, went up the shallow steps of the station towards the exit gate.

The conductor shuffled off in the direction of the waiting room, felt for a button concealed in the wall; there was a buzz, the gate opened and Christian went out. He was home, in the Tower.

‘Great that I caught you. I was thinking I’d have to come back again.’

‘Meno! You’ve come to meet me?’

‘Anne has had to find somewhere else for Robert and you to stay tonight. You’re sleeping at my place.’

‘So many guests?’ Christian only asked so that he could hide his delight behind a casual-sounding question. He already knew. The vast amount of baking ingredients that had been procured during the last few weeks and piled up in the larder of Caravel indicated the number of guests they expected for the birthday party — and had convinced him that coming home to stay in Caravel, except to take part in the rehearsals that would take place mainly at the Tietzes’, would be ill-advised; that is, if he didn’t want to irritate Anne, in her nervous state, by hanging about, or risk exposure to her suspicious gaze and end up, once excuses were no longer possible, being sent off to Konsum or Holfix larded with shopping lists, or to face never-ending stacks of dishes in the kitchen.

‘There were at least thirty of us for coffee this afternoon and the official celebrations only start later; more people are sure to be coming then.’

They were walking along Sibyllenleite.

‘And where’s Robert sleeping?’

‘At the Tietzes’.’

So his brother would be spending the night in Evening Star. Christian put his mittens back on and thought of the House with a Thousand Eyes, where he would be spending the night, in a quite different atmosphere from that at home in Caravel.

‘I decided to come and meet you so that you didn’t go home first. Anne has already taken your cello with her to the Felsenburg.’

Christian nodded and looked at his uncle, who had taken his hat off and removed the snowflakes with a few flicks. ‘Since when have you been wearing that?’

‘Anne bought it for me in Exquisit. Said it ought to suit me. A good style too.’ Meno looked at the writing on the sweatband. ‘A delivery arrived from Yugoslavia. Anne said people were queuing all the way back to Thälmannstrasse, at least fifty metres. They didn’t have one for your father.’ He put his hat back on. ‘Did everything work out with the barometer?’

‘As agreed. Two hundred and fifty marks. Lange even cleaned it up and polished it again.’

‘Good. Shall I take your bag?’

‘Oh, it’s not that heavy, but thanks, Meno. Apart from the barometer, it’s only dirty laundry.’

They came to Turmstrasse, the main through-road of the district, and from which it derived its popular name of the ‘Tower’. Meno walked with more measured steps than Christian; he had taken out a briar pipe with a curved stem and a spherical bowl and was filling it from a leather pouch. Christian raised his nose and sniffed, sucking in the vanilla fragrance that mingled with the aroma of figs and cedar-wood. Alois Lange, a former ship’s doctor and Meno’s neighbour in the House with a Thousand Eyes, got a box of the tobacco every year from the deputy chairman of the Copenhagen Nautical Academy, and he gave half to Meno — the ship’s doctor had once saved the deputy chairman’s life and thus, to the annoyance of Lange’s wife, Libussa, there was never a shortage of tobacco in the House with a Thousand Eyes. A match flared up, illuminating Meno’s lean, pale features and bluish five-o’clock shadow; the reflection flickered in his brown eyes, which were warmed by a few flashes of green — they were Anne’s eyes, and those of her other brother, Ulrich, the eyes of the Rohdes; Christian had inherited them too.

‘Did you get through all right? The Eleven was cancelled this morning. It was an hour before the replacement came. The curses at the stop’ — Meno sucked at his pipe to get it going — ‘would have been something for “Look & Listen”. And the Six had a diversion.’ His pipe still wasn’t going, he lit another match.

‘I noticed.’

‘Anne was going to ring you, but the lines didn’t seem to be working or something, I don’t know what was broken again — she couldn’t get through at all.’ His pipe was finally going, and he blew out puff after puff of smoke.

‘Yesterday it snowed like mad higher up, the snow’s more than a metre deep in Zinnwald and Altenberg, I was getting worried the bus wouldn’t go. Near Karsdorf we had to get out and help the driver shovel the snow away. The brushwood barrier in the fields had fallen over, and all the new snow had been blown onto the road.’

Meno nodded and gave his nephew, who was almost as tall as he was and was tramping through the powder snow a little in front, a thoughtful look. ‘How are things at school? Are you managing?’

‘Pretty well so far. People stare at me a bit because I’m from Dresden. Civics is as usual.’

‘And the teacher? Is he dangerous?’

‘Hard to say. He’s also our principal. If you just regurgitate what he says, you’re left in peace. The Russian teacher’s pretty devious. One of the quiet types, very observant, a Party fanatic. There’s something feline about him, he creeps round the corridors and checks on us in the hostel. Today he turned up in white gloves and felt in all the corners to see if they were really clean. I’m sure everyone in the next room missed their bus — he found an apple core under the lockers, and they had to clean the place again.’