Uwe Tellkamp: The Tower

On Mondleite the elms were stretching out their skeleton branches against the sky. It began to snow. The flakes gusted and drifted across the road, which hardly had enough room for the Ladas, Trabants and Wartburgs that squeezed up against the very edge, here and there shouldering aside the broken, weather-beaten fences, overgrown with brambles. The mantles of the lamps that were still working began to flutter, reminding Christian of the visions he’d had during evening walks of carriages appearing outside the silent houses that had withdrawn into the past, emerging from the nocturnal haziness of Mondleite and Wolfsleite on winter evenings such as this and driving up or away, inaudible in the snow — ladies with ermine muffs got out after a zealous servant had opened the carriage door, the horses snorted and shuffled in their harnesses, scenting oats and sugar, their home stable, and then the gate with the two sandstone balls on the pillars and the spiral lady’s tresses ornament carved on the arch opened, cries rang out, a chambermaid hurried down the steps to take the luggage … Christian started when he heard a barn owl screech. Meno pointed to the oak trees by the House with a Thousand Eyes, which had come into view, half hidden behind the gate and the massive copper beech. It stood at the side of a wider stretch of road, into which Mondleite led, and which, where the oak trees grew, formed a sharp bend between Mondleite and Planetenweg. Meno took out the key, but the house still seemed far away to Christian, inaccessible, woven into the beech tree branches as if in a large coral in the night. The shriek of a barn owl came from the park that fell away steeply from Mondleite and was separated from the garden of the House with a Thousand Eyes by a line of Bhutan pines, whose resinous fragrance mingled with the metallic smell of the snowy air. ‘Here we are, then.’

And Christian thought, Yes, here we are. This is your home. And when I go in, when I cross the threshold, I will be transformed. The Teerwagens across the road seemed to be having a party; a clatter of laughter came from the physicist’s apartment in the house that Christian and Meno called the ‘Elephant’ — massy, yet elegantly proportioned, undulating at the rounded corner of the façade with oyster-like balconies and rusty flowers sitting on its art nouveau railings like large-winged, melancholy moths. Meanwhile, Meno had scraped out his pipe, chewed a few mints, then gone on ahead, down the path of broken sandstone slabs that were bordered by hedges of sweet briar. He opened the door with an ornate key that had been stained with brazing solder. Christian would often see the key in his mind’s eye when he was lying in bed in his boarder’s room in Waldbrunn and think: the House with a Thousand Eyes. As he adjusted his bag over his shoulder, he felt warmed by Meno’s ‘here’: it took in the whole district, the villas all around in the darkness and snow, the gardens and the barn owl still calling in the depths of the park, the copper beech, the names. Meno switched on the hall light; the house seemed to open its eyes. Christian touched the sandstone of the arch; he also touched — a superstition, the origin of which was lost — the wrought-iron flower on the gate, a strangely shaped ornament that could often be seen up here: petals curving out in snail-like whorls round a curving stem which was also encircled by several coils of an elaborate spiral; a plant that, with its aura of beauty and danger, had already fascinated Christian as a child — sometimes he would spend half an hour contemplating the bee lily. The name came from Meno. Christian followed his uncle into the house.

The door, rounded at the top, with wrought-iron hinges, fell shut. Meno didn’t take his coat off. In a vase on the table below the hall mirror, there was a bouquet of roses; Meno carefully wrapped it in paper that was waiting there. ‘From Libussa’s conservatory,’ he said proudly. ‘You just try to get something like that in Dresden at this time of year. Just see what the others have to offer: Centraflor only has funeral wreaths, poinsettias and cyclamen.’ Meno picked up a slim package that was beside the vase.

‘Anne’s brought a few things for you, up in the cabin. What shall we do with the barometer? I promised Anne I’d be there a bit before things start.’

‘Have you any wrapping paper?’

‘In the kitchen.’

‘Then I’ll take some weather all wrapped up with me.’

‘Nicely put, my friend. Before you go, will you please check the stove? Towels are upstairs. You can have a shower if you want, the boiler’s on.’

‘Had one already, back at the hostel.’

‘I’ll leave the key here for you. I’ve also told Libussa, in case there should be a problem.’

Meno went into the living room. Not long after, Christian, who had taken his shoes and parka off, heard the clatter of the stove door and the thump of briquettes. The tongs clanged against the ash-pan, Meno came back. There was a gurgle of water from the kitchen. ‘And don’t give in to Baba if he comes begging, he’s had enough already, the fat beast. Leave him in the hall, the heat will all be gone if the living-room door’s left open, and I don’t want to see a disgusting mess like we had the day before yesterday ever again.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Calmly did his business behind the ten-minute clock. And I was only away for an hour!’

Christian laughed. Meno, checking his appearance and adjusting his tie in the mirror, growled, ‘Such a lazybones. I didn’t feel like laughing, I can tell you. And the stench! … Ah, well. Please bear that in mind.’

‘How are things at work?’

‘Later,’ said Meno at the door and, holding the slim package and the flowers he’d put in a bag, tipped his hat.

Christian took a pair of felt slippers out of the shoe cabinet by the door, started, and quickly looked round. He’d heard a creak, perhaps from the kitchen, perhaps from upstairs, where the cabin was — that was what Meno and the ship’s doctor called the bedroom where Christian was going to sleep. Perhaps the floorboards under the worn runner were moving. Christian waited, but there was nothing more to be heard. He slowly took in the familiar but still astonishing things: the dark-green, slightly faded fabric wallcovering with the plant and salamander motifs in the hall; the oval mirror, whose silvering was tarnished in places and had taken on a leaden tone; the wardrobe by the unseasoned pine stairs — as a child, he’d sometimes hidden there, among cardboard boxes with spare bulbs and work clothes, when he’d been playing ‘cops and robbers’ with Robert and Ezzo; and the hall light with the green clay toucan, which hung from it motionless and could perhaps, with its sad-looking, painted button eyes, see as far as Peru. That was where Alice and Sandor had brought it from years ago — ‘Aunt’ Alice and ‘Uncle’ Sandor, as Christian and Robert called them, although that wasn’t quite correct: Sandor was the cousin of their father, Richard Hoffmann. Christian remembered that he would see them again later that evening — they were visiting from South America; they lived in Quito, the capital of the Andean state of Ecuador; he was looking forward to it; he liked them both. So as not to disturb something for which he had no other name than the ‘spirit of the house’, the djinn with a thousand eyes that were never all asleep at the same time, Christian quietly placed the slippers in front of him on the floor, put them on and went into the living room.

As far as he could tell from a quick look round, nothing had changed since his last visit. Even the fat, cinnamon-coloured tomcat, Chakamankabudibaba, welcomed him in the same way as he had on that evening two weeks ago: blinking one eye, then yawning and showing his claws as he stretched, as if the light suddenly going on had woken him from dreams of murder. He sniffed Christian’s hand and, finding nothing edible in it, rolled over lazily onto his side to let his tummy be scratched. Christian murmured the cat’s full name, at which it made growling noises. Chakamankabudibaba, the name Meno had found in one of Wilhelm Hauff’s fairy tales, was not one you could use to call him for a long time in the evening or morning. But since the dignified feline did as he liked, a curt, crisp name, which could be called out repeatedly with no great effort, was no use anyway — if Chakamankabudibaba was hungry or, as now in the winter, wanted to sleep in the warm, he would come, if he wasn’t hungry, he wouldn’t. When Christian turned him over on his back to scratch his expansive tummy, the cat gave a grunt, of disgust, and chattered angrily, but he was far too listless to do anything about it. His four paws remained stuck up in the air, like the legs of a roast goose; the cat graciously stretched his neck and already his eyes were clouding over; he would presumably have fallen asleep in that pharaonic posture if Christian hadn’t given him a little prod so that he sank back onto his side.