Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘They can’t simply hold us here!’

‘That’s precisely what they can do. Then we’ll be stuck here and I’ll be chucked out of the clinic — it wouldn’t bother me, but there’s Robert and Christian to think of … We wouldn’t have got anywhere.’

‘But we don’t have to report people!’

‘And the price we’d pay would be our children’s future?’

‘But spying on people, is that a price we want to pay?’

Richard didn’t reply.

‘One possibility is that we stay here — and Christian and Robert can apply. As soon as they reach maturity.’

‘Do you know what you’re saying, Anne?! What would happen? Christian would be chucked out of the senior high school and Robert wouldn’t be accepted for it.’

‘Christian will be eighteen this year, Robert in two and a half years. They’ll lose time anyway. In the army. So if they have to wait for this or that —’

‘You’re assuming everything will work out the way you imagine. And if it doesn’t? If they don’t give them a visa? If the boys can’t leave the country? Do you know if they want to, anyway? We’re talking without taking what they think into account, it might just be too much for them?’

‘And perhaps not. We should discuss it with them.’

‘And what are they to do while their applications are being processed? Regine’s been waiting for two years and you know what a state she’s in. Sacked from her job with the city administration, branded as an agent of imperialism in front of all her colleagues —’

‘— and now she’s an unqualified secretary at St Joseph’s and she only got the job because you’re acquainted with the medical director. I know that.’

‘And the boys? They’d take their revenge on us by leaving them to stew much longer, you can be sure of that! Then they’ll be stuck here, no school-leaving certificate, unable to go to university; they’d have to do an apprenticeship … Christian — what trade could he learn? And perhaps they’d never get out anyway. Stuck here, their lives thoroughly mucked up … Do you think they could forgive us that?’

‘One of my colleagues has an application being considered. Despite that she’s still working with us and her daughter can finish school.’

‘They treat some people this way, others that way, but you can’t guarantee anything. I think it’s pretty unlikely we would be dealt with in the same way as your colleague. Do you want to try and see what comes of it?’

They walked beside each other, heads bowed.

‘What about Sperber? Couldn’t he do something?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know him particularly well. And I don’t trust him either, to be honest. We’d be taking a huge risk if I were to go and tell him everything. What would happen if he’s one of them … or collaborates with them? Don’t you think he must have one foot in their camp? Perhaps he’s a kind of front man, a lure they set out for us?’

‘Meno says there’s a few authors he’s helped.’

‘Could be. But even if he’s not one of them, would he help us? Who knows which authors he’s helped and in what kind of situation? At the least inconvenience to any reasonably well-known author, the press over there screams blue murder. But for us? For a doctor and a nurse no one’s ever heard of? Do you think Sperber can do anything if they give him to understand there’s no interest over there?’

‘I’m tired … Shall we sit down for a moment?’

Richard nodded. They’d walked as far as the ‘October View’ as the little circle surrounded by a pergola in Mondleite Park was officially called; the locals still called it by the old name of Philalethes’ View, after the nom de plume of King John of Saxony, the expert on Dante. In the middle of the flat hilltop was an obelisk with the names of people from the district who had died in the world war.

‘Should we drop in on your brother?’

‘No … I don’t want to. He’d think there was something wrong right away. — And there’s one thing we have to sort out: how do we tell the family?’

‘We have to think very carefully about whether we tell them at all.’

‘For me there’s nothing to think about. Of course we must tell them.’

‘Even at the risk that we can’t be sure whether Ulrich for example …’

‘He may be in the Party but he’s not an informer!’

‘What makes you so sure? Didn’t you warn me against him yourself? You remember, when we were walking home from the Felsenburg.’

‘But he’s one of the family … He wouldn’t go that far!’

‘Because he’s your brother — and my brother-in-law? Because he likes the boys and takes them to football matches?’

‘I don’t know. I just can’t imagine he would be capable of informing on you. Still … Yes, perhaps I can’t imagine it because he’s my brother. Father brought us up to be neither moral cowards nor informants. Do you know what he used to say? You know what’s the lowest form of life? A man who’d inform on his friend or his wife.’ She quivered, slumped forward, started crying again. Richard sensed that she didn’t want him to comfort her and went to the edge of the paved area, which had a wrought-iron balustrade with a stylized nautilus, eaten away by rust, worked into it. Beyond it the park fell away steeply. There were lights on in the House with a Thousand Eyes and in the Elephant opposite, at the Teerwagens’ a window was opened. Scraps of music, voices, laughter. There seemed to be a party going on. How carefree … Richard suppressed the thought. ‘Shall we go and see Regine?’

‘No … not now,’ Anne murmured. He rummaged round in his pockets, found the twenty-pfennig piece he kept for emergencies. ‘I could call her. There’s a phone booth at the crossroads there.’

‘It’s kind of you to try and distract me but … no. I want to go home. I’m very tired.’

He went over to her, sat down beside her on the bench. ‘Anne, it might be helpful to talk to her. Perhaps she can see possibilities we’ve overlooked. And we can trust her.’

‘Her, I agree, but not the bugs in her apartment. — Are you going to tell your colleagues?’

‘No. At least not for the moment. I can’t trust them any more than I can Sperber. Most of all Wernstein, but who knows, sometimes it’s the most trustworthy … I can do something else before I confide in my colleagues. I can accept.’

‘You really want to do that? You want to work for those bastards?’

‘Anne! — I’ll only pretend to. Give them trivial stuff, play stupid — and I’ll go on like that until they realize they’ve got a poor catch in me. I have to be no use at all to them, perhaps that will give me a chance.’

‘Don’t you think they’ll notice?’

‘I’m sure they will notice. But what can they do? Even a senior doctor doesn’t get to hear everything that goes on in his clinic. And isn’t it logical that the assistant doctors will hold their tongues in my presence?’

‘And if they set a trap for you? What if one of your operating-theatre nurses says something incriminating and you behave as if you hadn’t heard it, but that nurse is one of them and the next time they ask why you’ve been withholding information?’

‘That would be a mistake on their part, don’t you think? Then I’d know that nurse was one of them.’

‘And if they don’t ask you about it? But quietly draw their own conclusions … Then one day they present you with the bill —’

‘If, if, if! Do you see any other alternative?’

‘Get out of the country.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Anne. Surely you’re not serious. Even the attempt is a punishable offence. They’d nab us straight away and we’d end up behind bars … Getting out! How do you imagine we’d do it? With the boys? Or would they stay here? Should we dig a tunnel? Swim across the Baltic —’