Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘No.’

‘No?’ She seemed to be astonished. ‘He attacked you. You, Altberg and I, he said, are a dubious Romantic faction.’

‘No. For him it’s medicine, for me it spoils my day. So why should I read it. I’m not a masochist.’

‘But if you have to deal with the things he writes?’

‘Then I can’t avoid it. But only then.’

‘And you can bear sitting at a table with him?’

Meno gave a pained smile. ‘That’s the way things are in this little faculty, you see. Jousting by day and in the evening you have a beer together. You’ll have to get used to it.’

‘And that doesn’t bother you?’

‘Who says it doesn’t bother me? But —’

‘You’ve a family to feed,’ Schevola said with a dismissive wave of the hand.

‘You’re rather quick to jump to conclusions.’ Meno finished his beer. ‘Beware of that, if I may give you a piece of advice. It’s very attractive in moral terms and gives you a good strong heartbeat, but it’s not good for literature. We must talk about that when we discuss your manuscript.’

‘What’s not good for literature?’ Eschschloraque’s voice was hoarse, perhaps it was the thick cigarette smoke filling the room. He had a silk cravat that he had tied in a dashing knot in the open collar of his white shirt.

‘Moralizing,’ Meno replied and looked at Eschschloraque. ‘To put it another way: knowing all the answers.’

Eschschloraque gave him a searching look, gently rubbed his carefully shaved cheeks. Munderloh leant forward.

‘I’m interested in you, Herr Eschschloraque.’

‘I call that a chivalrous lifting of the visor. I thank you for that and for your courage in admitting your shyness with such a direct approach,’ Eschschloraque replied, raising his glass to the publisher. ‘Fräulein Schevola for example, about whom our friend Schiffner had such nice things to say to you, is not at all shy. That’s why her black thoughts are initially hidden. And I will be bold enough to make a further psychological leap: the problem, my dear, is the censor, who is right. — Incidentally, Herr Munderloh, what about me? Your publishing house, so full of wit and without me?’

‘I meant it personally — if you’ve no objection. Stalinism and esprit , how can the two be combined?’

Eschschloraque smiled. ‘Sleep quicker, comrade, your bed is needed. Well, Herr Rohde, memories of your days living in a kommunalka ?’

‘But surely you can’t … all those who were killed,’ said the Frankfurt press officer, incredulous.

‘People have to be killed,’ Eschschloraque replied coolly. ‘Don’t behave as if people didn’t die on your side too. Enemies have to be eradicated, that is a sensible, tried and tested custom of ages that achieve great things. And it is definitely better to die for a great cause than to live for a mediocre one. The genuine democrats among you should protest before the main course; sharp wits avoid the digestive process.’

‘Let’s talk about football.’ Redlich squinted across at the Frankfurt press officer, but he refused to play along.

‘You are trying to be polite, my dear Redlich, and to save us embarrassment. Look, the way it is with enemies is this: Herr Rohde, whom I respect, is a subtle wag and recently permitted himself a — let’s say — employee’s joke. As an editor who knows what’s right and proper, he marks up a manuscript in pencil; however, when he encounters a passage that is ambiguous, he inserts a red comma. You’ — Eschschloraque smiled — ‘have put a red comma after socialism. Is that supposed to mean something? That socialism is perhaps not the last word.’ Eschschloraque gave a short lecture on monks who commented on the works they were copying out in an equally subtle way, by emphasizing certain letters, over several pages and chapters, so that in a collection of noble love songs the Latin for ‘Troubadour thou art a dead loss’ was hidden, though clearly visible to the philologist’s practised eye.

Schiffner took out his genuine buffalo-horn comb and ran it through the white quiff over his striking features, bronzed from holidays in the Crimea. ‘That’s why you sounded so terribly calm on the telephone.’

‘Rossi was great! He more or less won the World Cup for the Azzurri on his own,’ Redlich cried.

‘You can write?’ Munderloh leant over towards Judith Schevola.

‘I try to,’ she replied, jutting out her chin defensively.

‘She tries to!’ The publisher slapped his hand on the table. ‘Could you kill a dolphin?’ Once more the conversations round the table fell silent.

‘That would depend on the situation, Herr … What was the name?’

Munderloh stared, first at her, then at Schiffner, who was enjoying himself. Eschschloraque clasped his hands under his chin, observing, alert to every nuance, his expression that of a scientist waiting for the result of an interesting experiment that is immoral but unavoidable.

‘The name is Munderloh. I like you. Though your answer that it depends on the situation was all too predictable. It always depends on the situation.’

‘I hate dolphins,’ Schevola said coldly. ‘They’re always so nice and kind, they save shipwrecked sailors and come to the help of the poet Arion, they dance round Bacchus’s boat and bask in the early light of the sun … but I don’t trust them.’

‘There is a school of evil dolphins,’ Redlich muttered. ‘Black dolphins who are not favourably disposed towards us —’

‘What are you on about, Josef?’ The Frankfurt press officer waved his hand in displeasure.

‘I’d like to kill a dolphin once, just to see what the other dolphins do. Whether they’re still so nice and kind, whether the cliché’s correct — or whether they’d then show their true character,’ Schevola said, not avoiding Munderloh’s hard look — from eyes that seemed like light-blue stones, a look like a rod, like a surgeon’s blunt probe, Meno thought.

‘I will read your manuscript,’ Munderloh said after a pause during which the table had been silent, the only sounds coming from the front of the Jägerschänke. ‘I will read it if Hermes will let me have it. — Do you like swimming?’ He took out a visiting card, scribbled something on the back and pushed it across the table to Schevola.

‘Only against the tide,’ she replied after she’d read what was on the card and given Munderloh a long, hard stare.

‘Great. — So it’s not just slaves you produce in this country.’

‘Don’t say that, Herr Munderloh, please don’t.’ Redlich was leaning forward. ‘They have dealings with the darkness, Lichtenberg, Waste Books , notebook L. And feel the pressure of government as little as they do the pressure of the air, notebook J.’

Munderloh nodded. ‘Perhaps you have the wrong idea of conditions in our country. Perhaps I have of conditions here. Let us drink a toast to what unites us.’ He raised his glass, which he’d filled with red wine, and drank to Redlich.

‘We, who know what a valuable thing truth is … And it is also a truth to present language in its purity …’ Redlich sank back onto the bench, his chubby face with the moustache and puffy eyes that reminded Meno of Joseph Roth’s face was in shadow again. Schiffner placed his hand on his arm.

‘However that may be, you, all of you’ — Redlich indicated the row of Frankfurters with a sweeping gesture — ‘are much better dressed than we are.’ He laughed, put his hand over his mouth.

‘You don’t like swimming, with or against the tide, is that right?’ Munderloh leant forward, clasped his hands. They were strong, peasant’s hands with hair on the back of the fingers; Meno was sure Munderloh would be able to crack walnuts between his thumb and forefinger. He would survive the camp — that angular head, the nose that looked as if it had been hewn with an axe, that lumberjack’s back, the liberators would see all that when they opened the gates; he’s a man that survives, Meno thought and frowned because he was irritated at connecting Munderloh’s appearance with the camp; it seemed a perfidious thought. Redlich didn’t reply to Munderloh’s question. The party broke up. Philipp Londoner was waiting outside the Jägerschänke and greeted Eschschloraque and Schiffner familiarly, Schevola had disappeared.