Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

‘You know I can’t’

She said nothing and stared at the street. Some girls were playing Chinese twist, a three-wheel lorry loaded with barrels lurched past. ‘Do you love your wife more than me.’

‘Leave it.’

‘Why can’t we be together … Always having to hide, always “You know I can’t” and “Leave it” and “Goodbye” … Recently Lucie was talking about you in the kindergarten, that you always go away in the evening when you’ve been to see us. “You’ve got a funny dad,” the other children told her.’

‘But I told you she was to keep her mouth shut!’

‘I can’t forbid her to talk, I can’t control her all the time.’

No, she couldn’t. After all, it was quite natural for a child to talk about her father; what would he have said if Josta had told him that Lucie never spoke about him. ‘Give her my best wishes.’

Without looking at him she squeezed his hand and got out. He wound the window down. ‘Josta!’

She stopped but didn’t turn round. ‘Please forgive me.’ She nodded. The girls playing Chinese twist raised the elastic. A window was opened above them, a man in braces over his vest put a cushion on the window seat and scrutinized the girls.

‘Another thing I wanted to say —’ He fixed his eyes on the man’s unshaven face; she didn’t react. ‘A lovely dress you’ve got on.’ She stayed there for another second, then slowly put on her coat and walked off. The man stared after her. On his way home to Anne, Richard stole a branch of forsythia from a garden.

Next day was the consultant’s round, a white-coated gaggle swept through the North wards. The duty assistants held X-rays for Müller and his senior doctors to see, the ward-doctors murmured explanations, nurses took the bandages off the cuts with sterile tweezers and gave gloves to the doctors inspecting them. Müller kept looking at his watch, snatching the X-rays out of the assistants’ hands, stabbing at them with his forefinger and throwing them down on the beds. Even the patients could feel the tense atmosphere, lay there rigid, arms along their sides, looking back- and forward between Müller and the doctor reporting to him. By one of the patients’ beds there was a glass bedpan with a splash of urine left in. ‘Is it beyond the bounds of possibility for the nurses with responsibility for this room to empty the piss out of the brandy snifter when the consultant is doing his rounds. What kind of slovenliness is that, Nurse Lieselotte?’ The nurse in charge of North I turned pale. ‘But there’s that proverb about master and man,’ Müller went on. ‘Herr Wernstein can’t find the charts for two patients, lab results are missing, the abscess in Two is merrily gathering pus … What a casual approach to medical treatment in my clinic!’ Richard raised his hands in protest. ‘The man in Two has been put back by the anaesthetist, we are aware of the problem, but he’s on Falithrom —’

‘Since when,’ said Müller, cutting him off, ‘since when, Herr Hoffmann, does an anticoagulant stop us performing our duty as surgeons and lancing an abscess?’

‘Herr Professor’ — Trautson nodded to Richard — ‘I had arranged for the operation, but the anaesthetist flatly refused —’

‘Then we’ll administer the anaesthetic ourselves, goddammit! An abscess on the thigh doesn’t require a general anaesthetic and you’re surely not going to tell me the man risks bleeding to death from having an abscess lanced!’

‘He’s at risk of sepsis if we don’t operate,’ Kohler pointed out.

‘Well, then you do it!’ Richard burst out. ‘The coagulation is poor and so far the antibiotics have kept his temperature under control —’

‘So far,’ said Müller. ‘I’m not happy, Herr Hoffmann, I want to see you this afternoon.’

No one had ever heard such criticism, in front of all the doctors and nurses, of the senior surgeon. Richard felt like a schoolboy who had been given a dressing down. The gaggle went on to the next ward. Trautson drew Richard aside. ‘What on earth can have got into the old man? He knows perfectly well that the anaesthetists are right. And all that fuss just because two patients’ charts are missing and, anyway, they’re already being operated on …’ Trautson shook his head. ‘Oh, great, we’ve got something coming. In your place I wouldn’t take it to heart, Richard. Who knows what’s really behind it?’

‘Can I have a word, Herr Wernstein?’ Richard asked. They went to the ward day-room. ‘Now will you for God’s sake tell me what you’ve been up to. If I’m going to get hauled over the coals because of you, I need to know why. It’s Herr Kohler’s complaint I’m talking about.’

Wernstein told him. As so often, it was about reality and what one made of it — and the barbed-wire fence between the two.

‘And then I told him to mind his own business.’

‘Told him?’

‘In so many words. That smart-arse — we know what sepsis is as well.’

‘And he said?’

‘That he’d been observing me for a long time, I was a troublemaker.’

‘And you said?’

‘That the troublemaker was of the opinion that political bunkum never cured a patient.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Well, something to that effect.’

‘Instead of bunkum you —’

‘… said something else, yes.’

‘My God, Wernstein, have you gone mad?’ Richard got up and started to walk up and down the room. ‘You know the old man’s relationship to Kohler. And anyway.’

‘I know,’ Wernstein growled. ‘Them and their fucking Karl Marx Year.’

‘The question is, what do we do now? I’ve been told that the complaint against you is being considered. Kohler’s being transferred to North I next month and Müller’s spoken to the head of Orthopaedics in Friedrichstadt.’

‘In other words … they want to get rid of me.’

‘Perhaps not only you, Herr Wernstein. I’m afraid I won’t be able to protect you. I suggest that for the time being we wait to see what happens at the meeting this afternoon. Perhaps I can get the Rector to do something.’

‘I’m sorry, Herr Hoffmann. And thank you.’

‘Off you go now — and keep up your good work on the operating table.’

Richard called Josta. ‘Hoffmann from the Surgical Clinic, Frau Fischer, could I have an appointment with Professor Scheffler? It’s urgent.’

‘What is it about, Herr Hoffmann?’ Josta’s voice was cool, she sounded businesslike and uninvolved; it cut him to the quick.

‘It’s about a colleague in the clinic, Herr Wernstein.’

‘Are you in the ward? I’ll call you back.’ For a few moments he could hear her breathing before she hung up.

The afternoon meeting with Müller was cancelled. Richard went to Administration, where he’d been given an appointment for five o’clock. He had to wait and went out because he was afraid Josta would watch him and try to catch his eye, despite the other secretary working in the office. But he was even more afraid that she wouldn’t try to catch his eye. He attempted to concentrate on the discussion facing him, to imagine what direction it might take. He didn’t know Scheffler particularly well, the last time he’d spoken with him was about the Christmas lecture. Richard seldom attended the meetings of senior surgeons that were held in Administration and that Scheffler chaired; Trauma Surgery was formally part of General Surgery but almost had the status of a separate department. ‘Almost’; it was undetermined, sometimes Richard was sent an invitation to a meeting, sometimes not, and when he was invited Richard found himself with conflicting attitudes to Müller: on the one hand he didn’t want to go over his head, on the other, that made him feel like a little boy who had to ask permission for everything. Moreover it annoyed him that, when reading these invitations, Müller would turn away from him and give him irritated responses such as: he couldn’t see the point of Administration keeping two senior surgeons in the Surgical Clinic away from their work.