Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

Frau Schmücke had changed and seemed to be drunk again, she was waving her left hand, but then he realized that she had just been painting her fingernails, clearly she was about to go out. Richard was astonished at her profusion of uncontrollable hair, he hadn’t noticed it before.

‘Can I … I’m sorry, I’ve disturbed you. Could I speak to you for a moment?’

‘Come in,’ she said after a short hesitation.

‘Thank you, but that’s not necessary, I don’t want to —’

‘Look, it may be May already, but I’ve still got the heating on and the warmth all slips out when the door’s left open. I’m sure it’s about next door and we shouldn’t discuss that out here. Moreover’ — she leant forward a little, her voice dropping to a whisper — ‘the people like to have an ear out in the hallway, and not only there, I think.’ She went back into her hall and he followed her hesitantly. This woman aroused him, it was grotesque, but his heart was pounding as he went into the stranger’s apartment and, to his astonishment, that made him curious. She walked smoothly and had no shoes on, a little chain round her left ankle, her toenails were also painted. The sight of her bare feet with the red nails and the chain aroused him even more. In the hall and the living room the walls were covered with paintings hung side by side; there was a smell of paint. He found the paintings disturbing, death masks with sharp contrasts, screaming blue mouths, yellow birds with black and green heads could be seen, painters’ palettes had been nailed to the living-room ceiling and, on an easel, in the corner where most apartments of this type had the television, there crouched a picture in a brutal red that coagulated in streaks, wound into fat whorls, had suffered yawning cuts in the top-left corner, smouldered in the middle round a darker spindle. All the pictures were powerful and gripping, but that one in particular; Richard was impressed but ignored that, he hadn’t come to view paintings. ‘By you?’ he asked hurriedly and more out of politeness.

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You need someone to look after the children.’

‘Forgive me for coming to you with …’

‘No problem.’ She poured out two glasses of brandy. ‘I’ve quite often helped Frau Fischer. I know where everything is, what they eat and what they don’t, I can take the little girl to the kindergarten.’

‘That’s good of you.’

‘You wait and see.’ She came over to him with the two glasses. He was so baffled that he took the glass she handed to him. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Do you smoke?’

‘N-no —’ He’d almost said: Of course not — and she’d have responded with: Of course not? Why? and perhaps guessed he was a doctor. Perhaps she knew that anyway. He wondered how much Josta had told her.

‘Have a sip, it calms you down.’

‘Don’t you work in a fish shop?’

‘As a sales assistant, true. It’s not so bad there. Now and then you have to kill a fish. You’ve got something to exchange, to bargain with, as a painter I was worse off in that respect. — You’re not a person who tries out different things?’

‘I’ll go now. Please, you must see that I’m not in the mood for a chat at the moment. I’m sorry. Another time — with pleasure, but not just now.’

‘So what are you in the mood for.’ She gave him a rather challenging look. He avoided her eye, stared at her feet. ‘To be honest, I don’t know.’ He held the glass away from him, as if it were infectious, clutched his forehead nervously. What a stupid answer. I must have gone completely mad.

‘You’d like to sleep with me.’

‘What?’

‘Did you think I didn’t notice you looking? In the hall and in the mirror just now?’ She emptied her glass. ‘You were horny and I am too now.’

‘Are you …’ Richard gave a disbelieving laugh. ‘… are you mad?’

‘No. Just alone.’

He took a mouthful of brandy after all. It was good brandy. He hated himself for noticing that.

‘I’ve sometimes been listening when you and Josta … She seemed to be pretty happy.’

‘Oh come now, that’s —’

‘Enviable. I’d like to be like that again for once.’

‘… completely mad —’

‘And now I have the opportunity. You can take off your “uncle” mask.’

‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’ Richard couldn’t help laughing.

‘Call it what you like. I call it seizing the occasion. I don’t want to die an old maid regretting missed opportunities.’

‘You don’t want to …’ He still had to laugh. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Not at all. And certainly not from this bit of brandy. I have that effect on people, I know. I’m a bit … what do people say? — woozy. I’ve always been like that. Grew up in the uranium mines. We were called “the sleeping village”.’

‘What would you say if I told you I couldn’t care less about your blackmail threat?’

She took his glass and threw it on the floor. ‘I would say: You don’t know what you’re missing.’ She came over to him, treading in the splinters of glass.

But then they sat there, silent. After a while she lit a cigarette, drew on it, held it out to him, he waved it away. Her feet were bleeding. Splinters of glass in the feet were difficult to find if they weren’t stuck in superficially, you couldn’t see them on X-rays.

He left the apartment. Said goodbye to Daniel, who had put Lucie to bed, where she was sleeping with her mouth open.

The girls trotted along a bit behind them and were less mocking than usual, perhaps because Christian had invited them: they were to spend the night in Meno’s apartment in the House with a Thousand Eyes, Meno was in Berlin. Perhaps it was because of the voices from the gardens, the scent of jasmine that was overpowering in the evening, cutting through the other smells: resin on the plum trees, warm asphalt, all the bubbling ferment coming out of the open windows that subsided with the twilight and the blossom-inflamed slope above the Elbe with its whispering — Niklas said: balsamic — delicacy. Christian and Falk did handstands but only Siegbert managed to keep going to the advertisement pillar at the Mondleite — Lindwurmring crossroads, to the shouts and applause of the Russian officers who had been playing volleyball outside the Villa Clair, where they lived. The piano in the Roeckler School of Dancing repeated ‘The Blue Danube’ with mindless patience. Heike had brought her drawing pad and Christian was amazed at the swift sharpness with which she caught Siegbert’s triumph: his precarious balance as he crossed the road on his hands in front of a honking car, his trousers slipping down to reveal his brown, brambly calves and tennis socks, his jacket that had turned inside out like an umbrella, his face as he tried to look casual and breathe calmly when he stood up and brushed the dirt off his hands, then Heike drew a halo over him and Reina’s and Verena’s faces with expressions between the craving for an autograph and an approaching swoon. The history and geography exams were behind them.

‘Hey, Christian, it’s really great that you’ve arranged this with your uncle,’ Reina said. ‘What did you say for question three? I thought it was pretty beastly and I don’t know —’

‘Hey, no more about school, you’ll just have to wait and see what you get, you can’t do anything about it now.’

‘Was it you I asked for your opinion, Falk Truschler, or Montecristo?’ Reina retorted pertly.

‘Can’t you give up these stupid nicknames?’

‘We mean it in the nicest way,’ said Reina.

‘It looks good, your blue dress,’ Falk said when Christian didn’t reply. They made a detour along Wolfsleite, Christian wanted to pick up Fabian and Muriel; when he rang at Wolfstone, no one came.