The Tower: A Novel (108 page)

‘We are the people’

(Eschschloraque) ‘And just as the river doesn’t flow upwards, Mole will ever remain a mole, will never leave the tunnel of darkness, never reach the light of the sun: that is his lot as a mole, the universe isn’t concerned about it and however much he suffers, struggles and thinks and feels, he won’t change anything, he will remain without time’ –

‘We are a people’

… but then, all at once …

the clocks struck

the clocks of the Socialist Union, the Kremlin clock stopped with the sound of a broken spring, the red star over Moscow still sending radio signals across the sea to the vassal islands, to the guards on the ridges between Bucharest and Prague and Warsaw and Berlin

(Pittiplatsch) ‘Ouch, my nose’

(Schnatterinchen) ‘Naknaknak’

the blood, that special juice, clots, Apoplex extinguishes Lenin’s lights, now the copper plate sticks up out of the sea like an ice floe, I’m the Whirligig, when wound, I keep everything going, round and round;
thyreos
, the shield, where ferns crawl and break the monolith, the concrete of Norman castle architecture, into whose rooms with their standard flower wallpaper, veneered furniture, standard ashtrays, standard officials’ desks fresh air now sweeps as the people break through; paper swirls up, paper, the old
files treated as founding documents, a storm of papers, a riot of papers down the air well, from the galleries with foliage plants and plastic watering cans that, equipped with a surveillance camera, can be used anywhere in the Republic’s cemeteries, in the cellars the shredders gobble up paper, gulp the typing down into their voracious maws for as long as they still can, the citizens’ committees still have enough to do making sure their amazement, their revulsion is not misinterpreted as weakness: the seal is opened on the room in which the register of smells is kept, the sweat under the armpits of thousands who are persona non grata is taken on a piece of cloth, shrink-wrapped in cellophane, precisely mapped and kept for the dogs, paper crunches underfoot, little scraps of paper make breathing difficult, punch-reinforcement rings, white confetti from the cast-iron hole punches, crumbling files swell up, an indigestible mush from the entrails of the authorities, paper, paper
–

And on a November day Christian and Pancake stood outside the barracks, some of the guards at the checkpoint enviously watching them leave while others had already gone back to their duties. The flags along the barracks road, still the black-red-and-gold ones with the hammer, compasses and wreath of grain, the blue of the Free German Youth, flapped listlessly in the wind, as the new recruits reported for duty, uncertain and heads bowed at the fact that here, that now, given what was happening outside, they would no longer have their freedom and would have to wear the hated uniform of the National People’s Army. Pancake, in a worn leather outfit, his home-made reservist’s sash with the forbidden black-red-and-gold eagle, dog tag, insignia, reservist’s badge, a green tank and the ballpoint pen signatures of his comrades between his years of service in Roman numbers casually knotted over his shoulder, turned to Christian, who felt he looked ridiculous in the same get-up (how he had been imagining this day for years, especially since the ‘99 Balloons’ of Nena’s song that were traditionally released into the sky above every regiment when discharge
candidates only had that many days left in the army), also anachronistic (as if anyone were still interested in that, as if anyone would actually have waited for them, the young men who were now leaving the army, waving the brown tracksuits they’d been given as trophies, bawling and drunk when they fell upon the stations and bars, but getting quieter and quieter the closer they came to the various places where they belonged, where people had other things to worry about and would brush off with a ‘So there you are’ their stories, which had to remain untold in a nucleus of explosive silence); Pancake turned to him, jerked his thumb at his mates, who had turned up on motorbikes and revved up now and then or let in the clutch to make their bikes leap forward; Pancake said, ‘So long.’

‘So long,’ Christian said.

–
Seeking: purity,

Meno wrote,

paper, with writing on and blank, with photos printed on, with the fine and heavy lines of a drawing woven in, paper confirming, pacifying, emphasizing, read between the lines, exultant, cautious, shady, opaque, official, revoking; paper for the TRUTH, the printed mirror, NEUES DEUTSCHLAND, JUNGE WELT, PRAVDA, newspapers washed down the drain, greaseproof paper for sandwiches, cigarettes form raging whirlpools, tickets for CSKA Moscow Sparta Prague Dynamo Dresden Lokomotive Leipzig HFC Chemie football matches, for speedway races and swimming pools, receipts mix with insulating paper; announcements, ukases, books, writing pads trundle along towards the propellers of a turbine in which they are mashed and pulped, scraps of paper trailing down like moss from the propeller blades, paper slush, fibrous sludge being wound into gigantic ropes that are chopped up by the slicers, mowing machines in constant scything movement that clip off the ends of the paper strudel like a string of spaghetti dough; newspapers that are flushed into the water, there are the buckets of the excavator dredgers, the leaking flanges over a
field of vegetables that is being fertilized with chopped-up paper, there are the gutters on the archives sinking in patient impassivity under the weight of paper, the pressure sinters the spring folders, layers forms, makes files damp, arranges moist marriages between printer’s ink and wood pulp and acid, wing nuts are tightened, drops form, like beads of sweat on the brows of men arm-wrestling, swell, one layer of moisture curves over another, a calibration mark is passed, suddenly it starts to run down an incline, two drops amalgamate with the sound of a chest expander held by too-weak arms snapping back, make two out of one, pus-white rivulets look for a way to the pipe openings, which point to pipe entrances, which point to pipe exits, mouth spews into mouth, and out of the gutters pours the extract, a liquid as precious as blood and sperm, from the papers of the archives
–

… but then, all at once …

the clocks struck, struck 9 November, ‘Germany, our Fatherland’, their chimes knocking on the Brandenburg Gate:

Characters have been listed by first name with the exception of those primarily known either by their surname or by a nickname.

ADELING, ‘THEO LINGEN’
: head waiter, Felsenburg restaurant

ALICE HOFFMANN
: from Ecuador, Sandor’s wife; Christian’s ‘aunt’

ALTBERG, GEORG, ‘THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN’
: writer of older generation

ALOIS LANGE
: former ship’s doctor, lives in the same house as Meno

ANNE HOFFMANN, NÉE ROHDE
: nurse, Richard’s wife; Christian’s mother

ARBOGAST, BARON LUDWIG VON
: scientist, has his own institute

ARTHUR HOFFMANN
: clockmaker, estranged husband of Emmy; Christian’s paternal grandfather

ASZA BURMEISTER
: furnace tapper in carbide factory

BARBARA ROHDE, ‘ENOEFF’
: Ulrich’s wife, dressmaker; Christian’s aunt

BARSANO, MAX
: General Secretary of District Party

BURRE, JAN, ‘NUTELLA’
: conscript

CHRISTIAN HOFFMANN
: senior high-school student, later conscript

CLARENS
: psychiatrist at medical academy

‘COSTA’, LARS DIERITZ
: conscript

DÄNE, LOTHAR
: music critic

DANIEL FISCHER
: Josta’s son by her divorced husband

DIETZSCH
: sculptor, lives in the same house as Hans Hoffmann

DREYSSIGER
:
junior doctor in surgery

EMMY HOFFMANN
: Christian’s paternal grandmother, Arthur’s estranged wife

ERIK ORRÉ
: actor, lives in the same house as the Tietzes

ESCHSCHLORAQUE, EDUARD
: writer, dramatist, Stalinist

EZZO TIETZE
: son of Niklas and Gudrun

FABIAN HOFFMANN
: son of Hans and Iris; Christian’s cousin

FALK TRUSCHLER
: classmate of Christian

FIEBIG, CLÄRE
: widow, inhabitant of ‘Tower’ district

GLODDE, MIKE
: local postman, engaged to the Griesels’ daughter

GRIESEL, DR
: engineer, keeps the house register where Christian’s family live

GUDRUN TIETZE
: actress, wife of Niklas; Christian’s ‘aunt’

HANS HOFFMANN
: toxicologist, husband of Iris; Christian’s uncle

HANSI NEUBERT
: Regine’s son

HEIKE FIEBER
: classmate of Christian, artist

HONICH, PEDRO AND BABETT
: work in Party organizations, live in the same house as Meno

IRIS HOFFMANN
: wife of Hans; Christian’s aunt

INA ROHDE
: daughter of Ulrich and Barbara; Christian’s cousin

JENS ANSORGE
: classmate of Christian

JOFFE
: lawyer, communist

JOSTA FISCHER
: Richard Hoffmann’s mistress, secretary in hospital administration

JUDITH SCHEVOLA
: young novelist; Meno is her editor

KARLFRIEDE SINNER-PRIEST
: ‘Mrs Privy-Councillor’, official in Book Ministry

KAMINSKI, RENÉ AND TIMO
: twin sons of important Party member, live in same house as Meno

‘KING’ SIEWERT, RON
: Free German Youth secretary at carbide factory

KITTWITZ, DR ROLAND
: scientist in Abogast’s institute

KNABE, FRAU
:
dentist, lives in the same house as Hans Hoffmann and family

KRAUSEWITZ, HERR AND FRAU
: live in the same house as Hans Hoffmann and family

KURT ROHDE
: Christian’s maternal grandfather

LIBUSSA LANGE
: wife of Alois, Czech

LONDONER, JOCHEN
: writer on social/political topics, Meno’s ex-father-in-law

LUCIE FISCHER
: Josta’s daughter by Richard

LÜHRER
: novelist

‘MADAME EGLANTINE’, STEFANIE WROBEL
: editor at Dresdner Edition

MAGENSTOCK
: pastor of the church in the ‘Tower’ district

MALTHAKUS
: owner of stamp and picture postcard shop

MARISA
: Philipp Londoner’s partner, Chilean, communist

MARROQUIN, MALIVOR
: Chilean, owner of fancy-dress shop, photographer

MENO ROHDE
: zoologist, writer and editor at Dresdner Edition; Christian’s uncle

MÜLLER, PROFESSOR
: head of surgery

MURIEL HOFFMANN
: daughter of Hans and Iris; Christian’s cousin

‘MUSCA’, THILO EBERT
: conscript, lance corporal

NIKLAS TIETZE
: GP, husband of Gudrun; Christian’s ‘uncle’ (Richard’s cousin)

‘NIP’, STAFF SERGEANT EMMERICH
: professional soldier, responsible for the conscripts

‘PANCAKE’, STEFFEN KRETZSCHMAR
: conscript, imprisoned with Christian

PHILIPP LONDONER
: son of Jochen, academic, economist

REDLICH, JOSEF
: editor at Dresdner Edition

REGINE NEUBERT
: friend of the Hoffmans whose husband, Jürgen, has fled to the West

REGLINDE TIETZE
:
daughter of Niklas and Gudrun

REINA KOSSMANN
: classmate of Christian

RICHARD HOFFMANN
: surgeon; Christian’s father (Anne’s husband)

RITSCHEL
: technician in Arbogast’s institute

ROGALLA, STEFFEN
: conscript, corporal

RUDEN, JOHANNES
: conscript, corporal

SANDOR HOFFMANN
: from Ecuador, husband of Alice; Christian’s ‘uncle’ (Richard’s cousin)

SCHADE, PAUL
: writer, Party hack

SCHANETT
: truck driver at open-cast mine, lives on a farm

SCHEFFLER
: rector of Medical Academy

SCHIFFNER, HEINZ
: publisher at Dresdner Edition

SCHMÜCKE, NINA
: neighbour of Josta, artist, later political activist

SIEGBERT GÜGER
: classmate of Christian

SPERBER
: lawyer

STAHL, GERHART
: husband of Sabine, engineer, lives in same house as Meno

STAHL, SABINE
: wife of Gerhart

STENZEL SISTERS
: three former circus bareback riders, live in the same house as Christian

SVETLANA LEHMANN
: classmate of Christian, committed communist

TEERWAGEN, PROFESSOR
: physicist, lives with his wife in ‘Tower’ district

ULRICH ROHDE
: Barbara’s husband, Christian’s uncle, managing director of a state-owned company

VERENA WINKLER
: classmate of Christian

WENIGER, MANFRED
: gynaecologist, friend of Richard Hoffmann from their student days

WERNSTEIN
: junior doctor in trauma clinic, marries Ina Rohde

ZSCHUNKE, FRAU
: greengrocer in ‘Tower’ district