The Tower: A Novel (86 page)

‘Reina?’

‘Richard?’

‘– I do too.’

He
stood on the platform, between two dustbins that were full to overflowing, thinking. He was thinking about how it had come about that he was stuck here and had had to steal a pass. Reina would arrive on the 4 p.m. train from Leipzig. Philosophy. It was about power and nothing else. You’re to go there and there, and if you don’t do that we’ll lock you up. And then two men will come and arrest you and if you kick out with your legs you’ll get a thump on the head. And if you knock the two of them down, four will come. And even if you can deal with them, a fifth will appear. Christian was sweating in his walking-out uniform but didn’t roll up the sleeves of his blue-grey shirt – the military patrols carried out checks here at the station above all, and presumably first and foremost on soldiers with a pass who were not dressed according to regulations. He felt like smoking, he’d allowed himself a cigarette now and then, to relieve the pressure, but he’d stink of it and he didn’t have enough mints to cover the smell. Moreover, when he smoked he could see Ann’s worried expression in his mind’s eye; it spoilt the pleasure of smoking and he was annoyed at that.

Officers came and went, passenger trains stopped with a squeal of brakes, no one waved to him. Perhaps Reina looked different – a new hairstyle, her face no longer that of a girl, a year and a half could be a long time. He was twenty-and-a-half years old and when he thought back to their conversations by Kaltwasser reservoir, to his mania for learning as much as possible, his delusion about becoming famous, he felt he could smile like an old man. He’d had light work during the day, Nip had chased him round the company a bit, tidying up, polishing floors, cleaning weapons, heating the bathroom stove (for four men: himself, Pancake and two sick soldiers on barracks duty). Breathing space. Burre had died in the military hospital, there had only been a brief interruption to the exercise, during the initial questioning by the military prosecutor; Burre’s mother had only been informed after the death of her son. That was the ‘Burre case’, the ‘Hoffmann case’ was still pending. But that was a dream, it couldn’t be anything else.
All that just wasn’t right. Burre’s slack body, still half stuck in the hatch while the recovery tank was already pulling. The gurgling darkness, the gun pointer helplessly flailing round above him until he gave him a kick: Get out of the way, crawl over to the loader’s side or behind the gun, open the hatch and climb out, but let me get at Burre. If that was true, then how could he be out here on Grün Station waiting for a train from Leipzig in his walking-out uniform? People stared at him. You couldn’t wear these things, even in a small garrison town like Grün, without getting hostile or contemptuous looks. But I’m not one of them! he wanted to cry out. I hate these things just as much as you do. Surely you must realize that, lots of you have done military service. The blue-grey shirt made of poor-quality material with the dull aluminium buttons and the ‘Monkey’s swing’, the silver braided marksman’s cord, dangling down; some, who had shown greater ambition than he, had the military sports badge, the marksman’s bar, pinned to their chest; the cap with its stiff plastic peak and cheap cockade, the grey felt trousers and the black shoes; the plastic arch of the sole had to be polished – an old Wehrmacht tradition, as Christian had been told at cadet school: there were seams on the arches of their military boots and woe to thee, Russia, if they hadn’t been greased. You had to have your sewing kit with you as well: torn trousers, always a possibility, would be detrimental to the dignity of the member of the army and therefore to the armed forces as a whole, so had to be mended immediately.

The train, a grumpy voice that sounded as if it were made of felt announced, was delayed. But now the light was falling, withdrawing, seemed to be saying, Come on, it’s up to you now, to the twilight. This was the hour of the day Christian liked best. He used to like the early morning just as much, when the air was still fresh and had a silky dampness, like a sensitive photo that had just been taken out of the fixative; but those hours no longer belonged to him, for eighteen months now they had been the hours of whistles and shrill shouts, of the start
of terrible days. This wilting, this hardly perceptible waning was something different. The station, with its grubby concourse, the sleepers with their dusting of ash, the smell of toilets, Mitropa snack bars and coal, seemed to be drinking in the thinning light, gradually filling itself with it until, with its rusty red dusting of ash, it had entirely become non-poisonous copper bloom. At this moment it would be enough to spread your arms to be able to fly – as he knew and it filled him with joy and satisfaction. The other people on the platforms seemed to feel the same, he saw workers throw out their chests, stride up and down with a bouncing gait, then, when they once more became aware of being watched, pluck at their overalls in embarrassment; he saw the down-and-outs hold up their bottles of beer assessingly to the light; and all at once the two men in the uniform of the transport police were casually swinging their batons. And he – he had cyclamen. Bought at Centraflor on the station forecourt where a supply had just been unloaded from a lorry; hundreds of pots of cyclamen; no cut flowers.

Reina alighted from the last carriage of the train that had just arrived. Christian gave an embarrassed wave, waited, set off hesitantly; he suddenly felt this meeting was inappropriate, the pot of cyclamen, which he was holding like a basket full of bees, ridiculous; the purple, turned-back flowers waved dementedly in the evening breeze. For a moment Christian thought of Ina in Berlin, of his wedding present for her and the awkward gesture with which he’d put it in her hand. He lifted up the pot, at the same time Reina also lifted up her present; unlike him she’d unpacked her cyclamen and as they exchanged their ‘Hello, Christian’ and ‘Hi, Reina’, they also exchanged their pots of cyclamen. Reina raised her shoulders, scratched her upper arm, looking for an insect bite, and Christian couldn’t think of anything to say; he searched desperately for some compliment but what occurred to him, of all things, was that the scar on her neck brought out the delicacy of her skin, the lovingly scattered freckles. But he didn’t want to say that, just like that. It would have made her even more confused,
more inhibited than she seemed to be: standing there, uncertain what to do, for now she was there and that left the question of what they should do, in a strange town that Christian too only knew from its station – barracks, metal works, chemical smells, the Dutch Courage were none of them the kind of place one knew because one was at home there.

Reina was there; he had no expectations. She’d changed in the eighteen months since the senior high, the woman she was becoming shimmered through her still girlish features, her hair was done differently: Christian found these changes strangely arousing and since he immediately began to reflect on that, he trotted along beside Reina in silence, head bowed, sensing the torment that she was trying to cover over with words that didn’t get to him. He wasn’t quite sure but he felt for a moment that he wanted to annoy her a little – that was when she was at her prettiest. She hadn’t put on very much make-up, for that he was grateful. Her new hairstyle, yes, that did look a bit dolled up, that would be the effect of the big city. That and the womanliness in her features made Reina strange beyond what he had expected and imagined, and that was precisely what aroused him, not her smell, her voice, not the glances of the others on the platform that awoke from their torpor as they passed over Reina and drew back into contempt, perhaps just indifference, when they looked at Christian. I don’t belong to you any more, the womanliness in Reina seemed to be saying and aroused desire, the instinct for possession. She fell silent; immediately he withdrew into himself, even more than he had already done with his discourteous silence that made their encounter hard work for her, an exhausting search for ways of getting a conversation going, leaving the approach to her; and now he felt bitter, decided it had been a mistake to meet Reina, especially in his situation.

Christian sought out the shade, looked nervously to the left and right, taking on the skipping gait, ever ready to flee, to manoeuvre, of those who believe they are being followed. Sometimes he quickly
ducked, clenched his fists (he’d stowed the cyclamen in the knapsack he’d brought with him) as if there were something in the empty air between them that he could only ward off in that way; sometimes he abruptly took one step back, which, as he noticed, Reina at first found irritating, then merely awkward, it seemed; but he was only avoiding an anticipated burst of light, an as yet invisible punishment that he didn’t know and couldn’t have explained but was sure to come, perhaps already had a face and was observing him; whatever he did, it would encounter him, and differently, in a different form from the one he expected. But he too could behave unexpectedly, not avoid a patch of brightness here, there take fifteen paces straight forward and suddenly swerve to the right because the punishment was thinking, right, I’ve got you now, at the sixteenth pace you’re mine – but that was precisely when he’d gone off to the side, the spear had been thrust into empty space! Christian realized that Reina had stopped.

‘You’re being very odd, what’s wrong? I think you’re not even listening to me.’

That was true. Like a euphoric sower on his field, the neon sign over the station concourse kept on casting a cheerful ‘Welcome to Grün – the pearl of the West Erzgebirge’ over the floor, unconcerned that it was pale from carefully torn-up newspaper. Reina wouldn’t start to cry now. The shy Reina, as she’d written in her letter; she began to dissolve into the mocking Reina who could turn into the hurtful Reina; he felt sorry about that and yet incapable of making things any easier for her. He felt paralysed, he would have known what words to use, but they refused to roll off his tongue, it was lumpy and too steep a climb and they just couldn’t make it.

‘Your letter, have they … I did receive your letter.’

Yes: he just nodded, briefly observed the way her fingers were tapping the edge of the cyclamen pot, then he gave her a bag that she accepted with a thoughtful look. There was a cupboard on the station forecourt and Christian would have thought it quite natural if the door
had opened to reveal a skinny, white-eyed girl. ‘They haven’t decided anything yet. There’ll be a hearing. Military court. We should talk about something else.’

‘I went to see your parents.’

‘You said so in your letter.’

‘Should I go back? You’re so negative.’

‘No. No.’ And then another word that took a great effort to say but for that very reason he wanted to see what would happen when he did say it: ‘Sorry.’ It came out fairly easily and made him think of Waldbrunn, his walk along the Wilde Bergfrau, his arrogance that was directed at Verena.

‘Where are we going?’ Reina looked round, didn’t seem to like what she saw.

‘Dunno. Have you any suggestions? I don’t really know my way round here. Cinema?’ he said, in the hope that they would sit there next to each other, watch some film or other, remain silent. Silence was what was best. Each close to the other, just close, without words. But Reina said no. ‘We can’t talk there. Perhaps … perhaps that sounded too challenging: Where are we going? It was just …’

They passed the cinema, it was the only one in the town. It was showing Soviet fairy-tale films:
The Scarlet Flower
,
Gharib in the Land of the Djinns
. Christian liked to go to the cinema when he had a pass. It reminded him of the Tannhäuser Cinema. The roof was damaged, on fine days the sunlight came in through a gap, rain on wet days – on sunny days a black umbrella with balloons tied on and guided by a string was floated up underneath the hole, on wet days a bucket placed under it.

‘You always called me Montecristo. My real name made you laugh.’

‘I didn’t say anything to your parents, just as you told me. But don’t you think … Your father could do something for you.’

‘No. They have enough worries as it is. Especially my mother. – We could go and have a meal. My treat.’

‘Verena’s
made an application to leave. She’s in Leipzig too, I sometimes see her.’

‘That could harm you.’

‘I’ve already had a discussion in the dean’s office. It was two of them who conducted the discussion. – But she’s my friend, they can’t forbid me to see her.’

‘Oh yes they can. They have ways of doing it. The guy who died offered to spy for them if they saw to it that he was transferred. They said: It’s where you are now that we need you, Comrade Burre. Of course we’ll protect you, we know what military ethics means. They can do as they like.’ They crossed the marketplace to the fountain. Jets of water came from a four-headed gryphon in black sandstone. ‘And Siegbert?’ Christian asked.

‘They’ve separated.’ That wasn’t the self-confident, sometimes haughty Reina he’d known any more. She seemed apprehensive, cautious, often looking round, scrutinizing the passers-by, the policemen strolling across the marketplace. ‘You know, I always wanted to write to you, but I didn’t dare. So much has changed. We left school and … well, perhaps it sounds odd now … so naive. Perhaps that’s the way we were. I mean, I knew I couldn’t say everything, not to Schnürchel nor to Red Eagle and certainly not to Fahner. And I asked myself: why not, actually? They’re communists, they claim to be honest … And us? Why do we talk one way at home and quite differently at school … just churn out what we know’s expected of us so as not to get into trouble? But why should you get into trouble when you have an opinion that’s counter to other opinions? And why is there this contradiction: on the one hand reality – on the other what’s written about it and they’re completely different? I was so blind … I didn’t know anything. Sometimes I would sit in my room in the school hostel and think of you and that you probably despise me for my cluelessness. But you … you were fortunate –’