The Tower: A Novel (106 page)

Berlin had called Dresden. The district had called the Administration of the Academy, the heads of the city hospitals, the transfusion centres. The management had called the wards. That was where the instruction had ended, was noted and kept quiet about. Have extra supplies of stored blood ready: the blunt terms of the message. In the breaks between operations Richard walked round the clinic to get his
conflicting emotions under control. He went down into the basement, where the nurses and doctors were smoking, whispering, exchanging rumours about the unrest at Central Station, the situation in Prague. He went out into the park, where it was monastic and autumnal, where the statues on the fountain were frozen in remarkably graceful attitudes, which must have demanded a great effort from the sculptor, for their grace was beyond this world and yet was not a lie. It wasn’t even kitschy; the statues seemed to feel at ease and that must have cost the greatest effort. It was the grace of lunatics. Christian had written, ‘What should I do if they order me? You’ve always tried to bring us up to be honest, but you lied yourself. What you said about moral cowardice, all those years ago outside the Felsenburg (it was loud enough, perhaps we boys played so happily so that we didn’t have to hear everything) – the lessons with Orré, your warnings and reproaches in the training camp, do you remember? What should I do? The barracks is on stand-by, no day-passes or leave, the telephone lines out have been closed down, there are no newspapers any more. If they give me the order: Hit them! – what should I do? I’m giving this letter to the cook in the hope that it will get to you and that your reply, if you should (can?) send me one will reach me.’ Richard kept the letter with him. Never before had Christian written one like that to him. He’d avoided the word: father. And Anne? Richard hadn’t shown her the letter. What had happened, what had happened to him, to them? Time, time, came the whisper from the branches with the copper-art foliage. The wind smelt of coal.

Someone had thrown a stone, a cube of black-and-white granite from the cobbles that fitted nicely in the hand; there could have been a commentary on its flattened parabolic trajectory, like a ball that even at the player’s run-up, at his crisp, explosive shot, the experienced reporter suspects will become the goal of the year, analysed again and again in
countless action replays, demonstrated by fathers, who were there, to their sons on male-bonding Sundays (or would there come a time when there were videos in this country?); Meno watched the stone descend over the phalanx of transparent shields, which reflected the clinical fluorescent light, and appear to lose height and its curve turn into a dotted line, as on airline pilots’ maps, before it would hit its target and, in a strange reflection, make the line of its trajectory flash up again, the electric-fast click of the bolt again confirming the alignment of the sights

and

shouts, the drumming of batons, sheer lust. Kettling, scurrying, boring. Thousands had come back from Schandau on foot, driven partly by the police, partly by other authorities, partly in resignation after days of camping by the tracks

and

rioters, the scum of every day on their faces cracking open to show the white undercurrent of hatehatehate, they stripped wood off scaffolding, broke bottles into deadly jagged crowns, suddenly had an armful of cobblestones that they hurled at the advancing power of the state, shields cracked, visors split open, windowpanes shattered, glittering theatrically, into splinters that seemed to salt the ground, howling was the response. Meno was standing pressed against a pillar, incapable of moving

and

yet they came closer, the gangs and cordons and rubber truncheons at the ready, Describe the rutting and attack ceremonies of red deer, went through Meno’s mind, he still had his case, not his ticket any more, just a scrap of paper, someone had torn it out of his hand

and

the black dogs, barking, their gums very pink, their teeth very white and dripping saliva, pulled on their leads, shaking their handlers with the power of their black haunches, strange engravings of their claws
on the smooth, hard floor of the station concourse, loops and scrolls, perhaps flowers, dog roses, Meno thought

and

truncheons came raining, pelting, whizzing down, a thudding like horse chestnuts on the roof of parked cars, the bizarre reality of the screams that answered them, people were kicked to the ground, trampled, hands raised in defence, but the rubber truncheons had tasted

fear and

blood and

blood and

lust

and

there were the toilets, Meno ran with the others, the herd, instinctive, opportunities. The toilets. The vault, blue tiles, the stench of ammonia cutting like a discus through the breath of those rushing in. Meno recoiled, the trap, what will you do if they lock them, ran out, he could see the expressions of the police, the index-finger arms. Out, out, outside the station, get out of the station. Tear-gas cartridges clattered on the ground, people ran away, a yielding zone yawned like a slit in taut skin, then the smoke swirled up. Water cannons squirted paths through the tangles of flight and free-for-all, mashed the paper, pushed it into slimy castles on the edge of the tracks. Meno looked up, saw video cameras, saw smashed station monitors; water was dripping down from the girders, filling the station with spray and gleaming metallic ribbons with which threads of blood interwove in slow motion.

–
paper,

Meno wrote,

paper, the mountain of paper
–

Christian was sitting in the quartermaster’s store, to which he now had a key, and roared as he bit his teeth into a fresh pack of soldiers’
underclothes. Sometimes he thought he was going mad. That the barracks, the tanks, the transfers from company to company were nothing but a dream, a long, unpleasant nightmare that yet must some time come to an end and he would be in bed, free, perhaps with the Comedian Harmonists singing on the Stenzel Sisters’ gramophone. Then he would go to the barracks library, a grotesque place watched over by a fat kindly woman with a granny apron and knitting (she knitted kidney warmers for the ‘young comrades’). Pale-gold trees shimmered along the barracks roads. The officers saluted jerkily, tension and fear on their faces. The political education classes had been doubled. The clichés trickled from their lips, covering the ground where they lay, invisible but attracting dust, despised, not taken seriously by anyone. There were exercises, work on the tanks, there were to be manoeuvres in the autumn. Christian was counting the hours to his discharge. Sometimes, even though he’d been in the army for almost five years now, he felt that he could no longer bear the few days of being locked in, would climb up onto the roof of the battalion building, the tar on which was still a malleable summery mass bubbling in the thermals between the black extractor fans, write letters that a kitchen assistant would smuggle out into a civilian postbox, read what Meno sent him (little Reclam paperbacks, Soviet fiction published by Hermes that had changed remarkably, suddenly there were blue horses on red grass). Most of the soldiers were now being sent out to work for various firms in Grün. Christian stood by a lathe, doing shifts as an assistant lathe operator. The soldiers wanted to go home but on the morning of 5 October they were given batons. Pancake laughed and asked Christian what he was going to do. Christian didn’t know, he couldn’t imagine, he didn’t want to imagine. Police came and trained them in their use on the regiment’s football ground. Attack from the left, attack from the right. Recognizing ringleaders, advancing in groups. For a while there was a rumour that Christian’s unit would be sent out with firearms. The soldiers were a motley crew brought together from companies
that were left (sometime in the spring of ’89 disarmament had been decreed), from Cottbus, Marienberg, Goldberg, no one could keep track of the streams of transferees any longer. Nip was happy if he could scrape together enough clothes and food for all of them. The kitchen assistant was still allowed through the barracks gate and he brought new rumours, from Grün, where there was unrest in the metal works, from Karl-Marx-Stadt and Leipzig, from Dresden. In the evening they were ordered into lorries. No firearms! Rubber truncheons, summer combat fatigues, body protector, an extra ration of alcohol and cigarettes for each man. Most of the soldiers were silent, staring at the ground. Pancake was smoking.

‘I presume you don’t care,’ the man next to Christian said.

‘Get stuffed,’ Pancake said. He stuck his head out. ‘Nothing to be seen. No signs with place names.’

‘If we only knew where we’re going,’ a younger soldier said, he still had a year to go.

‘To Karl-Marx-Stadt,’ the man next to Christian said. ‘Makes sense, hardly anyone here comes from there.’

‘We’ve already gone past,’ Pancake said.

‘Have you swallowed a map?’ a corporal asked.

‘Plus an odometer.’

‘So it’s Dresden,’ the younger soldier said.

‘Beat up a few queers, something to look forward to for once,’ the corporal said. ‘Hey, Nemo, are there many queers in Dresden? I’m sure there’s loads of them there.’

‘Class enemies,’ Pancake prompted; someone gave him a light.

‘Do you believe what they told us? That it’s just hooligans and that kind of thing? From the West. And counter-revolutionary factions.’

‘And you’re one of them too, hmm? You just watch out,’ the corporal said menacingly. ‘Hey, Nemo, lost your tongue?’

‘Just leave him in peace,’ Pancake said casually.

‘I
don’t let people threaten me, and I don’t let people run our state down,’ the corporal said.

‘Christ, what dark hole did you crawl out of?’ growled a sleepy voice from the seats by the driver’s cab.

‘So you’re going to fight,’ Pancake said.

‘Of course, they’re just a load of swine. It’s all they deserve.’

‘Then I’ll whack you over the head. The way you grunt.’

‘I’ll report you, Kretzschmar. You all heard what he said.’

‘You won’t report anyone,’ Christian said.

‘My view entirely,’ Pancake said. ‘No one here heard anything.
Nichevo
.’

‘They’re supposed to have hanged a policeman in Dresden.’

‘Fairy stories.’

‘They say Central Station’s closed. More damage than from the air raid.’

‘That’s what they tell you. And you fall for all that nonsense. Their fucking lies!’

‘Who said that? Who said fucking lies?’

‘And what if it’s true, eh?’

‘Can’t you lot just shut up,’ the sleepy voice said.

The soldiers fell silent, smoked, checked the numbers of the cars that overtook their convoy of lorries.

Dresden. Dismount.

They were in Prager Strasse. Christian saw the lights but they were something alien, unknown, he came from this town and yet didn’t seem to belong any more, and the objects, the buildings seemed to have come alive: the Round Cinema had coyly covered up the glass cases with the film posters, the Inter-Hotels stared arrogantly over the heads of the soldiers, the riot police, the trainee officers who were assembling,
instructed
by officers running to and fro, but also by bomber-jacketed civilians: shouts, orders, threats.

Crack down.

Hard.

The enemy.

Counter-revolutionary aggression.

Defence of the homeland of the Workers-and-Peasants.

In front of them people heading for Central Station. The soldiers formed squads of a hundred, hooked arms to make a chain. Christian was beside Pancake in the second row. From the station came a dull rhythmical knocking noise. ‘Forwaaard – march!’ the officers shouted. Christian could feel his legs turning to jelly, the same feeling as he’d had when judgment had been pronounced in the court, oh to be able to fly, to be able to do something that would put an end to the madness, to turn around and walk away, he was afraid and he could see that Pancake was afraid as well. The station was a gurgling, gobbling mechanism, an illuminated throat that swallowed footsteps, spewed out water, smoke and fever. Over there? Was that where they were going? Trams lay, helpless, like seeds in the swelling flesh of a fruit made up of human beings. A car was turned over and set alight, Molotov cocktails fizzed through the air like burning beehives that burst, throwing out thousands of deadly spikes of flame. The soldiers halted by the Heinrich Mann bookshop, closing off Prager Strasse. Christian saw Anne.

She was a few metres away, one of a group of people outside the bookshop and was haranguing a policeman. The policeman raised his baton and hit out. Once, twice. Anne fell down. The policeman bent down and continued to beat her. Kick her. Was immediately backed up when someone from the group tried to stop him. Anne had put her arms over her face like a child. Christian saw his mother lying on the ground, being kicked, thrashed, by a policeman. Lamps slid by like divers. There was an empty area round Christian, a lost darkness into which all the silence and protection and obedience that had gathered inside him slipped. He took his baton in both hands and tried to rush at the policeman, to beat him until he was dead, but someone was
holding Christian, someone had wrapped his arms round Christian, someone was shouting, ‘Christian! Christian!’ and Christian shouted back and howled and thrashed about with his legs and wet himself out of impotence, then it was over and he was slumped in Pancake’s vice-like grip like a puppy that has had its neck broken, they could do what they liked with him, he wanted nothing but to be in the future, he wanted nothing but to be elsewhere, Pancake carried him to the rear, Christian was sobbing, Christian wished he were dead.

He was taken back to the barracks’ where the following day he was interrogated by an official of the sealed and barred doors. He studied Christian’s file, rested his chin on his hands woven into a loose mat, said, ‘Hm, hm.’

Christian had been given an injection, a tranquillizer, from the doctor at the Med. Centre. He said (thinking as he did so of Korbinian and Kurtchen: We’ll see each other again. You’re not going to get out of here. Farewell and forgive us): ‘Schwedt’, said it in a matter-of-fact voice.