The Tower: A Novel (22 page)

Spring had arrived quietly, its pale fingers of sunshine had wiped away the snow along the F170 so that the fields round Possendorf and Karsdorf seemed to be covered in dirty sheets. There were still days of cold, but they merely suspended the rout of winter; the snow was sickening, beneath the crust there was a dripping, sintering, trickling, water-druses formed, quicksilvered, licked away at bridges between hollows, sought each other out, wove rivulets. Icicles hung from the school roof, like rows of glassy eels hung up to dry, drops tocked, pinged and clacked in melodious antiphony; Jens Ansorge would have liked to record it and work it up into a ‘Song of the Thaw’. What he had in mind was Tomita’s music based on Mussorgsky’s
Pictures from an Exhibition
that the Japanese sound artist had arranged in the witches’ kitchen of his synthesizer and published with Amiga. How the others envied Jens that record! It had just come out and could not be bought in any record shop in the whole area, not even in Philharmonia. The owner, Herr Trüpel, had anticipated Christian’s request and told him even as the ‘clong’ of the shop-door bell was still sounding that ‘Herr To-mitta’s disc’ was no longer in stock, not even ‘for the freaks’. As he spoke he had given Christian a blank stare from blue eyes that were much enlarged by gold-rimmed glasses with round lenses. Not even under the counter? That was asked more out of naivety than cheek; Herr Trüpel simply raised his left eyebrow and hesitated a moment before he looked under the counter, stood up ramrod-straight and said, ‘No.’ One had to make do with cassettes. Without a word Herr Trüpel placed one on the counter in front of Christian. ‘That will do.’ And collected the retail price of 20 marks – for an ORWO magnetic tape cassette.

Thaw
in the Erzgebirge. The grey of the shingle roofs emerged like a stony skin, old and worn out, dulled by the lashing of wind and rain. The air lost the metallic smell of snow. In the higher villages the roads often became impassable, washed away by torrential mountain streams. The bark of the fruit trees lining the tracks across the fields was black and shiny with the moisture; the trees on the slopes of the Windberg and the Quohrener Kipse were like peasant women hunched from work.

When the class went on a study outing on Tuesdays during the double biology lesson with Dr Frank, Christian kept apart from the other boarders in his house in order to avoid having to talk to them. He kept his senses awake to all impressions: this was his father’s and Uncle Hans’s country, this was where Arthur Hoffmann, his clock-grandfather, lived. And it was Verena’s country. They walked along the banks of the Kaltwasser, the Wilde Bergfrau, explored the upper reaches of the Rote Bergfrau with the tributaries that washed out the earth from underground veins of copper that gave it the reddish colour from which its name came, and Christian would think: she’s seen this, she went for walks here, perhaps she learnt to swim here, perhaps just here where the bank curves. He never asked her, didn’t dare to, fearing one of her tart or dismissive answers. But he observed her all the more closely, stared at every plant she looked at for any length of time, registered every whispering huddle, every outburst of laughter when the girls got together, casting mocking glances at the boys scattered around. Most often, he imagined, he seemed to be the target of these secret conclaves so that for a while he kept away from Verena, even sought out Dr Frank, their class teacher, as if he could think of nothing more interesting than the flora associated with a stream in the eastern Erzgebirge. He was familiar with most of the plants from his many walks with Meno and Grandfather Kurt. Dr Frank asked cautious questions about him. If Christian seemed about to say too much, he left him in peace. Then Frank would walk on by himself,
well ahead of the pupils, and come back when he found something interesting. He would never force it on them or explain it just to show off his knowledge but seemed almost shamefaced in asking the pupils to pay attention. Dr Frank was a calm man with medium-length, greying hair that looked shaggy and had a half-hearted parting – less, so it seemed to Christian, because Dr Frank felt the need to have his hair combed than because it was usual and you had to have your hair done in some way or other anyway. He had grown up in Schmiedeberg, a small town to the south of Waldbrunn that huddled up against the Erzgebirge motorway, low, nondescript houses set in the delightful countryside of the catchment area of the Wilde Bergfrau dominated by the factory buildings and chimneys of VEB GISAG Ferdinand Kunert, where most of the inhabitants of Schmiedeberg worked. Frank had not only completed a PhD but a DSc as well, the only schoolteacher in the whole country with that qualification, so it was said. The Technical University of Dresden had even offered him a professorship but, since he wanted to abandon neither his pupils nor Schmiedeberg, he had declined. Christian knew that his father had spoken to Frank and that it was Frank’s intervention with the district education department that had led to an exception being made to the usual selection procedure. He ought to have attended one of the senior high schools in Dresden but since those had the reputation of being particularly dogmatic ideologically, Richard was happier to see his son in Waldbrunn.

Frank was a Party member. In one of their first chemistry lessons he remarked that if he should meet someone who had attended the school and his classes at the expense of the people of the German Democratic Republic but then gone to the West, he would cross over to the other side of the road. As he spoke, he had given Christian a look of veiled melancholy with flashes of shy warmth.

Frank was doing research into left-handedness. The days when left-handed pupils were rigorously made to write with the right hand were not long since past. Frank himself was a left-hander who had had
his ‘polarity’ reversed and it seemed to disturb him, for he mentioned it several times, paused, broke off. Sometimes he would pick up a piece of chalk with his left hand, turn away as if he had been caught out, and when he turned back to the blackboard, the chalk was in his right hand.

Frank knew plants and animals, the wooded gorges as far away as the Karl-Marx-Stadt district, showed the pupils the abandoned tin mines outside Altenberg, the boggy Georgenfeld moors where the sundew grew. He knew the Kahleberg, from where you could see the ČSSR and on which, as on the whole ridge, the only trees were isolated, damaged spruces. The class went for several walks there, for just a few hours each time since the wind, which swept the yellowish fog over the Erzgebirge, grew stronger in the afternoon. At first the fog caused an irritation in the throat and difficulty swallowing, then coughing and red-rimmed eyes. Dr Frank, who also taught chemistry, knew where the fog came from.

One Tuesday at the end of March the history tests were handed back. Herr Schnürchel meandered round the room, giving out their essays, briefly commenting on them: ‘Svetlana, nice, clear class standpoint, very good deduction, A’, ‘Siegbert, confused the Gotha Programme with the
Anti-Dühring
, still a C’, ‘Christian’ – Schnürchel’s eyes fixed on him and he felt as if he were being cut open by their oxyacetylene-torch look – ‘too many empty words but you bring out Marx’s theory of history well, B minus’, then he sat down, intertwined his fingers and contemplated the remaining sheet of paper. Christian looked out of the window so that he had Schnürchel’s profile in view but avoided eye contact; Heike Fieber was playing with her fuzzy hair, Reina Kossmann had placed her hands on her desktop, her shoulders hunched up, her face and Verena’s two bright patches in the light flaking from the neon tubes in this still misty early morning that would probably brighten up into a sunny day. Schnürchel’s voice flashed out and seemed to hit Verena physically, as gently as a lizard’s tongue: ‘Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t feel well?’

‘I
… didn’t feel unwell.’

‘No.’ Schnürchel nodded, as if he’d expected that answer, but Christian could see neither satisfaction nor irritation in his expression. ‘If there is something you have to tell me …’

The whole class seemed to be concentrated round Verena’s seat, a chorus of intense silence not daring to ask, What’s going to happen?, crouching now in expectation of a blow, straining every nerve to absorb its force. Suddenly Christian could hear Uncle Niklas’s voice: In this country you have to be able to afford everything, see him turn round unhurriedly in the music room of Evening Star and take a sip of coffee. What he had said lodged in his mind, continued to work, returned as a vivid, nasty thought that took root when Verena’s face showed no signs of unease, was just paler than usual, which could come from the neon light; her coal-black eyes, alert, almost cold, fixed on Schnürchel’s. Could she afford it? No, that was absurd. If she could, it would be the equivalent of exposure, and They could have no interest in that, no more than in stupidity. Pupils who were involved supposedly had certain gaps or nonsense entries in their column in the class register. Their parents’ professions were not entered if they belonged to Them, or just the bare name was there. But that was not the case with Verena. Father: Johannes Winkler, doctor, District Clinic, Waldbrunn; Mother: Katharina Winkler, organist and choirmaster, Protestant church, Waldbrunn; Siblings: Sabine, librarian, District Library.

Verena an informant … He sought her eyes, he must have given her a horrified look, her eyes slid away.

‘Perhaps you want to tell me afterwards.’ Schnürchel’s words were not a question but a closing statement. His stripy socks, his crossed feet – not funny at all.

‘I didn’t feel unwell.’ Verena’s voice was jagged, she had to clear her throat.

‘Verena.’ This time Schnürchel answered quickly, Christian sensed the surprise in the class at the restrained warmth of his tone. ‘Then
I will have to call a meeting of the FGY leadership and inform your class teacher.’ Verena remained silent, and Christian couldn’t understand her, turned his head towards the door and whispered, ‘Why? Why?’ with a pointless intensity. He felt another burst of suspicion and thought he could also see it in Jens Ansorge’s expression, in Siegbert Füger’s thin smile, Reina Kossmann’s now chalk-white face.

The meeting of the FGY committee was arranged for three o’clock, after the last class, in the Russian room surrounded by pictures of Sputnik and the Artek Pioneer camp on the blackboards, sponsorship letters from their related Komsomol organization and a plaster bust of Maxim Gorki. The rest of the class waited outside.

Agenda, taking the minutes – Falk Truschler took out a pencil and paper – Dr Frank’s freckled hand opening and closing. ‘Go on, please.’ He nodded to Verena, who was staring to one side, the sheet of paper, blank apart from her name and the exercise, before her. ‘I didn’t know what I should write.’ Her voice was clear, tone curt, with a touch of contempt; Christian looked up but only met Frank’s eyes, the light brown of which he for some inexplicable reason now found disagreeable, as he did his helplessly opening and closing hand. ‘Then you had a blackout.’ Frank stated it in a murmur, it wasn’t a question. ‘That can happen.’

‘In this case you will have to be given an E.’ Schnürchel had spoken hesitantly but before Frank had stopped speaking. Again there was the silence, like something that couldn’t be switched off. Christian was wearing the blue Free German Youth shirt, as were Falk Truschler and Siegbert Füger and Svetlana Lehmann: Herr Schnürchel had asked all the boarders in the class to put them on.

‘I don’t agree with the way this discussion is going. In my opinion Verena has a negative attitude to the question set and didn’t answer it for that reason. It wouldn’t be the first time.’

Verena looked up and scrutinized Svetlana with startled fascination.

‘Yes,
you got up to the same kind of thing back at the high school. Just like your sister.’

‘Svetlana –’

‘In my opinion it’s deliberate provocation, Dr Frank.’

‘I don’t believe that.’ Reina Kossmann, the treasurer on the committee, shook her head. ‘She said something to me beforehand.’ Verena had felt ill because of something that happened once a month –

‘She said she didn’t feel unwell,’ Svetlana insisted. ‘I’d be interested to know what standpoints the two of you have. My view is that the committee should pass a resolution and present it to the principal.’ Svetlana thought for a moment, tapped her lips with her finger. ‘To both principals. And to the Party committee.’

At this Siegbert Füger joined in: Svetlana couldn’t simply say ‘I don’t believe her’; in that case not only Verena, Reina too, would be under suspicion of lying, he himself didn’t know Verena from the high school but from sports lessons with Herr Schanzler here, there’d been a collision when they were playing dodgeball. Her lip had bled, but she hadn’t fainted, as usually happened, Verena was the kind of person who would just grit her teeth, as she had before the history test.

What did he mean by ‘as usually happened’, Reina wanted to know, straightening her back, it was the boys who were the quickest to start moaning and wailing, for example at the potato harvest. Christian remained silent because he could see in his mind’s eye Verena’s face contorted with pain after she’d hit her thumb with the hammer, but since Falk Truschler said nothing – he had to take the minutes – Svetlana fixed her eyes on him, while Dr Frank folded a piece of paper up small and Schnürchel took a tube out of his briefcase, squeezed out an inch of transparent cream and rubbed it over his hands. There was a pleasant smell of herbs.

‘Your position, Christian?’ At that moment he found himself thinking of Svetlana’s curly hair. It was beautiful and of a brown colour he
couldn’t quite find a word for. ‘She isn’t in condition to do a test if she feels ill.’

‘She should have said so beforehand, of course. – That was her mistake,’ Schnürchel said reflectively. ‘We can’t withdraw the E grade. Not a good start, but I think that in your case it will just be a blip. There are oral tests as well and apart from this you’re good to very good.’

‘That’s all you have to say?’ Schnürchel’s contribution seemed to have gone right past Svetlana, like an insect you ignore because you’re concentrating on something. She fixed her eyes on Christian and it seemed to him that she was having to make an effort, her eyelids were fluttering almost imperceptibly, her look wasn’t steady. ‘Pity that the best positions were already taken, hm? The deputy Free German Youth secretary, the clerk and the treasurer. That would have done for acceptance at medical college, wouldn’t it? But the way things are … As agitator you’d have to show real commitment, wouldn’t you? Nail your colours to the mast.’