The Tower: A Novel (91 page)

They were taken, handcuffed, to a room where there were two cells
in the form of barred cages. Each was given a cage and they had to wait. Christian’s handcuffs were too tight, he pointed it out to the guard. The guard informed the officer in charge, who loosened them a little. Then he asked if they were all right like that. Sperber arrived. ‘You almost did something stupid, Herr Hoffmann, when you pointed out the special situation you were in, I thought we’d discussed that? I told you that that’s my business. Control yourself, otherwise you’ll just make things worse.

‘Herr Doktor Sperber …’

‘I know what you want to know. Are you always so impatient? Have a smoke first, calm down.’

‘Will I be acquitted?’

The lawyer looked at Christian in disbelief, then at Pancake, who couldn’t repress a grin.

‘It seems you still don’t really understand what you’ve done, Herr Hoffmann. You said something very bad. I would just advise you not to panic, panic’s always an inappropriate response. From my experience I would say that things aren’t desperate. It’s the breakfast recess now; at lunch I’ll have another word with the judge advocate, we know each other from our student days.’

‘Then I’ll be convicted? Prison?’

‘Don’t keep trying to anticipate decisions. It’s not a question of detention but of the terms.’

‘And … my place at university?’

‘Herr Hoffmann’ – Sperber seemed seriously exasperated – ‘you can’t really be that obtuse.’ Shaking his head, he lit himself a cigarette. ‘There’s one thing I have to tell you. As I’ve already explained to your father, appeals’ – he blew his cigarette smoke out of the window, it wasn’t barred – ‘are as good as never successful. They’re just a waste of paper and can cause you trouble. Accept the verdict as it is. From the outset the courts make their decisions on the principle that the punishment must fit the crime. In your case, in both your cases’
– Sperber nodded across at Pancake, who was immediately roused from his apathetic state – ‘the plain facts constitute an infringement of the laws cited and you, Herr Kretzschmar, must be very careful as to how you act; you will know why.’

In his
summation
Sperber described the mental state of the accused at the time of the offence as ‘diminished’. He disapproved of what had happened, but at least in the case of Herr Hoffmann it could not be a question of a consistently hostile and negative attitude to ‘our state’. After all, he had been the agitator in the group council of the senior high school and had received the certificate ‘For good study in a socialist school’ several times. He was socially active, had, for example, been editor of several wall newspapers at the high school and the senior high school. And he begged the court to remember his mother’s maiden name.

The judge advocate expressed his disapproval of the behaviour of the accused. Everything was a question of attitude. In this case ingratitude was to the fore – after all Hoffmann owed his place at university to the generosity of the Workers’ and Peasants’ State. He had betrayed the trust put in him. He was guilty of a gross violation of his duty as leader of a military combat collective. Had disappointed the trust placed in him. He demanded twelve months’ confinement. Sperber frowned, tried to get it reduced to ten months.

The next morning the judgment was
pronounced
:

In the Name of the People

 

In the case against

Lance Corporal Christian Hoffmann

b. 28/10/1965 in Dresden,

single, no previous convictions,

at present remanded in custody for crimes against

Section 220, sub-section 1, Public Disparagement,

on the basis of the hearing of 6/6/1986

the
1st Division of the Dresden Military Court,

represented by
…

 

has delivered the following judgment:

 

The accused is found guilty of Public Disparagement of the State according to Section 220, sub-section 1 and sentenced to a punishment of

 

twelve months’ detention in the military prison.

 

The period spent in custody will be taken into account. The period spent in prison will not count towards his period of military service. His place to study medicine at Karl-Marx University Leipzig, planned entry 05/10/1987, is cancelled. Lance Corporal Hoffmann has to bear the cost of the proceedings.

By law

signed

Then Pancake: also twelve months’ detention. The assessor read out the grounds for the judgment. The court left the room. Christian and Pancake had to sign the judgment and the grounds for judgment. The clerk kept her hand firmly on the paper while they signed.

Transfer
. Again a lorry arrived with VEB Service Combine written on it. From Dresden they went to Frankfurt an der Oder. ‘Right along the wall,’ Pancake joked, as he came back from Effects with Christian; both had their kitbags with their possessions over their shoulder. Pancake was annoyed that he couldn’t take his accordion. ‘No amusement,’ the guard snapped, pushing them into the lorry. They travelled in handcuffs. At some point during the hours on the road there was thumping on one of the cell doors. ‘I need to go.’

‘Sniff it up and spit it out,’ the guard told him. Then he
asked, ‘Anyone else?’ A few put up their hands. The lorry stopped, a short discussion with the officer in charge. Go one at a time. Christian was chained to the guard. The toilet was at a provincial station that remained nameless for Christian; they went along subterranean passages and through back doors. In the toilet he urinated against the blue-tiled wall they had instead of a urinal; there were cigarette butts in the drain, metal ashtrays at chest height on the wall, the man next to him put his cigarette down on one. He asked no questions and finished as quickly as he could. The guard stood, half turned away, smoking, glanced at his watch. ‘Get a move on, man, can’t you pee quicker?’

The
remand detention centre
in Frankfurt an der Oder was small and dilapidated. The men who had been sentenced were taken to a custody room, where Pancake and Christian couldn’t stand up straight. It was damp, in places the paint was flaking off the walls, the legs of the stools had mould on them. The bunks had been let down, the cell was overfull, they had to take it in turns to sleep. Christian lay on a bunk watching a drop of water growing like a bright pupil in the middle of a damp patch. Cockroaches rustled along the floor, ran across the walls. The other half of the night, when Pancake demanded his place, Christian sat at the table staring into the darkness with the shimmer of floodlights outside.

The next morning they were sent to the barber. The doors were low, you had to be careful not gash your forehead. The staircases were narrow, steps were missing, you had to make sure you didn’t fall, that might have looked like deliberate disobedience. Men in handcuffs were waiting to have their hair cut. The barber was a little old man with gaps in his teeth and his hair combed straight back, giving him the look of an arctic loon. Christian remembered a book from his childhood:
Germany’s Birds
it had been called, a green cigarette-card album that his clock-grandfather had given him. He’d seen a picture
of the arctic loon in it. Christian’s hair was shorn off with electric clippers, it didn’t take a minute; the arctic loon knew what he was doing.

Transfer
. Now the military detainees were separated from the other prisoners. The military detainees boarded the
Schweden
, as the vehicle was known, which took Christian and four others. At first they went northwards, through the Oder marshes, where the birds screeched and the flapping of their wings sometimes drowned out the clatter of the bolts on the cages, there was a smell of rushes and fish and kerosene. Then they turned off to the east, towards the Polish border.

Schwedt
. A name of terror, murmured in the army with your hand over your mouth, familiar to every soldier, to hardly any civilians; Schwedt an der Oder: a new town established in the countryside, like Eisenhüttenstadt in the south, the place where the Friendship oil pipeline from the depths of the Soviet Union terminates, high-rise buildings made of prefabricated concrete slabs, a windswept plain, the gigantic petrochemical combine. They got out. Christian saw: a barred gate with sentries, a road coming out of a forest, industrial pipelines along one side of the road, beyond them a field, in the distance the colourful rectangles of a mobile bee-house. Schwedt an der Oder Military Prison. From all the rumours about it Christian had imagined it would be more grandiose. But that? It looked small, unassuming, cramped. They were taken into a low concrete building, into a room that was bare apart from a portrait of the Minister of National Defence, a table and a few chairs.

‘Put out your things,’ the guard ordered. Christian and Pancake emptied their kitbags while the other prisoners waited outside in the corridor. The guard made a list of their possessions.

‘Pick up your things. Fall in. Follow me.’ With their kitbags over their shoulders Christian and Pancake followed the guard. In a
flat-roofed shed, still outside the actual camp, they had to take everything out again. A guard threw them each a set of fatigues, they had to take off their detention clothes and put on the uniforms, which had no epaulettes. The guard read out the prison regulations.

‘To the governor.’

That was a colonel. He was in the farthest shed. On the way there Christian was instructed as to how he was to report.

‘Military prisoner Lance Corporal Hoffmann reporting for instruction, Comrade Colonel.’

The colonel, a stocky, fatherly-looking man, remained seated, leafing through Christian’s file, and didn’t look at him as he spoke. He talked of remorse, of necessary punishment, of trust and re-education. That word was the most frequent one in his speech. Re-education: for two-twenty meant that he, Hoffmann, was a very bad case. He’d soon lose the taste for that here, he, the governor, could promise him that. He, the governor, would turn him, Hoffmann, into a contrite member of the army and a well-educated citizen of our Republic. He could promise him that too.

The reception block, where the new arrivals were, was separated from the actual camp by a wall with barbed wire on top. There was a barred gate in the wall through which the guard led the new arrivals. There were watchtowers at the corners of the wall on which visibly bored guards were pointing light machine guns into the camp. The concrete wall was only the outer boundary, between the reception block and the camp, inside it there was a barbed-wire fence. Between the wall and the fence was a strip of gravel where dogs were sleeping.

Christian was taken into a shed. The air in the room and the corridor smelt musty. There were eighteen beds in the room, six bunks with three beds each. The guard showed Christian his locker and ordered him to stand there. The guard went out, Christian stared out of the window through which dusty light came. The window was barred,
you could see one of the watchtowers and a strip of gravel with the dogs, of which two had now woken up. Only now did Christian understand what had happened to him and that this was his foreseeable future: Schwedt an der Oder Military Prison, one year, one irreplaceable year of his life. And that Here, Here you stand was burrowing itself deep into him, like a screw, he needed to distract himself and started to count: with the years of service that he still had to complete he would be discharged in the autumn of 1989, five years in the National People’s Army and he’d no idea what would happen after that, perhaps Meno would help him. He couldn’t stay standing but already the guard was back ordering him to do just that.

‘We’ll see to it that you’re re-educated.’

The daily routine
began with being woken at four in the morning. The prisoners jumped out of their beds, where they’d been sleeping in cotton vests, the genital area naked. Morning exercises and washing. In Christian’s company there were forty-seven military prisoners sharing one washroom with ten water pipes. The water points had no taps, the taps were kept by Staff Sergeant Gottschlich and had to be screwed onto the pipes. They were usually issued.

After breakfast there was either
training in the facility
(drill training, putting on and taking off protective clothing, instruction in fire protection, march with extra-full pack, assault course) or work. For the disciplinary units – soldiers who had not been through a military court – work was mostly in the cellars of the sheds. Christian and Pancake were serving a sentence handed down by the court and were driven out to the Combine every day. There they sandpapered doors, repaired or made pallets, smoothed the edges of plastic furniture or screwed screws into screw-holes. Work lasted eight hours, after that they were taken back to the facility for training. After cleaning the room and their section, 8 p.m. lights out. There were no doors on the toilets, everyone could watch you doing your business.

‘So you don’t do something stupid like committing suicide,’ Staff
Sergeant Gottschlich said. Hanging from the ceiling of the company corridor was a grotesquely bizarre object: a toy train made by earlier prisoners out of scraps of plastic from the Petrochemical Combine for the company commander’s fortieth birthday. The train had thirty-six goods wagons in different colours. Because the wagons were so brightly coloured it was called the ‘Orient Express’. There were coloured cards in the wagons and names on the coloured cards. The position of the name indicated the level of fulfilment of targets. It was an advantage to have your name in one of the first ten wagons. If you were in the middle, there were
drills
. One of these was to be woken at midnight and spend two hours standing in full rig. If your name was in the last or next-to-last wagon (Staff Sergeant Gottschlich wasn’t entirely consistent in that) for more than a week, you were sent for a spell in the
U-boat
, where you also ended up for
recalcitrance
,
insubordination
,
failure to accept one’s errors
,
uncooperative attitude
,
doing something stupid.
Doing something stupid could be not to sit
absolutely motionless, but ready to learn
during political education or on Thursdays during the communal viewing of Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler’s
Black Channel
on TV2.