New Lives

by Ingo Schulze

  I asked whether I could get her a drink. With an almost pleading look, she shook her head. A little later, however, I took her by the hand and led her to the table where Steen and the women were now waiting for us.

  No sooner had we sat down, a tray of full glasses in front of us, than her friend walked over and demanded in a very serious voice that she dance with him. Without looking up, she shook her head. “Dance with me,” he said again. It was an order, but his trembling chin betrayed his fear.

  “Say something,” he suddenly thundered down at her, “tell me to go! Say something, and you’ll be rid of me.”

  “I beg you,” I said as I got to my feet, “please go.”

  “One word from that beautiful mouth suffices,” he said in suppressed fury. “I obey orders from this woman, not from a gasbag!” As he pointed at her, a tattoo emerged on his wrist—faded letters, a D and an F.

  The women began arguing with him. The men in the background had stood up at the same time I had. I was ready to hurl myself at him, I wanted to put an end to this farce.

  I can’t say whether it was a cry of fear or some hasty movement that made me look at Steen. He had never taken his eye off my beautiful companion, but now he was staring at her. His smile had frozen at the corners of his mouth. A woman behind him gave a shriek. In horror, people averted their eyes from my lovely dance partner. I was the last one to whom she revealed herself. Have you ever seen a mouth filled with black stumps? She laughed, well aware of how it only increased her ugliness.

  The skinny man sighed, turned, and shuffled away. Before I could say or do anything, she had jumped up to follow him. It was easy to make out her path to the exit, because the crowd parted before her and closed again only hesitantly in her wake.

  That’s it for today!

  Your E.

  Friday, Jan. 19, ’90

  Dear Jo,

  This is the same manuscript paper that all articles have to be written on, thirty lines to a page, sixty strokes to the line. So I’m practicing now.19

  This morning I sent off a letter telling you about my late-night adventures. Our next test was lying in wait for us at noon today. Georg, Jörg, and I had to use surprise tactics to obtain our business license. The printer in Leipzig finally demanded an official seal. No registration, no contract. Our application has been lying around in the district council office since mid-December.

  The reception room was empty. We knocked on the door of the councilman for trade and commerce, and a moment later we were inside his cave. Believe me, for the first time in my life I saw light ooze away. Every ray met its end in a mesh of miasma, of cigar smoke that had hung there for decades and lay like volcanic ash on potted plants that still managed some green. The unwashed windows and the yellowed white curtains did their part too, but the murky seepage came from the man himself. It was a miracle that when he stood up from his desk we even spotted him amid the colorlessness and lack of any shading—his colorlessness, his lack of any shading. What I noticed above all—beyond big teeth, a badly trimmed yellowish beard, and stringy hair—was his laugh. By the glow of the match he used to light his cigar, scorn and fear flickered across his face.

  There was no way, he said with a laugh, that he could grant us a printing license. Pause. He ponderously took his seat again. Georg bent toward him and said that he was deliberately delaying publication of our paper, yes, was trying to prevent it by exceeding the limits of his authority, making it a case for the Commission Against Corruption and Abuse of Office. Vulcan laughed and asked Georg to repeat the long title. So far as he knew, no such commission existed yet. It didn’t matter what he knew or thought, Georg shouted, his brow now dark with rage, because such decisions were no longer in his hands. His job was to stamp our application, he wasn’t being paid to do anything else.

  “Hohoho!” Vulcan cried, baring his horse teeth and exhaling more smoke with each “ho!” Georg kept right on leaning forward, staring straight at him from one side as if the man belonged to some as-yet-unnamed species.

  “Hoho, haha, your application, hoha, your application, ha, doesn’t even exist, it’s never been presented, hoha, your application, ho, at least not to me, hoha, you’ve come to the wrong man, really the wrong man, hoho, who can’t do a thing for you, hoho.” Then he took another puff of his cigar and blew wordless smoke. I could already see us on our way to some other department.

  “Doesn’t matter!” cried Jörg, who so far had kept strangely silent and now doffed his beret as if giving some prearranged signal. “Then we’re presenting it here and now, orally. You hand us the application form and stamp it.” The councilman’s laugh first ran up the scale as if trying to melt into the thin air of mockery, then faded away in a long sigh.

  Unfortunately, he was all out of application forms, he said. There were too many people wanting to apply, far too many, “can’t end well, nope, it can’t.” Vulcan hastily puffed several more clouds that dissipated into the twilight of his cave. “New regulations are required,” he added worriedly, looking from Georg to Jörg, then to me and back to Jörg, “yes indeed, new regulations. Just ask the cabdrivers…” A gesture of his free hand suggested an attempt to fan away the fumes, then he laid his cigar in the ashtray.

  Neither Georg, who had taken up a position at the door, nor I budged. Vulcan thrust his spine against the back of his chair and splayed his fingers across his potbelly as if holding a pillow against it.

  “I’m not even responsible for newspapers,” he said in a flat voice. Those decisions had to be made in Leipzig.

  “You see!” Jörg shouted. “Just takes a little goodwill.” Vulcan had no cause whatever to worry, worries weren’t part of his job. Jörg paused, took a step back, grabbed my arm, and presented me as an artist, a master of touch-typing, all ten fingers. “Enrico Türmer!”

  I sat down at the typewriter, rolled three sheets of the official district council paper into it, and typed the date and place. Not just the “a” and the “o,” but all the letters were so clogged with gunk as to be almost indecipherable. Besides which the left caps shift was missing. There was, however, plenty of carbon paper.

  After a few puffs on his cigar, Vulcan grumbled again about how it was long past time for his noon break. Georg tossed me his pocketknife so I could give the letters a crude cleaning.

  “So?” Vulcan asked ten minutes later. As if judging the quality of a work of graphic art, he inspected the page and then laid it down in front of him. “So? What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Number, stamp, receipt,” Jörg replied.

  “Whatever you want, whatever you want,” he said, “but it won’t do you any good.” Jörg demanded both stamp and signature on the copies too, and left one of them on the blotter.

  Without another word, we left Vulcan behind. Out on the street we clapped each other’s clothes, dusting off volcano ashes. Jörg took off for Leipzig right away.

  I tour the countryside passing out flyers printed in red. The announcement and subscription form for the paper looks like a warning against rabies.

  Michaela asked me to send her greetings too.

  Enrico

  Friday, Jan. 19, ’90

  Verotchka,

  I can’t stop thinking about you and I count the days that you’re still in Berlin, as if we’re living together and will soon be separating.

  The newspaper’s telephone number is 6999. Do you think maybe you can call from Beirut? Mornings I’m almost always alone, but that will soon change. Have you heard anything more from your nobleman?

  Sometimes I’m afraid of myself, no, not of myself, but of where things are headed. It’s all happening so inexorably and logically, and I suddenly see myself right in the middle of it all, as if in a dream. I’m afraid I’ll wake up one morning and not know what to do next, what to do period.

  Yesterday and today I wrote Johann and told him a couple of stories. He’s always impressed by stories. He’ll envy me my job yet.

  Mamus is determined to
give us a bus trip to Paris. I hope I can talk her out of it. She claims it’s because of the bet, that I won the bet, and she’s going to keep her word.20 Michaela and Robert are all excited. Michaela’s schedule of performances will probably prevent us from going, at least I hope so.

  Michaela has started accusing me of being cold. She gets just as aggravated when I’m around as when I’m not. To keep her from getting any more upset, I even try to avoid abrupt movements and gestures when I’m around her.

  The last few days we’ve fallen into a morning ritual that makes the first hour feel deceptively like our old routine. (Except we don’t eat eggs anymore, they’re unhealthy, she says.) The moment Michaela is done in the bathroom I pour coffee so that she can drink hers right away. Every peaceable minute is a godsend. On the way to the car we usually talk about Robert and school, an inexhaustible topic. As long as we keep talking, we stay clear of danger.

  But as soon as we drive off, the tone of voice changes. By the time we’re even with the train station we’re not talking—that is, Michaela has fallen silent and I can’t bring myself to say another word either. As we pass the museum, our silence turns icy. Once we’re at the theater parking lot, at the latest, Michaela explodes. The eeriest part is the predictability, the way the whole thing repeats itself, as if every morning Michaela realizes for the first time that I’ll not be getting out of the car with her, that she has to go into the theater alone—and she seems all the more surprised because up to that point everything has been just like it used to be.

  I turn off the engine, so she won’t feel I’m trying to push her, and listen to my lesson on how there are theaters in the West too, how there always has been, always will be theater, and how both man and society come to self-realization in the theater. Once she’s flung her words at the windshield, she sinks back into silence. But in a state of intense concentration, like right before an entrance. The worst thing now would be to remind her of the time. I sit beside her as if waiting for the rain to end and make sure I don’t touch the steering wheel, avoiding any kind of gesture that could be held against me as impatience.

  Suddenly she flings the door open and runs off, without a good-bye, head thrown back, purse pressed to her chest, coat fluttering behind her.

  Bent over the steering wheel, I watch her go, ready to wave in case she might turn around. After Michaela has vanished I start the car and catch myself smiling in the rearview mirror.

  Three minutes later I’m in the office—add some coal, put water on, and wait with my back to the stove until the coffee’s ready. Georg comes down shortly afterward, taps the barometer, winds the grandfather clock, and checks the thermometers outside the window and next to the coatrack. Captain Nemo couldn’t keep closer watch on his instruments.

  Afternoons I usually drive around the area, dropping in on town halls. At first they’re frightened when they hear “newspaper.” The secretaries generally catch on more quickly than their bosses that I’m not a threat, and are extremely friendly. Robert comes along sometimes. During the drive we talk about all sorts of things. He has a clear understanding of what my job is. How a newspaper uncovers things and tries to see justice done on all sides. I really enjoy the time with him.

  Our first edition is supposed to appear on Friday, February 16th. It all sounds like a fairy tale. You come up with an idea, carry it out, and make a living from it. As if we’re returning to some long-forgotten custom, to a way of life familiar to everybody except us.

  On Tuesday we’ll be driving to Offenburg for three days, but not as part of the official Altenburg delegation. A well-wisher21 will be paying our hotel bill. Let’s hope our Jimmy holds up.22

  Verotchka, my dearest! Hugs!

  Your Heinrich

  Thursday, Jan. 25, ’90

  Verotchka,

  Just imagine how much money that would be if we exchanged it! Maybe a hundred forty, a hundred sixty thousand? What madness! But the best part was still the telephone booths.23 Am I asking too much to be able to hear your voice once a day?

  At times I thought it really still existed, the West. A constant flood of old daydreams and reflexes. People like Gläsle—the man at the town hall, who couldn’t understand why so many Altenburgers keep sending decks of skat cards24 —must have taken us all for barbarians.

  Georg, who had spoken with Gläsle on the phone, got the impression that we were being invited to plunder their store of office supplies to our hearts’ delight. Gläsle led us to a stockroom in an attic not far from the town hall. We immediately pounced upon the treasures. No sooner had we stuffed shopping bags full of felt pens, Scotch tape, erasers, and colorful paper clips than we emptied them again and stuffed them with file folders and transparent covers, with ring notebooks and tubes of glue. We even laid claim to a white magnet board. We ransacked it all as if in a frenzy. Within a few minutes I didn’t even recognize myself. How could we have done this without asking even once? We had to unpack it all again, taking inventory, counting, figuring prices, and putting more and more items back. Gläsle had turned paler than we were. Thank God Georg had the envelope of money with him. It turned out that this was Gläsle’s attempt to do us a favor by giving us the same discount the town got for office supplies. He was acting against regulations. He warned us not to say a word to anyone. All the same Gläsle performed a rabbit-out-of-a-hat trick, lifting the cover from a huge electric typewriter. He called it the “green monster,” and asked if we might want it, with a bag of ribbons included. That, he said, was a gift he could give us. Gläsle looked downright relieved and wondered out loud what else he could send along with us—although the typewriter was problem enough. We finally fit it—fat and green like a giant toad—between Georg and Jörg on the backseat.

  We first have to be civilized. Our blunder came not necessarily from a lack of character—no, our entire sensory system was out of whack.

  With two hundred D-marks in my pocket, store windows suddenly took on real interest. Stopping or moving on no longer meant the same thing they once did. I can’t explain how it was that we ended up in a shop for pots and pans. All I had to do was lift one of those heavy lids and I was fascination’s plaything. I assumed the edge of the pot had to be magnetic, for it seemed to attract the lid and automatically provide that perfect fit.

  We were still lidding our way through the shop when Wolfgang the Hulk came in. He joined in our game, while the saleswoman tried to offer the salient points of each, waxing enthusiastic about stews, soups, vegetable casseroles, Swabian spätzle, roasts, and just about every other sort of fare that had ever been prepared on a stove in her town.

  We listened. Wolfgang rapped his knuckles on pots as if checking a bell for purity of tone.

  At some point it became clear that our money would be left behind in this shop. We had already agreed on two unlidded pots when Wolfgang slipped us another fifty. Now we had enough for the sale item: three pots for 249 D-marks, lids included. The saleswoman—we would never regret our choice—escorted us to the door. Only then did she hand over the third plastic shopping bag to Michaela.

  I was searching for my car keys when Michaela was greeted by a woman that I had to look at twice before I recognized her, and then only from her coat. The newspaper czarina had a totally different hairdo. She asked how we were doing, and all I could think of in response was to hold out our shopping bags. “What pretty pots!” she exclaimed with the kind of fervor you show little children, took out the pot, and turned it around and around. I was afraid her rings might scratch the metal.

  “What a pretty pot!” she cried loudly, handing it back to me and vanishing with the regional farewell—an “Ade!” accented on the first syllable.

  Ah, Verotchka! As if there were nothing more important to write about. If only your Herr von B. would finally make his appearance here. Does he have a real name? I’m off to the post office now, so your letter can be on its way today yet.

  I have such a longing for you!

  Your Heinrich

&n
bsp; Friday, Jan. 26, ’90

  Dear Jo,

  Jan Steen has decided our fate. It was scary like a fairy tale, but in the end stupid Ivanushka25 got his treasure.

  Had we known prior to the trip just what was at stake, we probably wouldn’t have waited for Michaela to make up her mind, which she didn’t do until the night before and first had to ring Aunt Trockel’s doorbell the next morning and ask her to look after Robert.

  We had only a little under six hours left for a seven-and-a-half-hour drive—just one more than Jan Steen needs to travel the same distance in his sports job. Michaela claimed the navigator’s position and, laying Robert’s school atlas across her knees, acted as if Jörg and Georg weren’t in the backseat and Jan Steen hadn’t given us directions. All the same I was glad she had come along.

  I had to open the trunk at the border in Schleiz. The customs agent reached for the shoebox full of flyers and issues of klartext26 —Michaela had insisted we bring them along. The agent held the “printed matter” between his gloved hands and read, or at least pretended to, while car after car rolled past us. What was this stuff? he asked. “What it says it is,” I replied, “a call for a demo once the State Security’s villa is taken over.”

  When he went to put it back, the stack of flyers had shifted and no longer fit in the shoebox. He crammed the papers back in, gave me a wave of his hand that could have meant anything, and shuffled off—the morning sun reflected softly in the shine of his boots. I drove very slowly across the bridge so that we could see the clear-cut path through the woods.

  My three passengers soon nodded off, but I was savoring it all—the pink winter morning, the odd fluttery sound of tires against pavement, the expansive curves, the speed, the music, the traffic bulletins, the semis and the cars hurtling past, the fields and villages and hills. To my eyes even the snow had a Western look that morning.