New Lives

by Ingo Schulze

  Why did you follow me into the garden? And why these accusations now? Why didn’t Frau *** complain to you then and there? I don’t understand any of it.68

  To be candid, when you both had gone, I said: This woman is dangerous, and of course everyone knew whom I had in mind. I meant it in a general, impersonal sense—I can’t help thinking of that now.

  Hadn’t the interview turned into a cross-examination long before that? Without your remark to rescue him, Georg would have ended up accused of being lost forever in “the good old days.” We aren’t children. I won’t even mention the microphone insistently shoved under his nose. And I won’t carp about the sharp tone of voice in which he was presented with one well-formulated written question after the other. And unless you’re given time to think things over, how can you ever reply at that same level?

  What Georg called “real life” became “existential” for her. She quoted him as saying the end of the wall was “secondary,” when he had called it a “logical consequence.” She left him no choice but constantly to justify himself.

  Your interjection: “But after all, a person has to see the Mediterranean!” is the most beautiful sentence I’ve ever heard. It was a kind of redemption. Yes, I do want to see the Mediterranean.

  I haven’t forgotten one word of everything you said. The way you spoke about how lucky we are to live in a place like this, a home to such splendor, and how every road to Italy has to lead through Altenburg—yes, I know, you were talking about the museum’s collection…But for me it was a metaphor, a promise, and to be able to stand that close to you was already its fulfillment.

  I can still see those bright pale blue streaks along the horizon, and towering into them the cones69 at Ronneburg, which you called pyramids, and above us the heavy blackish gray blanket of clouds that had already brought the streetlamps on, so that we looked out over the town as if gazing out of a window. And then how we broke off in midconversation because the streaks of cloud had turned bright orange […] I want to remind you of nothing more than that.

  Your Enrico Türmer

  Monday, March 5, ’90

  Dear Jo!

  What do you think of our newspaper? Robert and I got rid of another thousand copies last Thursday. Michaela, however, is beside herself. She had convinced the general manager to remount Julie,70 after almost a year and a half. Flieder71 was here only very briefly. He has a brain tumor and is to be operated on in Berlin this week. So even without Sluminski72 interfering, there is no way he’ll be considered for new head director. Yesterday’s performance, the second premiere so to speak—which Michaela had such hopes for—was a disaster, only 32 tickets sold. Despite our having promoted it well, thanks to Marion.

  As I walked over to the theater around eleven—I had a “newspaper to get out”73 —it was already dark and there wasn’t a single car in the parking lot. The doorkeeper refused to let me in yet again. First, I didn’t belong here anymore and second, there was no premiere party, because this hadn’t been a premiere, and there was certainly nothing to celebrate, either. “Thirty-two in the audience! Thirty-two! Just imagine!”

  As I entered the canteen, Michaela was declaiming, “Oh, I am so tired. I cannot do anything more. Oh, I’m so tired—I’m incapable of feeling, not able to be sorry, not able to flee, not able to stay, not able to live—not able to die. Help me now. Command me—I will obey like a dog.”

  So you see, I still know it by heart.74

  Four of them were sitting there, the new girl from props with handsome Charlie from costumes, and at the corner table Michaela and Claudia, her friend and colleague. Claudia declared she was going to last till morning. I asked how they planned to do that with just half a bottle of vodka.

  “Go on,” Michaela exclaimed.

  “That was before,” Claudia began, and clamped the cap of a felt pen between her upper lip and nose. “Now we have other things to think about.” With these words she threw herself across the table and burst out laughing. Handsome Charlie applauded and tried to join in the laughter.

  “If you would ask me how it was, assuming, that is, that you would ask me,” Michaela replied, “then I would respond on the spot—well? What would I say?—I would say…”—and after a brief puff of laughter—“thrilling!” With a grand gesture she presented the deserted canteen to me.

  And it went on like that. You can call what the two were up to absurd or witty, but I was slowly starting to feel anxious. It’s my suspicion that Claudia was enjoying the flop. She had been humiliated at not being cast as Julie the first time.

  “Aren’t you my friend?” Michaela asked, looking at the girl from props. There was a long pause, during which Michaela stared at the poor woman, until she blushed and peeped, “Yes, of course I want to be your friend.” Claudia couldn’t suppress her giggles.

  “Flee? Yes—we shall flee!” Michaela went on. “But I am so tired. Give me a glass of wine.” Charlie got up to pour her what was left of the wine. Michaela appeared to be on the track of some realization, as if she had noticed something that had escaped her until now. The sentence “Where did you learn to speak like that?” truly moved her. After another pause, in which she sat up ramrod straight, Michaela announced mournfully, “You must have spent a good deal of time in the theater.”

  No one laughed. It was eerie.

  “Excellent! You should have been an actor.”

  The silence was breathless, like after the last note of a requiem.

  Michaela let me lead her outside without resistance. I told her to call in sick, but she won’t do it, says it’s not her way.

  I can’t console her. The theater has become an alien world to me.

  In our latest issue we have an interview with Rau.75 Jörg was given the chance, and not the Leipziger Volkszeitung. Rau gave a speech on Market Square praising the “more private” style of life in the East, and said that his only worry was that “a passion for the D-mark will turn everyone here into what we already are.” He too seems to be searching for his soul in the East. Let him. Then he just chatted, like another skat player, so to speak, and told us how to cast our votes right, and presented Altenburg Transit with six buses from North Rhine-Westphalia—they still have the old ads on the sides. Michaela was peeved because Rau handed over the keys to, of all people, Karmeka, a dentist who had kept nice and quiet all last fall, but is now a representative at the opposition Round Table. Tomorrow Otto von Habsburg will be here at the invitation of the German Social Union. At one point they distributed flyers reading: “If we had hanged them, we would have been no better than those who ruled over us with their Stasi and ‘shoot to kill.’”

  Clemens von Barrista and his wolf are everywhere and nowhere. Last Friday he climbed out of a big black American cruiser and asked for water for Astrid, the wolf. When I asked if he wanted some coffee, Barrista responded exuberantly, as if some secret wish had come true. We left the office together. I had to go to Lucka. He wanted to know if he could come along. “Yes,” I said, “of course!” And with that he opened the door of his black vehicle and tossed me the keys. The wolf jumped in. I said I’d rather not. It was a mystery to me how he had ever negotiated Frauen Gasse with the monster. “Give it a try,” he said, “it’s child’s play, you’ll see.”

  How right he was. We rolled gently through town and then zoomed off. I could feel the wolf’s breath at my right ear. Every fear had vanished. Suddenly everything turned bright and loud—Barrista had put down the top.

  Twenty minutes later we pulled up to the town hall in Lucka. I left the keys in the ignition, the wolf jumped up front.

  During my first visit in January Robert had come along, and we had found Frau Schorba, the mayor’s secretary, crumpled up in her chair, weeping. I had finally offered her a handkerchief. Even now I don’t know what it had all been about, but at my next visit she returned my handkerchief, freshly washed and ironed, and asked whether there was anything she could do for me. And now Frau Schorba takes in ads for the Weekly.

>   Standing at the door, Barrista observed our weekly ritual: While I skim reports in the Weekly file, Frau Schorba sways back and forth, playing her typewriter as expressively as a pianist. After watching her for a while, I always say, “I do admire you, Frau Schorba.”

  Then her hands sink into her lap. I ignore her pregnant silence, express my thanks, and call out as I depart, “See you next week.”

  “You’ve forgotten something,” she then replies, casting me a wicked smile. In one hand Frau Schorba holds out the ads, in the other the envelope with the money.

  “That’s a record!” I exclaimed loudly this time. Three of the six ads were for two columns, one of them eighty millimeters long.

  Suddenly Barrista was standing right there. He grabbed her hand and said, “Someone like you really should be taken under my protection.” I was no less flummoxed than Frau Schorba. “Whenever you need me,” he promised, laying his business card next to the typewriter. Bowing and spinning elegantly around, he said his farewell and was out the door.

  “He’s the hereditary prince’s ambassador,” I whispered to her, and followed him out.

  We again drove out to Referees’ Retreat for “lunch,” as Barrista called our noonday meal. After Barrista had asked me what year I was born, he then invited us—Jörg, Georg, and me—to be his guests at the Wenzel on Tuesday. I’ll tell you all about it.

  Hugs, Enrico

  Wednesday, March 7, ’90

  Dear Jo,

  Vera keeps calling from Beirut. She sits in a cramped little booth; last time the connection was relayed via New York. I’m always standing in the middle of the office, the receiver pressed to my ear, and seldom alone. The stories that Vera has heard, the misery she sees around her, the cripples, the blown-up buildings and palm trees, the barricades, and then at home there’s her headstrong mother-in-law and dithering Nicola, the whole dreary scene—I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to it all. My letters don’t get through because the post office isn’t functioning. But there’s no problem buying French cheese, cognac, or other delicacies. I hope Vera comes home soon.

  Michaela has gone to Berlin to visit Thea, her famous friend. She also wants to see Flieder in the hospital. It’s strangely quiet here. Even the crime rate dwindles from week to week.

  There’s only the occasional office argument about ads. There’s no talking to Georg about it. The ads bring in about the same amount we lose on returned copies. But according to Georg we’re losing readers precisely because we print ads. He talks himself into a rage—we’re not keeping to our agreements and without a second thought are throwing our real cause overboard.

  All the same, after each of us had said his piece, we put the argument behind us. But then Ilona stuck her head in at the door and reminded us that Herr von Barrista had called several times now and wanted to know what year each of us was born.

  “I’ve never set eyes on the fellow,” Georg shouted, “and yet all I hear is Barrista, on every side, Barrista, Barrista. Well, I know where he can shove my year of birth!” Jörg quickly calmed him down, reminding him of the possibilities that a visit by the prince could open up for us. Besides which he’d get to know Barrista come evening.

  At eight on the dot we were at the Wenzel. The restaurant was full, and Herr von Barrista hadn’t reserved a table, which he did every evening, but not today, no, sorry, not today. The bar was closed. Our only choice was armchairs in the lobby.

  Fifteen minutes passed and we agreed to give him another ten. At which point the elevator opened and Barrista stepped over to us. He sighed with a shake of his head; his upraised hands expressed both regret and reproach. Everything was ready and waiting. And here we were just sitting around!

  Barrista confided to us in the elevator that he had hoped “we might have found quarters for him here—in the Prince’s Suite. That really has a nice ring. But it is out of the question. He cannot stay here.” To my eyes, however, the suite to which Barrista now opened the door was splendid. An armada of three-branched candelabra cast the room in a honey gold light. The furniture shimmered honey gold, the place settings sparkled honey gold, the very air seemed bathed in the hue. “Beeswax?” Georg asked. “Excellent!” Barrista replied. “And do you know where I get these candles? From Italy, from an ecclesiastical supply house.”

  The stereo system was stupendous; we were standing in the middle of an orchestra, it was playing Handel.

  “Damn it all!” the waitress said, who had evidently been standing the whole time in front of the mirror puttering in vain at her hairdo, but now, tossing her head back and forth a few times, sent hair cascading down over her shoulders. She extended a hand to each of us; her smile squeezed her cheeks into little hillocks behind which her eyes twinkled. Her white blouse hung loose, but this could not disguise how deeply her skirt’s waistband was cutting into her flesh. I recognized her from somewhere, but couldn’t place her.

  Barrista admonished us not to just stand around—there was so much to do yet. And so we sidled along the old-fashioned chairs as if playing musical fright76 and tried to decode the names scribbled on place cards.

  “Let us drink, drink; champagne must be enjoyed ice cold.” After a brief toast to our common future and a successful outcome to our plans, he lifted his glass to each of us. When it came my turn, we gazed into each other’s eyes longer than normal—that is, I gazed into a vast darkness floating behind his thick lenses.

  My dear Jo, if only you could have been there. Just that first sip of champagne—how ridiculous to call it effervescent or bubbly. Oh no, no sooner had this liquid touched the palate and tongue than it evaporated into something lighter still. What a shame, I thought, that was it—and only then did I feel an unfathomable coolness deep within, yes, for a moment I myself was nothing but an icy pleasure. As if examining myself under a microscope I perceived with perfect clarity how this elixir diffused from cell to cell.

  It was as quiet as a prayer meeting. A raised eyebrow, a connoisseur’s smacking of the lips, even a word of praise would have been silly, would have been a sacrilege. Barrista likewise surrendered to the mysteries and hearkened to some inner voice. And for the first time I understood why someone would smash a wineglass. Forgive me the pathos—but already the second sip had a soupçon of the mundane.

  I used to want to be able to describe pleasure in all its nuances and hues. I am now content to have experienced it.

  The waitress placed a silver bowl in our midst, and from its center a glittering dolphin leapt up out of a sea of ice, on which—or so I thought—lay twelve black wrinkled mussels, plus lemon slices and another smaller bowl of sauce. The waitress gave my shoulder a pat, as if she were the hostess.

  The baron began his lecture, using an open hand in lieu of a pointer. At first there was something touching, if not almost absurd, about the earnestness with which he provided us the names of different kinds of oysters, their origins and characteristics, But that impression quickly vanished. There were various species—Pacific oysters, Atlantic oysters, Antarctic oysters, oysters from the north of France.

  “And now proceed as follows.” Barrista brandished a curious little fork. “Separate—lemon—sauce, not too much—slurp!” And he actually slurped. The liquid in which it floated was, he claimed, still seawater.

  No sooner did I have the slippery stuff in my mouth than he cried, “Chew! You have to chew, chew, and do you perceive it?” It had the odd taste of something that isn’t really food and yet has a flavor, a little like nuts. I paid no attention to the others—Jörg later admitted he would have loved to spit his out—and reached for a second. The oyster experience was the opposite of that of the champagne. I truly enjoyed the second one.

  Barrista raised his glass again. White wine, he said, clarified and enhanced the taste. I slurped a third.

  “Evidently they’ve lighted a fire!” Barrista clinked glasses with me and divided the rest of the oysters between us.

  He had driven to West Berlin at six o’clock that morni
ng and shopped “in certain specialty establishments.” This was a treat for him more than anything else. He had refrained far too long and was happy to be able once again to enjoy himself in our company. We should not imagine that first-class quality was easily obtained, one often had to journey far to find it. One could depend only on one’s nose. Which was why he traveled with just one small suitcase, and why most of the space in his car’s trunk was filled with coolers and his portable infernal machine. The waitress stepped to one side and gestured with both hands toward a two-burner stove.

  “Avanti!” Barrista exclaimed. “Steamed scallops!” We were each served just one, garnished with herbs and a dark sauce, a Chinese specialty.

  “You will be amazed,” Barrista said, announcing the next course. We need not take fright, this was not a dessert, but a mere nothing, as he liked to call it, a nothing that would give our taste buds a chance to recover, a kind of peppermint ice cream. (It had another name and wasn’t really ice cream.) He then passed around cigarettes, in a pack that reminded me of our Orient brand.

  “The hereditary prince,” the baron commenced, “sends his warmest greetings. You should perhaps know that the prince draws only a small pension, the lion’s share of which is withheld to defray the cost of his lodgings. The moment you have made his acquaintance you will want him to be your friend.”

  He went on to say that beyond his chambers, His Highness—that being the correct form of address—had no assets, nor did he lay claim to any, having, it should be noted, no right to do so in any case. And yet it had always been his dream to be allowed to return to the place from which he had to depart more than seventy years previous. He, Barrista, was saying this not so much to allay any possible suspicion, but rather he feared that there might be certain expectations and hopes attached to the person of the hereditary prince that he could in no way satisfy, however much His Highness himself might wish to do so. “We therefore have,” Barrista said in summary, “only money to lose.” Here his English accent reasserted itself. “You, of course, have nothing to lose,” he remarked, raising his glass. “I am responsible for the loss of moneys. Your responsibility is to assist me in that.”