New Lives

by Ingo Schulze

  Once in the living room we pounced on Barrista’s box of candy—chocolates that melted on your tongue. Michaela took one of each sort and, sitting down where Barrista had just sat, laid them on his plate, assuming it was clean. I managed three, Robert two, Michaela ate them like cherries, and took the rest with her when she sat down in front of the television—where she still is, listening to oracles about the upcoming election.

  Dear Jo, I find it hard to say anything about your latest work.105 All that seems so far away now. Invented stories no longer interest me. That’s no argument, of course, and certainly no criterion for measuring quality. The new literature, if it does come about, will be literature about work, about business deals, about money. Just look around you! People in the West don’t do anything but work. It will be no different with us.

  Say hello to your wife and daughter for me, hugs, E.

  [Thursday, March 15, ’90]

  Nicoletta, what happened?106 I’m practically numb. I heard about it just in passing from Jörg. But don’t know anything else about it. Why should you care about Barrista? When I think about how I was lying in bed at precisely the same moment, counting the minutes until your departure—and now I know. I suspected something of the sort, something disastrous. But Barrista? What does he have to do with us? When it comes to us, he doesn’t exist. What are you accusing him of? Or me? Why is he important at all? Isn’t he a person who ought to arouse our sympathy, or forbearance? As a man who has to compensate for so much? But none of that matters. Why are you making me atone for what he did? How else am I supposed to understand your silence? At first glance B. seems an odd duck. I have no idea where he gets his strange manners and attitudes. Do they have any purpose other than to draw attention away from his looks? People here make fun of his pointy boots with their out-of-whack heels. Ultimately I can’t tell you anything about B., other than that he approached the newspaper with his unusual request. The explanations he gave for it are flattering. Is there any reason why we shouldn’t cooperate with him?

  Where do you know him from? Or was he—I don’t dare put it in words—impolite or otherwise crude? Believe me, it would take no more than a hint of something of the sort—and he can go to wherever!

  B. has left, no one knows when he’ll be back.

  Please drop me just a couple of lines, I beg you.

  With all my heart,

  Your Enrico

  Monday, March 19, ’90

  Dear Nicoletta,

  Up until the very last minute I was certain you’d appear at the office, as if there were some natural rhythm that would necessarily bring you back to Altenburg. Sometimes I’m seized with the fear that you might be ill, that something’s wrong, maybe in aftermath of the accident. Have you had X-rays taken?

  My desire to see you was so strong that I believed it might conjure up your presence. That’s also why I came to the office early—and thought I had been rewarded. I ran into Georg in the vestibule, and he promised me a visitor, in fact someone was waiting for me. Georg’s smile was so broad I had no doubts whatever.

  But I played the innocent—yes, I blame myself for that now, as if my foolishness had driven you away—shrugged, as if I couldn’t imagine who it might be, and asked Georg what needed to be done, hoping you would hear my voice. Of course I had nothing against his going right back upstairs. Ah, Nicoletta, those few moments of promise!

  Three men from the newspaper in Giessen sat sipping coffee, happy to have new playmates. I recognized one of them from his lilac-colored jacket.

  My responses were mechanical. My thoughts were racing here and there, but at some point I calmed myself with the realization that there was lots of time left, that the day had just begun, so everything still lay ahead of me, a day with lots of hours with lots of minutes—and you might arrive at any one of them. With astounding speed the familiar happiness that comes with such an expectation reasserted itself. The soft light of a spring day too warm for this early in the year could only be your harbinger.

  The men from Giessen had been out watching polling stations open and had retreated to our office as if to a pub. They didn’t believe me when I told them I’d been up for only an hour instead of doing research since the crack of dawn. But after I asked them to pass on their article on the general mood, they set their misgivings aside. I laid out the page proofs and started in. I wanted to earn your appearance, Nicoletta, and be finished early.

  Each time the door opened it seemed more and more likely that you would appear.

  The fellows from Giessen deployed their forces one by one, but were never gone for long. Their favorite story was about how Hans Schönemann, the former “district secretary for ideology and propaganda,” was now a candidate of the German Social Union. Although I told them right off that there were two people who went by that name, the guy with the hedgehog haircut kept telling the story over and over, and left it to me to correct him. Then he would smile as if to say: Are you sure of that?

  Around two I stuffed myself with pastries and was afraid you’d catch me with my mouth full. I expected you by five, or five thirty at the latest, at any rate before the polls closed. I was as convinced of that as if you had just told me so over the phone.

  Around four I had finished up with everything and would have been done even earlier if I hadn’t had to play host the whole time, as well as putting off calculating the last article. I wanted you to find me hard at work.

  Franka had some folding chairs that were usually set out halfway up the back garden—the white paint was flaking and stuck to your trouser seat. We had put the newspaper to bed and had shoved the table’s extensions back in. There hadn’t been that many people in our parlor the day of our first issue. I hadn’t seen many of them since last October or November. Georg announced that he had figured out that anyone born after 1912 had never taken part in a genuine election.

  When the clock struck the hour, the sixth stroke caught me unawares. I thought I had counted wrong, but the portable radio also announced six p.m. Squeezed in among the crowd, it seemed to me other people were holding their breath too—utter silence. Until Jörg laughed out loud. Others joined in. Suddenly everyone was shouting something—the prognosticators were vilified and mocked.107 I fought my way outside and climbed up the garden slope.

  The fellows from Giessen and a few of our delivery people were still there an hour later. They were sitting around the table where the radio stood—silence reigned. At any given point at least one of them was shaking his head. The fellows from Giessen drew the harshest conclusions, talked about betrayal, betrayal of the ideals of last autumn, and even abandoned their story about Hans Schönemann.

  They were also the only ones who really dug in when Franka set out a tray of sandwiches. Georg had crept away somewhere. Staring at the table between his elbows, Jörg shooed away Georg’s boys and finally turned off the radio. At that moment the telephone rang. Or maybe the telephone rang first. Jörg was closest to it, but took forever to pick up the receiver. He said “Hello,” repeated it more loudly, and finally bellowed that he couldn’t understand a word. The guy in lilac nudged me. “The receiver,” he whispered. I didn’t get it. “Look at the receiver,” he hissed. Shouting into the earpiece, Jörg was holding the receiver backward. I signaled the fact to him, which only made him angrier. I took the receiver away from him, but by then there was nobody on the other end.

  I said my good-byes, Jörg caught up with me at the front door. He wanted me to write the editorial for the front page—on the right, boxed, a thousand characters, he’d always done it until now. When I got home I gave myself over to the notion that you were watching the same pictures on television.

  Those thousand characters were easier than I had expected. Georg will probably accept it, I’m not so sure about Jörg. There’s not much time for major changes. After all the hopes I had pinned on this day, I find my fatalism almost heroic.

  My thoughts are with you,

  Your Enrico

  Tuesday,
March 20, ’90

  Dear Jo,

  I hope you were able to cope with Sunday better than Michaela (my views on the election will be on the front page). You can hear “two point nine” sung by Michaela in all keys and timbres—today sardonic, yesterday more despairing, toneless, dramatic. Compared to her I felt like a stone. Ever since her klartext was consigned to the grave, Michaela hasn’t been near the New Forum. She also steadfastly refused any and all nominations, though she was flattered by the offers. Send Michaela Fürst to parliament!

  As if knowing what was coming, she had had her hair cut short on Friday. Not even Robert knew about it. The idea came to her at the beauty parlor. And so she’s playing Nefertiti, as somber as she is standoffish. Sunday mornings, when I set out at eight thirty, she never fails to ask if I had ever imagined my new life would be like this. Let’s hope she doesn’t see the line of people at the train station waiting to buy their Bild tabloid.

  On Sunday Michaela made her appearance in a new dress that Thea had given her—more an outfit for the opera. Our delivery staff and the people from the New Forum who crowded into our office received her as if their legitimate sovereign were making her entrance.

  She kept her composure after the first predictions came in. As long as the people around her reacted with despair or, like Marion, broke down in tears, Michaela could even play the consoler. She kept repeating that it’s never over until it’s over. Some people cursed Bärbel Bohley and her entourage for doing nothing but their Berlin thing, others damned the Greens in the West for having neither a clue nor any money. Marion then remarked that we hadn’t been hard enough on the bigwigs. We did ourselves in with our own false notions of fairness—why hadn’t we published all the Stasi lists and banned the old parties? What had been the point of reading Lenin in school?

  Within a half hour the outrage had exhausted itself. And with each person who slunk away, Michaela lost a piece of her energy. People didn’t even bother to say good-bye to one another. The simplest things went awry. Cigarettes refused to be stubbed out, two glasses were tipped over within seconds of one another, we bumped into each other or stepped on people’s toes. Michaela admitted to me today that for several minutes she had been unable to recall if Marion’s name was Marion. The fellows from Giessen kept jotting down notes, but in the end appeared to take offense at the results and said things like “the ugly side of the East.”

  Once we got home Michaela couldn’t be dragged away from the television. Wrapped in a blanket, she didn’t even turn her head when she spoke to us. At every miniscule change in the numbers she would call us in and stretch out an arm, pointing at the screen.

  Michaela had promised Robert she’d make fondue. It was all ready to go, the trays in the fridge, the broth in the pot. But even when it was on the table and we two had stuck our forks into the pot, she was still crouched in front of the TV. Robert was on the verge of tears. I asked her twice to join us—she knew how it had turned out.

  What did I actually have to say about the disaster? I was acting as if it were no concern of mine, as if our provincial rag hadn’t also played its part in the catastrophe. I replied that there were few things that could keep me from eating my fondue. I’m sure you know how I meant it. But Michaela turned to stone.

  Nothing, nothing had any meaning, she said, if people were going to cast such sick, idiotic votes. She couldn’t breathe the air here, could barely look anyone in the eye, and I was just as moronic as everybody else.

  As if hurling the question at me from the stage, she suddenly asked: Who are you, who are you really? I had to laugh, not at her question, but at what raced through my mind. A searcher, I said. And what was I searching for? The right kind of life, I said, and surprised myself at how calmly I pronounced those self-evident words. Astonishingly enough, she then sat down with us at the table.

  Ah, Jo, what am I supposed to do? I want so much to help her. But she won’t listen to the truth, at least not from me.

  When I returned from my midday meal today—innkeeper Gallus was “flying the flag,” meaning he had laid starched white tablecloths to celebrate the election victory—there at my desk sat Piatkowski, the local CDU vice chairman, sucking on lozenges to cover the alcohol on his breath. And who was he talking with? With Barrista!

  When Piatkowski saw me come in, he opened up a dark red document folder and handed me the letterhead of the Altenburg District CDU announcing that it was “deeply moved” and thanking the men and women who had given the party their votes. I said we couldn’t accept anything more—nothing more this week.

  “Or one could pay the surcharge,” the baron said. That’s what he’d done recently. For twice the price one could surely buy a half page. Piatkowski’s moist lips began to quiver. What, he asked, would a hundred fifty marks get him? Barely two inches, one column wide. Mulling this over, Piatkowski cinched the folder’s black-red-and-gold cord tight, then finally agreed—with a sigh at having to forgo his new CDU symbol (their old ex oriente pax was evidently no longer valid)—and chose one of the heavy obituary frames. You’ll need a magnifying glass to read the text. I gave him a receipt for his cash payment.

  Once Piatkowski was gone, I asked the baron whether he knew whom he had just been speaking with. Last October, the day after Altenburg held its first demonstration and Michaela and a couple of others had been invited to the Rathaus by the district secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, Piatkowski had been sitting across from them at the table and had threatened them, saying anyone who tried to block open dialogue should not count on magnanimity—a statement that even earned him the censure of the secretary, who declared how “deeply moved” he had been by the demonstration.

  The baron shrugged. What was I upset about? About that poor nobody who had just slid out the door? Piatkowski, I said, was the last man on earth to get my pity. But I was told to consider what I was saying. The fellow wouldn’t be watching the next local elections as a Party official, and Piatwhatever knew that better than anyone. He would lose his job for the same reason. Did I know why Piatwhatever had joined the CDU? To salvage his parents’ drugstore, because he had been told it was either stick with the Socialists or lose the store. And he had sought refuge with the CDU in order to keep the business afloat for at least as long as his father was still alive.108 Then he’d been offered an administrative position, in the exchequer—the baron’s term for the budget office. (Piatkowski had evidently completely turned his head.) We could finish him off with a snap of the fingers, the baron replied, we only had to place a call and threaten to write an article, that’s all it would take, we didn’t even have to waste column space on him. And hadn’t I just seen proof of how hard they were making things for him, just to get a line or two published, whereas I could write as much as I wanted on any subject. He didn’t like to see me wasting my time with people like Piatwhatever, the baron said, quite apart from the fact that it wasn’t very chivalrous to kick a man when he’s down.

  “Especially now that we’ve reached a critical point,” he said, “you have to know what you want to do.” His voice was insistent, but so low that even Ilona, whom we’d just heard moving about in the kitchen, could not have heard him. Then Felix, Georg’s oldest boy, came back from taking the wolf for a walk, and the baron asked if I’d care to accompany him on a stroll through town. So far he’d just been rushing from appointment to appointment, but now he’d just like to be carried along with the current. I had to turn him down, but was told we can keep the car for a while yet.

  Your E.

  Wednesday, March 21, ’90

  Dear Nicoletta,

  Even more promising than the Bamberg cancellation on the envelope are the two exclamation marks in the margin and the underlining, which I take is your handwriting.109

  Barrista is back in town already. He admitted that you had had an argument. Of course he denied my questions at first and refused to admit that there was an “argument,” but then conceded that he had not understood why he should have any less
right to spend time in our office than you. If we didn’t want him here, then I should tell him so. Finally he confessed that his reaction had been a bit “defiant,” but assured me twice that he had no reason to accuse you of anything, and spoke effusively of your articles in Stern magazine, of which I’m sorry to say I was quite unaware. If there needs to be a reconciliation, he’s willing to take the first step.

  Barrista went on to ask whether I might not be thinking differently about some things today. I asked what he meant. In the West, he told me, considerably more people were disappointed about the results of the election than here. He—that is, Barrista—wasn’t interested in any particular political point of view, but rather in democracy. The state at any rate stood in its citizens’ way more often than it advanced their progress.

  When I showed him the articles you sent me, he raised his arms and then wearily lowered them again. That was precisely what he meant when he had suggested talking things over calmly. Barrista had once expressed a wish that as time went on we ought to discuss things more, so that we could put as many ideas on the table as possible—although that surely is not quite the same thing […]

  From his attaché case he pulled out a binder that was much too small for the mass of paper bulging out of it. On top was an almost undecipherable cover letter—I could barely make out my own name—in which he advised who ought to be informed of the contents of this dossier. For the most part it contains copies of newspaper articles and documents by his defense lawyer, plus the final court decision […]

  While I thumbed through it—your own material is all there—he worked hard to persuade me. After all, a man doesn’t just walk in one day and say, “Hello, fellows, the prosecuting attorney showed up at my front door two years ago.”