New Lives

by Ingo Schulze

  For eighteen months I had longed to return. But where and what had I returned to? To a world that didn’t interest me, in which there was nothing for me, nothing worth writing about. In the army every well-used minute was an unexpected gift, every day of survival a victory.

  Instead of bearing witness to having made it through hell, I felt as if I had been driven from paradise. My world was turned upside down. And one thing led to another.

  Vera’s boyfriend at the time was a disgusting human being. Daniel, as I learned later, was also fleecing her financially.195 I tried to figure out if he was a writer or painter or if he did anything at all. Ostensibly he was a home health attendant, but he never went to work and lived off (besides Vera) what Dutch or French renters paid him for his apartment in Berlin. Daniel found Dresden unbearably provincial. He wasn’t going to stay a minute longer once Vera’s Berlin embargo was lifted. Vera admired Daniel because he could throw around words like “rhizome” and “anti-Oedipal” and had books from the West that he lent to no one. When he spoke the name “Foucault” it was as if he held his breath for a moment to listen for the echo of his own fanfare. To Vera, however, Daniel was the measure of all things.

  At the beginning I couldn’t resist him, either. The first time you met him his smile was like bait tossed your way. And by the second meeting you had the sense you had disappointed him, because the eyes behind his nickel-rimmed glasses were purely inner directed—today, I’d just call them dull. Everything I said about what I thought was good and right he would turn into its rhetorical opposite. If you offered any opposition, you were making yourself an accomplice of those in power, but if you attempted to lend support, that was a particularly perfidious way of trying to control someone. Inside half an hour Daniel would manage to brand me—in Vera’s presence—as a complete idiot. How was I supposed to write contemporary prose without having read Foucault, Deleuze, Lacan, Derrida, and all the rest of them? I didn’t need to waste my time on Adorno, and as for the whole Frankfurt school, I could just forget it.

  As she brought me to the door, Vera tried to comfort me. Daniel wasn’t blaming me for being ignorant of his authors, it was just that I should read them before attempting to write.

  The last straw was Vera’s promise to show me some texts about the army that one of her admirers had written and that she judged “not bad.” I was alarmed precisely because Vera didn’t take the guy seriously otherwise—she made fun of his jealousy and those puppy-dog eyes that followed her everywhere. And above all I was disconcerted because somebody was poaching in my reserve.196

  Once I got my own notes back from Geronimo, who had kept them in meticulous order, they bored me. The pounds of stuff I now crammed into my desk drawer were junk. Just as I had once collected seashells at the Baltic shore and then insisted I had to take every single one home with me—where after a few weeks, with my permission, they ended up in the trash—I might just as well have tied up the bundle and taken it to the ragman.

  Of course my letters—well, they weren’t real letters, but notes and sketches—paraded almost every one of my 541 days in the barracks before my eyes. But to what purpose? Where were the stories I had hoped to be able to net from these pages the way fat carp are taken from the ponds of Moritzburg Castle each autumn? All my fervor seemed so childish, so vain and pointless, that there was nothing for it but to admit Daniel and Vera were right. It was my plunge into hell.

  Suddenly I was just anybody. I felt abandoned, forsaken. If I couldn’t write, my life was worthless.

  Geronimo, who was studying theology in Naumburg, was helping Franziska study for her finals and playing in a band. Together we had argued with some Christian Democrats at the Church Congress in Dresden and had called Councilor of the Consistory Stolpe a political wet blanket. But otherwise we didn’t have much to say to each other. I was jealous of him because of Franziska and because he was a welcome guest in that large hillside villa in Weisser Hirsch, where he drank tea with her parents on the terrace while he gazed out over the whole city.

  To top it all off, I was told by the Army District Command197 that I had been discharged as a noncommissioned officer in the reserves, an ignominy that was too late to protest and that I had no choice but to keep to myself.

  My salvation was Aunt Camilla, who for the past two years had sent me one hundred D-marks at Christmas and another fifty D-marks at Easter, so that I suddenly had three hundred D-marks, to which my mother added what was left of her own gift; she also paid for my train ticket to Budapest and for two consignments of bed linens. I stayed ten days and lived like a prince.

  If this were a biography, one long chapter would be titled “Katalin.” Katalin was the niece of Frau Nádori and was studying English and German in Szeged. She was preparing for her exams. Every morning we sat in Frau Nádori’s kitchen and smoked her cigarettes until Katalin was banished to the living room, where she had to study Heinz Mettke’s Middle High German grammar. Each afternoon we would meet somewhere at four o’clock. Katalin was engaged and held fast to that role. After an evening at the opera, however, she visited me in my room. I pulled my sleeping bag from the bed and laid it on the old hardwood floor, directly in front of a white armoire that Frau Nádori always claimed was “genuine rococo.” Katalin now opened this genuine rococo armoire and made up a bed for us from the linens hoarded in it. She just wanted to lie beside me, she said, slipped off her nightgown, and warmed my hands between her thighs. At some point we both fell briefly asleep, but when we awoke it was all quite simple and lovely and unforgettable.

  I owe something else to those days in June—a book, one that I could just as easily have found in our own living room. But that copy was wrapped in such a dreadful jacket that I had never laid a hand on it.198

  In Budapest I received it from the hands of the same antiquarian book dealer who had wrapped several small blue volumes of Nietzsche in plain brown paper for me.

  I read the first story while I was still in the shop—and suddenly knew what I wanted. Stories exactly like this, except for today—in the here and now—a new Red Cavalry. I had found a new god. “Isaac Babel,” the lady had whispered, staring at the ceiling and elegantly spiraling her small liver-spotted hand in tiny ascending circles. Vera and David might be right a hundred times over, I was right about Babel.

  Katalin noticed that something extraordinary had happened to me. And I could sense that she liked how I spoke, how I couldn’t help reading her passages aloud, and how my enthusiasm was evidently blind to the fact that she wanted to kiss me, in broad daylight, even though the silvery head of her aunt might appear in the door at any moment.

  Your Enrico T.

  Tuesday, May 1, ’90

  Dear Nicoletta,

  At the end of August my existence as a full-time writer was salvaged. I was off to Jena to study.

  I’m almost ashamed to follow such a precise chronology. But each entry would be impossible to understand without the previous one. I promise you, however, I’ll move on now more quickly.

  Had it not been for my scribbling, for my wretched calling, I might have made a good student. But instead I was continually driven by the question: How far am I still from completing my army book so that I can publish it in the West at the magical age of twenty-five?

  I won’t write about my studies as such, although they defined my days and I was even afraid I might be asked to leave the university. There were nine of us students, five archaeologists and four philologists. I told you that day that the only faculty for classical studies was in Jena, and students were accepted only every two years. Of course that leads to arrogance, although God knows there was no reason for it.

  Do you still recall the peace marches and decisions to expand the arms race in 1983? There were demonstrations in Jena—illegal and official ones, sometimes both at the same time. The unofficial signs and banners were carried by workers—and quickly smashed by Stasi agents. I watched demonstrators hold up what was left of their signs, until they were eith
er arrested or vanished into the forest of GDR flags being waved by schoolchildren.

  Together with a few other students I joined the contingent of theologians, who weren’t attacked despite the fact that their slogans weren’t welcome either.

  Presumably all I would have had to do was bend down and pick up the remains of a sign and that would have been the end of my university studies.

  That I didn’t do it was not due solely to the promise of continued studies. I was also afraid. Not everyone survived his arrest.199 Every Sunday morning a vehicle fully manned by uniformed personnel would park near Cosmonaut Square. Their lurking just around the corner had its effect on the mood of the town. Anyone entering Thomas Mann Bookstore or simply strolling across the square might be instantly transformed into a demonstrator or a Stasi catchpole.

  The “personal conversations” I had known in high school (there were attempts at something similar even in the army) had their continuation at the university level. It was presumed that every male student would declare in writing that he was willing to become an officer in the reserves. After my initial refusal—my reasons for which were not all that easy to explain—I was invited to a conversation with the eminence grise of the faculty, Professor Samthoven (it was said that the “v” had once been an “f”),200 an archaeologist—a meticulously well-groomed man, if not a downright dandy. He was as proud of his thick, perfectly trimmed beard as he was of his little feet and slender, well-manicured hands. During seminars he smoked cigarillos (we were allowed to smoke as well) and used a riding crop as his pointer. He had the reputation of being a Casanova. At any rate he had no inhibitions about showing preference for the prettier female students, especially if they had long hair. Ever since I had outlined the pattern of a sonnet on the blackboard (he placed “utmost value” on general knowledge) and, as a novice, had had modest success describing early geometric vases, he overrated me far too much.

  He asked me to take a seat and treated me almost paternally—made tea and shoved an ashtray my way. We had both crossed our legs and were now gazing down at very different-size shoes, both jiggling gently and almost touching toes. He stroked the corners of his mouth with thumb and middle finger, pressed his lips tight, and began to speak. It should come as no surprise that I had been invited to this conversation. But before those paid to do so talked with me—by that he didn’t mean Stasi agents, but colleagues who owed their positions only secondarily to any expert knowledge—he himself wanted to have the pleasure of chatting with me, simply to make certain that I had also thought the entire matter through before making my final decision. He poured me some tea.

  Except for him, he noted, probably no one else here knew I was a noncommissioned officer…I was about to contradict him, to explain—he knew very well what I intended to say, but begged to be allowed to finish. He himself saw that there could be some small shame connected with being a noncom. But not perhaps in the way I might think, quite the contrary. All states, whether East or West, recruited their officers from the elite. That was the case everywhere, except with us. Poles, Russians, Czechs—they weren’t even asked.

  It would sadden him to see me ruin my professional chances, my life, by such a refusal—particularly, and here I surely would agree with him, since I had come up with no cogent reason for it, nor in all probability would I—only to end up being psychologically humiliated by these people. “For why, my dear Herr Türmer, should a noncom be frightened of becoming a full-fledged officer? If you argue the issue on principle, then you will also have to recant the very oath you swore. Or am I overlooking some other possibility?” He raised the shallow white cup to his lips and sipped.

  All that was demanded of us, he continued, was a profession of allegiance, a symbolic yes. He again put the cup to his lips and gazed out over the rim. “Georgian tea, brought it back from Tbilisi. You’ll be traveling there soon, I presume.”

  He would be quite satisfied if I merely ran the matter over in my mind one more time. There was no need for us to discuss the imperfections of socialism as it existed in reality, our two standpoints were probably not as far apart as some might imagine. He, however, always asked himself one question: What other society had in so short a time managed to conquer hunger, whether in Russia or China or Cuba? As long as tens of thousands died daily of starvation and curable diseases one must put the question just that way. “What was Allende’s first decree? A half liter of milk for every child. Allende was a physician, he knew what needs to be done.”

  Samthoven struck a match and took a drag on his cigarillo.

  Ultimately—and this was the only reason for him to tell me this, for him to take this time from his schedule—it was a matter of providing our state with its elite. “Don’t be so stupid as to forfeit your education!” he exclaimed, holding up the fingers between which his cigarillo glowed. I shouldn’t let myself be trapped in the net of the very people who had done our country greater harm than the class enemy. If I understood that, then we were both on the same side. He couldn’t say more, nor did he wish to. Instead of continuing to play the hero I would do better to join the Party. “The necessary reforms can come only from within the Party. You’ll live to see it.”

  He would personally smooth the way for me.

  These last words were spoken with a certain testiness, as if it annoyed him to have to say such things at all. We sat there in silence for a while, our feet still jiggling. Then he extended his small dry hand and said his good-bye.

  My lungs were burning from chain-smoking. I came to a halt in front of the Haeckel Phyletic Museum. I wanted to forget his odious offer, I needed some distraction, I needed fresh air.

  As I walked past the post office in the direction of West Station, however, I soon turned off to the right to avoid rush-hour traffic. My path led me up the steep hill, and I walked aimlessly through streets lined with middle-class houses and villas with gardens. From the multipaneled window of a sandstone villa hung a red and white banner that read VIVAT POLSKA! There were several of these in town. It meant that this was the home of someone who had filled out his application—who wanted out, wanted to go to the West.

  I kept on walking. It was windy, but not cold. I was sweating. At one point I thought I had lost my bearings.

  What can I say. I was standing halfway up the slope and suddenly knew what my army book would look like. As if guided by a magic hand, the Vivat Polska! and the graffiti on the wall of Holy Cross School merged with my army experiences. And I had the vague suspicion that I somehow owed the intellectual thread binding them to Samthoven.

  An hour and a half later I was sitting in a pub, the Hauser, answering questions posed by the clique of four who were in their third year of studies.

  I mimicked the elegant way Samthoven crossed his legs, observed the back of my outstretched hand with that same blatant self-infatuation, stroked my imaginary beard, perched a saucer at my chin and sipped, splaying my pinkie, repeating his comments about Tbilisi, and then tried to imitate his rhetorical periods, which were so lengthy that you could have laid wagers on whether they would end with the right verb form. If it was possible to lay Samthoven bare, then I did it.

  The clique boomed with laughter. I relished the way our table had become the center of attention in the dark room. Edith, the owner, a woman somewhere on the far side of fifty and dressed in a white smock, waved her hand at newcomers looking for a seat to wait at the door, as if they were disrupting a performance.

  I have never been a finer entertainer than I was that evening. Samthoven’s invitation to join the Party was its crowning pirouette.

  Samthoven might have thought that I had held my tongue out of courtesy, just as these people believed I knew what I wanted. At the end of my performance I had no choice but to respond with a yes to their presumption that I would stick to my refusal to be an officer in the reserves.

  A little later Edith sat down at our table and asked for a cigarette. The last round of beer was on the house. The evening had reached its
climax. Time for the final curtain.

  On the way home it felt like I had a plump wallet in my breast pocket—it was my book, whose fulcrum or pivoting point was to be the slogan Vivat Polska! painted in white on a dark wall somewhere in the basement furnace room of the barracks. One soldier after another would be summoned. Both the interrogation itself and the interval during which each man waited for his own name to be called would give me the opportunity for character studies and descriptions of the brutality of everyday life in the barracks. Who had put it there? No sooner do they have a suspect than the graffiti appears on another wall: Vivat Polska!

  Soon there’s a third one, a fourth, and now it’s ten—even in the snow on the drill field, the inscription: Vivat Polska! And all the while—and that was to be the linchpin of the whole story—it is the Stasi that started it all as a provocation, a way to interrogate people and lure them into denouncing each other. And now this vile trick has turned on them and is out of control.

  I only had to start, I could already sense the ecstasy that would bring it all together.

  Your Enrico T.

  Saturday, May 5, ’90

  Dear Nicoletta,

  In retrospect the affair with Nadja is transparent. At the time I was amazed that a woman like her would throw herself into my arms. Nadja was Vera’s first great love. Early in ’81 her mother had married a gay Swiss man, and they all left the country that same May.