New Lives

by Ingo Schulze

  As the crowd pressed tighter together in the twilight, the chants spread more quickly.

  I was prepared to acknowledge and admire as our alpha animals those at the epicenter who invented and struck up chants. But did they truly believe they could change things?

  The call of “Sanction New Forum” was a little work of metrical art, whose last three syllables pounded like a fist against a door. It touched me in some unique way, as if those squawkers were fighting for me, for legalizing my membership. The chorus’s chants bounced off the facades. It took people on the periphery a while to notice that those at the center had fallen silent or struck up a new slogan. “Sanction New Forum!” Patrick’s friend bellowed directly beside us. I admit—I felt embarrassed. Although he had done his part, I could not bring myself to utter something like that.

  In the same moment they shouted their first “Let’s move out!” I thought I heard the trample of boots—it was just a flock of pigeons taking off from a roof. I would have loved to move out—the people nearest me had already taken up the chant—but we were stuck in the middle of it all. And in the next moment Ellen and Patrick had vanished without a trace.

  Inside the pedestrian zone there was almost no way to tell where the demonstration ended and everyday life began. It was equally unclear in what direction the demonstration was going to move.

  Hoping to find Patrick and Ellen again, I pressed up against a display window. And only then did it finally hit me: this is a demonstration, people are demonstrating here. I only needed to take a couple of steps forward and then keep putting one foot in front of the other. So it’s that easy to take part in an illegal demonstration, I thought.

  I can no longer say how we made it to the train station, whether we had veered off before we got to the opera or not until Ring Strasse itself. Later images are superimposed on earlier ones. I can still see us with buildings on either side, in front of display windows, making us look like a second demonstration waiting to merge with the main column. A banner that when folded up was no bigger than a switchyard flag was passed along over our heads. “Travel Visa to Pisa.” I saw this as a clever way to smudge the fingerprints left on the sticks. Just as it was my turn to reach out my arm and grab one end of it, the cry of “Gorby, Gorby” swept over us in chorus. I looked at my feet and hoped that that one would soon be over.

  I had to talk myself into walking out onto the streetcar tracks. All trams had been halted. One driver had crossed his arms and with a blank expression was staring directly down at me. “Join with us!”282 was the next chant. People in the lighted car pressed their foreheads to the windowpanes, watching us as if we were characters in some boring movie. “Join with us!” It’s hardly likely you would recognize the song—we’d had to sing it in music class—and the refrain goes, “So left, two, three, so left, two three / Find your place, good comrades / Join with us in the Workers’ Front / Cause you’re a working man too!” That’s where it had come from, this “Join with us!” of theirs. Banal, isn’t it?283

  Then came the cordon of special-alert police. I showed you the spot where they blocked the street. I instinctively moved toward the side. To me it looked like an all-too-obvious “step-into-our-trap.” The crowd marched straight ahead, pushing its front rows practically into the arms of the cordon. And all of a sudden—just like in the square in front of St. Nicholas Church, which they never should have let us leave—the whole scene could be taken in with one sweeping glance. They were sure to correct their mistake now.

  On a high curb to my left stood a frail elderly woman with arms crooked at the elbows, half ballerina, half supplicant. The reason for her pose became clear to me only after I noticed she was holding leashes, at the ends of which two poodles were leaping about excitedly.

  Written in lights above a new building that worked like an extension of the blockade was the announcement: “Bienvenue,” “Welcome,” “Dobro poshalovat”—greetings from another time when there were more pleasant things to do than stand in the street with thousands of others, shouting slogans until you were hoarse and waiting for backup units of the special alert police. There were hardly any lights in the windows. Were the people inside standing behind drawn curtains, sitting at their evening meal, or in front of a television? I envied them. The Astoria, the train station—their lighted billboards worked like the backdrop to some familiar play against which a new sketch was being rehearsed between performances.

  To this day I still don’t actually know why we just stood there, why we didn’t move around the cordon or set off in a totally different direction. Weren’t we demonstrators just asking the powers of the state to encircle us? Or had our little stroll first found its meaning in this row of uniformed men?

  I had seen and heard enough. I took my first steps in the direction of freedom, when at my back the cry went up, “Shame on you! Shame on you!” The third “Shame on you!”—yes, I was ashamed of such a childish chant—was earsplitting and drove the poodles crazy. They barked and got tangled up in their leashes. Suddenly one jumped at me, I could feel its claws through my pants. The woman didn’t react. She even let the leash out as I pulled back, and brazenly stared me in the face. Her mustache was especially thick at the corners of her mouth. The woman turned away only as the “Shame on you!” began to ebb. She had a limp, the poodles obediently followed her—by some miracle their leashes had untangled themselves.

  If I was going to stay, at least I wanted to see something, and so I tried to press as far to the front as I could. People were helpful, calling out to those ahead by name or tapping them on the shoulder. I moved very slowly, trying not to upset anyone, especially after a man, almost still a boy, cringed and fell silent in the middle of his chant.

  When I finally saw the cordon of uniformed men linked arm in arm directly before me—as far as I could tell they were unarmed—I couldn’t understand why we had let them stop us. They were ciphers compared to us. The faces under their billed caps lay in shadows. It was difficult to make out any expression.

  In the narrow corridor that separated demonstrators and police three young women were running back and forth—or better, pubescent girls. Two of them blew a bubble, both at once, then smacked away at their gum with open mouths and laughed defiantly—they wanted everyone to see what fun they were having. In their white-splattered jeans they came across as both vulgar and charming. Why were they being allowed to carry on like that? And apart from me they appeared to be the only ones not joining in the chants.

  Then the girls came to a halt in an almost classic contrapposto, hands on hips or an arm thrown around a girlfriend’s shoulder, and pretended to strike up a chat with someone they knew in the cordon.

  I missed the crucial move. You’ll say I’m fantasizing, but I did hear the silence that announced the deed. It was like a great pause, the kind we know from nature, that moment when day and night collide and all creation falls silent for a few heartbeats. The silence caused me to look around—people were looking up, something was whirling above our heads—the cap fell with a smack! as its bill struck the asphalt, tipped over, and lay there upside down not five feet from me. Before I could decipher the name on it, one of the girls grabbed the cap and flung it over her shoulder high into the air again.

  Her face was like a miniature portrait, hung at the far end of the world, but in perfect focus. I saw it all at once: the cap rotating on its axis, the head of a black-haired lad, the motion of the girl, and the witnesses frozen in place. What bewildered me most was the bare head, the black hair plastered to it, the forehead with white welts284 cut across it.

  And now the second girl fished with one hand for the cap of a tall fellow and instantly tossed it into the air. Her other hand was casually thrust into her jeans pocket. This time the cap landed behind me. I picked it up. “Jürgen Salwitzky”285 was printed on the slip of paper under a plastic strip. The first cheers came now from the rear. Jürgen Salwitzky—he too with welts across his forehead—watched his cap go flying again. Before I c
ould give it back to him, it had been wrenched from my hand like booty to which I was not entitled.

  The jubilation that greeted each flying cap competed with cries of “No violence!” I couldn’t understand what the uniformed men were waiting for. What still had to happen?

  The third girl twirled a billed cap around and around on her head.

  Jürgen Salwitzky and his two bareheaded comrades now looked like the prisoners of the men in caps to their right and left.

  The chants of “No violence!” had died away. The demonstrators wanted to see more caps, and a few brave souls snapped up a trophy. It was easy game. With their arms linked the only thing the uniformed men could do was throw their heads back and stare at the bandit’s hand with a mixture of rage and fear.

  But people had grown used to all this. Which was why it came as a relief when a young fellow climbed up on something and gave a brief speech. We shouldn’t let ourselves be provoked, but go home now, and return next Monday, each of us bringing a friend, a colleague, a neighbor along. We had achieved a victory today, a victory that we could be proud of. The applause was sparse.

  He waited, as if he intended to resume his speech or answer questions, but since nothing occurred either to him or anyone else, he vanished again into the crowd.

  How easily I could have taken on that same role. But I would have said something quite different. My speech of indictment and rebellion had been lying at the ready inside me for years. A little courage, a bit of climbing skill, would have sufficed to accomplish something historical at such a moment.

  I was among the first to leave, and saw how small the world of the demonstrators was, how few strides it took to return to familiar scenery, to the old play of which we had grown so fond.286

  I got home shortly after nine. Robert had been waiting for Michaela, not me. At any rate his door closed again before I had caught sight of him. Michaela could hardly conceal her disappointment at my report, which ended up pallid and monosyllabic, as if I had been the one who played hooky. She may well have secretly doubted I had even been in Leipzig.

  As I lay in bed I couldn’t help thinking about what we had been taught in school, about how the workers in the GDR didn’t need to strike or demonstrate, because anyone who took to the streets in a socialist state was ultimately demonstrating against himself. That turn of phrase was a perfect description of my situation. As a writer, that was exactly what I was doing. I was demonstrating for the end of my material, my theme. I don’t think I need to explain that any further to you. What was I, as a writer, going to do without a wall?

  Fondly as always,

  Your Enrico

  Friday, May 25, ’90

  Dear Nicoletta,

  At the time I found it difficult to talk about those hours I had spent in Leipzig, but what was already in the past was no longer of interest to anyone else either. Michaela, who barely tolerated someone in the hall when she was sitting on the toilet, now began to leave the door ajar so she could still listen to the radio. We bought another radio when the border to Czechoslovakia was sealed.287 I had been expecting the trap to snap shut, but not before October 7th. Michaela was triumphant—the bankruptcy could not become more obvious, the opposing fronts more clearly marked. Her greatest disdain was for those who only now gave vent to their criticism and outrage.

  It wasn’t easy to find words to counter Michaela’s euphoria. Without the windbreak of October 7th, I said, people could never have pushed things this far. The demonstrators had had a nose for the few days when they could count on easy treatment. The upcoming anniversary was the only possible explanation for such restraint. But now, earlier than I had expected, the game of cat and mouse had begun. Step by step, bit by bit, the end was drawing near.

  I asked Michaela to hold back. Within ten days at the latest we’d be living under martial law. Or did she perhaps believe they would be impressed by our slogans and abdicate voluntarily? Why else did she suppose they had their State Security, their police, special forces, army?

  My arguments seemed to me so cogent that ultimately it wasn’t just Michaela who was daunted by them, I was afraid myself.

  And yet, my dear Nicoletta, that is at best only half the truth. These letters will not have been in vain only if you believe me when I say that above all else I felt a sense of relief, even a certain cheerfulness.

  I would like nothing better than to break off my confession at this point. But my descent has not yet come to an end.

  I had hardly anything to do at the theater and so I often sat in on the Nestroy rehearsals. Michaela was playing, as I noted before, Frau Eberhard Ultra. Ultimately it was no longer a role. Day by day she was playing herself more and more.

  A description of those rehearsals would more than suffice to characterize the period. It would serve as a kind of chronicle, even without ingredients like demonstrations and police deployments: from the initial discussions of May and June, when Norbert Maria Richter had still regarded the piece as a kind of lampoon of functionaries and their revolutionary blather, to the excitement of early September, when the concept was to stage the idea that revolution is possible, on into October, when the production grew triter and triter with each passing day, because the street was always a good two steps ahead of the stage, until the point when—but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

  Michaela couldn’t be talked out of traveling to Berlin that Saturday,288 just as she did every year, for Thea’s birthday. I thought it was absurd for us to be separated on the very weekend when the die would be cast. She couldn’t turn Thea down, and they needed to stay in contact, especially now. Besides which, I was invited too. Even though she really didn’t want me to come along. Robert and I took her to the train on Saturday. She leaned out the window and waved, as if saying good-bye for weeks. Then I delivered Robert to Michaela’s mother in Torgau, where he was to spend the night.

  On the way back I was able to gas up in Borna without a long wait. Once home, however, being all alone felt like unhappiness weighing down on me. I drove to the autobahn on-ramp, from there it was only sixty-five miles to Dresden.

  Do you remember the trains carrying the refugees from the Prague embassy? I heard on the news that there had been scenes of tumult at the Dresden Central Station. Everyone who wanted out had tried to get to those trains.

  I had last spoken with my mother on Wednesday, and it had sounded as if she was too frightened or cautious to talk about any of it on the clinic telephone.

  On October 7th, however, it was all about Berlin and Gorbachev and what would happen on Monday in Leipzig. While I drove I listened to early music, some famous Neapolitan whose name I didn’t really try to remember, but even Bach reworked some of his stuff.289 Listening to the arias and duets a sense of calm came over me for the first time in months, as if these chords were setting the world and me as well back on a familiar track. But that mood didn’t last long.

  After ringing my mother’s bell and waiting a while, I unlocked the door. As I pulled back the curtain separating the small vestibule from the hallway I smelled the odor of my childhood. The cup in the sink was half filled with water, no traces of lipstick on the rim. Bread crumbs were floating on the plate under it, a dark substance had dried on the knife, liverwurst or plum butter. The pot scrubber was full of grains of rice and stank just a bit.

  I walked to the telephone booth and called the clinic. A nurse I didn’t know answered. Judging by the voice, she had to be very young. Frau Türmer wasn’t available at the moment. I asked how long the operation would last. She couldn’t say. I asked her to tell my mother that I would see her at the clinic. At first I thought the nurse had hung up, but then I learned my mother wasn’t on duty this weekend, and so wasn’t even at the clinic.

  I called Geronimo. His line was busy. I called Thea. One of her little girls picked up the receiver, but before I could say a word, she shouted, “Nobody home!” and hung up. Geronimo was still on the phone. I walked to the little round bastion in the park with its m
onument to Theodor Körner, and then tried a third time, again with no luck.

  When I got back home lights were on in the living room. I stormed up the stairs, unlocked the door, gave a shout, ran to the living room, where I stood for a while listening to the tick of the wall clock and finally turned off the light. I walked from room to room, made a second round, turned on the heat, and finally sat down in the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry, but didn’t know what else to do at the moment than to fix myself something to eat. The bread was stale, and what few things I found in the refrigerator I put back after standing there holding each one in my hand for a while. With my tea I ate one section after the other of some West chocolate I’d found in the butter compartment.

  You will ask why I expect you to read such trivia. Of course none of these details are important, but the early music, the familiar four walls, and my mother’s absence had turned me into a child again. I drove off to see Francisca and Geronimo.

  There was no mention of Dresden in the news on the car radio, at least nothing from which you could draw any conclusion about what was happening at the moment. On the far side of Dr. Kurt Fischer Platz290 I could see streetcars a quarter mile ahead backed up as far as the Platz der Einheit.291

  I turned around and took Dr. Kurt Fischer Allee to Bautzner Strasse,292 meaning directly past State Security, decorated with “anniversary lights.” But except for one patrol car that turned just ahead of me, I saw no uniformed personnel.

  In order not to awaken Gesine, I threw gravel at a window, over and over, until I heard footsteps in the darkened stairwell. Geronimo appeared at the little pane in the door, opened up, and gave me a hug. But that was his one little burst of joy. “What’s up?”