New Lives

by Ingo Schulze

  He enjoyed my surprise. Happiness glistened in Sluminski’s eyes. Had it been because of Gotham, I asked. He shook his head, and Sluminski rocked hers slightly too.

  “What’s left here for me to do?” he said, gazing at me with his perennially moist eyes as if actually expecting some sort of answer.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve asked myself that question.”

  Instead of wishing him good luck, extending my hand, getting up from my chair, and leaving, I just sat there. I was sorry to see him go, I said. But I could well understand his decision.

  He knew, he said, that people talked behind his back and how they would lambaste him now, but he had no regrets. If he could see even the slightest chance of being able to accomplish anything meaningful here, he would stay. But that was out of the question now. I nodded. And then he said that Sluminski would be running the business end of things for now—and she looked up and noted that she would welcome any and all support. I nodded again. “Or would you like to do it?” Jonas asked, grinning his old grin. “Would you?” I shook my head, and then we shook hands again.

  As I entered the canteen Jonas’s departure was already being celebrated as a victory. I sat off to one side like someone from the old regime, happy to be left in peace.

  “Jonas is leaving,” I told Michaela, who hadn’t been at the theater. And because she looked at me as if she wasn’t about to have her leg pulled, I added, “He told me himself.”

  I had no explanation for her as to why I of all people had been singled out for special consideration. Michaela presumed one of Jonas’s tricks lay behind it, some really nasty machination. When I didn’t reply she asked if I was actually so vain as to think he had done it out of personal concern. I shrugged. “No, no, my dear,” she said, “there’s strategy and tactics behind it. Did someone just happen to drop by and see you two together?”

  I said no, but did mention Sluminski. At the sound of her name Michaela jumped to her feet. “What was she doing there?” she exclaimed.

  Even as I repeated Jonas’s words, a vein swelled at Michaela’s temple. “She’ll be running things for now? Her? The Party secretary?”

  “Only the business side,” I said.

  “And you?” she shouted. “What did you say?”

  I tried to recall my words. “You didn’t say anything,” she shouted before I could even answer. “Nothing, not one thing.” Michaela stared at me, her head was starting to tremble, she was about to say something else, but then fell silent, as if she didn’t dare say what she was thinking, and left the room.

  Somehow I had lost the capacity for emotions that Michaela experienced on such a grand scale. I had become numb, mute, devoid of emotion. I no longer felt my wounds.

  When at the end of the week and without an inkling that anything was up, I called Mother, the first thing she said was, “Did you know about this? Did you?”

  “Know what?” I asked. And when she didn’t reply, I said, “What am I supposed to have known?” Instead of answering, my mother hung up.

  I called her back. I knew she would never be able to survive it. I had no hope at all, but she answered.

  “Mother!” I exclaimed. I don’t think I’ve probably ever sounded so pleading.

  “Actor my foot! Vera works in a fabric shop. She’s a sales clerk! And you knew that! Right?”

  I was just happy to hear that accusation.338

  “You wanted to believe it,” I shouted. “Didn’t it ever bother you that Vera never sent any reviews?”

  My mother said she’d always thought the Stasi had removed them from the envelope.

  Finally she said, “I demand only one thing: not to be deceived by my children. That’s something I cannot handle, Enrico, not in my own family. How can you even expect me to take it?” Then she hung up.

  I walked home. On the way I thought about Emilie Paulini again for the first time, and how she had presumably been buried at some point over the last few days.

  Your

  Enrico T.

  Thursday, June 28, ’90

  Dear Nicoletta,

  Why have you remained so present to me, Nicoletta, so much so that it sometimes makes me shudder? How many times have I painted your portrait in my mind—it’s so vivid in my memory. As if in a fever I evoke your presence with an unhealthy craving. I’m frighteningly good at it, but when I find myself alone again, my own company seems intolerable. And then I write you a letter.

  Two weeks after the wall was opened there was no one left who hadn’t been in the West except us. All the kids in Robert’s class had seen Batman. Michaela found some excuse every time. “The West isn’t going anywhere,” she said, and she had tons and tons of work to do, by which she meant the meetings she attended at least once a day, sometimes holding them at home. It was her idea to publish a newsletter in which all of New Forum’s working committees would have an opportunity to place items. In Michaela’s eyes that meant publicizing injustices and abuses—the Sluminski case, for instance—because no one else was going to do it.

  When the chief dramaturge assigned me the task of delivering several cartons of libretti to Henschel Verlag in Berlin, I agreed mainly because I was worried about Vera. I could guess what the opening of the wall meant for her. Her lies, big and small, would blow up in her face.339

  When I invited Robert to come along, he hugged me for the first time. And now Michaela wanted to go to Berlin too.

  First, however, my self-control was to be tested.

  In November you still needed a stamp in your papers to cross the border. Robert accompanied me to the provisional office set up by the police in the one-story building behind the Konsum Market. (Michaela had refused to appear as a supplicant before these people ever again.)

  Since the place looked dead, I assumed the door was locked and was just trying to jiggle at it when it flew open in my hand. There was the odor of a noonday meal. The room we entered through folding doors was as dark as a church. Except that just above some desks that had been shoved together, a lamp had been hung, and beneath it sat the uniformed personnel, all of them hunched over as if trying to hide their faces. The counters and the door to the kitchen were barricaded with stacked tables and chairs.

  Uncertain from which side I ought to approach, I chose a circuitous route. I kept at least one person’s back in front of me and glanced down into a drawer full of stamps and inkpads, keys and seals. A metal lunch box shimmered beside a briefcase, there were two apple cores in the wastebasket. For a second I was afraid I’d walked into a trap. The blond didn’t recognize me, or at least pretended he didn’t. He raised his arm, his hand opened up, I gave him my papers.

  It was like remembering a dream. In the same moment the two other uniformed men looked up from their work, and by the light of the lamp I could tell that it was the black-haired cop and the fat cop. The trio that I had joined in their squad car on November 4th was now complete.

  I didn’t seriously consider trying to flee. But I did glance toward the door as if I expected someone to be standing there blocking our retreat. I called Robert over to me.

  “Have you been over yet?” I asked, looking at the blond as he inspected my accordion-fold passport to the last page,340 as if every stamp from every border crossing held great interest for him. The blond then added his stamp and folded it all back up again. Robert said later that I paid a fee, even got a receipt, but I don’t recall it. With the same gesture with which he took my pass, the blond handed it back. Just as he had ignored my thank-you, he now ignored my question. I headed for the exit, Robert kept close to my side.341

  The next day we made our libretti delivery in Berlin and then had our noon meal in a pub near Henschel Verlag. We had driven our old route, instead of the one I had pictured in my mind: turning off in the direction of West Berlin just after the three-lane asphalt stretch near Michendorf. Berlin, by which I mean the eastern half of the city, was nothing more than an antechamber where you waited before striding into the great hall. I was amaz
ed that the waitress and counterman were still working here in the East, as if the wall were still there. After we had eaten, we drove down Friedrich Strasse in the direction of Checkpoint Charlie. This was Robert’s wish. While we were waiting to be passed through—there were only a few cars ahead of us—I realized for the first time the meaning of the word “checkpoint.” The syllables checkpoint-charlie had been just a sound, a noise, a bubble-gum bubble that bursts just as the bells of the Spassky Tower ring342 out into the moment of greatest silence. I asked Robert if he knew what the word “checkpoint” meant. He did. Michaela said I shouldn’t play high school teacher. Pass, glance, pass, thanks—and through. No thumbing to find the stamp, nothing. Michaela said the real checkpoint had to still be up ahead. I turned right. I had no idea where I was driving. We had wanted to go to West Berlin, and here we were in West Berlin. Do you understand? West Berlin meant arriving there, meant being in the West, not just driving around aimlessly.

  An hour later and we ran ashore at the lower end of the Kurfürsten-damm, where I found a parking place to squeeze into and a bank where we collected our “welcome money.” Then we walked up and down the Ku’damm, lost our bearings in the adjacent streets, and landed on another major thoroughfare with lots of stores. With Michaela in the lead we entered a bookstore where several stacks of a novel343 by Umberto Eco were sprouting from the floor. I had to laugh when I saw those oversize wheeled shopping baskets outside a supermarket.344 They instantly roused a desire in me to hoard supplies, so that I wouldn’t have to leave the house for days.

  Later we found ourselves in a department store in which it was way too warm and, with coats draped over our arms, we moved from floor to floor as if looking for some particular item. When Michaela suddenly got the idea to buy Robert a jacket for his Youth Consecration,345 we went our separate ways for forty-five minutes. She handed me two fifty D-mark bills and shoved Robert ahead of her to the escalator.

  I watched them go, but I had no real desire to spend three quarters of an hour alone. I thought: You’re free, freer than you’ve ever been before in your life.346 I was in the middle of West Berlin and could do or not do whatever I felt like.

  I was most interested in the kitchen utensils and housewares—coffee machines, pots, tableware, and corkscrews, but there were also gadgets whose purpose I would have liked to inquire about. I definitely wanted to buy something for myself. Just for me. Suddenly I had an idea I couldn’t shake—if I didn’t spend the money now, it would be lost for good. At any rate, with much wringing of the hands, I searched for some perfect object. One moment I thought I had made a decision, the next I lost my confidence. I needed a Chinese teapot, I needed a windbreaker. I was already at the cash register with a Walkman when, tormented by regret, I stood there just shaking my head as if I didn’t speak German, left the Walkman on the counter, and fled. If Michaela and Robert had been on time I would have greeted them empty-handed. But then, lured by a clutch of people, I began to rummage through a square box full of gloves. Large or small, they were all the same price. At first I tried thrusting my hand down into unexplored regions and trolled along the bottom, but all I brought to the surface was junk, children’s mittens or singles, one of them a black leather glove that fit perfectly. I kept it on and searched for its mate, but in vain. Finally I conquered my aversion and considered those that other people had tossed back. It was difficult to try them on because each pair was sewn together at the wrist. Once you had pulled off the trick, however, you stood there manacled. I decided on a dark blue pair lined in a red and green plaid, and, properly handcuffed, walked over to the cash register.

  “I thought you don’t like gloves,” Michaela said. “Because I didn’t have any,” I said. Robert was carrying a plastic shopping bag so cleverly crafted that rain couldn’t get into it. Michaela confessed that she had only one D-mark left, but at least we no longer needed to worry about a suit for Robert to wear at his Youth Consecration.

  I treated us to currywurst at a food cart. That improved the general mood.

  After that I dialed Vera’s number. It was the first time I had ever used a push-button phone and I felt like I was in a movie. I kicked the phone-booth door open again and asked where exactly we were. Michaela ran off to look for a street sign.

  Vera had an answering machine. Her voice had a hard, stiff sound, as if the only calls she got were from total strangers. I was sure she would pick up the receiver as soon as she recognized my voice. I said, “Hello!” a couple of times and that we would love to have coffee at her place. I called the shop, and the male voice—presumably Nicola’s—on the answering machine said in German that I was to leave a message after the beep, after which I heard what I presumed was the same message in Arabic and French.

  The woman at the food cart explained how to get to Wedding.

  It was already dark by the time we found Malplaquet Strasse. At first I couldn’t locate Vera’s name on the doorbell register because the name was reversed as Barakat-Türmer.

  “They live in the rear building,” Michaela said, a fact that I likewise found disappointing. When I heard footsteps behind the main door I assumed it was Vera. All we saw of the short woman in an ankle-length robe was her face—she didn’t bother to give us a glance—and she now retreated like a windup doll. The rather shabby corridor was crammed with prams and bikes, the main door sprayed with graffiti, the lighting dim.

  We had to climb to the fifth floor. There was no one at home, but there was something special about just seeing her door and her doormat.

  On the back of the receipt for Robert’s suit I wrote, “Greetings from your Altenburgers.” I folded the receipt and stuck it in the crack of the door.

  Michaela asked if I would invite her and Robert to see Batman.

  I let them out in front of a movie theater near the Zoo Station and drove off to find a parking place. I got lost several times during the endless odyssey. I didn’t really care about the movie, but I panicked at the idea of missing the beginning and I was afraid they would wait for me. Every parking space proved too small. I was lucky nothing happened when I drove through a red light at a pedestrian crossing. Finally I hit it right just as someone pulled out. I parked with my right rear tire up on the curb. The cold air did me good. The exhaust in West Berlin really did smell like a pungent perfume.

  I was surprised when the woman at the ticket boot told me I was just in time.

  Michaela and Robert were sitting near the entrance. Given the plush armchairs I at first thought we were in a private box. But then the lights went on, and Michaela burst into laughter as a vendor appeared beside us selling the same ice cream we had just seen advertised. I couldn’t get my head around the notion that we were allowed to eat ice cream while sitting in such plush seats, and in the dark besides. Calculated on the basis of what money I had left, one movie ticket plus ice cream cost as much as my gloves.

  After the movie Robert was as happy as could be, and Michaela seemed to be too. From the map the woman in the ticket booth had given Michaela free of charge we saw how easy it was to reach the autobahn. Michaela played navigator. Robert had turned on his cassette recorder and, to the accompaniment of Milli Vanilli and Tanita Tikaram, gave us a detailed plot summary of the film, as if we hadn’t just seen it. When he was done he demanded we all list our favorite scenes. Five minutes later we were at the autobahn. With the lights of the Funkturm rising up in the background, I merged into traffic. After a couple of hundred yards I changed to the middle lane.

  Michaela shouted for me to be careful and not to drive so fast—this was absolute madness. “What do you mean?” I exclaimed. “What else can I do?” I wanted to hit the brakes and slow down but I didn’t dare risk it. Next to us, in front of us, behind us—we were racing along with them, faster than I had ever driven in my life, a pack of wild dogs, with us in the middle. I tried leaving more space in front of me, but immediately a car would shoot in from another lane and just make things worse. I had no choice, I had to drive like every
body else. But since everyone was driving at that speed, it couldn’t be all that dangerous, or at least not as bad as we feared. I gradually calmed down.

  At the airport exit I realized we weren’t headed south but north. Michaela was also aware of our mistake. Trying to find a more comfortable position, she stretched out her legs. Robert had fallen silent and, propping his elbows on the backs of our seats, stared straight ahead.

  We sped along through wide curves and tunnels—a little like a roller-coaster ride. Instead of driving on to Hamburg I followed the sign for the last exit before the border and turned around. We had an even longer stretch of asphalt autobahn before us now. The music on the radio was seldom interrupted.

  During the trip back I kept thinking about the sea, I pictured ships crossing the ocean and I made a list of harbors: Hamburg, Hong Kong, Valparaiso, New York, Helsinki, Vancouver, Genoa, Barcelona, Leningrad, Istanbul, Melbourne, Alexandria, Odessa, Singapore, Auckland, Marseille, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Aden, Bombay, Rotterdam, Venice. I saw these giants of the ocean anchored beside garland-trimmed seawalls. The radio reception had grown worse and worse, but there was one AM station that held a signal—music and words sounded equally magical and distant. I saw terraced cafés above a town, with day-trippers and lanterns and fireworks. I was already traveling in some foreign region of the world. Just as Jim, the slave in Huckleberry Finn, believes he can see the lights of Cairo and the pyramids in the distance, I wouldn’t have been surprised if suddenly a road sign had announced St. Louis or New Orleans.347

  I no longer know what I saw as I steered the car through Leipzig. The first thing I can recall is a gesture of Michaela’s hand that passed directly from the light switch to my forehead as we stood in the entry hall. “You have a fever,” she said, and showed me the sweat on her fingertips.

  “I’m ill,” I replied.