New Lives

by Ingo Schulze

“No need to shout,” she said.

  “I’m ill,” I repeated, and immediately whispered it again, as if I dared not forget it.

  “I’m ill” was the expression I’d been looking for in vain over the past several weeks. I quickly washed my hands and face, undressed, and took to my bed, from where, with ample time and no disruptions, I would finally be able to marvel at all the ships and cities of the world.

  The next day I awoke alone in the apartment. I had the feeling it would take hours before I had assembled enough willpower to spread a sheet over the couch in my room as well as transfer my pillow and blanket from the bedroom. I knew that this would be the last chore I would accomplish for a long time, and closed my eyes.

  And with that I’ve really said it all. Because it’s impossible to describe my condition. Words don’t come close.

  My dear Nicoletta, looking back on it now, I am writing to you from terra firma. Anyone who can tell about his own adventures didn’t perish with them—a certainty that in fact stands everything on its head. Besides which, the logic of dreams is hidden from the eyes of those who are wide awake, just as sunlight obliterates an image on film.

  If I had lost the sensibilità one needs for this world—in lesson 14, Signore Raffalt348 says that a corresponding word does not exist in German, only to translate it boldly one sentence later with Resonanzfähigkeit—it was not because I had become numb, callous, and apathetic, but simply because I was a broken man. There was no me left.

  Do you understand, Nicoletta? Everything that had defined me since that first Arcadian summer, everything that had interested me, had kept me alert and alive, had now been rendered immaterial by the last few weeks and months.

  The vast emptiness that had taken my place corresponded exactly to the overwhelming endlessness of time in which it floated. I was amazed at what an infinity lay hidden in each day. No, it wasn’t that simple. I lay in bed, getting up only when I had to go to the toilet and sipping at the tea Michaela placed beside the bed every morning and evening. I dozed off and woke up, dozed off and woke up, and wondered what was keeping Robert, why he hadn’t come home from school yet. But it wasn’t just him, Michaela kept arriving later and later. It seemed to me that the longer I waited, the greater the probability, yes, inevitability of some kind of trouble, maybe even an accident of some sort. When I finally brought myself to fetch my watch from my desk, it had stopped at half past nine. But my touching it had started it up again. Later—it was still light outside—I managed to make it to the kitchen. The clock above the door read twenty till eleven, the same as my watch. I lay there in bed, filled with amazement at what had become of minutes and hours, at what monsters they had turned into. I sneered at the thought of what all I could have accomplished in a single morning. I could have easily written one story per day, taken care of household chores as well, watched a little television, and read. Now that all that was of no concern to me, I had a godlike dominion over time. Not even eleven o’clock yet! Imagine that you’ve just had a long dream, a very long dream, one that unfolds into further dreams. When you wake up you’re certain the alarm will ring at any moment, when in fact not ten minutes have passed, and all the lights in the building across the street are still on.

  I counted the seconds it took for me to take a breath in order to get some sense of what a minute, what five minutes meant. As soon as I laid my watch aside, I was convinced that I could break every diving record. Another experiment, one that I had often performed as a child in the hope of speeding up time, proved less successful: with the help of a magnifying glass (Robert has one for his stamp collection) I watched the minute hand. Yes, I saw it move, but that was no help.

  At some point pain paid me a visit. I have to put it that way, the toothache seemed like a guest in my void. I was grateful. Closing my eyes, I tried to discover where it would settle in, for at first it darted about like a will-o’-the-wisp, bounding upward, plunging downward, now on the right, now on the left. But then it found its spot, lower left. To help you understand I probably have to express it this way: I clung to this pain. Or better, it has to be put like this: I was the pain. Outside it, there was nothing. And so it was only natural for me to try to nurse it. I watched it constantly, the way a child watches a hamster on that first day, and gave myself over to time beyond all measure. The greater the pain, the smaller the void. It first had to take total possession of me, and only then, as the capstone of my torment, did I want to see the dentist. I kept losing myself in the details of an agonizing session in the dentist’s chair.

  Like someone who fears he has been robbed as he slept and starts hastily patting his pockets, I explored my pain each time I awoke. And was always relieved to find it in its proper spot. And not only that, it spread, creeping and pommeling349 its way along my jaw, until it slammed into the back of my head. For me it was a kind of guarantee, the only reliable unit of measurement.

  I went to seed. The odor that hit me when I lifted my covers, the long fingernails, the fuzzy coating on my teeth—I perceived it all simply as a defect in my environment, like a burned-out lightbulb when you don’t have a replacement in the house. When my stubble had grown so long it stopped being prickly, I forgot my body entirely. That was, of course, in part due to my fatigue, a permanent exhaustion in which dream and reality often remained indistinguishable. I continued my survey of distant cities and ships. It didn’t matter whether I kept my eyes open or closed, I wandered aimlessly around those same cities, without ever actually making an appearance myself.

  To Michaela and Robert it looked like uninterrupted sleep. When Michaela brought me my tea each morning, she put her hand to my brow. She made every effort, cooked rice pudding, and asked Aunt Trockel to make me her applesauce. I didn’t want any of it, I wanted peace and quiet, but let it all roll over me as if it were a way of thanking Michaela for having Dr. Weiss sign off on my sick leave first for one, then for a second week.

  When the time was up, I dragged myself to the polyclinic. It was St. Nicholas Day, December 6th, the very same day on which Michaela and Jörg and a few others occupied the Stasi villa, after first printing and distributing a flyer at noon that called for the demonstration to assemble at the theater at six o’clock. Michaela appeared finally to have incorporated all the energy I lacked. In the half hour she spent at home that afternoon, she used my absence to toss my bed linens into the washing machine, but didn’t have time to put on fresh. When I got back with a renewal of my sick leave, this time for two weeks at a shot, I found my sickbed had been dismantled—a smack in the face that made me feel as if I had been thrown out. I did without new sheets, rummaged in the wardrobe till I found my old down sleeping bag, unrolled it on the couch, crept into it still in my underwear, and pulled the hood up over my head.

  That evening Michaela was out of control. I couldn’t remember her ever having entered my room without knocking first. Suddenly there she stood before me—I had heard her key ring and her voice before I opened my eyes. It wasn’t just that she was talking too fast. Every sentence demanded three or four more sentences of explanation that drew still more sentences in their wake, so that she barely had a chance to catch her breath or swallow and so kept on talking faster and faster. But the real demand upon me was her presumption that I would get up, get dressed, and return with her to the demonstration.

  Even if I had not been ill, she surely must have known how little I cared about any of it, yes, how it made no difference to me whatever whether those at the head of the demonstration chanted “Germany, united fatherland” or “We are one people” and whether some Jörg or Hans-Jürgen had or hadn’t attempted “to bring a halt to that.”

  With each of her statements I realized anew how incapable I was of taking any part in this life, how pointless every effort seemed.

  My response to Michaela’s question about what the doctor had said rekindled her anger. At some point she compared me to a caterpillar, a fat caterpillar—which, given the sleeping bag, was not exactly original. I unde
rstood it as an announcement that from now on she wouldn’t be taking care of me. What was annoying was the covert charge that I was faking it. The accuracy of this conjecture was revealed the next day when Robert asked me to help him with his homework. The worst thing was his nagging me to drive him here, there, and everywhere. Michaela seemed actually to be egging him on to do things she had once forbidden for pedagogical reasons. As if she had completely forgotten my condition, she in fact tormented me with wishes of her own over the next several days.

  Living together with the two of them became more and more of a torture. I ruled out the idea of returning to the theater. Vera had ducked out of sight, but the mail brought rambling letters from Geronimo almost daily—which after a while I no longer bothered to open. At the time I still knew nothing of the difficulties my mother was struggling with. She offered the absolutely foolish assertion that Vera was to blame for my breakdown. Michaela, on the other hand, took the miseries of the world upon her shoulders on an hourly basis, including feeling responsible for my deterioration, until finally she would once again lose all patience with me. I stubbornly defended my sleeping bag against her onslaught, but did allow her to tuck a clean sheet on my couch.

  As I’ve said, my condition at the time is alien even to me now. I’m reporting to you like someone who repeats hearsay for better or for worse.

  Then it happened. It simply happened. Have you ever collected your kitchen garbage in a paper bag? And when you pick it up the next day, all the crap plops right through it. The horror of it suddenly hit me.

  But what does that mean!350 I had suddenly realized what had happened to me and what a state I was in.

  Ah, Nicoletta, the total disappearance of Herr Türmer is almost incomprehensible. You can, of course, also attribute it to the loss of my writing, or more accurately, the loss of the West, the loss of our Beyond, the death of the benevolent gods…And with that, if you recall, the circle of my observations has closed on itself.

  On the other hand, perhaps my descriptions have, or so I hope, laid a foundation that will make what is yet to come comprehensible.

  But enough for today.

  Yours,

  Enrico Türmer

  Sunday, July 1, 1990

  Dear Jo,

  I can move in the day after tomorrow, that is, if the baron has no objections. I’ve ordered a new mattress—thanks to Monte Carlo, the best of the best.351 All the rest in due time.

  Vera will be coming by train, with her predictable two suitcases.

  The new family has flown to the Baltic, to Denmark, which makes a lot of things easier. No one knows just how the baron gets permission for his aviation stunts or how he has managed to get around the Russians.352 It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s soon flying a MiG-29. D-marks will get you anything. The baron is already making grand plans for the day the Russians have departed for good. Discount fares from Altenburg-Nobitz to London and Paris! I wouldn’t put anything past him.

  As I was getting out of my car on Friday, I thought I saw seagulls—seagulls here in town. But it was only paper, whirling scraps of paper of all kinds coming toward me along the sidewalk and out in the street. I stopped for a moment and watched the pages as they skittered over the parking lot, fluttered down the slope, pirouetted across car roofs, and finally landed along the brick wall or in the chain-link fence. I even stepped on one and wondered if it was worth bending down for the paper clip. I kept on walking—only to turn on my heels a moment later and start chasing these white birds like a desperate child. Marion’s shrill voice from the window had wrenched me out of my trance. Evi, Mona, and Frau Schorba came dashing and screaming out our front door.

  Frau Schorba attempted to snatch up the pages drifting along the street. She shrieked at regular intervals whenever the one she was chasing escaped her grasp at the last second. Meanwhile Ilona and Fred had joined the pursuit, and like the drivers in a hunt we were now combing the parking lot. We were able to glean the lion’s share of the flyaway ad forms from along the wall and fence. Evi climbed up and over the fence to pluck Rüdiger Bajohr Finance Agency and Noëlle’s Bookshop from the bushes. Mona crept under every car and fetched Copy Service from under my front wheel.

  Ilona and Fred checked along Jüden Gasse and on Market Square, while the rest of us hurried to assist Frau Schorba. She had changed tactics, and now trotted along behind the pages and then slammed her heel on the pavement with a cry of “Bastard!” It took at most two or three “Bastards!” and the ad was saved. Cars that had been forced to pull over had turned on their warning signals.

  Fred proudly displayed his muddy pants, and, apparently happy to have lost a heel, Ilona hobbled along pretentiously. We learned from Pringel—whom we probably have to thank for the fact that the computer came through unscathed—that Jörg had already loaded Marion into their car and driven off.

  She, Marion, had stormed into the computer room and, without saying a word, made a grab at the pile of ads and flung them out the window. Then, as wind from the Baltic scattered the forms, she had once again cursed everyone as shadows. I asked them all to treat the matter with discretion. I would encourage Jörg to get Marion to a psychiatrist. No sooner do we have one lunatic out of the house—the old man had to be put in a nursing home—than we’re threatened by a second one.

  Yesterday Marion even came at me with a knife. It was a perfectly innocuous situation. Because Schorba was out of the office, Fred was answering some questions two of our new deliverymen had asked. Marion had accidentally overheard him, and began laying into Fred right in front of them. Her screeches fetched Jörg and me to the scene.

  Since Jörg refused to do anything about Marion’s outburst, I let myself be drawn into it with a few words—enough was enough, and would she please leave us alone. As I turned toward the deliverymen I realized their eyes were wide with terror.

  Marion was holding Fred’s knife clamped in both hands, the blade and the pupils of her eyes directed menacingly at me. Her face was contorted, as if an attack of madness had suddenly obliterated her familiar features […]

  “Just try to drive me out of this office,” she shouted ominously. “You evidently think I wouldn’t dare?” Marion’s mouth wrenched into a skewed smile as I backed away.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t think there’s much of anything you wouldn’t do.”

  “Then we understand each other,” she announced with satisfaction, lowered the knife, and turned to leave. We all stood there frozen in place. As she departed Marion shouted a cheerful “Hi there!” to Schorba—who was just back in the office—a greeting that he happily returned. But Schorba now stared at us as if we were a gathering of ghosts.

  I’ve learned from Fred that the Weekly’s printing is now under ten thousand, despite Jörg’s histrionic headlines: “Poison in Our Groundwater?” or last week’s “Mass Graves in Altenburg?” He no longer knows what to write. While the celebratory mood is increasing day by day, Jörg hunkers down in his office, growing ever paler and smaller. The baron has given him a free hand. The only question is for how long yet. Have I told you about Ralf?353 I’ve hired his wife as a sales rep, he and his daughter will be delivering our Sunday issue in North Altenburg—not bad extra pocket money.

  I’ve been spending my evenings at Referees’ Retreat. Each time the Germans score a goal, Friedrich, the bald owner, shoots off fireworks and pours a round on the house. A shame we’re not playing today.

  Hugs,

  Your Enrico

  [This letter was never sent.]

  Tuesday, July 3, ’90

  Verotchka,

  Yesterday Michaela showed up at the office to bring Barrista his thick pocket calendar. It was the first time I’ve ever seen her kiss him. She was wearing her fancy red sneakers. She couldn’t look me straight in the eye.

  Later I happened to hear Mona and Evi talking about Michaela. Their suspicion that Barrista would move in on “one of the prettier ones” has now been confirmed. A little later Robert called and asked whe
n I’d be free. We made a date for lunch.

  I would barely have recognized him. Not because of the new outfit—he’s wearing sneakers now too, plus a jacket with heavily padded shoulders. His hair is a lot shorter. Maybe I have been a little inattentive of late—Robert has turned into a young man. He gave me a hug all the same.

  I let everything lie just as it was and left with him. Outside we ran into Pringel, who had been doing research for his report on Day Zero and the introduction of our new money. (Johann will have to work hard to hold his own against Pringel.)

  On Market Square I took a place in line at the fruit stand. It went fast, since most of the others apparently just wanted to view the wares. I felt like a gate-crasher, like the guy who’s at the buffet table before it’s even open. I asked for four kiwis, which I was allowed to select for myself—and at the same moment recognized our old friend, the D-MARK ONLY fruit vendor who had helped Robert sell his first newspapers. Our last meeting seemed so long ago now, he was like a figure out of a fairy tale. His greeting was friendly, but his mood was gloomy. He hadn’t done a hundred marks’ worth of business yet. He wouldn’t even make the cost of his fee to set up his booth. The prospects were bleak, hopeless. While bystanders watched, I impetuously began grabbing at random, as if I had to buy any piece of fruit I touched. I paid with a ten-mark bill and held out the palm of my hand, where he deposited the change. Robert was given a free banana, which he immediately deposited in my pocket out of embarrassment.

  The whole town was like an exposition that had just opened its gates, and we strolled through it like visitors. My sack of fruit was duly noted in the same way that I eyed every filled shopping net, every even half-full plastic bag. The air above Market Square seemed to flicker with expectation and nervousness.

  The Ratskeller was completely empty. It wouldn’t have taken much and I would have used the open door as our excuse for having barged in, but then the waitress told us to take a seat anywhere we wanted and handed us each a menu.