New Lives

by Ingo Schulze

  I pushed the wheelchair forward, and Massimo, who along with all the others had been following us, lifted him into it. Vera laid the prince’s blanket across his knees, Mother handed him binoculars, and Robert raised a parasol to prevent the hereditary prince from being blinded by the sun. Astrid never left the side of the wheelchair—the right side, let it be noted, so that she could always train her good eye on him.

  And here came the district councilor and mayor. Together with their retinue, these “first freely elected officials” formed a guard of honor along both sides of the steep bumpy path, up which Massimo labored to push the wheelchair. The top of the hill was crowned with a little chapel. I had no idea where we were.

  A white tent had been pitched in front of the chapel. Perhaps it would be better to call it a baldachin, because except for the four corner struts clad in triangular strips of fabric leading down to a point, there was only a roof and no walls. The sun stood at its zenith, the view was overwhelming, a downright shock. To the north of this hill fit for a commanding general—as the baron termed our nameless elevation—lay Altenburg and the flats of the brown coal mines, with Leipzig’s Battle of the Nations Monument far in the distance. To the south rose the expanses of Vogtland and the Ore Mountains. To the west, the pyramids of Ronneburg were so close you felt you could reach out and touch them, and behind them the Thuringian Forest. To the east you were offered a view of lovely rolling hills.

  “For the fields lay sere and not yet freshened with heavenly dew!” a stentorian voice proclaimed. To our left, not fifty yards down the slope, stood several hundred strangely garbed people. Divided into two large equal clusters, they were staring at a man in a broad-brimmed hat. Hitching up his long robe, he descended from a mound of sand that, according to a sign, was FRIESLAND and climbed another, where a sign that read ENGLAND had been planted. Basic theater for the masses. And we were the audience.

  A tree was now raised with the help of a hand-driven winch.

  The hereditary prince asked to be pushed as close as possible to the edge of the slope. Once the tree was standing—its equilibrium maintained by several men holding the ropes—a man stepped out in front of the troupe of players and called out: “The oak of Thor!” At that same moment a sign appeared above some heads that designated this new scene of action as GEISMAR/HESSIA. The man in the hat quickly stepped forward—it was Mansfeld, the Catholic priest—followed by three companions who had evidently learned their nervous gestures from studying bodyguards. When he pulled out an ax from under his robe, they lifted their voices in wails of lamentation. Their efforts were amateurish, but the effect was tremendous.377

  The baron pointed toward the man in the hat. “That’s Boniface,” he offered in superfluous explanation, and smiled at Robert. Boniface had fallen to his knees, and as he prayed his brow touched the ax handle he held in both hands. As he rose to his feet, above the more general cries of “Woe! Woe!” I could hear howls so desperate, so shrill they gave me goose bumps.

  Step by step the throng retreated before Boniface and his ax. A few seconds later, what I had taken to be splendidly simulated apprehension turned into genuine fear on the part of the actors. As Boniface struck the tree with his ax—amid utter silence—the trunk split into four pieces that, as each was tugged by a rope, fell away to the ground. The Germanic heathens burst into a wild outcry prompted less by the spectacle itself than by their fear for one of their fellow actors posted farther down the slope, who had barely missed being hit by one quarter of the tree. But since evidently no harm had come to him and he like all the others knelt down to gaze up at the cross that Boniface now held in his hands in lieu of the ax, none of us regarded it as a serious matter either.

  Besides which, a chorale had been taken up. I would have sworn I also heard an orchestra. More and more heathens sank to their knees and raised pleading hands to their new God.

  Before the chords of their song had died away, the narrator announced in his powerful bass voice that a church would now be built.

  That was the starting gun for a race. Four teams lifted the four pieces of trunk that formed a cross on the ground and now rushed uphill as if to take a city gate. Their goal could only be the chapel behind us, which, although it had a fresh coat of paint, had not been newly plastered. The painters had left obvious traces of their work in the grass and the gravel.

  Without so much as a glance our way, the converted Germanic men, women, and children panted past us. Viewed from close up, their makeup was good enough for a movie take—disheveled hair, bruised arms, feet and legs mud-caked halfway to their knees. We considered ourselves lucky not to have been overrun by this mob in their thespian frenzy. They set to work on the chapel, attaching the pieces of trunk beside the entrance and at the apse with chains that had been previously bolted there.

  A searing sun blazed in the sky, but it was still pleasantly cool where we stood. The hereditary prince, who had been intently following the proceedings, dismissed with a smile any questions about how he was holding up.

  Meanwhile the performers had returned to their previous positions. But whether to heighten the dramatic effect or to underscore the significance of these events, they all moved toward us now, and one woman who held a sign reading DOKKUM—PENTECOST 754 propped against her shoulder took up a position not forty feet away from us.

  As Boniface approached her with several of his adherents—he was moving more slowly now and was bent low to indicate his advanced age—he was presented with a book so large that he almost lost his balance. His three disciples lovingly supported him and cast pleading glances in the direction of the narrator, who then announced, “They await the newly baptized.”

  The throng had split in two. On the right side, with women in the majority, a bright doxology was struck up, while on the left one could hear the supernumeraries murmuring “broccoli broccoli,” a sound intended to suggest that they were the “barbarians.” Boniface, who stood with his profile to us, was just straightening up in expectation of greeting the women, when gruesomely shaggy figures came storming up from the rear and with a few heavy blows slew the apostle’s companions. Doxology turned into lamentation.

  All eyes were directed toward Boniface, who now stood at full stature. He held up the large book to counter his attackers, who had at first shrunk back before his presence. But then the most savage of these savage fellows stepped forward—piercing the book, his sword was thrust directly into the saint’s heart. In the breathless silence that followed, I heard only the wind in the grass and Astrid’s whimpers. Along with the actors, we all stood frozen in place. A few white strands of the prince’s hair danced in the breeze.

  Boniface staggered, but still held himself erect. Slowly he sank to his knees, his eyes directed heavenward. Finally he fell forward, burying beneath him the sword-pierced book that had been unable to save him. A bleak, dissonant cry of woe rose up, with the barbarians, now transformed back into Christians, joining in.

  Father Mansfeld, easily recognized under his broad-rimmed hat, was suddenly holding high the silver, jewel-bedizened hand reliquary. Whether by chance or calculation—it seemed to catch fire in the sunlight, its radiance so blinding that I had to put a hand before my eyes and turn away. And then I saw that almost everyone who had watched the spectacle with us was now kneeling. The few still standing were for the most part elderly. Her tail wagging wildly, Astrid was bounding back and forth among the faithful, probably hoping someone would pet her.

  “Play along,” the baron hissed at me from below. After a brief hesitation I yielded and knelt down, which to my surprise I found quite relaxing and pleasant.

  The throng had now taken up a hymn and formed a procession, with the reliquary carried solemnly before it. Again and again it refracted the sun’s rays, sending us its signals even after the hymn was no longer audible and we had given ourselves over to the pervading silence and gazed down on the procession as it moved across the countryside below. The book—now that I had time to think about it�
��had not saved Boniface’s life, but in the end it had indeed proved a token of victory.378

  Surely everything will turn out well now. We are waiting for you.

  Hugs from your

  Enrico

  Wednesday, July 11, ’90

  Dear Nicoletta,

  As you can see I have a new address and am living in a three-bedroom apartment, whose smallest room is larger than my old living room. If you were to stop by over the next few days or weeks, you would find me out on my veranda with its new greenery and dreamlike view of the city and town. You would see Altenburg and yet not believe that it is Altenburg. Our building also has a large orchard enclosed by an entwining hedge right out of Sleeping Beauty.

  So much for the present—to whose beginnings I hope to bring you with today’s chapter.

  Unfortunately there has been no real opportunity before now to tell you about Aunt Trockel,379 who used to take care of Robert. She would always prepare her annual “New Year’s dinner” for us. Sometimes she also played something for us on her piano.

  Michaela had promised me we wouldn’t stay long, and so I gave in and accompanied her on a visit to Aunt Trockel. Robert had been invited to his friend Falk’s birthday party.

  As we got off the bus we saw Aunt Trockel vanish behind her balcony door. Michaela picked up the pace, and now the familiar race began. At the same moment that Aunt Trockel opened her door, Michaela pushed the doorbell.

  It wasn’t easy to recognize Aunt Trockel’s smile in her crumpled face. Over the last few months she had literally shriveled up—except for her belly, whose vault pressed against her tight-fitting dress, so that in both shape and size it looked deceptively like the last stages of pregnancy, an impression enhanced by her otherwise girlish figure. Climbing the stairs behind Aunt Trockel, I once again had a chance to admire her slender calves.

  Aunt Trockel handed us hangers, folded her hands across her belly, and, as if she owed us some explanation, said she had eaten too much chocolate and this was the result. Almost all of her Bavarian “welcome money” had been spent on chocolate. Not that she didn’t have anything left, but whenever her neighbors drove to Hof she would ask them to buy twenty bars for her at the Aldi supermarket and would then repay them upon being presented the sales receipt. Once those bars of chocolate were in her cupboard she could think of nothing else. Aunt Trockel’s voice had reached an uncomfortably high pitch. I was troubled by the vehemence of the words tumbling from her.

  I simply can’t bring myself, Aunt Trockel continued, to wait until evening to open the first bar. On the contrary it took all her strength to save one or two squares until the evening news. Yesterday she hadn’t even managed that, and had devoured two bars in one day. But she certainly couldn’t say it was too much of a good thing yet.

  She served the first course: fennel with shaved almonds and oranges, along with an aperitif in tiny glasses, their rims wreathed with a dusting of sugar.

  As always Aunt Trockel had used up almost every ounce of her energy preparing this feast. She herself sipped at her water glass now and then, and kept up a flow of words even when she was busy in the kitchen. She never stopped long enough to give us a chance to pay her culinary arts their due until she presented the saddle of venison on a heavy tray.

  And then—my plate had just been heaped with a second helping—Aunt Trockel told us about how a classmate of hers had once given her a piece of tinfoil to smell, so that she could have some idea of what chocolate was. And she, only eight years old at the time, had been grateful. “Imagine that!” Aunt Trockel exclaimed, and looked at me. Her voice growing louder and louder, she told her tale as if it concerned only me. I tried to return her gaze as often as I could, but then grew unsure of myself—as if I had overheard whatever reason it was she had given for her exclusive attention to me—and proceeded to eat more hastily. Only then did I notice that Michaela had leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Aunt Trockel was sitting bolt upright at the edge of her chair.

  So now it was my turn, and in a low voice I listed all the things Michaela had accomplished over the last few weeks.

  “You don’t have to whisper,” Michaela said, “but with my eyes closed I have a better picture of little Annemarie Trockel sniffing at that tinfoil.”

  Aunt Trockel bounced once on the edge of her chair and rewarded Michaela’s hasty excuse with praise for klartext. Which also gave her an opportunity to tell about her sister-in-law, who had decided not to buy klartext because it called itself a newsletter for Thuringia, and according to her Altenburg was a Saxon town, belonged to Saxony—which she, Aunt Trockel, did of course agree with, but that could be changed, the newsletter’s masthead, that is.

  Michaela finally asked what she thought of the articles themselves. “Very good,” Aunt Trockel replied, “really very good, critical I’d say, very critical.” She took a sip of water and kept the glass in her hand.

  So she liked the criticism, did she?

  Yes, she did, why shouldn’t she, that’s how it was everywhere now. The truth was coming to light.

  Both women, it seemed to me, were waiting for the saddle of venison to finally disappear from my plate.

  “No!” Michaela screeched when Aunt Trockel brought in two plates with an eighth of a Black Forest cake on each. This launched Aunt Trockel into her story about the whipping cream she had ordered, which despite several assurances to the contrary had not been set aside for her, so that she had gone all the way to the manager, who finally got on the phone and found two bottles for her at the store on Stein Weg. “Two bottles!” Michaela cried. Two bottles of whipping cream was asking too much, she mustn’t do it, she mustn’t fatten us up like that, or herself. When Aunt Trockel set the plate down and then turned right back around again, even Michaela was taken aback by her own outburst. On each piece of cake, a maraschino cherry crowned the highest peak of whipped cream, with syruplike liqueur forming a mountain lake at its base. I was picturing Aunt Trockel leaning her head against the kitchen window, tears streaming down her face, when she appeared with an even larger piece of cake and set it down for herself. Suddenly there was a bottle of fruit brandy in front of me, and three glasses. “Oh, Aunt Trockel!” Michaela exclaimed. I poured the brandy, and we clinked glasses in a toast.

  At the first stab of the fork, a purple brook burst from the dammed maraschino mountain lake and spilled through the spotless white. We ate in devout silence.

  Then I did something I never failed to do when visiting Aunt Trockel; I went to the bathroom: sparkling fixtures without one water-drop stain to mar their beauty, a toilet bowl whose depths and rim were both a perfect white, a battery of combs without a single hair left behind. With childlike curiosity I always opened her mirrored medicine cabinet, which gave off the decorous odor of venom and liniment. In that bathroom it would never have occurred to me to piss standing up.

  Suddenly a remarkable event from my childhood popped into my mind. But at that same moment Aunt Trockel was pounding on the door and calling out my name in an imploring voice. Eyes wide with horror, she ripped two pairs of panties from the clothesline, pressed them to her chest, and fled with her booty.

  When I returned, Aunt Trockel was leaning back in her chair, hands at her sides, gazing down over her belly. Michaela already had her purse in her lap. “Have I ever told you about the most important event in my life?” I asked, and, paying no attention to Michaela’s reaction, began to tell them what I had just now recalled.

  I was ten or eleven years old when a neighbor boy persuaded me to spend the night with him at his grandmother’s. We would be allowed to watch the Hit Parade and then a movie after that. Besides which we’d have as many banana gumdrops as we could eat. Although to my mind nothing was more horrible than spending a night with strangers without my mother and Vera, I agreed, out of cowardice and for the lack of any good excuse. After the Hit Parade and the movie were over, the banana gumdrops devoured, and I was lying there in the dark in a strange bed, surrounded by stran
ge things and strange odors, I started weeping bitterly into my pillow. Yes, because I was homesick and full of longing and because that’s what I always did in such situations, I sobbed away. After a while I was amazed to realize my crying had stopped. I immediately tried to start blubbering again, but couldn’t.

  “Do you know what had happened?” I asked Michaela and Aunt Trockel. Both were looking at me as if I were speaking in Chinese.

  “Okay, what happened?” Michaela asked out of boredom.

  “I no longer knew why I had been crying,” I exclaimed. “I didn’t understand myself what was supposed to be so awful about my situation.”

  “And that occurred to you just now?” Aunt Trockel asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “that came to me while I was in the bathroom.”

  “Well, fine,” Michaela said, gave Aunt Trockel a nod, and started to get up. But then I asked for a second piece of Black Forest cake. Aunt Trockel bustled off to the kitchen, Michaela fell back into the sofa; resting her head against it, she stared at the ceiling. I refilled our glasses. Aunt Trockel came back from the kitchen giggling and in her excitement got our plates mixed up—I could tell from the traces of maraschino cherry I had left behind on mine. Aunt Trockel kept right up with me. We toasted. I was trying to do Aunt Trockel in, Michaela remarked in outrage. “How’s that?” I asked. “How’s that?” Aunt Trockel echoed with a giggle. “That’s lethal!” Michaela cried, pointing at Aunt Trockel’s plate.

  “As far as I know,” I said, “it presents no danger to pregnant women.” Michaela went rigid. Aunt Trockel threw her head back and started laughing for all she was worth, releasing a spray of whipped cream and crumbs.