Ingo Schulze - One More Story - Thirteen Stories in the Time-Honored Mode

No sooner was I in the apartment than I ran back downstairs. A minute later and I was in Friedrichshain Park. It looked deserted, the café was closed. A few dogs were being walked, a jogger passed by now and then. I walked up and down along the path beside the pond, then climbed the somewhat higher hill on the right, from where I could see Karl Marx Allee and Strausberger Platz, switched to the lower hill, which was hardly higher than the illumined row of windows in Marco’s penthouse across the street. I suddenly realized I admired Marco and Claudia, felt a need to tell them that they were right to live such an extravagant life, that a person has to take risks. In that moment I wanted nothing so much as to drive a car with Berlin plates.

I descended the long flight of steps and walked back to our apartment, ate all the mortadella, and watched for a long while as the bulldozer built its own ramp to dig its way deeper, piece by piece.

That evening we invited Claudia and Marco to join us at a large Italian restaurant on a corner exactly halfway between our two apartments. The owner, Marco whispered, had had to flee Italy — he had once been a lefty activist. It annoyed me that Ute nodded as if she knew all about it. Claudia had pulled on a heavy sweater over her yellow dress and now divvied up the baguette of white bread with her long fingers. Without looking up, she gave her order, then started talking to us again, holding the menu over her shoulder until the waiter took it from her. We ate fish and drank carafe after carafe of wine. The owner strolled from table to table, kissed both of Claudia’s hands, and, laying an arm around Marco’s shoulder, smiled a frozen smile, as if posing for a photograph.

Ute suffered the whole evening from an almost pathological need to show her approval, used words like the “industry” and “normals,” and wanted to know where Marco got his inspiration from and if he didn’t need a creative pause now and then. Marco’s favorite word was “leverage.” Ufa had “leveraged” the series, he couldn’t “leverage” the movie all by himself, they’d all have to “leverage” together. The restaurant, our apartment, the park were “class locations” and only yesterday he had “green-lighted” another contract or — as he explained to me with a little bow to emphasize how antiquated the phrases had become — given it his okay, had cleared the way for the film. Marco of course knew all about the bulldozer. “Construction begins in 1999, for credit purposes.”

It was far too late when we picked up Fritz. Ute wanted to know what was the matter with me. I said her devotional pose, her stupid questions, had got on my nerves. Lying stretched out in bed, I was certain this would be our last night together.

When I got up to go to the toilet — several cherry bombs in the stairwell had wrenched me from a deep sleep — I could see the bulldozer, brightly illuminated as if onstage, its jaws raised and open wide. Although it was close to one o’clock, maybe a dozen people were scrambling around it, with several vehicles in the street flashing their blue lights.

It’s with considerable reluctance that I report what happened next. I was watching the goings-on with the bulldozer and, recalling Marco’s explanation, presumed it was some sort of police raid, when I noticed something moving in the only window with lights still on, kitty-corner across the street — a head was bobbing up and down in a regular motion. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew right away what was going on. I fetched my glasses from our bedroom, where Ute was snoring lightly and the odor of fiber carpeting hung in the air. All I could see now was the man, half lying, half propped on an elbow, not that unlike the position of Michelangelo’s Adam. In the window adjacent, the silhouette of a naked woman appeared, but then took a few steps and vanished from my view. The man followed her, they met in the middle of the room, they embraced. Then they walked side by side toward the hallway, so that against the backlighting I could now see what slender legs — just in general what a beautiful body — the woman had. I missed the moment when they returned to the lit room, because I decided to likewise make my move to be closer to them. My hand was already on the door handle when I remembered that Fritz was asleep in there.

Back at my window, I saw the woman sitting on top of the man now; with one hand she brushed her long hair from her face and, leaning back slightly, braced herself with the other on his thigh. I followed her motion as he held her by the waist with both hands.

Her breasts appeared exaggeratedly large, like a Playboy caricature. I had to kneel down to see her face, which otherwise was hidden behind the window’s sash bars.

You may find it odd, but it was not until I realized this was not some video I was watching, that I felt a twinge of the heart. This was not a staged scene. What was happening over there was reality! Plus there was my own sense of humiliation at not being able to tear myself away from it.

After I had pleasured myself, I washed, returned to bed — but a few minutes later was standing at the window again. Now I could see her back, her long hair falling down it. She was bending back and forth, and those hands were still clasped around her waist. Deciding not to put myself through this, I began to inspect the video cassettes, row upon row. The titles, almost all in German, meant nothing to me. When I looked across again for the first time to check if they were still “doing it”—a phrase I couldn’t get out of my mind now — she was facing him again, but leaning forward with his hands on her breasts. I drank a glass of water in the kitchen and forced myself to go on sitting there at the table.

You can’t imagine how relieved I was when there was only one small light left on across the way. Although I couldn’t make anything out, I went on staring at the light until it was finally turned off.

The to-do around the bulldozer had quieted down, although the number of people had not noticeably diminished. Strangely drained of energy, I lay down in bed. But sleep was out of the question.

The whole circus began a little before seven — a half hour earlier and I would have welcomed it — just as I was finally dozing off. The doorbell rang several times, then came a knock at our apartment door and somebody shouting. Marco had said not to pay any attention to the telephone, but if the doorbell rang it might be a package.

When Ute returned to the bedroom, she asked me to please come with her — and it sounded as if she had found traces of my nocturnal adventures.

We were to vacate the place by 8:30—the bulldozer had uncovered a bomb in the courtyard, a five-hundred-pounder, as we would soon learn. Although I was hardly of a mind to get up, this news filled me with a childlike glee. While I drank my coffee, Fritz and I tried to persuade Ute to stay in the apartment, the worst that could happen here would be a couple of broken windowpanes. “You guys talk big,” she said, but we had trouble persuading her not to pack our bags.

One window was tipped open in the apartment from the night before. Either those two were already on their way or weren’t about to leave their bed. Out on the street lots of people were milling around with suitcases and blankets, as if a film about refugees was being shot. A radio reporter asked Ute how she’d be celebrating New Year’s Eve. A woman emerged from the building directly across the street with a tray, a thermos, and cups and served coffee to the reporter and two firefighters. In early May, she said, this street was a sea of pink blossoms. We’d have to come back in May sometime.

The front door to Marco’s building was ajar. We took the elevator up, rang the bell, and I thought I could hear footsteps in the apartment.