Ingo Schulze - New Lives

When he arrived Manuela, our secret weapon, happened to be in my office — she brings in more ads than our three other reps combined. Legs crossed, hands folded across his belly, Fred rolled his eyes to signal how pointless he found my putting up with Manuela’s chitchat. When he started shaking his head too, I handed him his lists without comment. If I didn’t know him, I said, I’d have to think he was cheating on us. I then sent Manuela on her way, asking her to have Ilona report to my office.

“Can you explain this?” I asked Fred after a long pause. “Can you tell me how you came up with these numbers?”

He had always turned the money in, never held a penny back, and Ilona had given him receipts.

“And you never,” I asked, putting the pages back in numerical order, “noticed any discrepancies?”

Fred shrugged. I said nothing. Fred asked if he could leave now. “No,” I said, “we’ll wait for Ilona.”

That sentence was the last one for a long while, until Fred volunteered to fetch Ilona himself.

“Good heavens!” she said when I spread the reports out for her.

“And you always took his money and wrote receipts?”

“I wrapped the coins and took it all to the bank, what else?” she said as if expecting praise. She didn’t seem to be in the least aware what this had to do with her.

“But didn’t check the figures?”

She had received the money and taken it to the bank, she repeated.

They competed at sniffing in outrage when I said they should put everything aside and recheck the reports. We would need numbers by afternoon. “Maybe,” I said in conclusion, “we’ve been broke for a long time.”

When things got underway shortly after five, the mood was excruciating. Ilona and Fred sat directly across from me, talking about something that kept them in stitches. They had had other things to do than to recheck figures, they announced. I was the comptroller, after all, that was really my job.

Pringel sat off to himself and stared at the blank sheet of paper in front of him. He already knew what awaited him, I was the only one still in dark. Kurt was missing, the sales reps hadn’t been invited. Only Jörg seemed his old cordial self.

His first question called Ilona and Fred to account: Why hadn’t they followed my instructions and studied the totals? They were completely flummoxed.

Frau Schorba gave the figures for the advertising receipts. We no longer had any need of a free paper, Jörg said, we already were one. Starting with the last week in June the Weekly would be printed in Gera, with four or eight additional pages. That would make room for more articles, which would be considerably more likely to increase the number of copies sold than this flood of advertising we were drowning in. And with that Jörg’s survey of the future came to an end. He presented his new lead article, which the Commission Against Corruption and Abuse of Office had delivered free of charge — they’re having to elect their third chairman, since the first two are themselves both under suspicion of corruption.

Then Jörg pulled out a sheet of paper and said, “We need to talk about this, Gotthold, you have to deal with this now.” Pringel’s childlike face shrank even smaller. Jörg explained the contents of the letter, signed by more than thirty employees of Air Research Technologies. In it they accused Pringel of being a “Red scribbler.” “What is a Red scribbler doing on the staff of your newspaper?” They had enclosed an article Pringel had written for their house journal in October ’89.

Jörg began to quote from it, and after citing phrases like “with the full force of the law,” “a threat to the health and welfare of our children,” broke off with an “and so forth and so on.”

When Pringel looked up he was hardly recognizable. His lips were quivering. He tried to smile, his glance skittered across the room.

He couldn’t really understand, Jörg said, why this letter came as such a surprise. But above all he wanted to ask why Pringel hadn’t shown his cards to us to begin with. In his mind that was the real offense. Pringel nodded. By October no one had had to write stuff like that anymore, Fred muttered, squelching Pringel’s own answer after he had just taken a deep breath.

It had been right after the riots in Dresden, Pringel finally stammered. But the text had been shoved in front of him, he had had no choice but to publish it, it hadn’t been his article at all, but he had had to sign off on it — as the accountable editor he had to put his name to it. His eyes wandered wildly. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Show us the article,” Marion said, which set Pringel stammering again — but it hadn’t been his article.

I asked him what he had been afraid of. Of course I meant in terms of the situation last autumn. But he misunderstood me.

“That you wouldn’t let me go on writing,” he said. Working for a newspaper had never been such fun before, so fulfilling. He was so happy to show up every morning…

What was the point of torturing him any longer? He agreed that for now his name would no longer appear in the paper. Pringel is an amiable fellow, and intelligent. You only need to tell him what you want, and the next morning you’ve got it. His little stories about various firms are a big hit at Gallus. Hausmann furniture has been placing half a page a week with us ever since.

Were there any questions, Jörg wanted to know.

Yes, I said, we hadn’t yet discussed the most important topic.

This was an editorial meeting, he interrupted, any discussion of fundamentals would have to be between the two of us. He wished I would finally get that into my head. Besides which, the matter was already settled.

As far as I was concerned, I replied, the matter was not settled, and the others should at least have a chance to hear my arguments. But “the others” had already stood up. Even Frau Schorba was reaching for her handbag. Only Pringel had remained in his seat. The two of us had evidently forfeited any power to influence decisions. But then I felt Astrid the wolf’s muzzle against my knee. She was looking up at me with her one good eye. Sure, you can make fun of me, but I’m certain that the wolf understood my situation precisely. I am going to have no other choice than to double my bet. I believe in winning.

Hugs, Your E.

PS: Maybe it would be better to publish Anton Larschen’s memoirs with Georg. I think Georg would be pleased, and the book would have a real publisher.

Sunday, June 3, ’90

Dear Nicoletta,

I hadn’t actually been all that surprised that my mother had shown up at our place on October 9th. But after Robert was in bed, she said, “I’ve got something to tell you two.” And after a short pause: “I was arrested.”

My mother’s report was far less detailed than Mario’s. She had also been arrested on Friday evening, that is, on the 6th, in front of the Dresden Central Station. She had wanted to verify with her own eyes what she had heard in the clinic and on the radio. But no sooner had she stepped off the streetcar — that is, well before she was able to get any sort of sense of demonstrators and uniformed personnel — than she was grabbed and thrown into a truck. They had beaten and cursed her. After her release on Sunday morning, she had taken a streetcar to Laubegast, to see Gunda Lapin, a painter and friend of hers. She had recuperated there until Monday morning. She had then had herself examined at the polyclinic and placed on medical leave for a week. If she were still locked up, she said, no one would know where she was.

Listening to her was pure agony. Michaela fought back her tears and tried to clasp Mother’s hands in hers. That seemed wrong to me, because it was like a restraint on my mother, and I was glad when Michaela left to call Thea from a phone booth. Being left alone with Mother, however, was even less bearable. I turned on the television. But neither she nor I watched. We cleared the table without saying a word, and didn’t break our silence as we made up her bed. Mother went to the bathroom, and I could hear her gargle and spit into the basin. I sat in front of the television — I had turned it back off — and gazed at my silhouette on the dark screen. I kept taking deeper breaths, until the rise and fall of my shoulders was clearly visible in the reflection too.