Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Suddenly my mother was standing before me in her underwear and asked me to rub her with lotion. Her back was covered with bruises, they had even struck her on the thighs and calves. She braced herself against the table and bent forward. There was a slight odor of sweat. In prescribing such things, she said, few doctors actually thought about the fact that old people are usually alone and can’t rub themselves down. We exchanged good-night kisses. My mother hadn’t turned the bathroom light off or screwed the top back on the toothpaste. Her towel lay on the toilet lid.

Michaela asked what that odor was, and then said that Thomas had just rubbed Thea down with liniment too. The word had a cozy sound, as if we’d put everything behind us now.

By Tuesday there was no longer any way to prevent the Dresden resolution from being read from the stage. Except for Beate Sebastian, who was unwilling to take part in such an action unless the Party gave its approval, the whole house was for it.

As for as the resolution itself, I didn’t share the others’ enthusiasm. When I proposed we write our own, I was told that the orchestra, most of the singers, and the corps de ballet had already agreed to it and that we couldn’t start all over again now.

The whole tone was taken from the ritual of criticism and self-criticism. There’s a worried functionary hiding behind every line, I said. Michaela shook her head, no, I was mistaken. We went through it line by line, and even I was surprised at how with just the slightest pressure on the lever, the pseudorevolutionary rhetoric gave way. For instance, this sentence: “A national leadership that does not speak with their people is not credible.”

“Don’t you hear the whimpering of some disillusioned lickspittle?” I asked. “Who says I’d ever want to speak with that bunch? Why call them our national leadership when they came to power by fraudulent elections? And what does that mean: with their people? Why don’t they quote Brecht: ‘They should dissolve their people and elect another…’”

Michaela admitted that those lines could be deleted, but that the formulation “a people forced to be speechless will turn to violent action” was not just courageous, but true as well in the present situation. Why, I asked, didn’t they write: “A people imprisoned for twenty-eight years and treated as property of the state, punished and bullied for the slightest contradiction, has finally taken over the street! Down with a band of criminals who beat defenseless people, mock and torture them.”

Michaela didn’t reply. “Why,” I asked, “don’t they simply say: Tear down the wall, throw out the Socialist Unity Party, establish human rights, take to the streets, be brave, don’t let them bully you anymore.”

“That’s going too far,” Michaela said, “that calls everything into question.”

“Of course,” I shouted, “it calls everything into question! Leipzig calls everything into question, what happened to my mother, to Thea, calls everything into question. We have to call everything into question.” Why was she willing to put up with the same old crap from the pens of apparatchiks? “‘It is our duty,’” I quoted scornfully, “‘to demand that the leadership of our country and Party restore their trust in the population.’ Isn’t that disgusting? To conclude with that? Doesn’t that mean, please don’t beat us, we’re really in favor of socialism? That’s more wretched than wanting some prince to take us by the hand? You know what that Dresden crowd is like.”

“Then why,” Michaela asked, “don’t you say it?”

“I will say it,” I replied. “You can depend on it!”

I have to add that we weren’t alone. We were standing beside the little round table in the dramaturgy office and had those who were sitting at it or leaning against their desks for an audience. Ever since her performance of the day before and our return from Leipzig, Michaela had become the Bärbel Bohley of the theater and I her husband, whose mother had been beaten, no, tortured by the police. One by one the others had all fallen silent. We had spoken the last sentences as if onstage.

Under their attentive eyes, Michaela walked over to my desk to get her purse. “There is a difference,” she said, returning to her first position, “whether something is said in the theater or on the street. There is no anonymity in the theater—”

“Which simply means,” I broke in, “that the street needs to enlighten the theater. God knows, not a single person arrested was anonymous. They all had to present their IDs!”

In her eyes, she said, it would be an achievement for the theater to arrive at a point where the resolution could be read at all. With that Michaela left the dramaturgy office. From my vantage point at the window I saw her walk to the bus stop. Yet another Gotham rehearsal had been canceled.

My arguments were so irrefutable that I found myself in a state of euphoria. I had given my aversion free rein and, by following it as if it were a divining rod, had discovered a logic that worked. Do you understand me? Suddenly I had cogent reasons why I did not want to be a part of it all.

My new outlook provided me, I thought, a line of defense that no one would breach all that soon and that allowed me to observe these theatrical follies with a derisive smile. Of course people said I was right, but they took Michaela’s side and talked about small steps, cunning, patience.

At two o’clock on the dot I drove home. Mother had prepared a meal. She had filled Robert in on what had happened to her. He enjoyed the “extended family” and the “Sunday dinner.” “The longer I think about it,” Mother said, “the more clearly I realize they all belong behind bars, not just their bullyboys and officers, but all of them, Modrow, Berghofer, Honecker, Mielke, Hager, the whole rotten pack. And if they didn’t know anything about it, so much the worse.” Michaela didn’t look up. Had I arrived earlier, she probably would have thought I had coached my mother. For coffee we drove to Kohren-Sahlis. There was poppy-seed cake and whipped cream. Mother ordered seconds and said she’d earned it. Then I drove Michaela to the theater. The Gypsy Princess matinee for retirees had begun at three o’clock.

While the performance went on up front, backstage the battle over the resolution had flared up again.

The orchestra and corps de ballet had voted yes, as had the soloists, with one exception, but the chorus was divided. The gypsy princess herself could not be persuaded to read the resolution. Kleindienst, the conductor, likewise refused. Finally we had a volunteer, Oliver Jambo, our gay heldentenor — I mention this only because Jambo celebrated being our gay heldentenor with every step he took. He would consider it an honor to read the letter. And with that I drove home.

That evening Michaela told us that the whole thing had fallen apart because of Jonas. He had sat in the smoking corner, smiling. He asked everyone who made the mistake of wandering past to put a hold on “this gesture.” He was asking for just one day. They should wait one day more. He had spoken to Michaela as well. It was difficult even for her to hold her own against him. One day, he kept saying over and over, just one day. When asked how that would change anything, he cited the meeting of the politburo.

At this point in Michaela’s narrative I couldn’t help laughing. Yes, she said, she found it shameful too, but in the end there had been nothing she could do. The singers were suddenly in favor of a one-day postponement. But the orchestra hadn’t been informed, so they had waited in the wings. Finally Kleindienst called them onstage to receive, or so he said, their well-deserved applause. The musicians had left in such a rage that they probably couldn’t be counted on from now on.