Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Later, in front of the bookcase, out of habit I took note of what we didn’t have — a complete Proust, for example — but I no longer felt any envy. I stood in front of their books like someone who doesn’t recall that his friend has moved away until he’s standing at his door.

Suddenly I heard Thea’s voice behind me. Somehow I felt caught red-handed and reached for the slim orange-bound Strindberg.

I immediately knew what was up. All the same I asked, “What fish are you talking about?” She repeated what I had said to Verena.

“When the wall goes, it’s all over for us here,” I said, and thumbed through Fräulein Julie. Conversations had already died before my reply.

“But it’s really quite clear. No wall, no GDR,” I said, and kept on thumbing.

“I earn seven hundred marks,” I said, after things had quieted down, “that’s less than two hundred West-marks, maybe less than a hundred and fifty. I’d pull down that much in West Berlin as a waiter on a good weekend.”

I turned to the guests like their teacher. “If I can earn ten or twenty times more at odd jobs than I earn as a dramaturge, why shouldn’t I be an odd-jobber? What does society need theater for these days anyway?” They laughed and booed and called me a clown and a traitor.

“What duties are those?” I called back. “Who am I leaving in the lurch?”

Pretzel-cruncher said he didn’t know who I was and what I did, and he didn’t care either, because whatever changes needed to be made, he didn’t want anything to do with reactionaries. ***, an actress from the Deutsches Theater, said in a high falsetto that I was a provocateur, yes, a provocateur.

“What I mean is,” I exclaimed, temporizing now, “is that your audience is going to run in the other direction…”

Ah, Nicoletta! I chose the word “audience,” but meant something different, something fundamental — the term “audience” didn’t do it justice. Any attention paid to us — the attention that had called us onstage — would vanish from the face of the earth, that’s what I was trying to say. But no one understood that. They didn’t even realize this was pure masochism on my part, that I — terrible to say — was losing much more than these actors were. Yes, of course, they would always find something. Thea would always have a role of some kind to play. They didn’t need to be afraid. But I was losing everything, EVERYTHING! My weal and woe! West and East! Heaven and hell!

Michaela sat pale and miserable on her ice floe and attempted a smile.

Around two we went to bed. The stuffed animals above my head — a dog that had tipped over and a bear lying on its back — seemed to be resting from play. Robert and the two girls had listened to music till after midnight and were now sleeping in another room.

Michaela entered in rumpled blue silk pajamas. Thea, she said, had intended to throw them out because they had been ruined in the wash. Now they belonged to her. Her weeping woke me up in the middle of the night. It was all too much, she said, just too much. With her wet check resting on my hand, she fell back asleep before I did.

The next morning Thea and Thomas served a breakfast that I took as a kind of apology, but it was also a ritual that Michaela held in high esteem. A snow-white starched cloth had been spread over the Biedermeier table. If your thigh touched the hem, the cloth rose up along the edge of the table. Our hosts’ napkins were inserted in silver rings bearing their initials, our napkins were folded to form a kind of crown. Michaela’s attempt to imitate her hosts failed in the same moment that the two girls unfolded their napkins with a casual flick and leaned back as if waiting to be served.

The table gleamed with porcelain rimmed in red and gold, real silverware, including the serving forks — and, yes, knife rests. Two kinds of bittersweet jam glistened in crystal bowls, making a plastic container for mustard and a jar of horseradish look like harlequins at court. Except for them, the only comparable item in our household was a small Russian pewter frame for the saltcellar, although our little spoon had wandered off somewhere.

Our table conversation had nothing to do with what had been said the evening before. Mostly it was the girls who talked. Robert ignored us completely. He had fallen in love with one of them — or maybe both, I never quite figured it out. The background music was a Chopin piano concerto. It had all been staged in order to convince me that the world was still the same as during my last visit in April.

Suddenly Thomas was in a big hurry. This was the first I had heard of a meeting of “Theater Union representatives.” Thea was supposed to deliver a “personal report” of her arrest. I hoped that my promise to spend the day with Robert would spare me from having to attend. But Robert had suddenly lost all interest in the planetarium. And so I had to set out for the Deutsches Theater.

We found seats in the second balcony. I swore to myself this would be the last time I would be so considerate of Michaela’s feelings. The only person seated onstage that I recognized was Gregor Gysi. We needed to realize, he said, that the special alert police were under psychological pressure, their structure was very basic and they weren’t prepared for a situation like this.

Various personal reports were read, including mention of blows delivered to the back, legs, kidneys, and head. Thea read hers without pathos, it was one of the shortest. At one point she said, I don’t want to go into that. Two women in front of us were weeping.

Applause, laughter, boos, and catcalls tumbled over each other. Suddenly it grew louder. Derisive laughter from all sides, the same sort I had been pelted with the previous evening. Just before it broke out, I thought I had heard Gysi’s voice.

“He had the nerve to ask us why we didn’t notify them about the demonstration!” Michaela shouted in my ear.

The thought raced through my head: That was the devil prompting him! But I was laughing too. Of course there were more speeches, but only for the sake of making speeches; people were whispering, clearing their throats, shifting in their seats, unabashedly carrying on conversations. But the devil’s seed had taken root.

I’m not sure, but I think it was the general manager of the theater in Schwedt who stormed the stage like a man possessed. Close to choking, he screamed in a trembling voice — he was also holding the mic too far away — that if the issue here was that there should be notification of demonstrations, then he wanted to notify the authorities that notification was being given here and now that in every town where there was a theater, where there were people like us, notification would be given for demonstrations — everywhere, throughout the country. “Thank you!” he shouted into the applause and joyous tumult that washed over him. Thea and Michaela had jumped to their feet clapping.

Up onstage talk turned immediately to procedural matters, how far ahead notification needed to be given and so forth. In the end the date was set for November 4th.

On the drive home that evening we stopped in Leipzig and went to the Astoria — I showed it to you, the luxury hotel right on the Ring, next to the train station. They let us in, showed us to a table, and fed us a regal meal. “Actually, we’re doing quite well,” I said. That the street in front of the Astoria was the same one where thirteen days before a military cordon had been drawn up, where six days before seventy thousand demonstrators had marched — that seemed equally as absurd as the assumption that there might be fighting in the streets here come tomorrow.

On Monday I was at my desk in the dramaturgy office by ten, read a little, went to the canteen at noon, and drove home at two. I did some household chores, went shopping, lay down for a while, and later prepared supper. After that I joined Robert to watch television. It was reported on the news that a hundred and fifty thousand people had taken to the streets in Leipzig. Not a word about arrests or street fights.