Ingo Schulze - New Lives

I was at Michaela’s today, I needed to speak with Barrista (his stupid Rolex scheme has become a curse!), I thought he would be at home. Michaela didn’t hear the doorbell. I rapped on the window of my old room. It’s now her “studio,” her “exercise studio.”

There she was, standing in front of me in her underwear and red sneakers, covered with sweat, and told me how she’d “lost four and a half pounds, four and a half pounds in two days.” I watched her get back on her treadmill, dumbbells in hand. “Another five hundred meters,” she panted.

I waited in the kitchen. How strange things can seem in so short a time. Mounds of zwieback, diet crackers, and low-fat milk. I didn’t notice the freezer at first glance. Its gleaming whiteness made everything else look grungy.

Michaela patted her stomach and said she wasn’t tucking it in, the fat was gone — I had to admit it, didn’t I? She talked about willpower and how much you can accomplish just by training once a day. She kept talking about her tummy while she puttered around half naked. And then I said, “Actually it’s kind of sad that your tummy’s so flat.” Verotchka, don’t misunderstand me, you and I, we could have taken the baby, I would have wanted it. At first I thought Michaela hadn’t got what I was talking about or didn’t want to. But then she looked at me and called me a dreamer and egotistical and some other things too. Suddenly she said, “You’ll believe anything”—and was startled by her own words. I asked what she meant by that. She didn’t reply. Even she couldn’t find a way to talk herself out of it that fast. YOU’LL BELIEVE ANYTHING!

At the time I had hauled the head nurse over the coals — how could she allow it, what a brutal thing to do, to put a “miscarriage” in the same ward with the “abortions”…The hallway would have been better, I said, yes, the hallway, that would have been more humane. No one said a word, not even the nurses. YOU’LL BELIEVE ANYTHING!

I told Michaela to swear it had been a miscarriage, and she swore it. But it was a lie. A lie, perjury. I couldn’t take anymore, I left, without a good-bye.

That’s all, Verotchka. We would have taken it, wouldn’t we?

Your Heinrich

Thursday, June 21, ’90

Ah, Nicoletta,

It seems to me as if untold riches await me, await us at the end of this month. Everything will be, must be, very, very wonderful. Please don’t be angry that I haven’t written for so long, there’s been so much to do here. What I really want to ask is: How are you? What are you up to? Would you have an hour to spare if I came to Bamberg? I would love to talk with you in the present, instead of always writing about the past. But it looks as if I have no choice.

And so back to Altenburg and the pistol under my sweater.

During the whole demonstration I was completely calm and detached. If someone had noticed I would have shown them my booty, pretended it was a joke, and handed it over at the next best opportunity. Michaela kept me at her side by linking her arm in mine and was busy the whole time responding to greetings, whether she knew the people or not. She whispered to me which of our neighbors she had spotted, and now and then called my attention to someone. Sometimes we tried to guess where we knew them from — a salesgirl, a post-office clerk, and Robert’s grade-school teacher was in the crowd too. A couple of times people greeted us, and then after just a few words crowned our serendipitous camaraderie with a hug.

There was the usual barrage of whistles and chants in front of the Stasi villa. Once we arrived at Market Square, the whole thing threatened to peter out, but then a voice caught people’s ears — it sounded as if it were used to bellowing. The man had climbed up on a bench and was hurling his tirades of hatred to the crowd. The adjectives he assigned to the Socialist Unity Party got nastier and nastier: rotten, prostituted, fucked-up. He thrust a fist heavenward at every stressed syllable. After six or seven sentences he couldn’t come up with anything else, and so started over again, so that his brief oration began to turn into a kind of refrain. Above all his demand that all these fucked-up functionaries be sent to the coal mines was greeted each time with cheers. But then, just as I thought he would call for us to storm the Rathaus, he let it go at that, shouted, “We’ll be back! We’ll be back!” and climbed down from the bench. I’ve told you once before about this revolutionary orator. He was the guy who offered to write a letter to the editor demanding that Wieland Förster’s sculpture be demolished. 332

As we drove home Michaela was euphoric. But it was only when we turned on the television that the day became a real triumph. A live report of the demonstration in Berlin was on. She had never watched television with such a good conscience, Michaela said, because ultimately we too had made our contribution. And she kept on watching the entire afternoon, slowly moving ever closer to the screen, hoping to catch a glimpse of Thea.

But as for me, from one moment to the next my mood turned so wretched that I would have loved to break into sobs and confess everything in the hope that Michaela would take pity on me and remove that pistol from my life. I was convinced that at any second they would arrive to search our apartment. I gave fate its chance by going to the kitchen after first laying the pistol on the sofa and leaving the door ajar. And in fact Michaela did call my name, but only because the pretzel-cruncher from Thea’s gathering was on. He gave the appearance of profound thoughtfulness and concern, all the while moving his small head from side to side as if he wanted people to remember his face from all angles. I stretched out my arm, aimed over my forefinger, and pushed down with my raised thumb—“Bang!” Michaela laughed.

I put the pistol in the cupboard with my manuscript files and sat down next to Michaela. My wooziness appeared to have passed. When the live report was over, all the news broadcasts, both East and West, included clips of the speeches. That gave me the opportunity to pursue the question that all my thoughts were whirling around: Who was it that I was supposed to shoot?

At first I thought any of the speechmakers would do. Then I chose my victims on the basis of sympathy and antipathy. In the end I realized how pointless it was to make the forces of opposition my target. That narrowed my choice down to Schabowski and Markus Wolf, and so I decided on Wolf, because that would result in the mobilization of Stasi troops. Every time Wolf lowered the hand that clutched a sheet of paper and the chorus of whistles and boos swelled louder, I pulled the trigger, sometimes from out of the crowd, sometimes from the rear. I came close to creeping into the screen, trying to find the best standpoint, and could feel the pistol fly upward, recoiling against my right wrist as I fired the shot. I realized how difficult it would be to escape without anyone recognizing me. And there might be sharpshooters posted somewhere too. Far and wide, not a policeman in sight. Suddenly it came to me: I don’t want to remain unrecognized. Why shouldn’t I own up to my deed?

At the next repeat of the clip I am already on the podium, just two steps behind Wolf, and as the concert of whistles reaches its high point, I shout, “Comrade General!” Wolf glances my way, I take aim and say, “You’re gone!” As he turns around his eyes reflect incredulity to the point of doltishness. “You’re gone!” I shout once more, and point the barrel toward the stairs. For several seconds no one moves. Then, in a monstrous failure to grasp his situation, Wolf reaches inside his coat — the Napoleonic gesture, or so I think. We stare at each other as if turned to stone. Wolf grows smaller and smaller. The motion with which he pulls out his gun scurries before my eyes like a shadow. Then the shot rings out, and the hot cartridge bounces across the podium.