Ingo Schulze - New Lives

When I invited Robert to come along, he hugged me for the first time. And now Michaela wanted to go to Berlin too.

First, however, my self-control was to be tested.

In November you still needed a stamp in your papers to cross the border. Robert accompanied me to the provisional office set up by the police in the one-story building behind the Konsum Market. (Michaela had refused to appear as a supplicant before these people ever again.)

Since the place looked dead, I assumed the door was locked and was just trying to jiggle at it when it flew open in my hand. There was the odor of a noonday meal. The room we entered through folding doors was as dark as a church. Except that just above some desks that had been shoved together, a lamp had been hung, and beneath it sat the uniformed personnel, all of them hunched over as if trying to hide their faces. The counters and the door to the kitchen were barricaded with stacked tables and chairs.

Uncertain from which side I ought to approach, I chose a circuitous route. I kept at least one person’s back in front of me and glanced down into a drawer full of stamps and inkpads, keys and seals. A metal lunch box shimmered beside a briefcase, there were two apple cores in the wastebasket. For a second I was afraid I’d walked into a trap. The blond didn’t recognize me, or at least pretended he didn’t. He raised his arm, his hand opened up, I gave him my papers.

It was like remembering a dream. In the same moment the two other uniformed men looked up from their work, and by the light of the lamp I could tell that it was the black-haired cop and the fat cop. The trio that I had joined in their squad car on November 4th was now complete.

I didn’t seriously consider trying to flee. But I did glance toward the door as if I expected someone to be standing there blocking our retreat. I called Robert over to me.

“Have you been over yet?” I asked, looking at the blond as he inspected my accordion-fold passport to the last page, 340as if every stamp from every border crossing held great interest for him. The blond then added his stamp and folded it all back up again. Robert said later that I paid a fee, even got a receipt, but I don’t recall it. With the same gesture with which he took my pass, the blond handed it back. Just as he had ignored my thank-you, he now ignored my question. I headed for the exit, Robert kept close to my side. 341

The next day we made our libretti delivery in Berlin and then had our noon meal in a pub near Henschel Verlag. We had driven our old route, instead of the one I had pictured in my mind: turning off in the direction of West Berlin just after the three-lane asphalt stretch near Michendorf. Berlin, by which I mean the eastern half of the city, was nothing more than an antechamber where you waited before striding into the great hall. I was amazed that the waitress and counterman were still working here in the East, as if the wall were still there. After we had eaten, we drove down Friedrich Strasse in the direction of Checkpoint Charlie. This was Robert’s wish. While we were waiting to be passed through — there were only a few cars ahead of us — I realized for the first time the meaning of the word “checkpoint.” The syllables checkpoint-charlie had been just a sound, a noise, a bubble-gum bubble that bursts just as the bells of the Spassky Tower ring 342out into the moment of greatest silence. I asked Robert if he knew what the word “checkpoint” meant. He did. Michaela said I shouldn’t play high school teacher. Pass, glance, pass, thanks — and through. No thumbing to find the stamp, nothing. Michaela said the real checkpoint had to still be up ahead. I turned right. I had no idea where I was driving. We had wanted to go to West Berlin, and here we were in West Berlin. Do you understand? West Berlin meant arriving there, meant being in the West, not just driving around aimlessly.

An hour later and we ran ashore at the lower end of the Kurfürsten-damm, where I found a parking place to squeeze into and a bank where we collected our “welcome money.” Then we walked up and down the Ku’damm, lost our bearings in the adjacent streets, and landed on another major thoroughfare with lots of stores. With Michaela in the lead we entered a bookstore where several stacks of a novel 343by Umberto Eco were sprouting from the floor. I had to laugh when I saw those oversize wheeled shopping baskets outside a supermarket. 344They instantly roused a desire in me to hoard supplies, so that I wouldn’t have to leave the house for days.

Later we found ourselves in a department store in which it was way too warm and, with coats draped over our arms, we moved from floor to floor as if looking for some particular item. When Michaela suddenly got the idea to buy Robert a jacket for his Youth Consecration, 345we went our separate ways for forty-five minutes. She handed me two fifty D-mark bills and shoved Robert ahead of her to the escalator.

I watched them go, but I had no real desire to spend three quarters of an hour alone. I thought: You’re free, freer than you’ve ever been before in your life. 346I was in the middle of West Berlin and could do or not do whatever I felt like.

I was most interested in the kitchen utensils and housewares — coffee machines, pots, tableware, and corkscrews, but there were also gadgets whose purpose I would have liked to inquire about. I definitely wanted to buy something for myself. Just for me. Suddenly I had an idea I couldn’t shake — if I didn’t spend the money now, it would be lost for good. At any rate, with much wringing of the hands, I searched for some perfect object. One moment I thought I had made a decision, the next I lost my confidence. I needed a Chinese teapot, I needed a windbreaker. I was already at the cash register with a Walkman when, tormented by regret, I stood there just shaking my head as if I didn’t speak German, left the Walkman on the counter, and fled. If Michaela and Robert had been on time I would have greeted them empty-handed. But then, lured by a clutch of people, I began to rummage through a square box full of gloves. Large or small, they were all the same price. At first I tried thrusting my hand down into unexplored regions and trolled along the bottom, but all I brought to the surface was junk, children’s mittens or singles, one of them a black leather glove that fit perfectly. I kept it on and searched for its mate, but in vain. Finally I conquered my aversion and considered those that other people had tossed back. It was difficult to try them on because each pair was sewn together at the wrist. Once you had pulled off the trick, however, you stood there manacled. I decided on a dark blue pair lined in a red and green plaid, and, properly handcuffed, walked over to the cash register.

“I thought you don’t like gloves,” Michaela said. “Because I didn’t have any,” I said. Robert was carrying a plastic shopping bag so cleverly crafted that rain couldn’t get into it. Michaela confessed that she had only one D-mark left, but at least we no longer needed to worry about a suit for Robert to wear at his Youth Consecration.

I treated us to currywurst at a food cart. That improved the general mood.

After that I dialed Vera’s number. It was the first time I had ever used a push-button phone and I felt like I was in a movie. I kicked the phone-booth door open again and asked where exactly we were. Michaela ran off to look for a street sign.

Vera had an answering machine. Her voice had a hard, stiff sound, as if the only calls she got were from total strangers. I was sure she would pick up the receiver as soon as she recognized my voice. I said, “Hello!” a couple of times and that we would love to have coffee at her place. I called the shop, and the male voice — presumably Nicola’s — on the answering machine said in German that I was to leave a message after the beep, after which I heard what I presumed was the same message in Arabic and French.