Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Just as I was about to investigate the soil in the pot, Ramona returned. Didn’t I want to confide in her, about something that was tormenting me, weighing down on my soul? As she asked she looked at me as if she were offering to pray with me. I said nothing and stared directly into her nostrils, the left one narrow and shaped like a boomerang, the other a circular crater. Ramona sniffed and left.

All the bullets were in the pot, and nothing indicated they had been discovered.

Shortly before Christmas I managed to finagle another two weeks of sick leave. I had to promise that in the new year, if I showed no improvement, I would see a psychiatrist or neurologist. Dr. Weiss recommended long walks, exercise in general, and fresh air. He had no idea how dismayed I was by his observation that the days would be getting longer now. I’ve always enjoyed rainy days more than a blue sky. But the prospect of bright, warm evenings, of birds chirping and children screeching at a swimming pool, the mere thought of Easter and summer vacation, was unbearable.

Then came Christmas. Of course I had bought no gifts. What was more, I refused to sleep in the same room with Michaela so that she or my mother could have my room.

Mother, who had not missed a single demonstration in Dresden, who had even responded to an appeal over the radio and shown up at Bautzner Strasse to take part in the occupation of the State Security offices, was in awe of Michaela. Michaela had actually become an actor. Michaela played leading roles. Michaela had raised her boy all by herself — Michaela was extraordinary, period. As proof, my mother handed me the first two issues of klartext, which had come into being under Michaela’s tutelage and about which I had been completely oblivious, even though meetings of the “media committee” had been held, as it were, right outside my door. Within hours two thousand copies had been handed out. Mother insisted on reading to me at least the article about how Schalck-Golodkowki’s people had sold off the Council Library to the West for a pittance. Whereas I had not even managed to open the little doors of my mother’s Advent calendar.

Robert was the only one who had reconciled himself to my condition. He no longer asked what was wrong with me, and instead enjoyed being my superior at every level.

On New Year’s Eve I watched and clapped as Robert and Michaela shot off their three rockets, but then retreated to my sleeping bag shortly after midnight, where I’m told I then mimicked hissing and popping sounds. Later I threw up. Dawn found me sitting on the toilet and staring out the window. The gray morning corresponded exactly to my view of the future. An entire year with all its days awaited me, a man who didn’t have sufficient energy for even its first few hours.

I was vaguely aware that it would take some deed to save me from going under. More than once now I had placed my right hand on my forehead as if to cross myself.

What kept me from doing it? Defiance? Self-regard? Pride? Wasn’t in fact my problem God and His eternity? Is there anything more hostile to life than immortality, whether that of saints or artists? Both artists and saints are egomaniacs. Someone who would truly sacrifice himself, descend into hell in someone else’s stead, that would be a saint. Judas is the only person whose legend perhaps allows for such a supposition.

Should I have confessed? I no longer wanted words, chatter, promises. I had had enough of my devotion to words. Their overweening arrogance in the midst of the most submissive gesture disgusted me. Please, no more prayers, no confessions. 359No, it had to be something entirely different, something as unexpected as it was close at hand, something that I had never done, had never thought of — simply something different.

In the night between January 1st and 2nd I had turned off my light early as always, but awoke shortly after ten. I opened the window, no snow, no rain. I expected to do nothing more than to pull the blanket around my shoulders and go back to sleep. But a moment later I found myself standing beside my bed, pulling on my trousers. I smiled to myself, something inside me was laughing at me. But all the same I went on dressing, grubbed the bullets out of the soil, loaded the clip, and stuck the pistol in my belt. 360I took two sweaters and a pair of old hiking boots from my wardrobe. I pulled one sweater on over the other, I laced the boots to the top eyelet. I climbed up onto the windowsill. My eyes were used to the dark, I could see the lawn below, jumped — and landed square on both feet. No pain, no stiffness, the jump was behind me.

I marched through Altenburg North, climbed Lerchenberg hill, and then walked down into town without meeting anyone. A couple of figures scurried along at some distance, but otherwise only cars. After passing the Great Pond, I made a slanting turn uphill to the left at an auto repair shop, and soon there were no buildings at all. 361A few snow islands shimmered against the black of the fields. Once the road started downhill I could see only a very few distant lights. Either there were no more streetlamps here, or they had been turned off by now. Once in a while a car passed, splashing mud on my trousers. A car that avoided me only at the last moment came to a halt, backed up. “You trying to commit suicide?” the driver bellowed. Was I? If I had wanted to, I could have put a bullet through my head — a luxury that terrified me.

Once in the valley, I turned onto a country lane that led uphill. 362Suddenly, fifty or a hundred yards ahead, I saw a blinking red eye. The cross-arms lowered in the reddish haze. I forced myself to keep walking, on and on, right up to the barrier. The train was approaching quickly, a freight with empty coal cars rumbled past, and now the cross-arms were being raised again, the signal light went out. Night descended around me. I stared into the blackness, to the spot where a moment before the tracks had taken on a reddish glow. My eyes refused to get used to the darkness now.

Locating the tracks with the tips of my shoes, I groped my way across and could at least see just enough to avoid puddles.

I kept on going. Can you guess what I was looking for?

An intersection, a crossroads, 363as remote as possible. After a hundred yards, just as the moon appeared, the lane led me to a narrow asphalt road.

Of all the people who have ever sought out a crossroads, I am probably the only one who couldn’t have explained even vaguely what he wanted there. And then once again I almost died of shame at the idea that someone might learn what I was up to here.

I waited. My breathing was rapid, I was sweating. Where had this fear suddenly come from? What if a feral dog were to come bounding at me, or a rabid fox? Would I shoot?

Just hold on, stand still — I bolstered my spirits — you have nothing else to do. You’re not going to leave here.

The reel of moments and minutes unwound, time whirled and spun. It was now after midnight, then half past. The cold crept up through me. I had to cough. The sky turned black. I found it unpleasant just to look up, as if I were exposing my throat. To be strong means to stand still, to hold on, I repeated.

And of course nothing happened. Did you perhaps think that I really expected something to?

When the moon came out again, I tried to memorize the few square yards within my field of vision: porous asphalt that formed little fjords along its edges. At one spot it was so thin that you could trace the network of cobblestones beneath it. Two scrawny trees off to one side, and all around me: weeds, fields of winter grain, and islands of caked snow.

But to the south, to my great astonishment, I made out a mountain jutting up out of the moonlit landscape — a head without a neck, trees suggesting hair, two serpentine paths as furrows across the brow…and something glowering at me from two eye sockets 364—but in the next moment it vanished, reemerged, dissolved. The whole thing seemed to tilt to the left, shaping and reshaping itself like clouds. Sometimes I could immediately make out the mouth and the snub nose, over which a veil would then fall.