Ingo Schulze - New Lives

The wife of innkeeper Gallus came close to creating a dire scene when her moment came. She attempted a grand curtsy, but landed, whether intentionally or not, on her knees and cried out, “It was suicide! Your Highness! It was suicide!” I hadn’t known that innkeeper Gallus had taken his life only three days before. While the baron offered his condolences and I explained to the hereditary prince the important role that innkeeper Gallus had once played, she just kept on crying, “It was suicide! Your Highness! It was suicide!”

Everyone I had included on my list showed up, except for Ruth (the daughter of my landlady, Emilie Paulini), Jan Steen, and the publisher of the newspaper in Giessen, who did, however, send his regrets.

I was also pleased that Wolfgang the Hulk and his wife attended. We had tried to get together so many times. Along with Vera I’ll be paying them a visit. And Blond and Black, two policemen, came too. We became acquainted last autumn.

Hors d’oeuvres, champagne, and orange juice were already being passed around when Marion and Jörg presented their invitations.

I assumed it was self-control that lay behind the cordiality with which the baron greeted them both, since it seemed unlikely that he hadn’t spotted our newspaper in Marion’s hand. Marion released all her subconscious aggression on the rolled-up Sunday Bulletin, a gesture that could best be described as “wringing someone’s neck.” But then she stared at the object of her repressed hostility and attempted to smooth out its pages. Jörg brushed her cheek with his hand. To make a long story short: the baron presented the two of them. Jörg greeted the hereditary prince with “Your Highness,” and bowed deeply. Then he stepped aside and gave Marion the floor. She instantly went down on one knee like the hero in an opera and held the rolled-up newspaper out to the prince. “Take a look for yourself. I don’t know why anyone would do this. But then everyone is suddenly changing their biography. No one speaks the truth anymore,” she said in a low monotone. He listened to a few more sentences of the same sort, totally absurd stuff. And of course she also informed the hereditary prince why she had forbidden “Herr Türmer” to address her by her first name, since he was a fraud and totally blinded. She however, Marion Schröder, refused to pray for me, for this shadow.

The hereditary prince extended a hand, hoping she would stand up — half the people in the room were gawking now. She misunderstood his gesture. Like a bird pecking for food, she quickly kissed his hand, stood up, and cried, “We shall meet again soon!” Jörg followed her out, catching up with her at the door, and threw an arm around her shoulder.

I was most surprised by Kurt. I had always taken him for a man in his mid-fifties, but Kurt is only in his early forties. His wife is thirty at most and so slight that I took her for his daughter. When Michaela read her profession as “butcher shop clerk,” Kurt’s wife corrected her in a firm voice: “certified vendor of meats and sausages,” which were the only words that I heard her large, lovely mouth utter.

Pringel’s wife, a pharmacist’s assistant, handed the prince a tiny box that contained a four-leaf clover she had found in the castle courtyard. It had brought them such good luck recently, they wanted to pass it on. “Our ace reporter,” the hereditary prince said, and Pringel, who had trimmed his beard short, replied, “Every, every good wish.”

As we were entering the great Hall of Mirrors for dinner, I asked the baron when he had first noticed the newspaper in Marion’s hand. She had had it with her when she arrived, he said. She had used the Sunday Bulletin as a fan, which he hoped hadn’t wounded my vanity. The baron didn’t understand a thing! He even suggested it would be good idea to place a stack of Bulletins outside the door to the Hall of Mirrors right now. I was such a scaredy-cat, he exclaimed, and asked what else I was afraid of at this point.

I’ve got to go.

Hugs,

Your E.

Monday, July 9, ’90

Dear Nicoletta,

I’ve been remiss in writing, but I no longer wish to muse about my past. It’s not that the World Cup has gone to my head. But isn’t the joy I feel at our victory the overt expression of a much greater, more all-encompassing happiness? My wish to begin a new life at your side has never been stronger than now. But since my letters appear not to have achieved that purpose, my hopes are dwindling — for these letters are motivated by nothing else. 371

But I must bring all this to a conclusion, just as a losing team dare not leave the field before those ninety minutes are over. And so back to the start of this year.

As I looked back in chagrin on my nocturnal crossroads adventure, I would have much preferred to have regarded it as a dream. And yet it also pleased me to have risked it. What I had thought and felt there, however, had been left behind in the night.

I took a bath beneath laundry hung up to dry. When I went to dress, I couldn’t find any of the things I wanted. I opened the laundry basket and began rummaging in the dirty clothes, and finally just upended it. Everything I picked up belonged to me. Two towels were the dubious exception to the rule. Only then did I notice that the items hung up to dry belonged solely to Michaela and Robert.

Okay, we’re even, I thought.

Michaela was out somewhere. I dined on fried herring and potatoes with Robert. “You’re eating again,” Michaela exclaimed when she returned home, and then announced there would be a meeting in the living room. Meaning, the space was taboo until evening.

Robert protested that he’d be missing one of his TV shows.

Michaela’s media committee arrived on the dot. While they moved chairs around, clicked open their briefcases, and struck up their usual murmurs, I tidied up my room, gleaning underwear, dishes, shoes, records, record jackets, newspapers, and letters from the floor, until slowly but surely the square fiber mats beneath began to emerge. I worked fast, hoping to escape beneath my headphones before the meeting really began. I had already stretched out on my couch when I remembered I still had laundry in the washing machine. I was trapped. To get to the bathroom I had to go through the living room. I had an overwhelming aversion to appearing before strangers — before people I didn’t want anything to do with, didn’t even want to be spoken to by. I spent a good while wondering whether I should knock or not. Finally, out of habit, I knocked — and felt as if someone had pushed me onstage. The light was blinding, the discussion died. Everyone gawked at me as if I had emerged from the wallpaper. “Why, there you are,” Michaela said. She sounded embarrassed. Sitting with propped elbows at the head of the table, she took a drag on her cigarette and blinked as she stared at me. “Don’t let me interrupt,” I said, closing the living-room door behind me.

Later I could recall the sudden clatter of voices. But at that moment I barely noticed, and was angry at myself for my hasty “Don’t let me interrupt.” I could well imagine what was going through Michaela’s head as she saw her barefoot husband whoosh through the room like a ghost.

I stuffed half a load of wet laundry into the spin-drier, pressed the lid shut, and threw myself on top so that I could hold the spout over the bucket.

I took the laundry down from the clothesline and folded it as neatly as I could. Every undershirt, ever pair of panties, every bra was familiar. I had the feeling I was saying good-bye to each piece. Then I hung up my own things.

No sooner had I opened the living-room door than two bearded men got to their feet.

“Herr Türmer,” said the fellow with long legs and a short, skewed torso, “we would like to know…” and the other one, whom I recognized as the Prophet from his cotton-candy beard and thick glasses, broke in with his variation on the question: “We really have no idea…why you don’t want to work with us.” Silence. The third fellow, Jörg, whose beret was lying on the table, leaned back and nodded encouragement like a teacher at an oral exam. The dainty woman with a pageboy hairdo seated across from him gazed at me as if she were infatuated. Only Michaela went on reading the text in front of her.