Ingo Schulze - New Lives

“There’s no reason, actually,” I said, just to say something.

What was I waiting for? Why didn’t I simply vanish into my room?

Rudolph, “the Prophet,” took a step toward me, extended both hands, and clasped my right hand between them. What great good luck, he said, to have this unexpected opportunity to thank me. He had wanted to do it ever since the first time he had heard me at the church. 372He always told his wife she should never forget what Herr Türmer had done for us. I had been months ahead of events, I had truly spoken the same clear text that they wanted klartext to speak, and if there was anybody in this town whom he trusted, it was me.

Although he was still grasping my hand tightly, his gaze met mine only occasionally.

I should be writing for them, he said. With my name on the masthead he would no longer worry about putting out a newspaper, my name was a “guarantee of success.”

“So grab a chair and sit down here with us,” Michaela said, interrupting my eulogist.

It was like a rehearsal with a cast change — everybody knows what’s going on except the actor at the center of things. But soon the discussion turned to things like cost projections, printers, distribution possibilities, copies per issue, number of pages, departmental assignments — which strangely enough relieved some of my anxiety since I had nothing to contribute and yet listening caused me no distress. It was all both as interesting and as boring as if they were explaining the rules of a parlor game.

Michaela was the only one who opposed the others’ plans. “But that won’t work!” she kept exclaiming.

I finally asked why they were discussing all this instead of proceeding just as before.

“Precisely,” Michaela said, tossing her pencil aside, “that’s what I keep asking myself. Precisely that!”

Jörg burst into laughter. And then for the first time I heard the words: Altenburg Weekly . Jörg didn’t let anyone get a word in edgewise now. When someone tried to speak, his radio moderator’s voice grew louder in anticipation of the objection or comment.

“But it won’t work,” Michaela shouted once more, to which he responded with another laugh and said, “But we’re going to do it anyway!”

After that no one said anything, they all just stared straight ahead. Suddenly the woman with the pageboy turned her head to me with a birdlike jerk and said, “And what about you? Do you want to work with us? We’d consider it an honor.”

It was our job, she continued, to win over public opinion, in fact, to actually create public opinion so that we could help sustain the transition to democracy, to steer and direct it, yes, even to provide a little control — and self-control — when necessary. “Independence is the crucial thing! And we’ll see to it that the New Forum gives us that in writing.” We didn’t need to go into the fact that in a provincial town an effort like this would take a different form than in Berlin or Leipzig. “The wheel of history,” Rudolph the Prophet interjected, “dare not be turned back.” Then Georg said, “We, that is the New Forum, which will be financing us, are planning a weekly, starting in February. In seven weeks we’ll be holding our first issue in our hands.”

I liked the idea.

“And what you do think?” I asked Michaela. She had stubbed out her cigarette and was shifting her puffed-up cheeks back and forth as if rinsing with mouthwash.

She had joined the New Forum out of a sense of responsibility, she had helped found klartext out of a sense of responsibility, she had taken on the role of publisher out of a sense of responsibility. A newspaper, journalism, political activism — those were important things in a time of crisis, but interested her only in a time of crisis. What was essential for real life, however, happened in literature, in art, in the theater. Where, if not in the theater, did society’s problems get bundled up together and take the shape of action? Then she turned to phrases like “the swamps of local politics” and “everyday picayune stuff.”

At first they all listened, but the longer she gushed on about art, the stage, and “real life,” the more restless they grew. Only the pageboy woman was still giving her her full attention. Michaela closed her sermon with the statement, “Only in art do our lives experience justice, only in art is there a language appropriate to justice.”

After that all eyes refocused on me. “It would mean a great sacrifice,” the woman with the pageboy said, “would truly be a sacrifice on your part.”

“Marion,” Jörg said a little testily, “it’s a leap for us all.” 373

“That’s absurd!” Michaela cried. It should be clear to me that it would mean my giving notice at the theater, it wasn’t something you could do on the side.

I promised to think it over.

Michaela flared up: “You can’t be serious!”

I repeated that I would think it over.

Michaela disappeared into our room.

This turn of events was a stroke of good luck for Robert. He didn’t even complain about the cigarette smoke, because everyone had departed from the living room just in time for his show to start. I said good-bye to Michaela’s media committee at the door.

Once Robert had gone to bed, Michaela elbowed my door open and turned around to reveal the drawer from her desk suspended like a vendor’s box at her stomach. “Here, you can practice,” she said, as she dumped the contents on the floor and was gone again.

A pile of papers scribbled full, the klartext files, as it turned out — plus bobby pins, Band-Aids, and a nail clipper.

I immediately set about sorting it all: printing costs, income from vendors, income from mailed copies, bills (paid and outstanding), printed texts, unprinted manuscripts, correspondence.

Standing up again at last, I surveyed my little ordered world — and then I removed my manuscript files from the cupboard, emptied the first, erased the title Barracks Heart/Final Version, and wrote “Printing Cost Estimates” in its place. On the pastel blue one that had read Titus Holm, I now wrote “Vendors’ Accounts.” And so on, until only one file was left without a title. I extracted my most recent attempt at prose from it and added it to the others on my desk. It was now the capstone of my collected works. And on the file itself I wrote: “Rejected Manuscripts”—and at that moment I realized how appropriate the title would have been all along. If we’d had a stove, my “Collected Works” would have gone up in flames that same evening.

But after I had turned the pile over with the written side down, it looked like any stack of blank paper. The pages were usable on one side — a metaphoric fact that both frightened and delighted me. The other half ought not to be wasted. 374

My dear Nicoletta, I’m not quite finished yet, but that’s enough for today.

This comes with greetings as warm as they are disheartened, from

Your Enrico Türmer

Tuesday, July 10, 1990

Dear Jo,

Referees’ Retreat was our stadium. We celebrated on into the morning. Mother and the hereditary prince held out until just after midnight. They didn’t want to miss a single moment of our Sunday, either. Everyone was there, except for the baron. He was in consultation with Jörg. I don’t know what came of it. I don’t want to know, either. It was unpleasant enough when Fred and Ilona interviewed with us yesterday. We don’t need anyone new at this point. It’s a bitter pill for them, because I was unable to recommend them to anyone in the family 375with a clear conscience — I know them too well for that.

You and Franziska really missed something on Sunday. It will be a while before I’ll see another spectacle like it. Besides which, I would have been interested in your impression — last but not least, from the theologian’s point of view. 376It was truly an extraordinary, yes, a strangely preter-natural event.