Ingo Schulze - New Lives

“What?”

“You couldn’t have it better anywhere else, what with boys always standing on their heads.”

“What’s with ‘standing on their heads’?”

“You know what I mean, you know very well. Plus your little vase of flowers and the tablecloth and all the rest of the shit.”

“You mean this?” Vischer pointed to a milk bottle behind the blackout drape, with a couple of withered wildflowers still stuck in some water.

“You ooze your way up to everybody here like a grease gun. ‘Can I bring something back for you? Coffee, vodka? Ring-a-ding-ding and thanks a bunch too.’ It pisses me off!”

Vischer shakes his head and goes on writing.

“But you just bring the stuff back, never take a drink yourself. It’s your way of paying them off.”

“For what?”

“Cocks and balls.”

Vischer bursts into laughter. “Head fulla shit, Sal, nothing but shit.”

“Didn’t you let that pansy give you a massage, I saw it myself, you stretched out here, couldn’t get enough.”

“You mean Rosi?”

“Moaning the whole time. Hey, I was there.”

“And you stretched out on your bed, too, Sal, don’t forget,” says Vischer, and looks up for the first time. “Somebody was all hot to get himself a massage from Rosi.”

“I had my shirt on and didn’t moan and carry on.”

“Undershirt pushed clear up, Sal, and remember what you said, about how somebody could sit on your ass?”

“You really like it here, Visch, just like our flamer. Rosi himself said so, because he’s not the only one, the place is fulla ripe boys who stand on their heads for him, Rosi said. And you, Visch, are just like all the rest, like all of ’em.”

“Shut up, Sal,” Vischer says, standing up and pulling the drape back. “Just shut your mouth.”

There’s a flash of lightning above the officers’ barracks. Vischer sits down, uses the windowsill as a table, his knees against the cold radiator, his back to Salwitzky, who goes right on talking.

[Letter of March 30, 1990]

Vischer didn’t turn around again until the squeaks began. Salwitzky is holding on to the metal frame with both hands behind his head, pressing his feet against the cross brace at the other end, and thrusting so that the bed frame shakes back and forth. “Rosi, you hot little piggy,” Salwitzky cries, and loses his rhythm, braces his feet against the mattress of the top bunk, and then, getting into the swing of it, kicks first against the cross brace and then the mattress. He rocks back and forth. “You hot pig!” he shouts. The springs squeak, the frame scrapes the floor. “Piggy, piggy, you hot pig!”

Suddenly a high screech — the metal poles disengage, Salwitzky shouts, holding the bed above him with his feet, shouts again. Salwitzky is an acrobat, a shouting acrobat. He can’t see Vischer because his legs, the bed, the mattress are in the way. “Have you got it?”

Vischer doesn’t answer. “Have you got it?” Salwitzky shouts, and, with what looks like incredible effort, sticks his head out to one side, so that he can finally see Vischer, who is supporting the top bunk now and smiling.

Salwitzky rolls to one side and stands up. Together they relink the poles at the foot of the bed. Salwitzky bends down and pinches the crease of his right pants leg, but so cautiously it looks like it hurts him to do it. Then he inspects the crease of his left pants leg. Little sweat stains dot his back and shoulders.

Vischer goes back to writing, his head cocked down close to the page. Salwitzky is standing behind him. Only the clumps of grass reveal how windy it is.

The first raindrops are so big you can see each one strike the pale gray asphalt, which is almost bluish in this light.

Salwitzky bends down across Vischer’s shoulder, cranks the window handle to open one of the panels. Like snowberries, the drops hit the asphalt with a loud slap. The sound even drowns out the trampling of boots, at least until the grid of the boot scraper starts resounding with a steady, almost rhythmic rattle.

Vischer sees a hand in front of his eyes, a strange, heavy hand with fat fingers, which as they spread reveal the tips with fingernails only half grown back and which remind Vischer of worms, or worse. Tendons and veins bulge, and the scar under the wedding ring turns white. Slowly the hand sinks down onto Vischer’s sheet of paper, and as the trampling of boots and the voices out in the hallway grow louder and doors bang and the asphalt turns black, the hand soundlessly crumples up the page before Vischer’s eyes.

“Don’t we have to make the spy talk if the spy won’t open his mouth? What you say, spy? That’s logical enough. Doesn’t the spy think that sounds logical?”

Edgar was pushing the floor waxer back and forth in the hallway. Inch by inch he came closer again to the pack crowded before the open door of their room. To get a better look some used the shoulders of the man in front to jump or yanked a guy back who was doing the same thing. If it wasn’t a yowl or a bellow, Edgar could understand every word.

“Great idea! Okay, spy, why so tongue-tied?”

“He’s not tongue-tied. If there’s one thing he isn’t, it’s tongue-tied — that he ain’t.”

They were ranting on just like before. Edgar had thought it would last ten, fifteen, at most twenty minutes. Twenty minutes waxing floors is a long time, the whole hallway: from the polit officer’s room and the johns past the doors of the floor leader, supply room, and weapons store, past the stairway and the orderly room, then two doors for the first squad, two for the second, two for the third, washroom, stairway, noncoms, TV room, club room.

“Did you hear what he said, spy? Why’s the spy holding out?”

“He only talks to the polit officer — chooses his words well, pot of coffee, milk, sugar, Duetts, the best of the best.”

“I’ll bet you anything he won’t open his trap, won’t do it.”

Edgar didn’t recognize the voice. The other two had been Mehnert and Pitt — Pitt, the little pink asshole with his jokes.

“Then we’ll just have to cram something in it,” Mehnert says.

“Unzip his zipper,” shouted the voice he didn’t recognize.

Edgar had figured there’d be a lot of talk but no real action. Which was why he had had no problem continuing to speak with the spy. “Don’t do anything to make them suspicious,” Mehnert had said. “If they get wind of it, they’ll transfer him or whatever,” although no one knew what Mehnert meant by “whatever.” Mehnert had gone so far as to borrow money from the spy. As compensation he’d offered to see that he got a pass. The spy had given him thirty marks, but turned down the pass. “That’s proof,” Pitt had said. “Now that all hell’s broken loose in Poland, they need all the eyes and ears around here they can get.” The spy had grown more cautious. He was writing less and then only when he was alone. But just now they had caught him at it again.

Today was the ninth day. For nine days now, Edgar had known what was going to happen to the spy — to the spy in his section, third squad, second section.

“We want to hear your voice, spy, you know so many words, fancy words, real pretty spy man’s words.”

“I told you, spy won’t answer. Spy needs help, spy needs motivation, spy needs us.”

As unpleasant as the affair with the spy was, it kept you from thinking stupid stuff. At least better than the singing did. Edgar couldn’t understand how anybody could volunteer to go from company to company singing Christmas carols, as if this were an old folks’ home. The reserve first lieutenant, who took over the quartermaster’s job at Christmas, joined up — carols in harmony. Then he had gone with them, just picked up and went, as if they were going for a beer, and the noncom on duty had left to go eat, and his second-in-command had put his fingers to the corners of his mouth and whistled, a secret whistle, so to speak. And then he’d turned the radio up loud, some station in the West, and that had gotten them all in the mood — I wanna be a polar bear, up in the cold, cold north — and they’d all walked along the shiny hallway to the door of the spy’s room and waited until the song was over.