Ingo Schulze - New Lives

“Yes,” Titus said. “‘The yellow of the lies staining their tongues,’ really good stuff.”

It was always like this. Joachim talked and Titus listened, because he hadn’t read the book, didn’t know the composer or the Bible verse, or because names like Gandhi, Dubček, or Bahro meant nothing to him. Joachim had time to read. Joachim had time for everything that interested him. But even if Titus had read the novella, the words would have paled beside Joachim’s retelling of them.

Joachim described the conversation between Ferdinand the painter and his wife, Paula, who hopes to talk him out of returning to Germany, to war, and how desperate she feels with a husband who actually sees through it all, is so weak — here Joachim hesitated — so tepid that he’s unable to find anything to hold on to, and so is caught up in the maelstrom. He leaves for Zurich on the first train the next morning.

“For Zurich?” Titus stopped in his tracks. “Why for Zurich?”

“Because they’re still in Switzerland!” Cigarette smoke rippled from Joachim’s lips. “He goes to the consulate in Zurich with the idea that because he knows people there he can change their minds — and falls flat on his face. He arrives way too early — premature obedience.”

Premature obedience, Titus thought. But he was even more taken by “Zurich.” If you lived in Zurich, you didn’t have any problems, at least no serious ones. It was easy to be brave in Zurich.

“We were thinking of you the whole time,” Joachim said. He flicked the butt away. Titus blushed. It was his turn. He had to say something now.

“And not just thinking,” Joachim added, and with a quick twist of his shoe tip, the butt vanished in the gutter. “So now you’ve gotten to know the cellar.”

“For over an hour,” Titus said.

“Among the oscillographs?”

“Yes,” Titus said. He wanted to speak with the same sort of deliberation Joachim did.

“He’s most comfortable in his little lair,” Joachim said with a laugh. “When all is said and done, Petersen is a poor bastard.”

Titus wanted to ask why Petersen was a poor bastard.

“Got some money? Want to go to the Toscana?” Joachim asked.

“Yes,” Titus said, although he was supposed to meet someone and was in a hurry.

Titus knew the café only from the outside, the last building on the left before the bridge. He knew Holy Cross choirboys went to the Toscana after rehearsal when they should have been in class — for breakfast, as they put it. Titus could see himself now standing beside Joachim at the curb, directly across from the parking lot, and heard himself say, “My treat.”

They walked along Hübler Strasse. They stood awhile outside the bookstore. When they got to Schiller Platz they watched the traffic cop’s pantomime and let him wave them across. Instead of waiting with the others to change sides of the street, they headed for the Blue Wonder Bridge.

The wind was blowing harder now, directly in their faces. Ever since they had known each other, Titus had tried to see the world through Joachim’s eyes. Everything was straightforward and compelling, and Titus’s own life seemed to gain clarity whenever Joachim talked about him, just like he could suddenly understand a math problem or a tricky bit of grammar once Joachim formulated it. At the same time, however, he found it painful that he had no advice for Joachim, couldn’t give him anything. Joachim didn’t need him.

Titus hung up his anorak in the Toscana’s coatroom, then slipped into a seat at the round window table near the door while it was still being cleared. Joachim walked over to the pastry display and came back with his ticket. Titus followed his example. He was surprised to see so many old women in hats here.

Joachim greeted the waitress, whose lacy décolletage opened onto a view of the top of her breasts. The wrinkles at her neck looked like strings cutting into her skin. He ordered two pots of coffee and gave her the pastry tickets.

“While he’s in Zurich Ferdinand gets a shave and has his good suit brushed.” Joachim simply picked up the story where he had left off, as if there had been no interruption. “Ferdinand buys gray gloves and a walking stick, he wants to make a good impression. He’s ready now, every ‘i’ dotted, every ‘t’ crossed. But then it all turns out very differently.”

Joachim went on talking, tapping his cigarette on the tabletop as if to some secret rhythm. Titus was miffed that Joachim hadn’t asked him anything else about the cellar and Petersen. Or was he trying to go easy on him? And what was so special about the Toscana, with its flock of bird-faced women? Why had he agreed to come here? Didn’t he have a will of his own?

Joachim went on talking, leaning back now, his legs crossed, a cigarette in his right hand, his left hand resting on the table as if to show Titus the large half-moons of his fingernails and veins like you see on men’s hands — worms wriggling toward his wrist.

Joachim had unbuttoned just the top buttons of his cardigan. He inhaled deep, his chest rose and fell. Titus stared at him and suddenly found himself inexplicably repulsed by this breathing, as if it were unseemly. He had never seen Joachim naked, not even from the waist up. During gym he always kept his undershirt on under his blue gym outfit. All he could remember was that Joachim’s arms were freckled with moles.

[Letter of May 5, 1990]

Titus bent forward, but Joachim didn’t lower his voice. Or wasn’t he going to read any more of it? “‘If only people had the will,’” Johann declaimed, “‘but instead they obey. They are like schoolboys. The teacher calls on them, they stand up, trembling.’” He wasn’t holding the page between his fingers, but with his whole hand, wrinkling it along the edge. Titus would have loved to interrupt him: That’s my book! I ran out and bought it during recess. You borrowed it from me. I refuse to let you talk about it. I won’t let you copy it out, and above all I forbid you to give it to somebody else you meet in the park, somebody I don’t know.

Titus could feel things between him and Joachim coming to a head. But he had no name for it. He was powerless against it. He swallowed, and his throat hurt from his gratuitous accusations. At the same time a kind of shame left him feeling uneasy, as if they had actually had a fight. Titus barely noticed when their coffee and pastries arrived.

He wanted to pull Petersen’s book from his satchel, hold it under Joachim’s nose, slam it onto the plate of cheesecake he was scarfing down. He let the idea carry him away.

“He dumped this on me,” he heard himself exclaim. Titus looked down at the book in his hands, Bundeswehr, the Aggressor, flaming red letters against a yellow background. And when Joachim responded with just a hint of a smirk, he flung it at his chest. “He dumped this on me,” he shouted. “A little report on the Bundeswehr as the aggressor, and what conclusions we should draw from it. Get it? My conclusions.”

Joachim was just describing how Paula tried to block Ferdinand’s plan — why didn’t he just shut up. Angry and frightened, Titus looked around the café in search of help. Out of here! he thought. He couldn’t waste any more time here. He was supposed to meet someone. He wanted to wake up, shake off this strange state he was in. He watched a redheaded woman at the next table, the way she was laughing and at the same time biting her lower lip to contain herself. Her pale knees shimmered through her black stockings. The laces of her shoes were tied in large bows.

Titus saw her putting on those shoes that same morning, tying those large bows. Did she sometimes ask herself what all would happen before she took off her shoes again that evening? Every morning when he leaned over the bathtub to wash his neck and armpits, Titus asked himself whether he would have the courage to declare as Joachim had: I will not join the army.