Ingo Schulze - New Lives

In response to my astonishment at Türmer’s almost manic obsession for self-revelation, Vera Barakat-Türmer offered the following explanation: “I always wondered why Enrico had such a great need to attach himself to people and open his heart to them. In every phase of his life there was someone whom he admired unconditionally and to whom he was almost slavishly devoted.”

Ingo Schulze

Berlin, July 2005

TO BOTH MY ASTONISHMENT AND DELIGHT, I have become aware that Enrico Türmer’s story in letters and prose has met with lively interest outside of Germany, a testimony to the fact that a book can be addressed to national, indeed regional, concerns and still speak to the core of human experience.

Over the last year speculation about Türmer has run riot, and has remained speculation.

There is nothing more to be said now about Türmer’s whereabouts than was the case when New Lives was first published in October 2005. We know no more about it than we do about his state of health.

In the meantime, however, Türmer has become an author of literary interest to German readers and, with uncustomary swiftness, his slight volume a topic of academic research. This has brought me praise and recognition as a publisher, and also criticism that in my foreword I ranked Türmer’s prose as “mediocre at best.” Certainly that evaluation can now no longer be advanced. Nonetheless I prefer to maintain a critical skepticism in regard to the author of the letters and prose works presented here.

The American edition has been supplemented with a few additional notes.

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to John E. Woods, my friend and excellent translator, for what has been an especially stimulating cooperative effort. Last and not least, my thanks to my American publisher for a generous and conscientious reception of this book.

I.S.

New Year’s Day 2008

MOST OF THE LETTERS ARE HANDWRITTEN, a smaller number were typed, the last ones on a computer.

With few exceptions T. always kept a carbon copy or printout. Wherever there was both an original and a copy, only significant changes are noted, scratch-outs for instance. Words underlined by T. are set here in italics.

Matters are somewhat less transparent with regard to the small body of thirteen letters to Vera Türmer. Only three of the letters sent to Beirut have survived, all in the form of copies. The two faxed letters no longer exist as received letters. The final letter was never sent.

Errors in grammar and spelling have been corrected without remark, although both regionalisms and Türmer’s own idiosyncrasies were taken into consideration.

I.S.

[Saturday, Jan. 6. ’90]

[To Vera] 1

…like that?” Instead of trotting along behind us as usual so that he could demand a reward for every step he took, Robert bounded ahead like a puppy. We had to cross a hollow, the snow had a bluish sparkle and came up to our calves. Suddenly Robert gave a yell and started up the opposite slope. The moldy soil beneath the snow had not frozen. Michaela and I were running now too. When we stopped there was only the white field up ahead and grayish pink sky above us. We kept climbing, crossed a dirt road, and made straight for the woods. The wind swept the snow from the winter planting. I had to work hard not to be left behind. But the two of them didn’t turn back at the edge of the woods as we had agreed, but entered it. And so I also followed the sign pointing to Silver Lake.

The pond was frozen over. Before I could say anything Robert was skidding across the ice, with Michaela right behind. Robert, who is very proud that his voice is breaking, crowed something that I didn’t understand. Michaela shouted that I was chicken. But I didn’t want to risk it and stayed onshore. The snow hid most of the trash lying around, but there was a toy horse jutting up out of it. I was just bending down when I heard my name, turned around — and something struck me in the eye. It burned like hell.

I couldn’t see anything. Michaela thought I was putting on a show. It was snow, she shouted, just snow, a snowball!

It took me a couple of seconds to pull myself together. I was happy to feel Robert take my hand and begin to lead me. Not until that moment did I finally seem to realize that your letter wasn’t a dream, but that I had actually received it and that it was in my breast pocket. Yes, it was as if I had started to breathe again only now.

Plodding along behind us, Michaela told me not to carry on so. She probably thought I was going to cry. She thinks I’m a hypochondriac, even a malingerer, and was afraid I was just looking for some new excuse for calling in sick again.

She panicked in the middle of the field when a mutt from the village came racing toward us. He was barking and jumping around like crazy, but I was able to quickly quiet him down. Then I couldn’t get rid of him. The mangy animal escorted us all the way to the road leading downhill into town. Robert waved, and right away a car stopped. The woman sat ramrod straight behind the wheel and gave me a nod in the rearview mirror. The throbbing pain in my eye felt like my heart pounding inside my head. But the pain, or so it seemed to me, was something external, not anything that could hurt me, anything that could upset me, no matter what happened with my eye — because I have you!

At the entrance to the polyclinic I ran right into Dr. Weiss, the physician who usually attests that I’m too sick to work. “You don’t lose an eye that easily,” he said, grabbing me by the shoulder. He told me that I normally wouldn’t find anyone here at this time on a Friday, and that I should hold still — a doctor’s a doctor. “Let’s have a look,” he ordered, and turned me to the light. People going in and out shoved past us, I blinked into the fluorescent fixture. “Just a little vein,” he muttered, “just a burst vein. Nothing more than that!” Weiss left me standing there on the threshold as if he regretted he had even bothered with me. And called back that there was no need to be a crybaby, handing Michaela her triumph. By then it didn’t even hurt anymore.

The snow has already thawed again. The grass under the clotheslines looks like muck garnished with spinach. I have to drive Michaela to her performance. How easy everything is when I can think of you.

Love,

Your Heinrich 2

Saturday, Jan. 13, ’90

Dearest Verotchka,

I’ve been going out every day, never for less than an hour. Besides which I’m responsible for shopping and cooking and now outshine Robert’s school cafeteria food, which is no great feat. Every evening Robert is granted his wish for the next day’s noon meal. Today I gave pancakes a try. And what do you know, Michaela ate up all the leftovers. Her cookbooks are the only thing I read these days.

I’ve already had to write Mamus 3twice this week. The second letter was necessary because Michaela had phoned 4her to ask whether she’d heard about my decision. 5

We are not dealing here with trivialities, this is about the betrayal of art — betrayal of it, which means of Michaela, of our friends, of life itself, so that my response to her is always that I’m not the deserter, art is. Of course, she doesn’t accept that. 6

I was in the “editorial office” for the first time yesterday afternoon. The building, which belongs to Georg, who is one of the two founders of the paper, is on Frauen Gasse, about three hundred yards behind the post office. You think you’ve arrived at the end of the world. But once you’ve passed through the eye of the needle — the ruins of a one-story building and a tilted wall — the world turns more hospitable again. Georg’s house is in the middle of a garden, a country home en miniature. The garden gate is arched over by a rotting wooden structure, a rose lattice. The bell could wake the dead.