Ingo Schulze - New Lives

“Not mine,” I replied, which initiated a great silence that didn’t lift until yesterday.

Hugs, Enrico

PS: We’ve heard that we were rebuked as idolaters from a Protestant pulpit last Sunday — because of the horoscope on the next-to-last page.

Tuesday, Feb. 20, ’90

Dear Frau Hansen,

If you knew what it had cost me to bring myself to ask Frau *** for your address. I puffed myself up like a fourteen-year-old and claimed you had promised to show me Rome. 59

I’m sorry I was of so little help to you and that it was on our account that you missed meeting the museum staff. To make up for it, I’m enclosing the little Reclam volume 60and a few other items about the pavilion. I’ve prepared a list of a dozen people for Frau *** to interview and have already sent it to her. I think that ultimately it doesn’t really matter with whom she talks. The best choices are left to chance. 61

When do you plan to or when will you be able to come back again? I would love to know for all sorts of reasons.

With warmest regards, Your Enrico T.

Saturday, Feb. 24, ’90

Dear Jo,

Yesterday, as if meeting me for an appointment, Barrista came bounding down the long stairway of the Catholic rectory. The man at the front door with whom he’d been talking watched us without budging from the spot. Which was why I thought Barrista would be returning to him. Instead, he asked if he could join me, and was soon sitting in the passenger seat with the wolf in the middle behind us. He had made a find. “A Madonna,” Barrista said, “a Madonna, Herr Türmer, a Madonna…And no one knows where she comes from.” I barely recognized him, his speech was so lively — without accent or stilted bombast.

He said he didn’t care where I was going, that I should make no special allowances for him, if need be he’d simply wait and walk the dog. When I stopped at the gate of Larschen’s farm, I interrupted Barrista’s gushings about the Madonna. He ignored what I had said and followed me with his wolf. I had to express myself more clearly and ask him to excuse me for a few minutes. He stopped in his tracks in the middle of the courtyard, muttered something, and only now seemed to notice where he had landed. A couple of chickens beat a retreat and a farm dog was barking close by. Anton Larschen appeared before I had even found the doorbell. He grabbed me by the elbow and led me to a low doorway, commanded Barrista to follow us, and insisted on treating us as his guests. “Ten minutes!” he exclaimed, and preceded us up a steep set of stairs that I wouldn’t have ventured on my own. Barrista hesitated as well. The low room was very overheated, the bed, the only object of normal size, looked huge. Anton Larschen hurried to set another place at the table, buttoned the top button of his jacket, and plucked at both trouser legs. He wasn’t wearing socks, so his naked heels were visible with every step of his felt slippers. The top of his tower of white hair brushed the ceiling beams. “Please!” he cried. We sat down at the table, he vanished back downstairs.

“Splendiferous!” Barrista whispered, holding his cup up to the light. I no longer remember the name, but evidently Larschen’s porcelain is Chinese. The room looked like a museum, everything in perfect order. The only chaos was a hodgepodge of items that lay or stood atop the radio: a battered convention mascot, a mug from Karlsbad, a ship in a bottle, a darning egg, a straw doll, a pair of framed photographs, and other stuff. The wolf had stretched out in front of the dark blue upholstered armchair and now blinked up into the narrow boxes of light — the windows were barely larger than roof scuttles. I was about to tell Barrista a little about Larschen when he came climbing back up the stairs, teapot in hand. He passed us a plate of licorice cookies and ginger pastries. (No novelties to Barrista!) These, as well as the tea and the lump sugar, came from relatives in Bremen, Larschen explained.

Barrista apologized for his barging in like this, but he spoke so softly that he was interrupted by Larschen, who announced how glad he was to be able to welcome two guests into his modest home. Yes, it was an honor, and now he began a speech he had evidently prepared for the occasion. As he spoke he held a folder clamped under his arm, stroking it constantly, as if to dust it off and press its corners flat. With downright frightening candor he described what he called the dramatic high point of his “little opus”—that is, his failed attempt at flight to the West. Not only would it have provided him with a farm to match his wishes, it also would have meant the fulfillment of his love for a married woman. The woman had not been willing to get a divorce, but was prepared to flee with him. They were betrayed, arrested, interrogated. He didn’t recognize his lover in the courtroom. Her hair had turned white as snow. He knew the people who had betrayed them — but that knowledge would never give him back those lost years. For him, the knowledge was an additional punishment. Larschen used the phrase “a nobody like me” several times, and in conclusion asked if I would be willing to cast a brief glance at his “memoirs.” I reminded him that that was, after all, why I had come. Barrista’s wolf, which had at first been startled by Larschen’s rhetoric — there’s barely a sentence he doesn’t speak with added emphasis — was now dreaming and shuffling its paws.

As we were climbing back down the stairs, the grandfather clock struck eleven. Exactly twenty minutes had passed since our arrival.

Barrista had again spoken too softly for Larschen, who therefore didn’t hear the answer to his question about whether Barrista would also like to read the manuscript. “If it’s only half as good as what he told us,” he said, “you should print it.” He even suggested that we turn it into a book. Barrista thanked me profusely. I couldn’t imagine, he told me, how much this meeting had meant to him. And had I seen the darning egg? He had been genuinely touched. He himself always carried a darning kit with him, not because he couldn’t afford new socks, but because darning had a calming effect on him, took him back to the evenings of childhood, and inspired his best ideas. He described for me at length his vain attempt to find a darning egg. No one had been able to help him — not in department stores, variety shops, not even in secondhand stores, until finally a salesclerk had taken pity on him and brought him a darning egg from home.

As I was about to drop Barrista off in Altenburg, he asked if there was any reason why he could not accompany me farther. It was so interesting to him, he said, all the things I had to do, all of it without exception. And so I turned up everywhere with my little companion — the council hall in the village of Rositz, the town hall of Meuselwitz. I introduced Barrista to secretaries and in Wintersdorf even to the mayor. The wolf remained in the car, and I enjoyed the freedom — at Barrista’s encouragement — of leaving the keys in the ignition. He’s right. It is a different way of living.

On the return trip Barrista urged me to turn right on the far side of Rositz, he wanted to show me a discovery.

The scene presented to me was desolate: a soccer field overgrown with weeds, next to it a barracks with a sign reading REFEREES’ RETREAT and white grating at the windows and doors. Not a soul far and wide. Barrista strode ahead in his old-fashioned pointed boots, and although his left knee was still giving him trouble, he nimbly took the few steps of the small porch, opened the grated door, and stepped inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The interior was furnished as a hunting tavern, neither the wainscoting nor the numerous guests matched the wretched exterior. Barrista took off his coat, rapped each table affably, greeted those behind the bar, and slipped into the corner bench set aside for regulars. I was barely seated before a beer was placed in front of me. The most remarkable thing was that the innkeeper, a bald-headed man, called the wolf “Astrid”—and Astrid came trotting over, looking neither left nor right, and vanished through the open kitchen door. Barrista rubbed his hands. “Isn’t it wonderful here?”