Ingo Schulze - New Lives

As I walked over to the theater around eleven — I had a “newspaper to get out” 73—it was already dark and there wasn’t a single car in the parking lot. The doorkeeper refused to let me in yet again. First, I didn’t belong here anymore and second, there was no premiere party, because this hadn’t been a premiere, and there was certainly nothing to celebrate, either. “Thirty-two in the audience! Thirty-two! Just imagine!”

As I entered the canteen, Michaela was declaiming, “Oh, I am so tired. I cannot do anything more. Oh, I’m so tired — I’m incapable of feeling, not able to be sorry, not able to flee, not able to stay, not able to live — not able to die. Help me now. Command me — I will obey like a dog.”

So you see, I still know it by heart. 74

Four of them were sitting there, the new girl from props with handsome Charlie from costumes, and at the corner table Michaela and Claudia, her friend and colleague. Claudia declared she was going to last till morning. I asked how they planned to do that with just half a bottle of vodka.

“Go on,” Michaela exclaimed.

“That was before,” Claudia began, and clamped the cap of a felt pen between her upper lip and nose. “Now we have other things to think about.” With these words she threw herself across the table and burst out laughing. Handsome Charlie applauded and tried to join in the laughter.

“If you would ask me how it was, assuming, that is, that you would ask me,” Michaela replied, “then I would respond on the spot — well? What would I say? — I would say…”—and after a brief puff of laughter—“thrilling!” With a grand gesture she presented the deserted canteen to me.

And it went on like that. You can call what the two were up to absurd or witty, but I was slowly starting to feel anxious. It’s my suspicion that Claudia was enjoying the flop. She had been humiliated at not being cast as Julie the first time.

“Aren’t you my friend?” Michaela asked, looking at the girl from props. There was a long pause, during which Michaela stared at the poor woman, until she blushed and peeped, “Yes, of course I want to be your friend.” Claudia couldn’t suppress her giggles.

“Flee? Yes — we shall flee!” Michaela went on. “But I am so tired. Give me a glass of wine.” Charlie got up to pour her what was left of the wine. Michaela appeared to be on the track of some realization, as if she had noticed something that had escaped her until now. The sentence “Where did you learn to speak like that?” truly moved her. After another pause, in which she sat up ramrod straight, Michaela announced mournfully, “You must have spent a good deal of time in the theater.”

No one laughed. It was eerie.

“Excellent! You should have been an actor.”

The silence was breathless, like after the last note of a requiem.

Michaela let me lead her outside without resistance. I told her to call in sick, but she won’t do it, says it’s not her way.

I can’t console her. The theater has become an alien world to me.

In our latest issue we have an interview with Rau. 75Jörg was given the chance, and not the Leipziger Volkszeitung. Rau gave a speech on Market Square praising the “more private” style of life in the East, and said that his only worry was that “a passion for the D-mark will turn everyone here into what we already are.” He too seems to be searching for his soul in the East. Let him. Then he just chatted, like another skat player, so to speak, and told us how to cast our votes right, and presented Altenburg Transit with six buses from North Rhine-Westphalia — they still have the old ads on the sides. Michaela was peeved because Rau handed over the keys to, of all people, Karmeka, a dentist who had kept nice and quiet all last fall, but is now a representative at the opposition Round Table. Tomorrow Otto von Habsburg will be here at the invitation of the German Social Union. At one point they distributed flyers reading: “If we had hanged them, we would have been no better than those who ruled over us with their Stasi and ‘shoot to kill.’”

Clemens von Barrista and his wolf are everywhere and nowhere. Last Friday he climbed out of a big black American cruiser and asked for water for Astrid, the wolf. When I asked if he wanted some coffee, Barrista responded exuberantly, as if some secret wish had come true. We left the office together. I had to go to Lucka. He wanted to know if he could come along. “Yes,” I said, “of course!” And with that he opened the door of his black vehicle and tossed me the keys. The wolf jumped in. I said I’d rather not. It was a mystery to me how he had ever negotiated Frauen Gasse with the monster. “Give it a try,” he said, “it’s child’s play, you’ll see.”

How right he was. We rolled gently through town and then zoomed off. I could feel the wolf’s breath at my right ear. Every fear had vanished. Suddenly everything turned bright and loud — Barrista had put down the top.

Twenty minutes later we pulled up to the town hall in Lucka. I left the keys in the ignition, the wolf jumped up front.

During my first visit in January Robert had come along, and we had found Frau Schorba, the mayor’s secretary, crumpled up in her chair, weeping. I had finally offered her a handkerchief. Even now I don’t know what it had all been about, but at my next visit she returned my handkerchief, freshly washed and ironed, and asked whether there was anything she could do for me. And now Frau Schorba takes in ads for the Weekly.

Standing at the door, Barrista observed our weekly ritual: While I skim reports in the Weekly file, Frau Schorba sways back and forth, playing her typewriter as expressively as a pianist. After watching her for a while, I always say, “I do admire you, Frau Schorba.”

Then her hands sink into her lap. I ignore her pregnant silence, express my thanks, and call out as I depart, “See you next week.”

“You’ve forgotten something,” she then replies, casting me a wicked smile. In one hand Frau Schorba holds out the ads, in the other the envelope with the money.

“That’s a record!” I exclaimed loudly this time. Three of the six ads were for two columns, one of them eighty millimeters long.

Suddenly Barrista was standing right there. He grabbed her hand and said, “Someone like you really should be taken under my protection.” I was no less flummoxed than Frau Schorba. “Whenever you need me,” he promised, laying his business card next to the typewriter. Bowing and spinning elegantly around, he said his farewell and was out the door.

“He’s the hereditary prince’s ambassador,” I whispered to her, and followed him out.

We again drove out to Referees’ Retreat for “lunch,” as Barrista called our noonday meal. After Barrista had asked me what year I was born, he then invited us — Jörg, Georg, and me — to be his guests at the Wenzel on Tuesday. I’ll tell you all about it.

Hugs, Enrico

Wednesday, March 7, ’90

Dear Jo,

Vera keeps calling from Beirut. She sits in a cramped little booth; last time the connection was relayed via New York. I’m always standing in the middle of the office, the receiver pressed to my ear, and seldom alone. The stories that Vera has heard, the misery she sees around her, the cripples, the blown-up buildings and palm trees, the barricades, and then at home there’s her headstrong mother-in-law and dithering Nicola, the whole dreary scene — I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to it all. My letters don’t get through because the post office isn’t functioning. But there’s no problem buying French cheese, cognac, or other delicacies. I hope Vera comes home soon.

Michaela has gone to Berlin to visit Thea, her famous friend. She also wants to see Flieder in the hospital. It’s strangely quiet here. Even the crime rate dwindles from week to week.