Ingo Schulze - New Lives

“You’ve actually come,” he said. The vestibule was filled with all sorts of garden tools and quite a few bicycles.

Turning left, opposite the stairs, you first enter a windowless antechamber and then a small room with a floor of wide planks and a beamed ceiling that I can touch with my outstretched arm. A table and chairs take up almost the whole room. It smelled of furniture polish and coffee. When seated I’m taller than Georg, whose short, skewed upper body squats atop endlessly long legs. The whole time he talked about plans for the newspaper he stared at his folded hands. Whenever he paused, his mouth vanished into his beard. Then he would glance up at me as if checking the effect of his words. I was uncertain how to address him — at our first meeting we had used formal pronouns with each other.

There are various postal scales on the windowsills. The glass of the panes is old, distorting the view to the garden. You only have to move your head a little and trees shrink to bushes or shoot up sky high.

Later we climbed up behind the house, the garden rises in several terraces. When I thought we would have to turn back, Georg made an opening in the thicket and began walking up a steep footpath. I had trouble following him. Then a marvelous view: the town lay at our feet under a lilac sky, the hill with its castle to our right, Barbarossa’s Red Tips to our left. 7There was something agreeably unfamiliar about it all, it even felt like I was looking at the theater for the first time.

I inhaled the cold air and the smell of moldy soil and felt very glad that from now on I’ll be able to enjoy the view whenever I want.

Jörg, my other boss, had arrived in the meantime and made tea. He’s that same little bit shorter than Georg is taller than I. Jörg formulates his sentences so that they’re ready to be set in print. He seems to have his doubts about me. He never let me out of his sight and responded to everything I said with a slightly mocking smile. But I won’t let that scare me.

Georg and Jörg want to pay me the same salary they make, which means I’d earn two thousand net a month, almost three times my wages as a dramaturge. They’ve given up trying to get money out of the New Forum. 8The main thing is that I don’t have to go to the theater anymore. I was falling apart there. There’s no place more boring!

A little before six o’clock Georg invited us to a light supper. His wife, Franka, and his three sons had already gathered round the table. As we sat down there was a sudden silence, I automatically expected someone to say grace. But it didn’t happen.

I’m now reading newspapers. On the first page of the ND 9 is a photograph of Havel. 10He changed professions just in time. Whereas Noriega’s picture looks like a mug shot. 11Some soldiers in Gleina went on strike for a few days. 12They demanded a new military code. Even an army prosecutor was sent in. But they refused to be cowed. And now, so I read, there actually is a new military code.

I think about you all the time.

Your Heinrich

[Sunday, Jan. 14, ’90]

Verotchka,

Your letter has been lying here in the kitchen, on top of the fridge, since yesterday. Michaela brought the mail in, so the mailbox was empty when I took a look. Just now, right after breakfast, I suddenly recognized your handwriting on an envelope.

Now that the date is set and you’ve booked your flight…for the last few days I’ve been feeling stronger than I have for a long time. I was even a match for Jörg, who’s like a fox lying in ambush. But it won’t be long now and you’ll be so far away…oh my, I’m sounding like Mamus. Does she even know anything about it?

I have no idea what Beirut is like, but I can’t understand why Nicola 13doesn’t want to bring his mother to Berlin instead? And how much business can there be amid all that rubble and desolation?

I’m frightened for you — which is also egoistic of me. I won’t be able to help you. I’ve got two thousand marks in my account. Do you need it? How much is that? Three hundred West marks?

I’ve got plenty of time to give you, however. I’m living under some kind of spell, I’m awake at four or five at the latest. Even though I rarely go to bed before midnight. And yet I’m not the least bit tired, not even in the afternoon. When I get bored with brooding, I thumb through the dictionary. It’s amazing how many verbs and adjectives we know without ever using them.

I called Johann in the middle of the week to tell him I had quit the theater and am joining the crew of a start-up newspaper. He was extremely distant and brusque. And now I get a letter that could have been dictated by Michaela. I never used to read newspapers, so why was I trying to avoid these new artistic challenges (and he used that very phrase!). And went on like that for four pages. What a stranger he’s become.

What you wrote about this nobleman sounds really promising. If in fact he does want to come to Altenburg, you can give him my address, and our editorial office will soon have a telephone.

Verotchka, if I’m not going to be able to see you, at least write and tell me about what you’re doing, about taking care of final details, anything! There is no one else who I can count on.

Your Heinrich

Thursday, Jan. 18, ’90

Dear Jo,

I got your letter and read it, but I simply don’t have the desire or the energy to argue with you. I would just repeat myself anyway. Wait a few months, and then we won’t even need to talk about all this anymore.

I take short walks, read newspapers, and cook our noon meal. I suddenly have so much time that I don’t know what to do with myself.

Yesterday I even attended a meeting of the New Forum, I must admit not quite voluntarily. Rudolph Franck, who’s called the “Prophet” because of his gray cotton-candy beard, asked me to come along. I owe my job at the paper to him, he initiated things and put in a good word for me. It’s still a mystery to me what he thought my attendance would contribute. I probably disappointed him.

Jörg thinks there’s a rumor — no, rumor is too strong, more like a whisper — that something is not quite kosher about people (like me) who couldn’t stop spouting off last fall, but then vanished from one day to the next. I’m afraid it’s Jörg himself who’s spreading this stuff. It would be just like him.

There were a few hundred people in the hall. I was about to take a seat when I heard my name from behind me. I didn’t know the man — brown eyes, average height, dark thinning hair. He said he was glad to see me here again. His wife assured me that her Ralf had told her so much about my speech in the church that day. I ended up joining her and Ralf at one of the tables up front. Georg and Jörg were already seated with the steering committee. And then things started rolling.

First came a steady stream of votes confirming all sorts of previous actions. I’ve never had to sit through anything like it in all my life. I felt robbed of my freedom, I was suddenly a prisoner.

Ralf, on the other hand, seemed happy and excited. He rolled his shopping bag back like a sleeve to reveal a piece of cardboard backing and a letter-size notebook. His hopes, his pride, yes, his fundamental convictions were invested in the care with which he slipped in the carbon paper, lowered his head just above the page, and began to write. Whenever Jörg’s speech was interrupted by applause, he would stop and clap soundlessly, ballpoint clasped in his right hand.

Georg sat almost motionless at the front table the whole evening, staring straight ahead. Whenever there was a vote, however, his arm was usually the first thrust into the air. Jörg, as acting chairman, was all smiles as he kept greeting acquaintances he spotted in the hall. I recognized, way over on the left, the loudmouth who had saved the November 4th demonstration. His eyes were glistening.