Ingo Schulze - New Lives

They were also the only ones who really dug in when Franka set out a tray of sandwiches. Georg had crept away somewhere. Staring at the table between his elbows, Jörg shooed away Georg’s boys and finally turned off the radio. At that moment the telephone rang. Or maybe the telephone rang first. Jörg was closest to it, but took forever to pick up the receiver. He said “Hello,” repeated it more loudly, and finally bellowed that he couldn’t understand a word. The guy in lilac nudged me. “The receiver,” he whispered. I didn’t get it. “Look at the receiver,” he hissed. Shouting into the earpiece, Jörg was holding the receiver backward. I signaled the fact to him, which only made him angrier. I took the receiver away from him, but by then there was nobody on the other end.

I said my good-byes, Jörg caught up with me at the front door. He wanted me to write the editorial for the front page — on the right, boxed, a thousand characters, he’d always done it until now. When I got home I gave myself over to the notion that you were watching the same pictures on television.

Those thousand characters were easier than I had expected. Georg will probably accept it, I’m not so sure about Jörg. There’s not much time for major changes. After all the hopes I had pinned on this day, I find my fatalism almost heroic.

My thoughts are with you,

Your Enrico

Tuesday, March 20, ’90

Dear Jo,

I hope you were able to cope with Sunday better than Michaela (my views on the election will be on the front page). You can hear “two point nine” sung by Michaela in all keys and timbres — today sardonic, yesterday more despairing, toneless, dramatic. Compared to her I felt like a stone. Ever since her klartext was consigned to the grave, Michaela hasn’t been near the New Forum. She also steadfastly refused any and all nominations, though she was flattered by the offers. Send Michaela Fürst to parliament!

As if knowing what was coming, she had had her hair cut short on Friday. Not even Robert knew about it. The idea came to her at the beauty parlor. And so she’s playing Nefertiti, as somber as she is standoffish. Sunday mornings, when I set out at eight thirty, she never fails to ask if I had ever imagined my new life would be like this. Let’s hope she doesn’t see the line of people at the train station waiting to buy their Bild tabloid.

On Sunday Michaela made her appearance in a new dress that Thea had given her — more an outfit for the opera. Our delivery staff and the people from the New Forum who crowded into our office received her as if their legitimate sovereign were making her entrance.

She kept her composure after the first predictions came in. As long as the people around her reacted with despair or, like Marion, broke down in tears, Michaela could even play the consoler. She kept repeating that it’s never over until it’s over. Some people cursed Bärbel Bohley and her entourage for doing nothing but their Berlin thing, others damned the Greens in the West for having neither a clue nor any money. Marion then remarked that we hadn’t been hard enough on the bigwigs. We did ourselves in with our own false notions of fairness — why hadn’t we published all the Stasi lists and banned the old parties? What had been the point of reading Lenin in school?

Within a half hour the outrage had exhausted itself. And with each person who slunk away, Michaela lost a piece of her energy. People didn’t even bother to say good-bye to one another. The simplest things went awry. Cigarettes refused to be stubbed out, two glasses were tipped over within seconds of one another, we bumped into each other or stepped on people’s toes. Michaela admitted to me today that for several minutes she had been unable to recall if Marion’s name was Marion. The fellows from Giessen kept jotting down notes, but in the end appeared to take offense at the results and said things like “the ugly side of the East.”

Once we got home Michaela couldn’t be dragged away from the television. Wrapped in a blanket, she didn’t even turn her head when she spoke to us. At every miniscule change in the numbers she would call us in and stretch out an arm, pointing at the screen.

Michaela had promised Robert she’d make fondue. It was all ready to go, the trays in the fridge, the broth in the pot. But even when it was on the table and we two had stuck our forks into the pot, she was still crouched in front of the TV. Robert was on the verge of tears. I asked her twice to join us — she knew how it had turned out.

What did I actually have to say about the disaster? I was acting as if it were no concern of mine, as if our provincial rag hadn’t also played its part in the catastrophe. I replied that there were few things that could keep me from eating my fondue. I’m sure you know how I meant it. But Michaela turned to stone.

Nothing, nothing had any meaning, she said, if people were going to cast such sick, idiotic votes. She couldn’t breathe the air here, could barely look anyone in the eye, and I was just as moronic as everybody else.

As if hurling the question at me from the stage, she suddenly asked: Who are you, who are you really? I had to laugh, not at her question, but at what raced through my mind. A searcher, I said. And what was I searching for? The right kind of life, I said, and surprised myself at how calmly I pronounced those self-evident words. Astonishingly enough, she then sat down with us at the table.

Ah, Jo, what am I supposed to do? I want so much to help her. But she won’t listen to the truth, at least not from me.

When I returned from my midday meal today — innkeeper Gallus was “flying the flag,” meaning he had laid starched white tablecloths to celebrate the election victory — there at my desk sat Piatkowski, the local CDU vice chairman, sucking on lozenges to cover the alcohol on his breath. And who was he talking with? With Barrista!

When Piatkowski saw me come in, he opened up a dark red document folder and handed me the letterhead of the Altenburg District CDU announcing that it was “deeply moved” and thanking the men and women who had given the party their votes. I said we couldn’t accept anything more — nothing more this week.

“Or one could pay the surcharge,” the baron said. That’s what he’d done recently. For twice the price one could surely buy a half page. Piatkowski’s moist lips began to quiver. What, he asked, would a hundred fifty marks get him? Barely two inches, one column wide. Mulling this over, Piatkowski cinched the folder’s black-red-and-gold cord tight, then finally agreed — with a sigh at having to forgo his new CDU symbol (their old ex oriente pax was evidently no longer valid) — and chose one of the heavy obituary frames. You’ll need a magnifying glass to read the text. I gave him a receipt for his cash payment.

Once Piatkowski was gone, I asked the baron whether he knew whom he had just been speaking with. Last October, the day after Altenburg held its first demonstration and Michaela and a couple of others had been invited to the Rathaus by the district secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, Piatkowski had been sitting across from them at the table and had threatened them, saying anyone who tried to block open dialogue should not count on magnanimity — a statement that even earned him the censure of the secretary, who declared how “deeply moved” he had been by the demonstration.

The baron shrugged. What was I upset about? About that poor nobody who had just slid out the door? Piatkowski, I said, was the last man on earth to get my pity. But I was told to consider what I was saying. The fellow wouldn’t be watching the next local elections as a Party official, and Piatwhatever knew that better than anyone. He would lose his job for the same reason. Did I know why Piatwhatever had joined the CDU? To salvage his parents’ drugstore, because he had been told it was either stick with the Socialists or lose the store. And he had sought refuge with the CDU in order to keep the business afloat for at least as long as his father was still alive. 108Then he’d been offered an administrative position, in the exchequer — the baron’s term for the budget office. (Piatkowski had evidently completely turned his head.) We could finish him off with a snap of the fingers, the baron replied, we only had to place a call and threaten to write an article, that’s all it would take, we didn’t even have to waste column space on him. And hadn’t I just seen proof of how hard they were making things for him, just to get a line or two published, whereas I could write as much as I wanted on any subject. He didn’t like to see me wasting my time with people like Piatwhatever, the baron said, quite apart from the fact that it wasn’t very chivalrous to kick a man when he’s down.