Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Yours, yours entirely, Enrico

Wednesday, March 21, ’90

Dear Jo,

Yesterday the baron and I made good on our stroll through town, the weather was just right. Leaving the Red Tips behind, we went on to the Great Pond and then down along the hat factory. I suggested he take a walk with Georg, who could tell him all about Barbarossa and the abduction of the princes, about Melanchthon, Bach, Lindenau, Pierer, Brock-haus, Nietzsche’s father, and so much more. The island zoo was closed. I wanted to take a little detour past Altenbourg’s 112house, but since the name meant nothing to him, we walked back by way of the movie theater and then up Teich Strasse, which is no more than ruins, with hardly one building occupied. We made slow progress because Barrista was constantly taking photographs. Both his steps and gestures were as cautious as those of an archaeologist or spelunker. We couldn’t even get into a good many courtyards; the walls had buckled to create organic shapes, protruding potbellies, sagging rows of windows. Young birches sprouting from the roofs looked like feathers on a hat. I told him what everyone says: Even after the war a man could hardly have drunk a beer in every pub along Teich Strasse — reportedly there were over twenty of them, now just one is left.

Every so often Barrista would run his hand along the plaster. It was his show of sympathy — it opened my eyes and shamed me. As we walked along it came to me: the utter coarseness of it all, a coarseness inside me, inside us, a coarseness that meant letting a town like this fall into ruin, yet without going crazy. I had always regarded this deterioration as the natural order of things.

I thought of the frog experiment that the baron mentions on most every occasion — if you raise the temperature one degree per hour, so he claims, the frog ends up boiled, even though it could jump out if it wanted to. And maybe all those who jumped out of this country did the right thing. That’s what I was thinking as I watched the baron take shots of the faded lettering and signs above walled-up windows or capture the murky twilight of shops through broken panes.

(Georg is sitting just behind me at the table. I can hear him groan and sigh as I write this. He wanted to know if I could tell him what to say when he’s asked why we founded the newspaper. I repeated his own words from those days: Create transparency, accompany the course of democratization, provide the people a forum, tell the bigwigs…Yes, he knew all that, Georg interrupted, but could we still write those same words today? His scruples won’t let him finish a single article, and instead he constantly nitpicks at ours.)

When Barrista and I finally reached St. Nicholas cemetery, he asked a man of indeterminable age who was leaning against one jamb of the bell-tower doorway whether we were very late. The man shook his broad head, grinned as if he recognized me, set two fingers by way of greeting to the bill of his cap (Robert calls it a “basecap”), and pulled out a cord with a large key, then a safety key, and finally a sturdy wooden weight. I was amazed that it all came from one pants pocket. He gave another salute and sauntered off whistling like a street urchin. He was the same man who had been talking with Barrista on the steps of the Catholic church the day we took our little excursion to visit Larschen.

As the baron turned the safety key in its lock, the sound echoed inside the tower.

I’d probably have no trouble making the climb, Barrista remarked, and waved me on ahead. He followed. I tried to keep some distance between us, but he stayed hard on my heels, meanwhile chatting away about how the tower was closed because the stairs were in need of repair — I should watch my step. He had found Proharsky to be a man who carried out little requests without further ado. Proharsky was actually a Cossack, the child of so-called collaborators, whose adventures had landed them as strangers here among us. He had helped Proharsky’s mother apply for a special pension that had long been hers by rights.

“You know,” he said as I took the last step and my gaze swept the rooftops, “I’ve fallen in love with this town. While I was away I felt it more strongly then ever before. All the jabbering and blathering we do over there had me literally longing to get back here.”

The baron even had a key for the watchman’s room, a cluttered mess with a foul odor.

The baron had fallen in love for a strange reason: The town had as good as no chance, and if it ever could be saved, then only by a miracle. He laughed and massaged his left knee. The name itself, Altenburg: “old” plus “fortress.” Old didn’t sound all that inviting, a town with that prefix would have a difficult time of it from the start. And people associated fortress — here he laughed more loudly — with awful things, with cold, cramped dungeons. Nomen est omen —all he had to do was say “Alten-Burg” and foreign investors would throw up their hands at the thought of some colonial fort abandoned by Charlemagne. That was without even mentioning an autobahn that was as far away as hell and back. One glance at a railway map and it had been clear to him that it wouldn’t be long before only milk trains stopped here. Moreover, I could ask anyone I wanted — the local factory behemoths were close to folding, and the D-mark, whenever it did arrive, would finish them off. D-mark wages would put an end to selling vacuum cleaners at dumping prices, and as for industrial sewing machines — that train had left the station long ago. And the vehicles for the Volksarmee, those fully obsolete trucks — for the Western German army maybe?

Then we stepped out onto the encircling balcony. It took me a long time to find Georg’s garden and our viewing spot there, but I immediately located the Battle of the Nations Monument on the northern horizon.

Brown coal, the baron went on — and I knew this as well as he — had, according to his information, a water content that made it more profitable to process it as a fire retardant. And environmental agencies would close that muck spinner 113in Rositz the moment the cancer rates became public knowledge. And as for uranium — we were looking now at the pyramids to the west — that was a matter of pure speculation.

“So what does that leave? Altenburger liqueur? Altenburger mustard and vinegar? A couple of decks of skat cards? The brewery maybe?” And suddenly, turning toward me: “I’m asking you!”

How was I supposed to know? I replied. But he wouldn’t let go. Surely I’d given it some thought, ultimately it was all of a piece, and without money in their hands it didn’t matter what people were offered. One really ought to be able to expect a prognosis from someone who had founded a newspaper, which itself involved no inconsiderable risk.

“The newspaper doesn’t have anything to do with any of this,” I replied. These kind of worries, I proposed, had played no role in our founding the paper. Barrista was scaring me. I thought of my grandfather’s prophecies: someday I’d find out just how hard it is to earn my daily bread.

So tell me more, was what I really wanted to say — the same way you do when you want to hear how, as improbable as it might seem, the storyteller escapes in the end.

“There isn’t much left, in fact,” Barrista finally said, “except for these towers, houses, churches, and museums. The theater, if you’ll beg my pardon”—he bowed—“surely can’t be something you would add to the list. Two years, maybe three, and its glory days are over.” And after pausing, he added, “Wonderful view, isn’t it?” Then he fell silent, and strolled on. We could see the Vogtland to the south and the ridgeline of the Ore Mountains, and to the east, behind Castle Hill, I thought I could make out the gentle hills of Geithain and Rochlitz.