Ingo Schulze - New Lives

“But it’s all got to be kept going somehow,” I exclaimed. He turned around and, after gazing a while in astonishment at me with his deep-sea eyes, raised his right eyebrow in silent-film fashion. “Well, then tell me how…!” he cried.

“Why me?” I burst out.

“And why me?” he echoed with a laugh. Yes, he was making fun of me. The matter required some thought, he went on. A good general with only half as many soldiers as his foe needed to come up with something — or seek refuge in retreat. After all, I had studied in Jena and surely hadn’t forgotten what had happened there in anno Domini 1806. 114Hegel’s Weltgeist wasn’t going to come riding into town all on its own.

I shuddered, as if someone had slipped an ice cube under my shirt collar. The baron had turned up the collar of his jacket. “If only the hereditary prince could see this,” he said. “What all wouldn’t he give for such a view.”

The baron laughed and then began rubbing his hands like crazy. “We’ve got to find something — a vein of silver, gemstones, something’s always lying buried somewhere. We just have to find it!” He gave a raucous laugh and showed me the red palms of his hands, as if they had just released something into the air. “Shake on it,” he said, and I grasped his hand without knowing what pact I was entering into. But because his hand was warm and his gaze so momentous, I clasped his hand with my left as well — on top of which, obviously moved, he laid his other hand.

We were greeted down below by Proharsky. Without a word he took back the keys and wooden weight, and wandered off.

We walked across town, heading for the office. I slowly began to grasp what he had in mind, that is, the decision he had come to. Approaching by way of Nansen Strasse, with Market Square lying in its full expanse before us, he merrily prophesied that within a short time I would see how everything he touched would turn to gold. He himself had ceased to be amazed that this was so. First he needed an office, a spacious office with a telephone and all the rest. He would be grateful if I could help him find one over the next few days.

Now I had to laugh. Was he just playing stupid, or was he really that out of touch? With everybody wringing their hands these days in search of a few dry square feet of office space, he wants to be able to pick and choose?

He plans to announce the opening of his real-estate office in the Weekly. “During the next few weeks of renovations, contact possible only by mail.” By the time the ad appeared, he said, he’d have his business license. He asked me to suggest a name. “LeBaron,” I replied without a second thought. Not bad, he replied, and asked whether Fürst was my life partner’s last name, he had seen it listed next to mine on our door. I nodded. “Well then!” he announced, joy apparently propelling his step. That was the ticket, but even better in the plural, Fürst & Fürst, Prince & Prince, which would probably present few problems, he added, since there was surely no one else by that name in Altenburg. He would, if I had no objection, ask my partner for her consent, a deal that would provide some ready cash for Michaela — he actually called her Michaela.

What I really wanted to do was invite him to Robert’s birthday party, if only because of the wolf, which Georg’s boys normally take for an afternoon walk. But there have been enough arguments already, because both grandmothers are arriving tomorrow, and Robert can’t be dissuaded from selling newspapers on Market Square. Michaela’s mother insisted on at least keeping Jimmy’s steering wheel. I’ll present it to her tomorrow — the urn of her deceased companion, so to speak. I’m to keep the LeBaron for now.

You really must meet Barrista, if only to taste his wine and to behold a Hero of Contemporary Literature.

Hugs, E.

PS: Georg is still brooding, but breathing calmly and regularly.

Saturday, March 24, ’90

Dear Nicoletta,

There are times when I interpret your silence as a test to maintain my trust in you and not to let my emotions drive me crazy. I go over and over the hours we spent together, searching for some clue as to what I might have done wrong. If only I knew that much! Is my task to discover my own failings? Or have they sent you to Hong Kong? Can Barrista really be the reason for your silence? A single word from you — and I’d have no trouble making that decision. Or is my search for reasons itself presumptuous?

If the question weren’t so absurd, I’d ask whether you read my letters. Not one has been returned. Which gives me the courage to continue.

The high point of my second summer in Arcadia was our annual visit to Budapest. Instead of whiling away the night on the train, we flew — the ultimate in luxury. Plus the added benefit that we traveled without Vera, who had a job at a vacation camp on the Baltic.

Our landlady, Frau Nádori, 115whom as always we paid with bed linens, 116greeted us with an invitation to join her in the kitchen, made us coffee, and puffed away on a Duett from my mother’s pack. She inhaled deep and blew the smoke into my face. (She had been a friend of Tibor Déry’s mother and had helped Déry’s wife out during the difficult days after ’56. The name meant nothing to me at the time.)

As always we walked up to the castle. This time, however, I was no longer a child — I had my pencil and notepad with me. 117

And then I saw it, the tower! It reigned over the street like one of those all-seeing, omnipotent constructions in a Jules Verne novel. A tower like that could strike us with some mysterious ray or send a life-saving message. But if we got too close to it, it would vanish.

“Foreign currency hotel”—Frau Nádori’s term for this miraculous tower of golden glass — missed the mark completely. The thing we were staring at was not of this world, and yet stood on solid ground. A UFO — it had inexplicably landed in the here and now and had simultaneously become the crown, the capstone of our own world.

I’ll never forget my mother’s smile as she entered the Hilton, or her wave to me to follow her. Unmolested by either the police or State Security officers we made it inside — just as we were.

You need to know that prior to that I had never seen the inside of a hotel, not even a fourth-class one. We walked across carpets still wearing our street shoes — no one cared. I heard primarily West German and English and one other language, presumably Italian. Plus there was an inexplicable light, neither bright nor dim, and a general hush, even though people spoke here more loudly than on the street. Mostly older married couples were sprawled in leather armchairs, something I had never seen before in public. Some of them had even pulled up footstools to stretch their legs out across them. No one demanded these Westerners remove their shoes. And to my even greater astonishment I saw one of the uniformed personnel heave suitcases and bags onto a gilt cart and push it toward the elevator. They were police, weren’t they? Or were they servants maybe, real live servants, who carried Westerners’ luggage for them? A portal onto the underworld could not have astonished me more than this passageway into the beyond.

My mother, who evidently wanted to confirm the reality of the species, asked a lanky uniformed fellow, whose hair was cut far too short — were they soldiers maybe? — where one could have a cup of coffee here. He directed her with an open hand to our left, circumvented us with a few short steps, and repeated the gesture. My mother thanked him loudly, and in German. German of all languages, she had always drummed into us, should never be spoken loudly in other countries.

I recognized the tall, uncomfortable stools from a milk bar in Dresden. I was both disappointed and relieved to see something for which I had some reference.