Ingo Schulze - New Lives

My mother closed her purse and shoved it onto the counter. A pack of Duetts crackled in her right hand, the cigarette lay between the forefinger and middle finger of her left, her ring finger and pinkie pressed a brown D-mark bill against the ball of her hand.

So as not to betray us with her box of matches, she asked the woman working the bar for a light. This time my mother had spoken too low. I had to help her, had to protect her. I went over the question in English several times before I risked asking it out loud. “Do you have matches, please?” I repeated it and blushed. I was less in doubt about the correctness of my English than whether it would be understood outside my schoolroom.

The pack of matches not only shimmered white, it also bore a flourish of golden letters and lay on a white porcelain saucer. And then the shock: “You are welcome, sir.” The woman had called me “sir” in front of my mother. The phrase instantly suffused my flesh and blood, and I would use it later to the amazement of my English class.

I took a match from the pack, set it ablaze, and cautiously raised it — for the first time ever — in the direction of the cigarette.

My mother looked older. The worries of the last few years, my arrest, and finally my expatriation were deeply traced in her features. Her joy in my worldwide success could not change that either. Her only son had been taken from her. When had we last seen each other? It had taken five years for me finally to be issued a visa by the Hungarians. The whole time we had each thought one of us would be sent back at the border, just as had happened so often before at the last moment. But then, incredible as it seemed, it had happened, and mother and son could embrace. Was it not perfectly understandable that words came slowly, if it all, that we simply took silent delight in each other’s presence?

I had no idea what my mother was thinking as we waited for our coffee and orange juice. I had always found her occasional social cigarette something of an embarrassment, because she preferred to squint and cough rather than give up her imitation of whoever it was she was imitating. But here and now it seemed right.

I was so charmed by my new role that I despised these Westerners — children, all of them, young and old. How naive they were! What did they know of the rigors of a divided world — they could reach out and grab anything in their world, not to mention ours.

Gazing through the windows on the other side of the counter, I could see the columns, arches, and fragmented walls of a former grandeur. And above them now rose this tower. From up here the city lay like a gift at your feet, and here I celebrated my triumph. Even Westerners fell silent when they recognized me.

While I had been dreaming, my mother had ordered a fruit pastry. No, that was for her! The pastry was hers to enjoy, I could have it anytime. But of course to her — and I had booked her into the most expensive room — all this had to seem outrageously new and incomprehensible. She didn’t dare let all this splendor touch her too closely if she wanted to continue to set one foot in front of the other. And so I ate the pastry.

To show just how at home I felt here, I went to the restroom and sat myself down on the shiny toilet seat — something I normally did only at home. And I have never — ah, Nicoletta, forgive me for such intimate indiscretions — never since taken such a glorious dump. In that same moment, I decided to learn Hungarian.

I luxuriated in washing my hands with warm water and liquid soap, examined myself in the huge mirror — and liked what I saw.

My mother was waiting for me. She took my hands in hers and smelled. “How fragrant,” she whispered. And with that we stepped out onto the street.

At least two roles were available to me over the next few days. I vacillated between that of the banished writer and that of the precocious, observant poet. Only a couple of years lay between the two.

The next day we made our pilgrimage to Váci utca. Whereas on previous visits I had been on the lookout for devotional trinkets like printed T-shirts, Formula One posters, or records, this time I was drawn to book displays. As if to mock me, the jackets offered the names of authors — Böll, Salinger, Camus — but all the rest was hidden behind an unpronounceable barrage of letters.

I found myself standing before yet another bookstore, and at first didn’t even notice that I was reading and understanding. Once inside the shop I couldn’t believe what I actually saw. Even when the clerk, protected by a counter from his numerous customers, took the book down from the shelf and presented it to me, I was slow to grasp the reality. It was in German, had been printed in Frankfurt am Main, bore the logo of three stick-figure fish, and no matter how many times I read the title and the first and last name of the author, they remained the same. Impossible as it was, what I held clenched in my hands was Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams.

The moments stretched out endlessly until I found a chance to ask the price. Slowly seeping into my mind was the certainty that I would never have to let go of this book again.

If this particular work by Freud was what I wanted, my mother said, then she’d gladly buy it for me. More out of a sense of duty than curiosity, I had the clerk hand me one volume of Freud after the other. Although he was evidently supposed to put each book back on the shelf before he could hand over another, one quick glance over the rim of his glasses and he capitulated, stacking the collected works in front of me. It was a hopeless situation. Even if we had stayed out of the bar in the Hilton and had headed home right then, we still would not have had enough for all the volumes. Can you understand what it was like? Suddenly, as if by a miracle, here was a chance to buy something you couldn’t buy, and now there wasn’t enough money.

I decided in fact on The Interpretation of Dreams, because it was the thickest and hardly any more expensive than the others. I watched as it was passed on to the cashier, who wrapped it; but no sooner was I out on the street than I ripped open the brick-shaped package to seize The Interpretation of Dreams as my inalienable possession.

It didn’t matter to me where my mother went now. All I wanted to do was read.

I began reading on a bench beside the Danube. I read and read and loved my mother for doing nothing but sunning herself and smoking. “Don’t gloat too soon,” she warned me that evening, “it’s not across the border yet.” Never, under any circumstances, was I to admit that the Freud belonged to me — that could, if worse came to worst, cost me high school, my diploma, university, my entire future existence.

Whenever after that Frau Nádori provided me a room for a week, for the first two days I would rummage through secondhand bookstores and visit the shop on Váci utca. Moderation was pure torment. Every book shortened my rations. I had to decide what I could afford to eat and in what quantity — a strange, bewildering feeling, which I mistook for hunger. By the same token, each book left behind unbought in a bookstore was agony. How could I be justified to write anything as long as I had not read all of Freud — or everything else, for that matter?

On the flight back the sky turned red in the dusk of sunset. But it was still bright enough that I spotted our building shortly before we landed. I regarded the fact that I had been able to locate it from such a height as an honor bestowed on the place to which we were returning. And for a moment I thought: This is how God looks down on us.

Enough for now. I have to be on my way. Once again in the hope of receiving a letter today,

Your Enrico