Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Geronimo 129was a choirboy whose voice was cracking and who sat beside me at our desk. He was the only one who didn’t wear a blue shirt, having declared himself a conscientious objector at age fourteen — even though the lenses of his glasses could have been made from the bottom of soda bottles. All the things I had imagined in my boldest summer daydreams, he managed almost offhandedly — like finishing his homework on the walk home, while I brooded over my textbooks on into the evening. He was playing the role that I wanted to claim for myself later. And he played it magnificently. He was not only the head of the class, who spoke only in sentences ready to be set in print and used a slightly old-fashioned vocabulary that coming from anyone else would have made people laugh, but he was also loved by his schoolmates and teachers alike. And those who didn’t love Geronimo at least respected him in a way that I had never before seen among boys my age. In Geronimo’s case, the “private talks” were conducted not by Myslewski, but by the principal.

Geronimo was my nightmare — even though I ought to have been grateful to him. He never contradicted me in German class, never inundated me with English or Russian vocabulary words I couldn’t possibly know. He slipped me his homework for problems that to me seemed beyond solution. In music class, however, he did cover his ears whenever I finished one of my attempts at singing, amid the laughter of the whole class. He was a total failure only at sports.

Geronimo had chosen me to be his pal, or better perhaps, his attendant. Every week he demanded I supply him a new Hesse. In return I received dog-eared tomes by Franz Werfel jacketed in newspaper. I never touched them, if only because their stained and yellowed pages disgusted me. He, on the other hand, took potshots at Hesse, although he also quoted him often enough. No one suspected that I had read the books too, let alone that I had supplied them to him. I would have accepted that as the price I paid for his forbearance in other matters, but likewise not a week went by that he didn’t ask me: Why do you do it? Do what? I would ask in return each time, blushing and breaking into a sweat. He would eye me through his deep-sea glasses and his lips would form a pained smile. What he meant was: If you’re a Christian, why aren’t you a conscientious objector too, why do you agree with the proposition that existence conditions awareness, why don’t you say grace before meals, why does your voice sound high and thin when Myslewski says something to you, why do you waste so much time on this school crap? Geronimo didn’t have to ask any more questions. I knew them all by heart.

Every day began with the prospect of my being subjected to a painful examination. I began my walk home each day either relieved that for once I had escaped him, or suffering the torments of hell. For I never had an answer for him, and hoped the school bell would soon end our strange dialogue, which often concluded with his offering me a Bible quote: “Fear not, for I am with you always even unto the end of the world.” Once he said, “It’s my guess that you’d make a very good catechumen.” It was left to me to be content that Geronimo, who planned to study theology, at least found me good for something.

I was no better at keeping up my diary or praying — apart from a fervent Lord’s Prayer or two — than I was at providing Geronimo with answers. What was I supposed to write, or pray for? I really did know right from wrong. There were lies, and there was the truth — you could be either a traitor or a man of God. I didn’t have to put my self-indictment in writing. I knew as well as anyone that there was not a single argument I could offer that would not have been an admission of my guilt. Cowardice, duplicity, doubt, weakness — why couldn’t I act like Geronimo? Why was I living my life like everyone else?

The conflict once again grew more intense at the end of October, in the week after fall break, during which the flu had preserved me from worse torments.

That Monday Myslewski ordered me to join him in yet another cellar conversation. I felt honored, was surprised that I was the only boy to be summoned for a second round. Geronimo made sure everyone heard that he would be waiting for me at the school door — to lend me his aid, to stand by me.

Myslewski was apparently unprepared for my refusal to become an officer in the National People’s Army or at least to serve for three years as a noncom with weapon in hand defending the homeland against all enemies. He stammered with outrage, struggling to deal with this from my first “no” on. Suddenly he shoved a book at me, in which he said I would find all the information necessary to deliver a ten-minute report about the aggressor, the West German Bundeswehr, during Friday’s physics class. He smiled and patted me twice on the arm, so paternally that I felt a need to thank him, to cheer him up, to tell him that I would reconsider serving in the NPA for three years. Yes, I would not have minded staying there with him a while longer. I left school through the side entrance and, making a wide detour, ran to the bus stop.

I was disgusted with myself, because I had to admit that I would have much preferred to hug Myslewski and win his friendship, and had now run away from Geronimo. And although a greater disgrace was hardly imaginable, my real humiliation still awaited me. The ugliness of what I had just experienced and the ugliness of what lay ahead were so overwhelming that I finally started to take pleasure in my misery — a pleasure that found pubescent release as I ran to catch the streetcar. I swear to you that it took an act of will just to stay on my feet and not sink to my knees, whimpering with delight and shame at the moist spot in my underwear.

My novella, however, revolves solely around the days between my second cellar conversation and the ten minutes of my report. The situation had everything the genre requires, from exposition — by way of a bit of suspense — to a surprising twist at the end.

Although my feelings at the time have long since been exhausted literarily, I still have a sense of reeling back and forth for hours between those two end points, as if bouncing from one wall to another and never finding my footing. How could I, in the presence of my classmates, in the presence of Geronimo, present arguments against him and against myself?

I shall spare you the further agonies of a ninth grader’s soul. What I find touching now is my mother’s fear and helplessness. In the end it was she who wrote my report and persuaded herself to forbid me from even mentioning conscientious objection — there would be time enough for that later. But her words had no influence over me. On the contrary. It didn’t take a Geronimo to remind me of Jesus’ words about forsaking father and mother to follow HIM.

In presenting the finale in my novella I oriented myself roughly on the stations of the cross. In fact I was totally at the end of my tether when my name was called ten minutes before the bell marking the end of class. I got up, pushed back my chair, and stepped into the aisle, without any idea of what I would now do.

My knees were shaking — a phenomenon that I registered with both amazement and interest. My upper body remained unaffected, my hands were calm, although moist as always. Out of some sense of tact in regard to my body, I stepped behind the teacher’s desk, where I did an about-face like a soldier. Here my knees could shake as much as they wanted. I raised the two letter-size pages a little higher and was ready to begin to read. All the rest would take care of itself.

I kept to my mother’s text, word for word — my tongue worked hard at it, but what burbled up were sounds, sounds outside the human realm, gibberish that evidently provoked laughter. Was in fact everyone laughing — except a couple of scaredy-cats — but that Geronimo and Myslewski were glowering at me? Or am I just quoting myself again?