Ingo Schulze - New Lives

My second attempt failed as well. I gagged on each syllable, my tongue performed wondrous feats — while my vocal cords remained out of control.

The chair at the teacher’s desk had been pushed away. I fell back onto it, shoving the teacher’s grade book aside. From a seated position, I could manage words for the first time, the first sentence formed slowly. And with that Myslewski’s barrage of words drowned out everything else.

The class was hushed. I knew that numbness only too well.

The next moment I watched myself stand up and lean against the desk, bracing myself on one fist, the thumb of my other hand hooked into a belt loop, the report dangling between forefinger and middle finger. Everything about this boy expressed contentment, like the lethargic pleasure you feel while you dress yourself still half-asleep or when you stretch your legs.

But was that boy at the teacher’s desk me? Wasn’t I floating above everything, out of everyone’s reach and surveying the whole scene in a way I had never done before? I gazed down, observing what was happening below me, a diorama of school life, nothing unusual. That fellow Enrico Türmer interested me no more or no less than the other students. Enrico Türmer differed from the others only because I could give him instructions. I said: Smile — and he smiled. I said: Don’t fight back, just stay on your feet and ask to deliver your short report. I said: Ignore the demand to sit down — and he ignored the demand to sit down. I fell silent. I wanted to see what he would do without me. Enrico Türmer likewise fell silent. A few quick breaths later and he repeated: “I would now like to deliver my short report, I worked very hard on it.” After he had paid no attention to yet another demand to sit down, I knew enough. Another brief breathless hesitation — I gave my permission, and Enrico Türmer returned to his seat.

He heard Geronimo clear his throat, heard Myslewski’s squeaky shoes scrape the floor. He looked around — no one returned his glance. When the bell rang Enrico Türmer got up from his seat like everyone else and smiled as he watched Myslewski depart. It looked to him as if Geronimo, who scurried out the door next, was following like an attendant, as if he hoped to carry the grade book back to the teachers’ lounge.

For the next few minutes I was completely happy — you must believe me. What a grand reversal of affairs it was! Do you have any idea of what had happened? Can you imagine what I suddenly realized, how the experience hit me like a thunderbolt?

I was invincible, I had become a writer!

Although this realization came not as a revelation, but more like something I had always known, but that for various reasons had slipped my mind only just recently.

“It’s my guess,” I said, mimicking Geronimo as I walked home, “that you’d make a very good catechumen.” If it weren’t too pathos laden, I’d have to say: I gave an infernal laugh. A fourteen-year-old 130can manage that better than people generally like to believe.

And do I also need to say that it was only several days later that I first noticed that I had lost God, that He had been expunged without my having even been aware of it? Not a single Lord’s Prayer has ever passed my lips since.

I was hovering in the same place from which God had been looking down on humankind. But now it was I who was gazing down on them, at myself as well as at Geronimo or Myslewski, and I could observe what they were doing. I knew that it was of little significance whether they were brave or cowardly, strong or weak, honest or deceitful. The only important thing was that I was observing them.

Geronimo could do or not do whatever he pleased. It would vanish in the universal mishmash. I would determine whatever picture of him was to remain. Yes, no one would even care about Geronimo unless I wrote about him today, tomorrow, or whenever. 131I was the keeper of the keys to Dante’s hell.

My disaster of a report had no repercussions. I didn’t speak to anyone about it. The explanation I fed to my mother was that I had been saved by the bell.

I had every reason to keep my experience to myself. For a while I even concealed it from myself and tried to assign some other origin to my carefree state. Needless to say, my novella also took a different and surprising turn.

At the time I had no idea of the price I would pay for being so carefree.

Within a few days my pattern of speech, my voice had changed. I smiled as I spoke. Everything I said had a shade of ambiguity, isolating me from my classmates. What was meant in earnest? What was just a game? For the first time I was living the life of the outsider. Other people no longer interested me. Time spent with other people, at least those my own age, was time wasted. Could the intensity of a conversation ever match that of reading a book? I needed what little free time I had for reading and writing. Those hours were too precious to piddle 132them away in the company of others.

Geronimo avoided me, but without attacking me. He was praying for me, he whispered to me at one point when he caught me observing the sharp line of his clenched jaw and the nervous twitching of his lips.

I took delight not just in my triumph but also in my having escaped both him and Myslewski — small revenge.

Whenever there was a game during gym class, usually soccer or volleyball, and Geronimo and I were chosen to be on the same team — he was almost always the last choice — I never missed a chance to pass him the ball and thus include him in the team, just the way our gym teacher demanded.

Nothing frightened Geronimo more than a ball. His body would instinctively flinch. He first had to overcome his urge to flee — but then when he did confront his foe, as he always did, it was too late. I was successful right off. Soon a victory by any team Geronimo was on was considered a sensation. Scorn, mockery, and rage were directed solely at him. The altruism of my playing the ball to him was evidently never questioned. 133

On the day grades were handed out at the end of our sophomore year, a “farewell” was extended to five of our classmates. Four had to leave because of their unsatisfactory performance (I had found refuge somewhere in the middle), plus Geronimo for still insisting on being a conscientious objector. With the approach of our last day in school together, old anxieties returned. I had the sense that accounts were due to be settled, that for months now Geronimo had been planning some spectacular action that would imprint itself for good on our memories. But I wasn’t afraid of that. My insecurity came from feeling so secure, because I couldn’t imagine an attack that could really touch me. My carefree state was suddenly full of care.

My memories of that day are bathed in the garish light of July. Geronimo’s long, never really dirt-free fingers trembled above the surface of his desk.

“I must likewise say my farewell to you today,” Myslewski remarked, drawing himself up beside our desk. Once Geronimo was standing fully erect — a good head taller than Myslewski — he started shivering, as if suddenly chilled. Glancing at the grade card, Myslewski announced the grade average: a perfect four point, disregarding a two in gym. Somehow Myslewski managed to grab hold of Geronimo’s hand and held it for a while.

As he sat down Geronimo bent forward as if he were going to throw up, and then began to weep. He wept as if he had been saving up his tears his whole life long and were trying to shed them all in the space of thirty minutes. To the sound of his weeping, with here a sob and there a whimper, we were all handed our grades.

I laid my hand on his shoulder, on his head. I ran my hand over his hair, which was greasy. Geronimo never looked up until the bell rang.