Ingo Schulze - New Lives

“Have a seat,” Jörg said. In those three words, in his simple “Have a seat,” were the ease and authority that proved Jörg the born boss. At last he could speak as he wanted.

A couple of sentences later and Ilona jumped up from her chair, clapping her hands. Fred could no longer suppress his smile. They didn’t need a lot of explanations. The disaster was not a disaster. It was just that no one had dared think like this before.

Three articles, Ilona exclaimed, holding up three fingers, three little articles was all that Georg had managed to produce over all these weeks — three! Fred growled that he knew enough businesspeople we could get advertising from if we really wanted.

Suddenly the baron was standing at the threshold again. And what decision had been made? From his very first sentence he fixed his eyes on me, as if I and no one else were responsible for all this. He did truly hope he would be spared such childishness in the future. He was accustomed to being able to rely on his business partners. There was no point in agreeing to a plan that no one was going to follow through on. As Jörg attempted to raise an objection, Barrista didn’t even look his way. Only after I said that he need not fear any further annoyances of this sort, nor any delays, did he seem satisfied.

That was precisely what he wished to hear. The baron promised that for his part he would not disappoint me, and from his attaché case he extracted four packages, which he now distributed, remarking that we all had children who would enjoy an early Easter bunny. 137He disregarded all our thanks and testily went on to say that he had no intention of keeping us from our work, but he didn’t want to depart our office while still in our debt. As a small demonstration of support for the paper — and in the hope of his ad being effectively placed — he wished to pay in full, in D-marks, which he hoped would be agreeable.

No sooner had he completed this sentence than the telephone rang — which until then had remained miraculously silent. We could hear voices coming from the vestibule. In three shakes of a lamb’s tail we were all busy, and when I looked around again for the baron, he had vanished. The exact sum lay before me on the table. 138

When I got back from my rounds in the countryside that afternoon, Marion was at her typewriter. “There you are!” she cried in delight. From now on she would like to write Georg’s articles, and by doing so ease my workload.

At which point I made the mistake of suggesting we address each other by our first names. Her face froze, her eyes bounced about in all directions. “Why not,” she finally said, extending a hand. “Marion.”

“Enrico,” I said, and then fell silent. Thank God the telephone rang. “Our special friend,” she whispered, and held the receiver out to me.

I had never experienced the baron so beside himself. They had canceled his room at the Wenzel, and he didn’t want to get upset again, but just wanted to inquire if I perhaps knew where he could spend the night, after that he had other quarters, just the one night. I invited him to sleep at our place.

By the time the baron rang the bell at nine thirty every bit of eager anticipation had vanished. Robert and I had raided the grocery shortly before seven. Robert was really looking forward to the baron and his wolf and remembered to get the pickles that the baron had found so tasty the last time, plus dog bones. We made potato salad as if it were Christmas. Michaela had a performance, Hacks’s Schöne Helena, which has officially been taken out of the repertoire, but because it’s an ensemble favorite — there’s a role for every idiot — they’re still cranking it out a few last times.

We began eating around nine, so that the deviled eggs decorated with little swirls of anchovy paste were already gone, and obvious inroads had been made on the platter of cold cuts and the potato salad — only the two little suns cut from apple slices, which Robert had arranged on saucers, were still shining, though a bit more dimly.

If it had been up to Robert, I would have had to go on forever telling stories about Georg and “Herr von Barrista.”

When the bouquet and, behind it, Barrista himself finally did appear — bouquet is hardly the right term for such a burst of jungle flora — all our expectations revived in one fell swoop. Our vases were all too small, the whole apartment was transformed into a dollhouse.

The baron didn’t torture Robert on the rack for very long and handed him the new Bravo and — to Robert’s jubilation — a baseball cap, whose two intertwined letters I at first took to be two knucklebones. 139

When Robert asked about the wolf, Barrista put him to a little test of his courage by handing him the car keys. He could go ahead and free Astrid all on his own.

“If you need money,” the baron said as soon as we were alone, “do not scruple to ask me. I can only advise you to buy in now!”

What do you suppose he meant? Up to that point I hadn’t even admitted to myself what he now spoke of openly. Yes, I did hope to take Georg’s place at Jörg’s side as an equal partner. I asked what it would cost me. The amount, he said, was not the problem, almost any sum could be justified. I’d have to find out whether Georg was actually prepared to give up his share. 140Should Georg demand twenty thousand or more — that was twenty thousand D-marks, by the way — he suggested that I ask for time to think it over first, which tended to hold the rush of speculation in check. The Schröders, that is Jörg and Marion, didn’t have that sum in ready cash themselves. Twenty thousand D-marks, however, were mine to use at any time, and he was certain I’d be able to pay him back the entire amount by autumn, with the rate of interest equal to the rate of inflation. “Do it, and if only for your boy,” he concluded when we heard Robert at the door. Astrid trotted in.

Barrista isn’t the sort of man you respond to with a hug. But I feel as if my wishes and longings are in better hands with him than in my own, as if he is constantly shaking me out of a kind of daze and asking: Why are you sitting at the children’s table? Come over here, join me, join the adults.

The baron thanked Robert, addressing him, however, with the formal pronoun of one adult to another, and had nothing but effusive praise for the handsomely set table. I told him that it was quite all right to still use the informal pronoun with Robert. If that was the case, the baron said turning to him, he would be happy to do so, but then he had to insist that Robert call him Clemens and use the informal pronoun too. Turnabout was fair play. It would be on those terms or not at all.

The next chance I got I whispered to him that neither Georg nor Jörg had said anything about money, but he responded with a smile and said under his breath that now wasn’t the time to talk about this. 141Then he dug in with the same gusto he had shown on his first visit, just nodded with his mouth full when I offered to warm up what was left of the sausages, and went on chatting about pop music with Robert. He pulled a couple of CDs from his attaché case and smiled because, unlike me, Robert knew how to hold them so that the plastic box opened easily. 142

In the baron’s presence Robert seemed incredibly grown-up. He even took to heart all the things Michaela was always preaching to him — he sat up so straight in his chair he looked almost ridiculous.

Robert inquired about where the baron lived. “Here and there,” was the answer. Since his divorce his things were stored at his mother’s, and he lived in furnished rooms all over the republic. By “republic” he meant the Federal Republic of West Germany. His son was fourteen years old, 143and what was more, his name was Robert too. He even looked a little like our Robert. He extracted an envelope of photos from his attaché case. He was right.