Ingo Schulze - New Lives

It was in the choir that I also first saw Franziska, a ninth grader, the daughter of ***, 145whom everyone knew, and not just in Dresden — a man able to do, yes, allowed to do anything he pleased. Her existence was known to everyone in the school.

Franziska sang soprano, wore jeans and tight-fitting sweaters, and had smooth black hair. The decal on her shoulder bag was no less exciting than she herself: “Make love, not war!” During rehearsal I always took a seat on the aisle so that I was as close as possible to the sopranos seated on a slant across from us. It was months before Franziska returned my greeting. When out of the clear blue sky she asked me if I didn’t want to join her class for their dance lessons — there was a surplus of girls — I saw my dreams already fulfilled. But nothing ever came of the promised dance lessons, and she turned me down all the many times I invited her somewhere. Nonetheless I lived in the certainty that I would one day win Franziska over.

I tried my hand at writing poetry and had moderate success in contests called “Young Poets Wanted” that were part of the “Poets’ Movement of Free German Youth,” a term that strikes me much funnier now than it did at the time. We were to write “friendly” poetry — that was one of the maxims I recall being inculcated with by a friendly, indeed downright jolly, older man who had, it was said, succeeded in writing a perfect poem about a Bulgarian jackass, although I never came across it.

I was not considered a great talent or a precocious wunderkind — terms that, if not used often, were not uncommon either — but was sufficiently stuck on myself that I was firmly convinced my day would come.

Vera was leading a bohemian life, or so my mother and grandfather called it. She delivered noon meals for People’s Solidarity, for which she was paid two hundred marks a month, plus insurance and a meal for herself — and a person could live on that. Since Vera smoked like a chimney and was forever in need of money, she also worked as a model at the Art Academy — which soon developed into a career of sorts.

From the late ’70s to the mid-’80s there were a good many paintings and sketches by Dresden artists that showed a woman with a broad catlike head and auburn hair, frequently nude and looking lost, but sometimes also as a carnival queen. Vera is not a beauty, but she didn’t have a GDR face. I can’t explain to you just what a GDR face is, but you recognized one at once. 146Vera soon had enough connections and money to be able to dress elegantly. Sometimes she was even taken for a visitor from the West.

She lived in Dresden Neustadt, in the garret of a rear-house that lacked a front-house. Since only her apartment had a bell and the other gates and doors were locked at eight o’clock, if you arrived in the evening or at night you had to somehow make your presence known. Vera’s neighbors took revenge the next morning by ringing her bell or pounding on her door on some pretext or other. Or pilfered her underwear from the clothesline. Our conversations often took place in the dark, because one of her admirers was raising hell out on the street and, once he’d drunk enough courage, would try to scale the fence.

Two tiny rooms opened off a long hallway with a little cabinet and sideboard that served as a kitchen.

In the back room Vera would perform for me her repertoire for passing the drama school’s entrance exam. “Pirate Jenny” was always included. I loved those performances in that tiny room, but feared the moment when she fell silent — should I break into tears or applause?

Of course I find it difficult to speak of Vera without already seeing premonitions of what happened later. Though we rarely met if she “had somebody,” we were inseparable in the days and weeks between such affairs. She introduced me to what was called “the scene.” I was always greeted with twofold joy: first as a brother who you were nice to in order to please her, and second because I was living proof that Vera was free game again.

I never knew when Vera would invite me in or send me on my way. I would often break off with her, but still stopped by to pick up bowls that had contained food my mother dropped off now and then.

Whenever Vera reemerged — she would usually be waiting for me outside school — she would reproach me, wanting to know why I hadn’t shown my face for so long.

Vera lived a life that I wanted to live too as soon as I could — a nonstop series of exhibitions, readings, parties, performances, and night prowls. My clothes would likewise reek of ateliers, I would write whatever I wanted, until the day when I’d become too dangerous for the honchos of the GDR, and be deported, to the West, where my books had already been published and where Franziska and I would enjoy life together, making love, writing, and traveling.

But first I had to survive school. I wondered if it would be worth it to say something abrasive and so provide myself with material. An event worth writing about was sorely needed! Should I write on the blackboard, maybe a “Swords Into Plowshares!”

In January 1980, panic broke out as the result of “Karl and Rosa Live!” being painted in red on the wall beside the main entrance. All I got to see was a gray cloth draped over the inscription, as if some memorial plaque were about to be unveiled. Everyone was in the crosshairs — especially those who were thought to be truly convinced. (You do understand what I mean by “convinced”? Our “Reds,” the ones who believed in the GDR.)

The only thing that prevented me from confessing to the deed was fear that the real perpetrator might own up. But no one, male or female, hinted at being the offender. At least I heard nothing about it. The inscription was swiftly removed, although its traces now achieved the status of “the handwriting on the wall.” Some thought they could make it out at the upper left of the entrance, others believed the four words were distributed across the whole wall, and ended not in an exclamation mark, but a hammer and sickle. Just gazing at the wall was held to be an act of resistance. Small gatherings repeatedly formed as if by chance before it. I never saw anything.

I mention this wall episode because I intended to make my memory of it the embryo of a novel years later.

In hope of being provocative I tacked a poem to the bulletin board — resulting in serious consequences for one of the school’s wunderkinder. Myslewski ripped off the page along with the thumbtacks and called me to account in front of the whole class. He had walked right into my trap. That same poem was scheduled to be published in a student anthology. 147Couldn’t I have said what was on my mind somewhat more simply? he asked, and then to universal laughter sent the tattered paper sailing down onto my desk.

The publication of Ehrenburg’s memoirs in the GDR offered the opportunity to raise questions about Stalinist work camps. The camps, I was told, were the outgrowth of the cult of personality, a phase that had long since been put behind us and was condemned by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as early as 1956.

I searched in vain for something I could do or leave undone that would really have a payoff.

My hope was the army!

Ever since my first appearance before the draft board — after that first experience of being questioned by men in uniform — I knew where I could find what I was looking for.

Once inside District Military Headquarters I felt immediately inspired, ideas came to me all on their own. No other place possessed such poetry, such ineluctability. I think I compared the banner of the Army Athletic Club with my underpants — banners were intended to cover a vacant spot on the wall, but in fact revealed instead just how barren that wall was — it was the same with my underpants and my body. Or something like that. I jotted down a whole sequence of such comparisons right there on the spot. Uniforms made suffering plausible. This was no longer just pubescent hypersensitivity, or a shirking of duty that carried no risk à la Neustadt or Loschwitz, 148this was a cold war, this was theater on a global scale.