Ingo Schulze - New Lives

I washed my face in the restroom — my eyes were red from tears — and leaving school, headed straight for the Café Toscana.

As for the Toscana, suffice it to say that I transposed every café scene I ever read to that particular oasis beside the Blue Wonder Bridge (so that even today I could show you the table where young Törless once sat). I populated the café with famous colleagues. Sometimes they called out my name and waved me over. Sometimes they whispered among themselves, uncertain whether the marvelous verses being passed from hand to hand had in fact come from the pen of the young fellow sitting there solitary and pallid over his absinthe. Sometimes I was all by myself. The waitresses probably thought I was a Holy Cross choirboy, one of whose greatest pleasures was to have breakfast there after morning rehearsal. I seldom had to wait for a seat.

That day I was greeted downright rapturously by my famous colleagues. They congratulated me on the courageous speech I had given. Both their reception and the ragoût fin did me good. I immediately ordered seconds.

Gradually the scene in the principal’s office acquired some good points. After all, I had my first official interrogation behind me. That was as significant as a hundred-page manuscript. Besides which, these guys now knew that they were dealing with a future writer. From now on my response to any questions would be a whispered “Stasi” and silence. Along with my ragoût fin I relished the rumors that would soon envelop the whole school, arouse Franziska’s admiration, and ultimately find their way to Geronimo.

Vera — she was living with Nadja at the time — tended to me as if I were someone who had been severely injured and walked me home that evening.

My mother not only had a three-and-a-half-hour interrogation behind her, she had also had two gentlemen escort her back to our apartment. The two had insisted on seeing the application of my request, which the school had approved, to be released from classes. There was nothing in it about an award for professional excellence. All the same we were puzzled — my mother had in fact been considering using the phrase to avoid making people envious. Were we being bugged? Were there mics behind the wallpaper? The solution was perfectly banal. The only officer candidate in our class had recently spent the night with us because our apartment was close to the airport. We two represented our class on a committee providing the hoopla for a visiting foreign nabob (whose plane never landed). Evidently the vigilance of my schoolchum had set off the false alarm.

The next day, after each bing-bong that preceded every announcement on the loudspeaker, I expected to hear our names called out. My expectations were in vain.

It was only much later that I realized the real appeal of this involuntary session had lain in the mistake made by State Security. At the time I was almost ashamed of having been interrogated on false suspicions — which is why I never made literary use of the incident.

With warmest greetings,

Your Enrico

PS: Georg has quit. I’m taking over his share of our enterprise. Not one nasty word has been said, general relief on all sides. We’re looking for new quarters.

Thursday, April 5, ’90

Dear Jo,

Yesterday Jörg presented me as his associate; he spoke in serious tones with unusually long pauses, lending even more weight to his sentences, which always sound as if they’re ready to be set in print. Although everything he said was already known, no one dared disrupt the ritual, not with so much as a look of boredom. Marion sat erect, nodding at me as if to say: Courage, Enrico, courage! Ilona pressed her bony knees together and kept smoothing the hem of her plaid miniskirt. She and Fred are evidently especially receptive to orations of this sort and waged a contest to see who could look more dignified. Kurt, Fred’s assistant and deliveryman, as well as our film developer and ad hoc photographer — he’s a member of a photography club — sat there inert, arms crossed. I’ve never heard Kurt speak a single complete sentence. Whenever we meet he raises his hand in greeting and answers every question with “Fine” or “Could be better.” For him every job is alike. If you were to ask him to wash windows, he’d immediately find himself a bucket, rag, and newspapers and would not stop until every window sparkled. The Wismut mine had let him go, which left him with just his job as a night porter at the hospital. I don’t know if or when he ever sleeps.

We had also asked Pringel, one of our freelancers, to join us. I got to know him in Leipzig, where he put together the house journal, Air Research Technologies —he’s an impeccable proofreader. Because he’s stocky and overweight he can’t keep his legs crossed for any length of time, although he seems to think that’s important. So he’s constantly changing legs, which gives him a strange fidgety look. Pringel’s beard keeps growing wilder with each passing day, like a hedge framing a child’s face.

Jörg spoke at length about the responsibilities and risks we’ll both be sharing. He called on everyone to show discretion in terms of content and numbers, especially now, because next week we’ll be leading with the announcement of the hereditary prince’s visit.

Jörg will represent us in public, I’ll work on in-house issues, and we’ll share editorial duties.

Then it was my turn to say a few words. No sooner had I finished than Fred asked just what if anything would be different? He was upset because Jörg doesn’t want him to sit in on editorial meetings — but has asked Ilona to.

Although I didn’t have to answer any questions, I was glad when the meeting ended.

The baron has invited Jörg, Marion, and us to join him at the Wenzel next week. He pleaded fervently with me not to hide my wife away again this time.

We talked a good while as we sat in his new car — I’m to keep his old one until I can afford to buy my own. 151He had to admit that he didn’t know the rules of the game in the East, but the longer he thought about the fact that half the firm had been as good as foisted off on me, the more he was inclined to look for some attached strings that were dangling so close to our nose we couldn’t see them. I told him what I knew — that neither Jörg nor Georg had needed his own ten thousand marks and both had already returned the money to their mothers. Steen’s twenty thousand D-marks were news to the baron. The more details I told him, the less believable the whole thing seemed to him.

But be that as it may, he finally said, from now on at any rate I wouldn’t be sleeping so soundly. He didn’t want to have to reproach himself later, which was why he needed to make clear to me, even at this moment of my greatest happiness, that according to civil code co-owners in a company were fully exposed. “You’re liable down to your wife’s last blouse, to your son’s last pair of pants.” He swore he wasn’t implying anything, but I should be prepared for the tricks and treachery of this new world. Sometimes just a roofing tile or a banana peel can lead to a firm’s ruin. His motto was: “the limited liability corporation, a GmbH!” He traced the letters on the fogged-up windshield and went on with his lesson. Then he rummaged in the glove compartment and, as a farewell gift, handed me a paperback published by dtv. From long use it opens to the law covering limited liability.

Hugs,

Your Enrico

Sunday, April 8, ’90

Dear Nicoletta,

I awoke a little while ago with a strange sense of joy. It was in anticipation of something, and do you know of what? Of now, of this moment, when I can write to you. It’s as if you have just sat down beside me. And through you what I tell you takes on its own special color. I share my memories with you and you alone. To whom else should I tell these things? 152And each time I do, I find myself just this side of writing you real love letters. It takes every ounce of will not to. You entered my life, and yet before I could even stretch out my arms to you, you were taken from me again. Without you I feel incomplete, like an amputee. 153And I’m afraid that you will have forgotten it all when we meet again […] and won’t even recognize me. To keep from becoming a stranger to you, I shall go on writing.