Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Beneath his narrow face Jan Steen’s double chin led a remarkable life of its own. The more I gazed at it, the more clearly I could make out a second, perfectly independent physiognomy. In every other respect Steen’s body was all of a piece and surely preordained to carry his bulk. We kept smiling and toasting each other, relishing our side-by-side existence.

The moment I spotted her face, I was instantly filled with desire and melancholy. Her dance partner’s long, lean back kept interfering with our exchanged glances. But she never stopped looking my way. Evidently she wasn’t sure just what roles Steen and I had assigned each other. I didn’t know myself what I was doing here. She was no great beauty, but I was infatuated with the earnestness of her face.

In the few seconds between songs I asked her for the next dance. Her escort shouted that I could go to hell. We began to dance. Unwilling to yield the floor, he stepped between us. One twirl was enough to leave him standing alone again. Anticipating his next move, I took her in my arms, not even thinking whether it was the right or wrong thing to do. But when she acquiesced, as good as fleeing to me, I felt nothing but pure happiness. The skinny man’s voice quavered with outrage as he stared at his beloved. With rolled-up sleeves and hands half raised, he appeared on the verge of separating us by force. She could only have sensed what was happening from my reaction, from the motions of my body. She tossed her head to one side and, as if spitting at his feet, let loose with a cascade of what I took to be Romanian curses.

I have never seen anyone capitulate so submissively just by lowering his eyes. I didn’t catch his stammered words. Finally he steered for a table at the edge of the dance floor, where he literally collapsed as he sat down.

She kissed me on the neck, and I was drunk enough to respond with lust so tempestuous that just by diving into it I could forget my own sense of forlornness. All I needed was to feel this woman next to me and everything seemed simple and clear.

I asked whether I could get her a drink. With an almost pleading look, she shook her head. A little later, however, I took her by the hand and led her to the table where Steen and the women were now waiting for us.

No sooner had we sat down, a tray of full glasses in front of us, than her friend walked over and demanded in a very serious voice that she dance with him. Without looking up, she shook her head. “Dance with me,” he said again. It was an order, but his trembling chin betrayed his fear.

“Say something,” he suddenly thundered down at her, “tell me to go! Say something, and you’ll be rid of me.”

“I beg you,” I said as I got to my feet, “please go.”

“One word from that beautiful mouth suffices,” he said in suppressed fury. “I obey orders from this woman, not from a gasbag!” As he pointed at her, a tattoo emerged on his wrist — faded letters, a D and an F.

The women began arguing with him. The men in the background had stood up at the same time I had. I was ready to hurl myself at him, I wanted to put an end to this farce.

I can’t say whether it was a cry of fear or some hasty movement that made me look at Steen. He had never taken his eye off my beautiful companion, but now he was staring at her. His smile had frozen at the corners of his mouth. A woman behind him gave a shriek. In horror, people averted their eyes from my lovely dance partner. I was the last one to whom she revealed herself. Have you ever seen a mouth filled with black stumps? She laughed, well aware of how it only increased her ugliness.

The skinny man sighed, turned, and shuffled away. Before I could say or do anything, she had jumped up to follow him. It was easy to make out her path to the exit, because the crowd parted before her and closed again only hesitantly in her wake.

That’s it for today!

Your E.

Friday, Jan. 19, ’90

Dear Jo,

This is the same manuscript paper that all articles have to be written on, thirty lines to a page, sixty strokes to the line. So I’m practicing now. 19

This morning I sent off a letter telling you about my late-night adventures. Our next test was lying in wait for us at noon today. Georg, Jörg, and I had to use surprise tactics to obtain our business license. The printer in Leipzig finally demanded an official seal. No registration, no contract. Our application has been lying around in the district council office since mid-December.

The reception room was empty. We knocked on the door of the councilman for trade and commerce, and a moment later we were inside his cave. Believe me, for the first time in my life I saw light ooze away. Every ray met its end in a mesh of miasma, of cigar smoke that had hung there for decades and lay like volcanic ash on potted plants that still managed some green. The unwashed windows and the yellowed white curtains did their part too, but the murky seepage came from the man himself. It was a miracle that when he stood up from his desk we even spotted him amid the colorlessness and lack of any shading— his colorlessness, his lack of any shading. What I noticed above all — beyond big teeth, a badly trimmed yellowish beard, and stringy hair — was his laugh. By the glow of the match he used to light his cigar, scorn and fear flickered across his face.

There was no way, he said with a laugh, that he could grant us a printing license. Pause. He ponderously took his seat again. Georg bent toward him and said that he was deliberately delaying publication of our paper, yes, was trying to prevent it by exceeding the limits of his authority, making it a case for the Commission Against Corruption and Abuse of Office. Vulcan laughed and asked Georg to repeat the long title. So far as he knew, no such commission existed yet. It didn’t matter what he knew or thought, Georg shouted, his brow now dark with rage, because such decisions were no longer in his hands. His job was to stamp our application, he wasn’t being paid to do anything else.

“Hohoho!” Vulcan cried, baring his horse teeth and exhaling more smoke with each “ho!” Georg kept right on leaning forward, staring straight at him from one side as if the man belonged to some as-yet-unnamed species.

“Hoho, haha, your application, hoha, your application, ha, doesn’t even exist, it’s never been presented, hoha, your application, ho, at least not to me, hoha, you’ve come to the wrong man, really the wrong man, hoho, who can’t do a thing for you, hoho.” Then he took another puff of his cigar and blew wordless smoke. I could already see us on our way to some other department.

“Doesn’t matter!” cried Jörg, who so far had kept strangely silent and now doffed his beret as if giving some prearranged signal. “Then we’re presenting it here and now, orally. You hand us the application form and stamp it.” The councilman’s laugh first ran up the scale as if trying to melt into the thin air of mockery, then faded away in a long sigh.

Unfortunately, he was all out of application forms, he said. There were too many people wanting to apply, far too many, “can’t end well, nope, it can’t.” Vulcan hastily puffed several more clouds that dissipated into the twilight of his cave. “New regulations are required,” he added worriedly, looking from Georg to Jörg, then to me and back to Jörg, “yes indeed, new regulations. Just ask the cabdrivers…” A gesture of his free hand suggested an attempt to fan away the fumes, then he laid his cigar in the ashtray.

Neither Georg, who had taken up a position at the door, nor I budged. Vulcan thrust his spine against the back of his chair and splayed his fingers across his potbelly as if holding a pillow against it.

“I’m not even responsible for newspapers,” he said in a flat voice. Those decisions had to be made in Leipzig.