Ingo Schulze - New Lives

The commissioned letters had more or less run their course. And I didn’t have much else to do. Now and then we rode cross-country in our APCs, which was a welcome change. I enjoyed the ride — but wouldn’t admit it to myself. Even setting up field camp and going on short maneuvers had ceased to be frightening, plus the summer of ’82 was extraordinarily warm.

When I wanted to write, I retreated to Nikolai’s painting studio, 189where the same banners lay draped over laundry racks for weeks on end. Each morning Nikolai would give the pots of paint a quick stir with a brush and then retreat into his studio, a small room with windows that overlooked the drill field and that he had turned into an incredibly cozy spot. He even had a record player and a scruffy leather sofa. The few guys who were allowed inside mostly served as his models.

You’ll scarcely believe my naïveté, 190but in fact I couldn’t figure out why all the guys who modeled for him were very boyish and often looked almost identical.

Inspired by Baudelaire’s prose poems, which Nikolai read to me from an Insel edition, I wrote one or two sketches every day. These idyllic hours were interrupted only by the 7th of October parade, rehearsals for which were an idiotic, stomach-turning grind. But that’s not a topic for here.

As winter once again approached — I was now a DC–I was afraid time might be running out.

There was a good chance that much of what I had assumed would happen as a matter of course and had intended to experience would never find a place on my agenda before the end of April. I had taken it for granted that sooner or later I would see the inside of the brig. I almost managed it once without its being any of my doing. When the radio in our room, for which I as corporal was responsible, was checked out by a battalion officer, the red tuning line didn’t vanish beneath one of the paper strips you had to glue on to mark East-bloc stations. They threatened me with three-day arrest, but that was the end of it. Everyone, even the officers, listened to New German Wave, and the FM reception on West Berlin’s RIAS, SFB, and AFN was top-notch.

I was working on a story about sentry duty, and urgently needed more observed details. When I learned that my company would be assigned double duty 191on the three days before Christmas, I did everything I could to be included. But as one of three drivers in their third six-month stint, there was little chance of that. My only help was to play Good Samaritan. In an act of hypocritical sacrifice I gave a heartbroken paterfamilias my leave pass and took over sentry duty for him. To keep the gratitude of the man, who was on the verge of tears, within limits I demanded several bottles of vodka in return, which he smuggled into the barracks at risk of life and limb.

Such intentionally arranged incidents are seldom worth the investment, 192but this time it appeared as if my hopes would be fulfilled. Just when I had been relieved of duty at the end of the snowy second night — Christmas Eve — the police patrol brought in a stinking, roaring drunk sailor. They were holding him by his arms and legs and swinging him back and forth like a sack. They had a lot to do yet, so they unloaded him in the guardhouse and went back out on the hunt.

The sailor lived in Oranienburg and had been nabbed at his front door. He could no longer stand on his own, and would choke now and then on his gurgled curses and insults. He finally managed to make it to his knees, but then lurched over on one side again and raised one arm. He wanted us to let him go. Even in his pleas you could hear some of the disdain that he as a sailor had for men in gray. He claimed he hadn’t been trying to get to his girl, but to his mother, he didn’t want to fuck, but just to be home for Christmas, even “grunts” ought to understand that. He fumbled at his watch, pulled it off — it was ours if we let him go.

As a noncom and I attempted to get him back on his feet, he readily assisted us in the belief that we would bring him to the gate, and went on praising his Glasshütter watch, which had never let him down.

We moved quickly to consign him to the brig and agreed with him that the MPs were mangy dogs and jack-offs. The footprints left in the snow by his street shoes looked downright ladylike in comparison to those of our boots. He looked up as if he had only now realized where we were taking him. I grabbed him tighter. Whether because of that or because he saw the corporal stripes on my shoulder strap 193—he took his rage out on me. He gave me a kick, the tip of his shoe met my shin. As if out of reflex I struck back, his nose started to bleed. He had pulled free and whaled into me now, banging at me in a fury with bloody fists. I somehow got a grip on him, clinching him from behind. He booted and kicked, until I didn’t know what else to do but to pick him up and fling him into the snow. Help arrived from the guardhouse. On all fours now, the sailor spun around inside the circle of his tormentors searching for me.

Four of us got the better of him, wrenched his arms behind him, tugged his head back by the hair — after he started spitting — and shoved him forward. He went limp, which is why we had to drag him down the stairs to be booked. And so I had finally made it into one of those cells I had wanted to occupy myself. The next evening, Christmas night, I sat in Nikolai’s studio, drank mulled wine, ate stollen, and listened to the “Christmas Oratorio.” Nikolai gave me Malaparte’s The Skin, a well-thumbed Western pocketbook.

I was already living in the euphoric state of a returnee when we were sent on maneuvers in the middle of April, barely two weeks before my discharge on the 28th. We crossed the Elbe and burrowed our way into a pine forest.

The last night we were waiting for our orders to return to base, sleeping in our APCs. As soon as it got chilly inside, the driver turned on the motor. That was forbidden, but our officers evidently chose not to notice.

After the second or third time I fell asleep. A pain in my shoulder woke me up. Udo, a noncom, was literally kneeling on me in order to get at the crank that opened the louvers on the hood of the APC — the only way to cool the motor. The thermostat indicator was out of sight, well beyond the red zone. The motor was on the verge of locking at any moment. An incident like that could be punished as sabotage, and you ended in the military prison at Schwedt. Udo’s chin lingered above my shoulder, we stared at the thermostat. I could smell his sleepy breath and awaited my fate. Out of stupidity, off to Schwedt — that would be unbearable!

When the indicator began to move I felt Udo’s hand at the nape of my neck, he was squeezing with every ounce of his strength. Then he opened the hatch and climbed out. I waited until I could turn the motor off and followed him. I thought he was standing somewhere nearby, having a smoke. But I couldn’t find him. It was still dark and perfectly still when I started my walk. From one moment to the next there was nothing to remind me of an army. No sentries, no barbed wire, no spotlights, only soft earth and silence. The vehicles were as unreal as the trees, enchanted reptiles murmuring in their sleep.

The farther I went the more excited I was. I don’t know how long I walked. I stopped at the edge of a field, dropped my trousers, and squatted. What all I discharged from myself was simply stupendous. It seemed to me as if I were not simply emptying out what I had stuffed myself with over the past few days, but was also ridding myself of every oppression, fear, and torment I had ever had to swallow. With my naked butt hovering above the forest floor by the first light of dawn, I was the happiest, freest human being that I could imagine. I saw my sun rising with the dawn. It was all behind me, I was returning from hell, and the completion of my book was only a matter of time. These minutes were now the yardstick of my happiness.