Ingo Schulze - New Lives

The train to Jena was overcrowded. Which was fine by me. I didn’t want to read, I didn’t want peace and quiet. All I wanted was already inside me. I finally had time to develop 201the scenes with Nadja and discover new details.

When Nadja whispered in my ear, she had tugged at the lobe. I could feel her breath, the tips of her fingers on the nape of my neck, on my cheeks. I could feel the strength in her arm, I could feel her breasts, her lips.

The last thing Nadja heard from my lips was, “Have a good trip!” I felt my face burning for the shame of it. And Nadja? What had she said? We were holding hands, I ran alongside the train as it pulled away. The faster I ran the more rollicking her laughter, the farther she leaned out, until she pulled back in fright, as if the end of the platform were some unexpected stroke of fate. The fright was still reflected in her face until all I could see of her was her swirling hair. And finally, the moment came when I turned around and walked back along the empty platform.

I don’t recall if we were loaded onto trucks or transported by train from Jena to Seeligenstädt, nor who was in command and divided us into companies. All that emerges from the fog are the explosions of laughter that greeted each newcomer to a drunken bash that lasted till dawn — as if shorn heads were an original costume. I drank from every bottle offered me.

My memories first begin with a gesture, a motion of the right hand, that opens a belt buckle and grabs it by the last punch hole as it falls, while the left doffs the cap. I executed this gesture with so little thought it frightened me, as if someone were mimicking me.

This horde of buzz-cut, uniformed men bewildered me. All it took was a certain way of walking or a twitch of the mouth and I would find myself greeting someone I presumed I knew from Oranienburg. On day two I was certain it was Nikolai I saw walking directly toward me. By the time I realized my mistake I had already called out his name. Faces I was actually familiar with, however, were the ones I didn’t recognize. Anton, my friend and fellow student, stumbled around so blindly and apathetically under his helmet that it was days before we discovered each other.

The instant I had a few free minutes, I would stretch out on my bed as if it were the only spot where I could think of Nadja.

Within a few hours it was clear to me that I had been mistaken, that there was nothing for me here in Seeligenstädt. What was going on around me neither belonged in my army book nor needed to be shared in a letter. This studious submissiveness of men of above-average intelligence was abysmally shameful. 202And I was one of them.

My group, students from Jena and Ilmenau who were sports majors, fired one another up as they ran the obstacle course and once we were off duty tried to teach me how to take the scaling wall in one assault. They liked to play room check, showed one another how to “do a package” (folding underwear), were jealous if other men were issued more blank ammo to waste, and for pedagogic purposes liked to step on the heels of the man ahead of them on the drill field. There was no sand thrown in the gears here, no drunkenness or disorderly conduct, no reporting late or grousing. In Seeligenstädt there was no longer any need for orders — one nod, and the pack of hounds heeled.

Seeligenstädt didn’t match my experiences in basic training — or those I had hoped to have here. The opposing fronts had disappeared.

I shriveled, something crumpled inside me. I kept my mouth shut during political instruction and was glad to hang my helmet from my belt during marching drills — a noncom privilege.

Nadja’s letters reached me two and a half weeks later by way of my mother. Nadja had also telephoned her.

When the alarm whistle sounded the next morning — a good many slept in their sports gear in order to appear punctually out in the hall — I just lay there and fell in only after someone ripped my blanket off.

Instead of joining the morning workout I slunk over to the regimental dentist, complained about pain under a filling — and was actually sent on to Ronneburg. The dentist there didn’t even make me wait, just stamped the referral and wished me a nice day. Suddenly school was canceled, and my gait was as light as if a cast had just been removed from my foot. I rummaged through a bookstore, lay in the grass beside an old cemetery wall, and enjoyed the perfect quiet. When the clock struck twelve, I went in search of a meal, drank some beer, and then took another sunbath.

It was almost three o’clock when I stepped into a phone booth and for the first time heard the ringtone of Nadja’s phone, a velvety deep hum that would become so familiar in the coming months. There was no answer.

Just short of five o’clock, before boarding the bus with a bundle of books under my arm, I tried a last time. Again with no success.

Caught up in the triumph of having managed a free day, I wrote my first letter. I printed AUSTRIA and SALZBURG on the envelope in capital letters, as if they were the slogan that would guarantee me immunity.

The next morning I fell in again. Thus far I had been able to avoid issuing orders, but this time I couldn’t get out of a “target objective.” 203I reported pails of unidentified grub in the advance units, heavy friendly fire from goulash cannons that fell short of their mark, and ordered retreat. I know, that’s pretty wretched too, but at the time I basked in the laughter it earned me. The lieutenant, a student from Ilmenau, 204ordered retreat and had me repeat my target objective.

My second, and third, attempts were greeted with laughter. But then they all, without exception, wanted me to give some real orders. The other groups were waiting to move out. Now they had me where they wanted me. The humiliation was worse than having to march past a reviewing stand on the 1st of May. That afternoon I found a pass on my bed.

I rounded up some change and by eight o’clock was camped out in a functioning telephone booth.

It was after ten before Nadja finally answered. I had assumed she knew of my whereabouts from my mother and could picture my circumstances during these weeks. But she seemed happy just to hear from me and rattled off the names of friends who wanted to meet me. She asked for a picture of me, and letters, lots of letters.

I had to explain to her where I was and what I was doing here, and the longer I spoke the more palpable her silence became, a silence that forced me to reveal more and more of my daily life. I was hoping the connection had gone bad, when Nadja snapped at me, “Why would you go to a camp like that?”

Instead of answering, I began to tell her about my target objectives and how I had put my group practically into stitches and had been working on some new scenarios…“Don’t make such a fool of yourself,” Nadja shouted.

In that moment I turned very calm. The battle was over, I had lost, all the rest no longer mattered to me.

“It’s not worth it,” I then heard Nadja say. She knew a lovely bed-and-breakfast in Prague — when would I be able to come, she longed so much to see me…

My army book had become my blind spot. I didn’t know when I would ever be able to work on it. At the end of a day’s duties I played chess — when I didn’t just lie on my bed. Since I usually lost, I was everyone’s favorite partner.

At the end of our five weeks, on the next-to-last day, we had political instruction one final time. I don’t remember the exact question or my answer either, which evoked no response whatever. The topic was probably the global arms race.

At the start of the last hour — there was to be a test — previous grades were announced. With a D — in the first seminar, my silence had been rewarded with a B — I was the worst in the class.