Ingo Schulze - New Lives

We first have to be civilized. Our blunder came not necessarily from a lack of character — no, our entire sensory system was out of whack.

With two hundred D-marks in my pocket, store windows suddenly took on real interest. Stopping or moving on no longer meant the same thing they once did. I can’t explain how it was that we ended up in a shop for pots and pans. All I had to do was lift one of those heavy lids and I was fascination’s plaything. I assumed the edge of the pot had to be magnetic, for it seemed to attract the lid and automatically provide that perfect fit.

We were still lidding our way through the shop when Wolfgang the Hulk came in. He joined in our game, while the saleswoman tried to offer the salient points of each, waxing enthusiastic about stews, soups, vegetable casseroles, Swabian spätzle, roasts, and just about every other sort of fare that had ever been prepared on a stove in her town.

We listened. Wolfgang rapped his knuckles on pots as if checking a bell for purity of tone.

At some point it became clear that our money would be left behind in this shop. We had already agreed on two unlidded pots when Wolfgang slipped us another fifty. Now we had enough for the sale item: three pots for 249 D-marks, lids included. The saleswoman — we would never regret our choice — escorted us to the door. Only then did she hand over the third plastic shopping bag to Michaela.

I was searching for my car keys when Michaela was greeted by a woman that I had to look at twice before I recognized her, and then only from her coat. The newspaper czarina had a totally different hairdo. She asked how we were doing, and all I could think of in response was to hold out our shopping bags. “What pretty pots!” she exclaimed with the kind of fervor you show little children, took out the pot, and turned it around and around. I was afraid her rings might scratch the metal.

“What a pretty pot!” she cried loudly, handing it back to me and vanishing with the regional farewell — an “Ade!” accented on the first syllable.

Ah, Verotchka! As if there were nothing more important to write about. If only your Herr von B. would finally make his appearance here. Does he have a real name? I’m off to the post office now, so your letter can be on its way today yet.

I have such a longing for you!

Your Heinrich

Friday, Jan. 26, ’90

Dear Jo,

Jan Steen has decided our fate. It was scary like a fairy tale, but in the end stupid Ivanushka 25got his treasure.

Had we known prior to the trip just what was at stake, we probably wouldn’t have waited for Michaela to make up her mind, which she didn’t do until the night before and first had to ring Aunt Trockel’s doorbell the next morning and ask her to look after Robert.

We had only a little under six hours left for a seven-and-a-half-hour drive — just one more than Jan Steen needs to travel the same distance in his sports job. Michaela claimed the navigator’s position and, laying Robert’s school atlas across her knees, acted as if Jörg and Georg weren’t in the backseat and Jan Steen hadn’t given us directions. All the same I was glad she had come along.

I had to open the trunk at the border in Schleiz. The customs agent reached for the shoebox full of flyers and issues of klartext 26 —Michaela had insisted we bring them along. The agent held the “printed matter” between his gloved hands and read, or at least pretended to, while car after car rolled past us. What was this stuff? he asked. “What it says it is,” I replied, “a call for a demo once the State Security’s villa is taken over.”

When he went to put it back, the stack of flyers had shifted and no longer fit in the shoebox. He crammed the papers back in, gave me a wave of his hand that could have meant anything, and shuffled off — the morning sun reflected softly in the shine of his boots. I drove very slowly across the bridge so that we could see the clear-cut path through the woods.

My three passengers soon nodded off, but I was savoring it all — the pink winter morning, the odd fluttery sound of tires against pavement, the expansive curves, the speed, the music, the traffic bulletins, the semis and the cars hurtling past, the fields and villages and hills. To my eyes even the snow had a Western look that morning.

Our only stop was just after Nuremberg. The gas station and rest stop were bustling with our fellow countrymen, some of whom were picnicking on bagged sandwiches and thermos coffee behind rolled-down windows. You could have spotted them just from their restless eyes and the eager way they chewed. Once I had found a parking place and opened the trunk, Michaela rebelled. There was a restaurant here, and no way was she going to be the dog left outside the door. She offered to pay.

While Georg, Jörg, and I slowly dithered past the glass cases with their displays of food, Michaela’s tray was already stacked high with fruit salad on top of sandwiches, rote grütze and vanilla sauce on top of apple strudel. She ordered scrambled eggs for us all and told us we only needed to bother about our coffee and tea.

Even Jörg, who as I first noticed when we sat down had brought his own sandwich in, capitulated before this magic banquet, smearing butter on his D-mark kaiser roll and piling it high with scrambled eggs and ham.

Georg went back for a plate of white sausages with sweet mustard. Michaela discovered cucumber salad — cucumber salad in winter!

We filled our tank from one of our gas cans, and drove downhill in the passing lane. The names that began to pop up on signs delighted me: Heilbronn, Karlsruhe, Strasbourg, Freiburg, Basel, Milan. It wouldn’t have amazed me to find ourselves suddenly whizzing along under palm trees.

We pulled into Offenburg a little before noon, found the Ratskeller — and right on time, there we stood opposite Steen, who was sitting having a beer with Wolfgang the Hulk. Michaela was the center of attention. Steen invited her to ride with him, Georg and Jörg were packed into the backseat, and I put-putted along behind with Wolfgang.

He had greeted me with a hug and silence, but was now chatting my ear off about how important it had been for us to show up on time. We’d pulled it off with pizzazz, real pizzazz. Steen thought a great deal of us, finally somebody he could depend on, people who knew what they wanted, went for it, and didn’t expect to be handed anything on a silver platter. Steen had reassigned his entire advertising campaign for the Leipzig Fair to us, now didn’t that show pizzazz on his part too? He gave my thigh a slap. We were moving up into the Black Forest now. A few serpentine curves and we had lost Steen. Only after we started back downhill did we link up again. “Demand a thousand marks, a thousand dee ems per page,” Wolfgang said without turning his head. “A thousand D-marks per page,” I replied.

Georg and Jörg were standing in the Hotel Sonne parking lot, each off to himself, like two eavesdroppers. It was the air! It was so delicate and cold that it hurt to breathe.

Michaela, more recumbent than sitting, played with the darkened windows, sending them up and down with a hum, and didn’t get out until a hotel employee asked about our luggage. She followed him, while Steen steered us toward the restaurant. Steen was carrying on several conversations at once, and we listened with bated breath. “A thousand D-marks,” I whispered to Jörg.

The restaurant seemed to be closed; we were the only guests. Steen headed for a corner table and slid along the bench until he was seated under the stuffed head of a stag. I went to the restroom. I wasn’t sure whether Jörg had understood me or not, and so I took my time, but neither Georg nor Jörg followed me.

Jörg was talking about our planned first printing, the distribution structure, the number of pages, etc. “And you two are the owners?” Steen interrupted, nodding at Jörg and Georg. He intended to “shift his advertising” to us. About how much would that cost?