Ingo Schulze - New Lives

I walked from Neustadt Station to Vera’s apartment. The windows were closed, no one answered the door. I left a note and took a streetcar to my mother’s place. No one there either. Finally, an hour later, they arrived together.

Vera had spent the whole day running from office to office; for the first time in her life Mother had called in sick and now dragged in two suitcases full of new shoes, underwear, and bed linens. She couldn’t understand why Vera wanted to leave with just a little traveling bag. And if it hadn’t been for photographs and my father’s handkerchief collection, she wouldn’t even have needed that.

“What am I supposed to do with all this?” my mother cried, dogging Vera’s footsteps until she locked herself in the bathroom and we all three stood around shouting. Mother was the first to start sobbing.

As I write to you about all this, it seems to me as if this were the first time I’ve ever recalled those hours. 229

Vera moved through each room one last time, opening every drawer, as if she wanted to print it all on her memory. She’d really prefer to go to the station by herself, she said. Shaking her head, she watched Mother butter one sandwich after the other, as if we were going on a family outing. We walked to the streetcar stop together.

Mother had bought a pack of Duetts and was chain-smoking. We rode to the Platz der Einheit. Vera and I had taken a few steps in the direction of Neutstadt Station, when Mother called her back. “Vera! I can’t do it!” Mother was still standing in the same spot where we had got off the streetcar. Vera ran back, set down her bag, and I watched as — for the first time, or so it seemed to me — she hugged my mother. I could also see my mother caressing Vera’s cheeks. Then I noticed people turning around to look at them.

Vera said nothing, cast a glance into her compact mirror, and linked her arm in mine. I took her travel bag. Someone might have thought she was bringing me to the train.

Neither outside the entrance nor inside the station did I notice anything unusual. It was a few days before the start of school vacation, and there were long lines at the ticket booths. We slowly climbed the stairs. I was afraid that some of Vera’s girlfriends — and boyfriends — would arrive and we wouldn’t be alone.

We walked along the platform. People were standing shoulder to shoulder in little groups. Bottles of wine and bubbly were being passed around. Almost every group had children, each with a backpack and some stuffed animal to clutch. To me it looked as if all these white-splattered jeans outfits had reassembled at their point of origin.

Under an open sky, at the end of the platform now, Vera unpacked her sandwiches.

“The Stasi asked about you,” she said, without looking at me. 230I exclaimed much too loudly, “What?” Yes, I think I crowed that “What?” like a fourteen-year-old whose voice is cracking.

“That’s how it is,” she said, “if someone’s a little more interesting than the rest.” She used her thumb to lift the top of a sandwich and remarked that even after thirty years, it still hadn’t registered with Mother that she didn’t like blood sausage.

“Those idiots,” I said.

“Why idiots?” Vera asked, tossing a pigeon some bread.

“What else would you call them,” I said. Vera smiled — and fed pigeons, as if that had been the point of our coming here. The blood sausage hung like a tongue from between the slices of bread and finally landed at her feet.

“Maybe they are idiots,” Vera said, “but they do exist and nothing is going to change that soon.”

The train pulled in with no announcement on the loudspeakers. While the others stormed their cars, Vera distributed the rest of the bread. “But it’s possible to talk with these idiots,” she said. “Do you have anything else to say in that regard?”

I felt a need to sit down or, better yet, lie down. I almost said, “That’s for you to decide.” Instead of asking Vera the reason for her comments, I said nothing, which was perhaps the worst thing to do. I stared at the black platform and at the pigeons battling for bread as they hopped over each other, beating their wings. From the corner of my eye I could see Vera successfully unsnap her purse with her pinkie and pull out a brown-and-white-checked handkerchief, one of the perfectly ironed huge ones that had belonged to our father and always smelled of the drawer they were kept in. She calmly wiped her hands. Appetites whetted by the bread, the pigeons waddled around pecking at anything, even cigarette butts.

Suddenly Vera was holding the yellow imitation-leather silverware pouch that I had had to make in shop class, my gift to her at her Youth Consecration ceremony. “Here,” she said, “this is what’s left of my fortune.” The pouch was stuffed with currency.

Vera had halted in front of a car door. She kissed me first on the cheek, then on the lips. I handed her her traveling bag, and she climbed aboard — she was the last, I think.

The people in the aisle pressed against the windows to let her by. I accompanied Vera from window to window. I saw Vera light a cigarette right below the NO SMOKING sign. She held up the pack, Mother’s Duetts. Then the doors closed, which unleashed a new battle for places at the windows.

Whenever our eyes met, Vera smiled.

Without any announcement or whistle, the train suddenly lurched and began to pull out. The outcry along the platform was deafening. Anyone who could reached for a hand extended from a window. Even Vera allowed herself to be caught up in the hysteria. I saw her hand in the upper corner of the window, as if she wanted to give me the last half of her cigarette. She pressed her lips tight and shook her head, until I could see her no more.

Far too many people ran after the train in order to hold the hand they were grasping for a few more seconds. As idiotic as I found it all, what a grand spectacle it was when all those hands let go simultaneously.

From the end of the platform a wave of faces reddened from crying washed toward me. One woman threw her arms around my neck and was then tugged away. The last car thundered past, and in the next second each of us was all by himself — low voices, just an occasional sob. We left the platform one by one, as if observing some previous agreement.

I walked along the Elbe, following the shore upriver as far as the Blue Wonder Bridge, and headed up the slope, all the way to the grand villa with its circular flower beds.

Franziska opened the door as if she were expecting me. Her greeting was as warm, even fervent, as I used to dream it would be. From the cellar I could hear the music of Johann’s band, just a couple of bars that kept breaking off at the same spot. “All they ever do is argue,” Franziska said. I said nothing yet, because I could hear singing now. I understood hardly anything, and the singer — it wasn’t Johann’s voice — soon fell silent again as well. How I suddenly detested this riffraff, these church mice who never took a risk. What difference did it make what faith you sanctimoniously pretended to believe, or where you pretended it? Would Johann have been permitted to study theology if he had admitted he was an unbeliever? My revulsion surprised even me. Instead of bidding her an immediate good-bye, I followed her upstairs. The light went out on the landing of the stairs leading to their attic apartment. Franziska came back down to grope for the switch, or so I thought. By the glow of the streetlamp I could still see Franziska shove her glasses up into her hair, felt her press against me — and we kissed.

We barely budged the whole time, but the hardwood floor under our feet creaked now and then. Of course I had noticed Franziska had had a little to drink. But it wasn’t clear to me that she was completely drunk until she suddenly slumped and I was unable to keep her from slipping to the floor. I tried to sit her down on a step, and she almost fell off. Franziska held me tight. “It’s true, isn’t it,” she whispered, “you do love me, don’t you?” I said I did. 231