Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Georg and Jörg said nothing. But at least Georg knew enough to ask just what sort of advertising was involved. Steen’s double chin went back into action, but then quickly settled down. “Air Research Technologies,” he exclaimed, “what else? Full page!” Georg began one sentence, then another, then the next and one more without finishing any of them. “Twelve pages to start with, need every column, an ad no one will understand, just twelve pages, sub-tabloid format, isn’t much, and if you, and Air Research Technologies, just getting a handle on it, in the Altenburg area, a whole page, why a whole page?”

“What’s he talking about?” Steen cried, turning to Wolfgang.

“That you have to consider…” Jörg said, but then broke off midsentence and cast a glance Steen’s way, but he had vanished behind his menu — we all had one now. Wolfgang took a deep breath…

“A full page costs one thousand two hundred D-marks,” I burst out, as if I had finally calculated costs. Steen’s head reappeared and looked from one of us to another. “One thousand two hundred,” I repeated, and attempted a smile.

“Ahhh,” Steen groaned and threw himself back in his seat. He eyeballed me, which evidently he enjoyed doing.

Jörg gave me a broad wink, as if I were sitting several tables away. Georg stared at his hands. Wolfgang took another audible deep breath. And I had already begun working up my monologue of apology.

Steen said something that sounded like “whaddaya know” or maybe it was “I dunno,” braced himself against the edge of the table, and said these exact words: “I’ll advance you twenty thousand for now, and then we’ll see, agreed?” He stood up halfway and extended a hand first to Georg, then Jörg, then finally me. His tie dangled into an empty wineglass and was still draped over his plate as he sat down. “How do you want it, check or hard currency ?”—the last two words in English. The waitress presented us each a glass half-filled with champagne.

“Well, which is it?” Steen asked.

“Check doesn’t work for us,” Jörg said.

“Hard currency!” Steen stated, and reached for his glass, but stopped short because no one else had budged.

“Cash,” Wolfgang cried, lifting his glass, “hard currency means cash.”

Silence. Jörg said cash was good, very good. At which point Steen’s body raised up a little, his mouth flew open and let loose with a laugh, a laugh that ricocheted off the walls, a laugh unlike any I’ve ever heard in my life. “Cash!” Steen howled when he was finally capable of getting a word out, but now catapulted into another volley of laughter, gasped for breath, swallowed wrong, coughed. “Hard currency!” His double chin shook angrily. By now the laughter had grabbed hold of Wolfgang too.

The longer the outburst lasted, the more tactless I found it. Wolfgang’s laughter began to wane now, and finally he just clamped his eyes tight, as if all the laughter was pressed out of him.

“Cash is very good!” Steen shouted. He swiped a folded handkerchief across his mouth, got up, and walked toward Michaela. She took his arm and he escorted her to the table. They were as incongruous here as a couple dressed for the opera is on a streetcar.

We noticed too late that Steen simply raised his glass to toast, whereas we all touched glasses soundlessly. I emptied my glass in one chug. My life force was gradually returning. Contrary to my initial impression, the flowers on the table were real.

The venison was served with spätzle and an incredible sauce. Steen also topped off each forkful with some kind of marmalade. The starter was broccoli soup (they showed us a raw stalk, sort of like cauliflower, but dark green). As if everything else had now been settled, Steen spent the whole time instructing us about food, but then disappeared with a hasty good-bye shortly before dessert — a dark Italian cake, soft and moist and creamy. 27

I don’t know when I last saw Michaela look as beautiful and at ease as she did during the meal. When we got up from the table she asked what Herr Steen had been laughing so hard about, and Georg replied that he wasn’t certain of the reason himself. But Herr Steen had every intention of handing over twenty thousand D-marks to us. Twenty thousand D-marks, Michaela responded, bought a lot of uncertainty.

We were supposed to be in Offenburg by five. We had lain down for a little nap, but when we arrived the delegation from Altenburg was just climbing off the bus. The Offenburgers were annoyed that they couldn’t spot anyone in charge of the expectant throng. Their tall, well-tanned mayor shook every hand, and despite his height kept standing on tiptoe as if afraid he had overlooked someone. Just as Steen had done, he offered Michaela his arm and led her into the town hall, where he took us on a kind of tour. He made a point of always letting Michaela precede him into each room.

We admired the cream-colored carpets, the computers, the desks, the push-button phones, and we took turns lounging in the mayor’s plush desk chair. The finale was marked by toasts with champagne, the snacks disappeared quickly.

A small elegant man in a yellow sweater sidled up to me as if just by chance, and after a while asked me whether I could explain something to him. Thanking me for my help, he described his problem. Every day ten to twenty little packages arrived for him from Altenburg, each containing a deck of skat cards with a nude female color photo on the back. These people wanted him to provide them other addresses in Offenburg. He stared at me. And what exactly was his question, I wanted to know. He hooked a finger inside his the collar of his sweater, gazed at me a moment longer, thanked me, and then departed as inconspicuously as he had arrived.

Receptions had been planned for those of us in the press to meet with the various political parties, with the exception of the Free Democrats (which has only five members, but does have a seat on the town council).

Michaela wanted to visit the Greens, Jörg was already assigned to the Socialists, and that left the Christian Democrats for Georg.

None of us had any idea what a mistake we were making.

Michaela and I proved a disappointment for the Greens in any case. After we had introduced ourselves and asked for an ashtray, they began to go around the room with their introductions. Whoever had the floor looked directly at us, while the others chatted and giggled. Michaela started off jotting down their names and various activities, but she stopped when someone asked her why she needed to do that. I asked what CI meant, because they were constantly talking about CIs (citizens’ initiatives), and about “collecting toads.” Most of them said, “I’m in the CI for airport noise and collect toads.” I asked the woman beside me what toads meant. She didn’t understand. Suddenly, however, she shrieked, “Guess what Enrico thinks toad collecting is?”

In the minor uproar that followed one very beautiful woman who spoke in the singsong cadence of her native Swabia stood out above all the rest. “They’ve blown their cover now! They’ve blown their cover now.”

Michaela bravely came to my aid. She had made the same association — toads was a common enough slang term for money. She herself had used it often.

But in fact they did collect these animals and carried them across highways. Toad tunnels were already being constructed.

The beautiful woman wanted to know why no one from the Library on the Environment or the civil rights movement had come with us, but before we could answer, she declared, “Those guys are all just the old bigwigs.” Michaela spoke about her klartext, and I could sense how much she would have liked to talk about Leipzig and all the rest, if only someone had asked her. “We’re not part of the official delegation,” she exclaimed. “We’re not part of them!” The environment would be given a lot of attention in our new newspaper, I said. It somehow sounded feeble, and hardly anyone was listening anyway. At the end we sat drinking mineral water with a married couple who told us all about their trip to Weisswasser and Karl-Marx-Stadt. We were hungry.