Ingo Schulze - New Lives

I begged her to inform the chief dramaturge. The outraged gatekeeper laid the receiver down, put a finger to the cradle, and pressed hard. She was well aware of what she had to do, she didn’t need instructions. Besides which, people there would have no more idea of who I was than she did.

“He don’t even know where he wants to go,” she shouted into the receiver once more as two ballerinas came tripping by, “that’s what got me so riled, that’s the problem,” to which I could only keep on replying, “Hoffmann, Hoffmann!”

“Nobody knows you here,” she declared, and set down the receiver. Giving me another once-over, she leaned back in exhaustion and started to thumb through whatever it was that had been lying before her the whole time. It was unclear whether she was going to pursue my case or had already filed me away for good.

“Wait!” she cried out, still turning pages, but as she reached for the receiver again a woman in a white blouse emerged out of the darkness of the stairwell, bounded down the last three steps, and cast me such a friendly glance that I was afraid she had mistaken me for someone else.

“I know who you are,” she said with a smile, linked her arm under mine, and guided me in the direction of the gatekeeper.

“May I introduce you, Frau”—here she inserted the gatekeeper’s name—“to Herr Türmer, our new dramaturge…” This time it took the gatekeeper two tries to get up out of her chair; she extended a hand through the oval hatch in the pane and exclaimed, “Why didn’t he say so right off!” And with that we strode through the portal.

The woman in the white blouse ushered me through a labyrinth of hallways and stairs. Every few feet the odor changed. We passed the ballet room, a canteen, skirted a baroque sandstone stairwell, and stood there in the dark. I heard a key and followed her into a room where light barely seeped through the curtains. The odor was of midday meals.

On the way back we stopped in front of white french doors and listened. Suddenly my guide pressed down the door handle and shoved me inside, just as a piano struck up again.

Who was I, what did I want, who had sent me?…My good fairy had vanished, the director, hardly any older than I and with a haircut that highlighted the back of his head, had interrupted the rehearsal and was paging quickly through the piano reduction.

I gave my name, I repeated my name. I was informed by the director, who went right on paging through the score, that one did not attend a rehearsal uninvited, nor did one interrupt it. One needed to request permission in advance from at least the director, if not the entire ensemble. “In advance!” he repeated and finally stopped turning pages. Had I done that? No, I replied, I had not. It was too late for any excuses for my misconduct. A gentleman kneeling on the floor expressed in a bass voice his outrage at such a disregard for his person. How long was he supposed to keep crawling around, didn’t we people have eyes in our heads. He said “people,” but he had looked only at me.

Over the next five weeks, during which I was allowed to audit Tim Hartmann’s production of Undine, there was little I could do to improve the situation I had got myself into when making my entrance. I made it worse by using formal modes of address. Tim Hartmann took it as an insult that I did not call him Tim like everyone else. Just opening the door to the canteen was awful, leaving the counter with my tray of bockwurst and coffee was awful, taking a seat at an empty table was awful, joining other people at a table was awful. What’s more, I smelled like the kitchen, which was directly under my room.

Every so often the assistant director, a tall, beautiful woman from Berlin, took pity on me. When she stood before me, I realized what might have saved me: something to do.

Although I did like sitting in on rehearsals. At first I thought I needed to say something that would prove my theatrical credentials. I amazed myself at what all occurred to me. At the end of the first week I handed Tim Hartmann a list of suggestions. I hoped in this way to commend myself as a worthy partner in the conversation. At the start of the next week of rehearsals the assistant director asked me to refrain from taking notes from now on.

When there was no evening rehearsal I attended performances, where I sat in one of the first rows with program in hand and tried to memorize the faces of the cast. As if my future depended on it, I devoted great energy, indeed passion, to learning names. Which was why the last week of Undine rehearsals was especially important, because I could now coordinate names and functions even for people who never appeared onstage, but whom I knew by sight. I found it easy to learn names and equally difficult to correct my mistakes. For example I thought the lighting director was the man in charge of painting sets, and took the director of the set workshop for the lighting director.

I considered my audit to have concluded on a conciliatory note when I was assigned to write the press release, which Tim Hartmann then handed out at dress rehearsal, all the while repeating “à la bonne heure.” At the premiere I was even allowed to spit three times over the left shoulder of Undine herself, who had ignored me longer than anyone else.

Tim Hartmann’s production was no thundering success, but the audience applauded until he appeared onstage in a black suit, bowed, and rocked his head back and forth in the hope that everyone would notice his brand-new stub of a ponytail.

At the cast party I was given lots of hugs. I expected a speech from the general manager, a few words about the production and the singers’ fine performances. And I hoped he would also remember his promise to me.

He congratulated Tim Hartmann, shook hands all around the table, and also responded to a few bons mots with a laugh that was almost indistinguishable from a cough. But he refused to sit down and join us. His entourage, recruited mainly from stage actors, but especially from the ballet, were waiting for him two tables down.

I drank and chain-smoked and for the first time felt at home in the canteen. The assistant director introduced me to Antonio, a young Chilean from Berlin. Antonio asked what I thought of the production, which he himself termed a “yawn.” Antonio told me to sit down beside him, and pulled a chair over for me to join the “Jonas” table — he called the general manager by his first name. How easy it all was. Antonio offered me some vodka. Everybody at the table was drinking vodka.

In claiming that marriage and fidelity were unnatural, pointless, and ridiculous, Jonas managed to antagonize most of the women, which didn’t prevent him from plowing right ahead. He kept brushing strands of hair from his face while shifting his gaze from one person to the next. As our eyes met I automatically nodded as if I agreed with him. I was angry at myself for doing it, and all the more so since the actress Claudia Marcks loudly contradicted him, even laughed in his face — which he took half as an offense, half as confirmation of this theory about women.

I admired Claudia Marcks. I had never been able to strike up a conversation with her, I hadn’t even managed to work my way into her vicinity. Everything about her was beautiful and desirable, I especially loved her hands. They led a life of their own, which no one except me seemed to noticed. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to feel the touch of those hands — today, tomorrow, whenever — and then to kiss them. And I was strangely convinced that that hour was no longer all that distant.

I asked Jonah whether he himself believed the stuff he was spouting.

He stared at me with reddened eyes. “Why don’t you just go get laid!” he shouted. “Why don’t you just…” Jonas repeated the sentence two, three times, four times, until the whole canteen had fallen silent.