Ingo Schulze - New Lives

We had no luck this time either. Application forms in hand, Michaela hesitated, looking first at me, then at Robert, and back to me, as if wanting to give us a final chance to stop her from doing something stupid. Or was her point to consecrate the moment in some way, because from now on nothing would be as it had been before? The slips of paper vanished soundlessly into the mailbox.

We hardly talked to one another in the car. On the highway from Leipzig to Borna I felt as if I had finally put something behind me for good. I hadn’t weaseled out, I had signed — and I wouldn’t deny it or take it back — and had sacrificed half a day doing it. I felt as if this justified me to go ahead calmly with my work. Even in the midst of that lunar landscape, even in Espenhain, the gentleness of that autumn was palpable. I thought of the smoke of burning potato plants after the harvest, of hiking the Saubach Valley near Dresden, all the way to the mill with its giant waterwheel, of country roads littered with windfall fruit, leaving you drunk on the scent of overripe apples and plums, on air quivering with wasps. I thought of the first home games at Dynamo Stadium, of the Königstein Fortress and the taste of bockwurst and herbed cider. My Dresden novella reminded me of some favorite book I hadn’t read for a long, long time.

The next day it was Jonas, our general manager, who told me — as if he had just accidentally happened to have been there — about Leipzig. There had been ten thousand people, ten thousand demonstrators! I would gladly have believed his fairy tale that they were all applicants 277—but ten thousand was too many, far too many.

Michaela told me that cameras had been set up on the roof of the Leipzig post office. She repeated everything Max had told her as if to say, “And what were you doing while this was going on? Where were you ?” 278

What I found so ridiculous about the demonstration was its “workaday” quality. One conscientiously does one’s job, then it’s off to demonstrate, but not for too long, because one wishes to report punctually and with renewed energy for work the next morning.

On Wednesday Michaela bought a new radio.

Norbert Maria Richter had scheduled an evening rehearsal for the next Monday. Michaela took this to be an alibi, a pro forma announcement. To judge from Norbert Maria Richter’s behavior and the way he had reacted to Max’s descriptions, the crew could only assume he would be the first to take off for Leipzig. Norbert Maria Richter, however, had no such intention whatever. Michaela called him a shifty bastard. Anything anyone wished to say, Norbert Maria Richter remarked, could best be said onstage. The latitude of the stage was a privilege to be used for the benefit of the audience — a responsibility that must be respected and not cavalierly misused.

Those who would play at rebellion, Petrescu allegedly interposed in best Stanislavsky tradition, could and ought not shirk from studying it. It would be a betrayal of one’s duty as an honest actor not to make full use of this opportunity. Otherwise some lovely day we, the people of the theater, would find ourselves being instructed by the audience as to what rebellion and revolution look like. Norbert Maria Richter spoke of being considerate of those who thought differently about the matter and of how necessary it was at precisely this juncture to maintain discipline and, by good work, demonstrate one’s irreproachability.

Michaela declared she would report in sick. As we listened to the news about the refugees in the Prague embassy, we fell silent, and Michaela made a gesture whose message was: There, you can hear for yourself, we have to go to Leipzig!

Monday noon Michaela appeared in the dramaturgy office. She just wanted to tell us that no one was going to Leipzig. There she stood, Miss Eberhard Ultra, our revolutionary in chief, in her leg and ankle warmers, a scarf flung over her shoulder. “It’s all so absurd,” she said, “I’m so ashamed.”

“Then I’ll go alone,” I said, as if that were the only possible reply.

Of course I had no real desire to. But to have missed the whole thing would have been reprehensible. If there was ever going to be a second demonstration, then it would be on that Monday, the last one before October 7th. 279

No sooner had I said it than Michaela decided she didn’t want me to go. She kept going on about Krenz, about how he had just got back from China — and everybody knew what that meant. 280

They couldn’t just take aim and mow down ten thousand people, I replied, at least not in Leipzig, and they couldn’t arrest them all either. I concluded by telling her I’d leave the car somewhere near Bavaria Station — and handed her the second set of keys.

We said good-bye, and Michaela actually appeared then on the balcony and waved as I drove off.

The sunlight was dazzling, late-summer warmth lay like a heavenly blessing over the day. The landscape in the rearview mirror was the paradise to which — after this final ordeal, filled with countless observations and sensations — I would be returning.

By four o’clock I was in the German Library, where I ordered up a couple of books on Nestroy and found an empty desk in the reading room. The lamp didn’t work, but that didn’t bother me; on the contrary. I was content just to be able to sit here in this asylum, aboard this ark.

Before me lay the script of Freedom in Gotham. When I pushed my sleeve up past my watch, my cold fingers felt like the touch of a stranger.

I figured I would be revealing my intentions if I were to leave at five on the dot. So I had hung on for a few more minutes, asked about the books I’d ordered, and then went to the restroom. Who knew when I’d have another opportunity.

After parking the car near Bavaria Station and stashing my Polish leather briefcase in the trunk, I slung an empty bag around my wrist as if I were going shopping.

At a pedestrian stoplight I ran into Patrick, Norbert Maria Richter’s assistant director. “Playing hooky?” The question just slipped out. He replied like a student caught in the act and avoided my gaze. He introduced the woman beside him as his fiancée, Ellen.

We were walking past the Gewandhaus when I heard the first chanted slogans. I couldn’t make them out. “Stasi raus!” Patrick repeated like someone forced to quote something embarrassing. He couldn’t have said it more softly.

Ellen was free only until seven o’clock. She had a piano lesson in Connewitz 281at eight. The two of them discussed whether — and if so, when — streetcars would be running again. Even if she had to go on foot, Patrick said, a quarter till eight would work, otherwise she’d miss the best part. I figured it was inappropriate to ask what he thought the “best part” was.

I checked out everyone close by, from head to toe. Like an overeager dog, I let my eyes wander from one to the next, because now — it was a little before six, in the vicinity of St. Nicholas Church — there could be no one who was actually here to shop or simply on his way home from work.

Although close to the Krochhaus now, I saw no indication of anything overwhelming, although the chanting of slogans never stopped.

On the square in front of St. Nicholas people were standing shoulder to shoulder. Unable to move ahead, we craned our necks. That was quite enough for me. Ellen, however, was able to twist and wriggle her way through the crowd. People yielded to her as if she were a waitress. She would have made it even farther if Patrick hadn’t run into an acquaintance. Without exchanging names, we shook hands.

I stood on my tiptoes. I don’t even know anymore how I came to recognize the group shouting those outrageous words. Was there more light there? Were their arms raised? I can no longer match the image I still have today with what I saw that day on the square in front of St. Nicholas. All of it — the people, the twilight, the warm air, the underground current that flowed from that group — seems like a dream or a vision to me now.