Ingo Schulze - New Lives

I got lost on the way back, and it was almost eleven before we found the Hotel Sonne. Jörg came storming toward us.

“What a screwup!” he shouted. “A total screwup!”

Dressed in suit and tie, Wolfgang sat enthroned in the lobby. Like a drunken Bacchus, he dangled limp arms over the armrests of his chair, his crown of hair stood straight up.

“And where were you?” he barked at us, and his arms took on life again, paddled at the air, found their way to the armrests. It looked as if he might stand up, his eyes bugged out — then he sank back again. As he closed his eyes I was afraid he was going to cry.

“They didn’t even offer us anything to eat,” Michaela protested. Jörg kept rubbing his eyes and forehead. Georg paced back and forth on his long legs, his upper body as lopsided as a jockey’s.

Jan Steen had spent the whole evening waiting for us in a “fancy restaurant” up in the Black Forest. Wolfgang had tried every twenty minutes to phone us. Around ten o’clock Steen had angrily tossed his napkin on his plate and driven home. Heaven only knew if we would ever see the man again.

“But how were we supposed to know that?” Michaela asked. “Nobody knew about it!” Jörg shouted. “Nobody, nobody, nobody!” Instead of responding to the question, Wolfgang spoke oracularly about the one that got away, the really big fish that got away. The phrase gave him some kind of grim pleasure, in fact he seemed to console himself with it, because we didn’t hear him utter anything but that phrase for the rest of the night.

Jörg and Georg sat on our beds. We peeled our eggs over the cloth on the nightstand. Our one luxury consisted of trading the sandwiches we had fixed the night before. Plus cold tea drunk from the cap of the thermos.

We were now the same people who had climbed into a Wartburg in Altenburg before dawn. What lay between that long-ago morning and our evening repast was merely a strange dream.

Michaela suddenly stopped chewing. “This may well be our breakfast,” she said, putting her nibbled sandwich back on the table. “And who’s going to pay for our rooms now?” Between us we had just under seventy D-marks. Georg tried to set our minds at ease. But then he was the only one who had eaten. The saddest part, as Michaela saw it, was that Steen had been waiting for us in a fancy restaurant.

The next morning we were actually awakened by the crow of a rooster.

Later on, we each double-checked to make sure that the breakfast buffet was included in the price and that two nights had been paid for in advance. We didn’t run into Wolfgang in the dining room, and he wasn’t in his room either. We were, so to speak, hanging around paradise with pink slips in hand. Michaela arm in arm with the mayor adorned the front page of the local paper.

The second day passed without fanfare and included visits to the hospital and the daily paper that has a monopoly here. We saw nothing of Burda Publishing. Jörg was interviewed on the radio. In the evening the newspaper czarina held a dinner for us. During the two hours of “exchanging views” we took turns stealing off to place a call to the Hotel Sonne, prepared to cut out on a moment’s notice.

The czarina — as far as I’m aware, the first millionaire I’ve ever seen — had, wouldn’t you know, grayish blue eyes, black hair, and skin like milk. Over dessert she offered to supply us with printers, computers, and everything else we might need for a newspaper.

“So you want to hire us?” Georg asked. The czarina unfolded her slender hands in a gesture that was intended to say: You heard me right.

Jörg explained to her that our first issue would be coming out in three weeks. The czarina’s eyes grew ever narrower, and her smile took on a dreamy look.

“We belong to us, so to speak,” Georg summarized in an apologetic voice.

“That’s a shame,” she said, “really a great shame.” For a moment I had the feeling we were making a mistake.

The next morning Wolfgang pounded on our door. “He’s downstairs waiting. He doesn’t have much time.”

Steen was in a splendid mood. His remarks kept Wolfgang in smiles the whole time. I was just launching into my speech about a big misunderstanding, when Steen cried, “Open wide!” He held a fork under my nose, expecting me to take a bite. It was just bacon, but was it ever good! Steen placed an order for me. Jörg and Georg likewise opened wide.

Michaela, who had wriggled into her old jeans, was the last to arrive. Steen obliged by following her every step, but his old enthusiasm had faded. Nevertheless he acted as if we had all spent the last two days together amusing ourselves. He waxed enthusiastic about the Black Forest, about Basel and Strasbourg, only out of the clear blue sky to urge us to buy German cars. For him anything else was out of the question. It was his way of helping the economy circulate. Anyone who wanted to do well had to make sure others did well too. I’m doing a poor job of recapping here. He said it better. Far more important was his tone of voice. Steen is full of self-confidence, confident that he has an honest relationship with the world, ready to render a full account of his deeds at any time.

Once again he kept his good-byes brief. He wished us a good trip, kissed Michaela on both cheeks, and vanished.

We shouldn’t make such long faces, Michaela hissed. Wolfgang hadn’t budged the whole time, and his good-bye to Steen had been just a nod. He wasn’t in any hurry after that either. He pulled up closer to the table, gave his lighter a click, and lit a cigarette. He noisily slurped his coffee. I already suspected he had been assigned to tell us something. No one had dared blame him for yesterday evening’s screwup. After all, we had him to thank for booking our hotel rooms. Wolfgang shoved his plate to one side, brushed crumbs from the tablecloth, pulled out a couple of sheets of paper, and laid them out in front of him. “Here,” he began without any preliminaries, “are two hundred twenty-six addresses that the newspaper should be sent to. Here are two hundred D-marks for gas and another hundred in expenses for each of you, and here’s…twenty thousand. In addition,” he continued in a monotone, “he left this for you.” He now emptied a cloth bag emblazoned with the same advertising as the lighters, ballpoint pens, notepads, and pencils that cascaded across the plates and cups. “You only have to sign here. ” He shoved the gewgaws aside, laid a paper in front of me, and handed me his pen. I thought it had to do with the hundred D-marks and gas money. So I signed and passed the sheet on. Only when Michaela hesitated did I realize I had signed a receipt for the twenty thousand. “One more can’t hurt,” Jörg said, signed his own name, and passed it on to Georg. In return we received a paper with a series of flourishes that formed the name Jan Steen.

But that still wasn’t the end of it. You remember that old German proverb, don’t you, about how the devil always shits where the piles are biggest? Well, the Offenburg town hall phoned and said that, if we had time, we could stop by — they would like to put a few things together for us, office supplies and such. (Swabians say office “stores.”)

We had a splendid view out over the Rhine valley, all the way to some distant mountains in France. The hills around Offenburg roll gently, most of them unforested on top; the highest peaks of the Black Forest couldn’t be seen from here or were hidden by clouds.

Gläsle was waiting for us outside the town hall. It wasn’t long before our eyes were welling with tears. When it was all over we even hauled away an electric typewriter that we’ve baptized the “green monster.”

Gläsle drove Georg and Jörg to a used-car lot — we want to buy a VW bus — so Michaela and I strolled through town. And because we suddenly had money in our pockets we went shopping — stainless steel pots, as if for our trophy collection.