Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Instead of registering each detail, each vibration, I felt less and less. All the same I was convinced I was experiencing a historical moment. Even if the partylike mood were to vanish in the next moment — the square would be easy to block off — this nevertheless would have been the biggest protest since 1953. People would soon recall October 2nd in much the same way they remembered June 17th.

As the crowd pressed tighter together in the twilight, the chants spread more quickly.

I was prepared to acknowledge and admire as our alpha animals those at the epicenter who invented and struck up chants. But did they truly believe they could change things?

The call of “Sanction New Forum” was a little work of metrical art, whose last three syllables pounded like a fist against a door. It touched me in some unique way, as if those squawkers were fighting for me, for legalizing my membership. The chorus’s chants bounced off the facades. It took people on the periphery a while to notice that those at the center had fallen silent or struck up a new slogan. “Sanction New Forum!” Patrick’s friend bellowed directly beside us. I admit — I felt embarrassed. Although he had done his part, I could not bring myself to utter something like that.

In the same moment they shouted their first “Let’s move out!” I thought I heard the trample of boots — it was just a flock of pigeons taking off from a roof. I would have loved to move out — the people nearest me had already taken up the chant — but we were stuck in the middle of it all. And in the next moment Ellen and Patrick had vanished without a trace.

Inside the pedestrian zone there was almost no way to tell where the demonstration ended and everyday life began. It was equally unclear in what direction the demonstration was going to move.

Hoping to find Patrick and Ellen again, I pressed up against a display window. And only then did it finally hit me: this is a demonstration, people are demonstrating here. I only needed to take a couple of steps forward and then keep putting one foot in front of the other. So it’s that easy to take part in an illegal demonstration, I thought.

I can no longer say how we made it to the train station, whether we had veered off before we got to the opera or not until Ring Strasse itself. Later images are superimposed on earlier ones. I can still see us with buildings on either side, in front of display windows, making us look like a second demonstration waiting to merge with the main column. A banner that when folded up was no bigger than a switchyard flag was passed along over our heads. “Travel Visa to Pisa.” I saw this as a clever way to smudge the fingerprints left on the sticks. Just as it was my turn to reach out my arm and grab one end of it, the cry of “Gorby, Gorby” swept over us in chorus. I looked at my feet and hoped that that one would soon be over.

I had to talk myself into walking out onto the streetcar tracks. All trams had been halted. One driver had crossed his arms and with a blank expression was staring directly down at me. “Join with us!” 282was the next chant. People in the lighted car pressed their foreheads to the windowpanes, watching us as if we were characters in some boring movie. “Join with us!” It’s hardly likely you would recognize the song — we’d had to sing it in music class — and the refrain goes, “So left, two, three, so left, two three / Find your place, good comrades / Join with us in the Workers’ Front / Cause you’re a working man too!” That’s where it had come from, this “Join with us!” of theirs. Banal, isn’t it? 283

Then came the cordon of special-alert police. I showed you the spot where they blocked the street. I instinctively moved toward the side. To me it looked like an all-too-obvious “step-into-our-trap.” The crowd marched straight ahead, pushing its front rows practically into the arms of the cordon. And all of a sudden — just like in the square in front of St. Nicholas Church, which they never should have let us leave — the whole scene could be taken in with one sweeping glance. They were sure to correct their mistake now.

On a high curb to my left stood a frail elderly woman with arms crooked at the elbows, half ballerina, half supplicant. The reason for her pose became clear to me only after I noticed she was holding leashes, at the ends of which two poodles were leaping about excitedly.

Written in lights above a new building that worked like an extension of the blockade was the announcement: “Bienvenue,” “Welcome,” “Dobro poshalovat” —greetings from another time when there were more pleasant things to do than stand in the street with thousands of others, shouting slogans until you were hoarse and waiting for backup units of the special alert police. There were hardly any lights in the windows. Were the people inside standing behind drawn curtains, sitting at their evening meal, or in front of a television? I envied them. The Astoria, the train station — their lighted billboards worked like the backdrop to some familiar play against which a new sketch was being rehearsed between performances.

To this day I still don’t actually know why we just stood there, why we didn’t move around the cordon or set off in a totally different direction. Weren’t we demonstrators just asking the powers of the state to encircle us? Or had our little stroll first found its meaning in this row of uniformed men?

I had seen and heard enough. I took my first steps in the direction of freedom, when at my back the cry went up, “Shame on you! Shame on you!” The third “Shame on you!”—yes, I was ashamed of such a childish chant — was earsplitting and drove the poodles crazy. They barked and got tangled up in their leashes. Suddenly one jumped at me, I could feel its claws through my pants. The woman didn’t react. She even let the leash out as I pulled back, and brazenly stared me in the face. Her mustache was especially thick at the corners of her mouth. The woman turned away only as the “Shame on you!” began to ebb. She had a limp, the poodles obediently followed her — by some miracle their leashes had untangled themselves.

If I was going to stay, at least I wanted to see something, and so I tried to press as far to the front as I could. People were helpful, calling out to those ahead by name or tapping them on the shoulder. I moved very slowly, trying not to upset anyone, especially after a man, almost still a boy, cringed and fell silent in the middle of his chant.

When I finally saw the cordon of uniformed men linked arm in arm directly before me — as far as I could tell they were unarmed — I couldn’t understand why we had let them stop us. They were ciphers compared to us. The faces under their billed caps lay in shadows. It was difficult to make out any expression.

In the narrow corridor that separated demonstrators and police three young women were running back and forth — or better, pubescent girls. Two of them blew a bubble, both at once, then smacked away at their gum with open mouths and laughed defiantly — they wanted everyone to see what fun they were having. In their white-splattered jeans they came across as both vulgar and charming. Why were they being allowed to carry on like that? And apart from me they appeared to be the only ones not joining in the chants.

Then the girls came to a halt in an almost classic contrapposto, hands on hips or an arm thrown around a girlfriend’s shoulder, and pretended to strike up a chat with someone they knew in the cordon.

I missed the crucial move. You’ll say I’m fantasizing, but I did hear the silence that announced the deed. It was like a great pause, the kind we know from nature, that moment when day and night collide and all creation falls silent for a few heartbeats. The silence caused me to look around — people were looking up, something was whirling above our heads — the cap fell with a smack! as its bill struck the asphalt, tipped over, and lay there upside down not five feet from me. Before I could decipher the name on it, one of the girls grabbed the cap and flung it over her shoulder high into the air again.