Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Her face was like a miniature portrait, hung at the far end of the world, but in perfect focus. I saw it all at once: the cap rotating on its axis, the head of a black-haired lad, the motion of the girl, and the witnesses frozen in place. What bewildered me most was the bare head, the black hair plastered to it, the forehead with white welts 284cut across it.

And now the second girl fished with one hand for the cap of a tall fellow and instantly tossed it into the air. Her other hand was casually thrust into her jeans pocket. This time the cap landed behind me. I picked it up. “Jürgen Salwitzky” 285was printed on the slip of paper under a plastic strip. The first cheers came now from the rear. Jürgen Salwitzky — he too with welts across his forehead — watched his cap go flying again. Before I could give it back to him, it had been wrenched from my hand like booty to which I was not entitled.

The jubilation that greeted each flying cap competed with cries of “No violence!” I couldn’t understand what the uniformed men were waiting for. What still had to happen?

The third girl twirled a billed cap around and around on her head.

Jürgen Salwitzky and his two bareheaded comrades now looked like the prisoners of the men in caps to their right and left.

The chants of “No violence!” had died away. The demonstrators wanted to see more caps, and a few brave souls snapped up a trophy. It was easy game. With their arms linked the only thing the uniformed men could do was throw their heads back and stare at the bandit’s hand with a mixture of rage and fear.

But people had grown used to all this. Which was why it came as a relief when a young fellow climbed up on something and gave a brief speech. We shouldn’t let ourselves be provoked, but go home now, and return next Monday, each of us bringing a friend, a colleague, a neighbor along. We had achieved a victory today, a victory that we could be proud of. The applause was sparse.

He waited, as if he intended to resume his speech or answer questions, but since nothing occurred either to him or anyone else, he vanished again into the crowd.

How easily I could have taken on that same role. But I would have said something quite different. My speech of indictment and rebellion had been lying at the ready inside me for years. A little courage, a bit of climbing skill, would have sufficed to accomplish something historical at such a moment.

I was among the first to leave, and saw how small the world of the demonstrators was, how few strides it took to return to familiar scenery, to the old play of which we had grown so fond. 286

I got home shortly after nine. Robert had been waiting for Michaela, not me. At any rate his door closed again before I had caught sight of him. Michaela could hardly conceal her disappointment at my report, which ended up pallid and monosyllabic, as if I had been the one who played hooky. She may well have secretly doubted I had even been in Leipzig.

As I lay in bed I couldn’t help thinking about what we had been taught in school, about how the workers in the GDR didn’t need to strike or demonstrate, because anyone who took to the streets in a socialist state was ultimately demonstrating against himself. That turn of phrase was a perfect description of my situation. As a writer, that was exactly what I was doing. I was demonstrating for the end of my material, my theme. I don’t think I need to explain that any further to you. What was I, as a writer, going to do without a wall?

Fondly as always,

Your Enrico

Friday, May 25, ’90

Dear Nicoletta,

At the time I found it difficult to talk about those hours I had spent in Leipzig, but what was already in the past was no longer of interest to anyone else either. Michaela, who barely tolerated someone in the hall when she was sitting on the toilet, now began to leave the door ajar so she could still listen to the radio. We bought another radio when the border to Czechoslovakia was sealed. 287I had been expecting the trap to snap shut, but not before October 7th. Michaela was triumphant — the bankruptcy could not become more obvious, the opposing fronts more clearly marked. Her greatest disdain was for those who only now gave vent to their criticism and outrage.

It wasn’t easy to find words to counter Michaela’s euphoria. Without the windbreak of October 7th, I said, people could never have pushed things this far. The demonstrators had had a nose for the few days when they could count on easy treatment. The upcoming anniversary was the only possible explanation for such restraint. But now, earlier than I had expected, the game of cat and mouse had begun. Step by step, bit by bit, the end was drawing near.

I asked Michaela to hold back. Within ten days at the latest we’d be living under martial law. Or did she perhaps believe they would be impressed by our slogans and abdicate voluntarily? Why else did she suppose they had their State Security, their police, special forces, army?

My arguments seemed to me so cogent that ultimately it wasn’t just Michaela who was daunted by them, I was afraid myself.

And yet, my dear Nicoletta, that is at best only half the truth. These letters will not have been in vain only if you believe me when I say that above all else I felt a sense of relief, even a certain cheerfulness.

I would like nothing better than to break off my confession at this point. But my descent has not yet come to an end.

I had hardly anything to do at the theater and so I often sat in on the Nestroy rehearsals. Michaela was playing, as I noted before, Frau Eberhard Ultra. Ultimately it was no longer a role. Day by day she was playing herself more and more.

A description of those rehearsals would more than suffice to characterize the period. It would serve as a kind of chronicle, even without ingredients like demonstrations and police deployments: from the initial discussions of May and June, when Norbert Maria Richter had still regarded the piece as a kind of lampoon of functionaries and their revolutionary blather, to the excitement of early September, when the concept was to stage the idea that revolution is possible, on into October, when the production grew triter and triter with each passing day, because the street was always a good two steps ahead of the stage, until the point when — but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Michaela couldn’t be talked out of traveling to Berlin that Saturday, 288just as she did every year, for Thea’s birthday. I thought it was absurd for us to be separated on the very weekend when the die would be cast. She couldn’t turn Thea down, and they needed to stay in contact, especially now. Besides which, I was invited too. Even though she really didn’t want me to come along. Robert and I took her to the train on Saturday. She leaned out the window and waved, as if saying good-bye for weeks. Then I delivered Robert to Michaela’s mother in Torgau, where he was to spend the night.

On the way back I was able to gas up in Borna without a long wait. Once home, however, being all alone felt like unhappiness weighing down on me. I drove to the autobahn on-ramp, from there it was only sixty-five miles to Dresden.

Do you remember the trains carrying the refugees from the Prague embassy? I heard on the news that there had been scenes of tumult at the Dresden Central Station. Everyone who wanted out had tried to get to those trains.

I had last spoken with my mother on Wednesday, and it had sounded as if she was too frightened or cautious to talk about any of it on the clinic telephone.

On October 7th, however, it was all about Berlin and Gorbachev and what would happen on Monday in Leipzig. While I drove I listened to early music, some famous Neapolitan whose name I didn’t really try to remember, but even Bach reworked some of his stuff. 289Listening to the arias and duets a sense of calm came over me for the first time in months, as if these chords were setting the world and me as well back on a familiar track. But that mood didn’t last long.