Ingo Schulze - New Lives

After ringing my mother’s bell and waiting a while, I unlocked the door. As I pulled back the curtain separating the small vestibule from the hallway I smelled the odor of my childhood. The cup in the sink was half filled with water, no traces of lipstick on the rim. Bread crumbs were floating on the plate under it, a dark substance had dried on the knife, liverwurst or plum butter. The pot scrubber was full of grains of rice and stank just a bit.

I walked to the telephone booth and called the clinic. A nurse I didn’t know answered. Judging by the voice, she had to be very young. Frau Türmer wasn’t available at the moment. I asked how long the operation would last. She couldn’t say. I asked her to tell my mother that I would see her at the clinic. At first I thought the nurse had hung up, but then I learned my mother wasn’t on duty this weekend, and so wasn’t even at the clinic.

I called Geronimo. His line was busy. I called Thea. One of her little girls picked up the receiver, but before I could say a word, she shouted, “Nobody home!” and hung up. Geronimo was still on the phone. I walked to the little round bastion in the park with its monument to Theodor Körner, and then tried a third time, again with no luck.

When I got back home lights were on in the living room. I stormed up the stairs, unlocked the door, gave a shout, ran to the living room, where I stood for a while listening to the tick of the wall clock and finally turned off the light. I walked from room to room, made a second round, turned on the heat, and finally sat down in the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry, but didn’t know what else to do at the moment than to fix myself something to eat. The bread was stale, and what few things I found in the refrigerator I put back after standing there holding each one in my hand for a while. With my tea I ate one section after the other of some West chocolate I’d found in the butter compartment.

You will ask why I expect you to read such trivia. Of course none of these details are important, but the early music, the familiar four walls, and my mother’s absence had turned me into a child again. I drove off to see Francisca and Geronimo.

There was no mention of Dresden in the news on the car radio, at least nothing from which you could draw any conclusion about what was happening at the moment. On the far side of Dr. Kurt Fischer Platz 290I could see streetcars a quarter mile ahead backed up as far as the Platz der Einheit. 291

I turned around and took Dr. Kurt Fischer Allee to Bautzner Strasse, 292meaning directly past State Security, decorated with “anniversary lights.” But except for one patrol car that turned just ahead of me, I saw no uniformed personnel.

In order not to awaken Gesine, I threw gravel at a window, over and over, until I heard footsteps in the darkened stairwell. Geronimo appeared at the little pane in the door, opened up, and gave me a hug. But that was his one little burst of joy. “What’s up?”

Just so I wasn’t to be surprised, he whispered on the stairs, he had a visitor.

Geronimo preceded me, the kitchen was empty. He opened the pantry. “It’s Enrico,” he said, and held the door open as if he were presenting me with his Golem. Nothing happened for a few moments. I sat down — and stood right back up again. Because he had to duck to get through the doorway, what I first saw was just a white turban, a bandaged head. And out came Mario, Mario Gädtke, the reddest Red in our class, who had left for the army as if setting out for summer camp. The left half of his face was swollen. We shook hands. “Nice coincidence,” he said, “here we are all together again.” Mario sat down on the sofa and pulled a stationery notepad from under his sweater. I waited for an explanation, including why he had vanished into the pantry at the sound of gravel against the window.

“He’s just been released,” Geronimo said. Mario pursed his lips, the same way he always had.

“Released from where?”

Mario sat there smiling to himself.

“The special alert police,” Geronimo answered for him. They had nabbed him the evening before and hadn’t sent him home until two hours ago.

“He brought that with him,” Geronimo said, pointing to the bandage. Mario raised his head. I asked about Franziska.

“She’s in no danger,” Mario said, and smiled again.

“She’s working on a conference for the Hygiene Museum—‘Bicentennial of the French Revolution,’” Geronimo explained. In such situations only one of them left the house, the other stayed with Gesine. He was about to go on, but Mario had begun to read — so loud that Geronimo got up and closed the kitchen door.

Mario’s report is reprinted in Geronimo’s book, 293naturally with some changes to what I heard that day. In his foreword Geronimo describes how he had barely recognized Mario — he was so badly battered and wearing that head bandage. Mario had drunk one glass of water after another before he was capable of uttering a word. At that moment, Geronimo writes — that is before he learned anything from Mario — the thought crossed his mind for the first time that all this would need to be documented. Then comes a lot of stuff about forgetting and preserving, about guilt and justice and atonement and forgiveness. One gets the impression, moreover, that Mario had come to him because Geronimo was just the man one turns to in an emergency, a rocky refuge in a tempest-tossed sea.

In his description of the evening Geronimo omits my visit. And in fact I said hardly anything. But as you’ll see it would nevertheless have been appropriate to have mentioned me, if only in a minor role.

What Mario read to us sounded at first like an accident report already officially on file, a statement of grievances addressed to whomever. First the date, time (8:15 p.m.), and the statement that he had gone to the Central Station in, he emphasized, “a totally sober state,” plus an enumeration of his “personal effects”: ID, wallet, cigarettes, matches, house key, handkerchief. This list made its way unaltered into the printed version. There it reads: “My goal was personally to witness what truth there was or was not to the reports of friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Near the Central Station and along Prager Strasse several thousand people had gathered. Prager Strasse and especially the area adjoining the Rundkino had been cordoned off by security forces. Several areas had obviously been declared off-limits. A canine unit was posted directly in front of the movie theater. There was no untoward rowdiness that I could see. As nearly as I could ascertain the security forces were made up of units of the special alert police, the transportation police, as well as the National People’s Army. One could hear chants coming from in front of the movie theater, about where the music instrument shop is: ‘Father, no billy club! Brother, no billy club!’ ‘We’re here to stay!’ ‘Nonviolence!’”

I asked if it shouldn’t be “No violence!” but Mario insisted it was “Nonviolence!” Missing in the book is his commentary on “We’re here to stay!” He had thought it necessary to explain that the slogan was meant to set them off from people wanting to leave the GDR and was in no way meant as resistance to a police order to vacate the area.

“A passerby took a picture of the barricade in front of the Exquisite Clothing Shop. In response 2 uniformed men approached him; the passerby attempted to flee, but appeared quickly to resign himself to being grabbed. He was roughly pulled behind the barricade, his camera ripped from his hands. It all happened in double-time. The security forces now advanced, clearing Prager Strasse. Anyone who didn’t run fast enough ahead of them was ruthlessly apprehended. Before each successive phase of their advance, they rhythmically rapped their truncheons against their shields, first slowly, then faster and faster, until they broke into a running charge. This obviously raised the level of fear and dismay among those fleeing before them.”