Ingo Schulze - New Lives

The baron’s concern for our welfare did not prevent him from making a less than decorous attempt to steal Frau Schorba from us. But she swore she would never forget the trust I had placed in her, not for all the money in world.

She visits Käferchen and the old man at the hospital every day. Käferchen has pneumonia or something even worse; she talks as if she’s delirious with fever and babbles on about not knowing where she’s supposed to go now. Frau Schorba tries to talk the old man out of his craziness and hopes she may actually be able to speak my name in his presence soon. Leaving aside her warm heart and her gifts as a secretary, she would make an ideal advertising rep or a good bookkeeper. She’s the most inconspicuous student during computer classes, never interrupts with some silliness, never inattentive.

Andy began our first class two weeks ago by clipping on a little name tag and pulling a telescope ballpoint out to full length. It was as if he were talking to a hundred people. Each answer to his incisive questions was exuberantly affirmed with a “Rishtick, zerr goot!”

In Andy’s eyes we’re all equal, all pupils, and everyone has to take his or her turn in front of the screen — sort of like being called to the blackboard. Pringel is head of the class, has always done his homework, is always eager to give an answer, his childlike face beaming. Jörg has much the same, if not a better grasp of the material, but is calmer, not quite such a grind.

I feel a lot like a paterfamilias, 297who would rather ask for something to be repeated and assume the role of the slow learner so that everyone moves with the class toward our common goal. Marion is inhibited. Some criticism early on in front of the whole class ruined any interest she had, so that willy-nilly she’s at about the same level as Ilona, who never even gave it a try, but enjoys the cooperative spirit of the class collective and sees all criticism and scolding as a kind of special attention. She sits ramrod straight on the edge of her chair so that, whether her answer is right or wrong, she can plop back again with a happy groan—“I’ll never catch on, never, huh?”—luring Andy’s gaze to the hem of her skirt almost every time.

We’re paying Andy a hundred marks an hour — doing a friend a favor, as the baron says, although neither Jörg nor I see it that way. But he did manage after three sessions to get us to the point where we could print out a perfect newspaper page, spread out over two standard letter pages. Quod erat demonstrandum.

We then cut and pasted and stood around gazing at it as if it were the baby Jesus in his manger.

Hugs, Your E.

Thursday, May 31, ’90

Dear Nicoletta,

As long as I was still having dreams that I could remember in the morning, they stood in direct contrast to how I felt. If I was miserable, my brain spun out the most cheerful images. Days that I took to be good ones were often followed by horrible nights.

Early on the morning of October 8th — I was still in Dresden — the doorbell wrenched me out of my paradise. It was my habit to leave the key in the lock. Which explained why my mother couldn’t get in. I unlocked the door — but there was nobody there. I got dressed, went downstairs in my bare feet, found the front door ajar, looked out, nothing. Even today I would swear I heard the doorbell.

Back in bed I tried to find my way back into my dream, back to a table where Vera and I were peeling apples and cutting them in the shape of little boats and then dipping them in honey. But that was only the backdrop. The true joy lay hidden within a world whose logic fell apart on awakening. And yet what was left of it in the other so-called real world was a sense of warmth so palpable that I could actually console myself with it.

I woke the second time to the ringing of Sunday church bells. I found a glass of honey and toasted some stale bread. I went for a hike in the Dresden Heath — I hadn’t walked most of its paths since my school-days — and then around one o’clock drove by way of the Platz der Einheit and Pirnaischer Platz to the Central Station. What the radio and Mario had reported, including any trace of a demonstration the evening before, had vanished like a ghost. A half hour later — I had stopped at Café am Altmarkt, one of Vera’s favorite spots — it looked as if something was brewing on Theater Platz. The Dimitroff Bridge 298had already been closed off. After keeping an eye out for Mario’s turban for a while, I drove home via the Marien Bridge. I wrote my mother a note saying I was sorry we hadn’t been able to go on our outing to Moritzburg. After reading it I almost tore it up again, but then decided I was happy to have put anything to paper.

I never went over sixty on the autobahn, obeyed all other posted speed limits, listened to music, and for fractions of seconds thought I actually had seen Vera the night before.

Robert was waiting for me in Torgau. With a plastic bag in each hand, he ran ahead of me to the car. One contained some pastry, the other a pot secured in several layers of cellophane bags and canning-jar rubbers — stuffed peppers, Robert said, all of it for me. Why for me, I asked. “For all of us,” Robert said, “but especially for you.”

He asked what I had done. Just as I later told Michaela, I said that my friend Johann had sent a telegram asking me to come see him. And so I had driven to Dresden. He asked about my mother, and I said she hadn’t been at home. We drove to the train station.

Michaela got off the train directly in front of me. I could tell from the way she diligently avoided looking at me, from the way she kept brushing her hair behind her ear, and only then finally greeted me, that she was deep into a role, her new Berlin role, which she was now going to perform for us. Robert came running up to her, his backpack bobbing up and down, and even before giving her a hug asked if she wasn’t feeling well — because Michaela’s role now included looking exhausted, even as she summoned what little energy she had left so that we wouldn’t notice her weariness.

The only thing I talked about in the car — and she has held it against me ever since — was the stuffed peppers and the pastry. Months later Michaela accused me of having left her in the lurch and of behaving like a total idiot. Even though she ignored every one of Robert’s questions and just kept repeating that Thea sent her love and said we should definitely come along the next time.

I saw nothing disconcerting in the fact that immediately after we got home she withdrew to the bathroom. I put the pot on the stove, set the table in the living room, Robert spooned the sour cream into a little bowl and lit the candles. And just for us he put Friday Night in San Francisco on the record player. He called Michaela to come join us several times. After I turned the volume down, we could hear her sobbing.

She finally appeared trailing a streamer of toilet paper, as if she needed a whole roll to dry her tears and blow her nose. She opened the balcony window — the odor of food was making her sick to her stomach — collapsed onto the sofa, and pulled Robert to her. She gazed out over his head into some remote distance where she evidently saw what she had been keeping from us.

Before the birthday party was to begin that evening, Thea, Michaela, and Karin (another actor) had spent a couple of hours in Thea’s favorite pub on Stargarder Strasse, not far from Gethsemane Church. They had stayed there until seven o’clock, and Thea had talked about her guest appearances in the West — successful productions that nothing here could compare to. And the audience had been much more spontaneous and open, too. Tipsy not so much from beer as from her stories, they had stepped out onto the street only to be confronted by a phalanx of uniformed, helmeted men armed with shields and truncheons. They turned around, but there was no way to get through in that direction either — Schönhauser Allee had been blocked off at the same point. They walked back and asked the helmeted men to let them pass, they really needed to get home. Thea even showed her ID and said it was her birthday. There was no response. They tried again on the other side of the street. The uniformed men there had neither shields nor helmets.