Ingo Schulze - New Lives

We turned left, in the direction of the Central Station. People in cars that weren’t going anywhere now sat as if frozen in place, fear in their fixed stares. There was not a squad car, not even a policeman in sight — except for one policeman who stood legs astraddle in a side street, as if he wanted for once to get a good look at the demonstration for himself. After two or three hundred yards we turned around to look. As you perhaps recall the street falls away from the station at a slight slope. Michaela burst with joy and hugged me, the seal shouted, “Crazy, crazy!” The whole city seemed to be one huge demonstration.

All of a sudden the seal bellowed, “Join with us! Join with us!” At the second shout he raised his arm and chanted it with a balled-up fist as if threatening the people in a restaurant who had come to the window and were waving. “Join with us!” he roared, and Michaela chimed in the third or fourth time. Then they switched to “Gorby, Gorby!” It was awful. The two of them were making such a racket that conversations died away and people had no choice but to pick up the chant.

Michaela turned to me as if to say, “See, this is how it’s done!”

Whenever the seal paused, Michaela would tell more about Thea. Without complaint she accepted his interrupting her midsentence to break into the “International.”

We walked beneath the pedestrian bridge, thronged with people, and found ourselves at the vast open intersection on the other side, which was now completely empty. It was fun to be able to walk in the middle of the street. But at that same moment I saw helmets and shields, maybe three hundred yards ahead. We halted. The seal enlightened us by explaining that this was the “Round Corner,” the State Security building.

As we had at the pedestrian stoplight, we waited for people to move up behind us, for the demonstrating crowd to grow denser. It was at this intersection that for the first time I heard the chant “We are the people” ( Wir sind das Volk, which in local Saxon sounded something like: Meer zinn das Foulg ), which at the time I took to be an answer to the letter to the editor submitted by the Geifert cadre. 303

At the Round Corner — not a single window was lit — I now realized how small the cluster of uniformed men huddled shield to shield at the entrance really was. To my eyes these hoplites looked like horses shying and prancing in place. 304In an attempt to calm them down, a row of demonstrators had formed opposite the shielded forces. Joining hands they watched as other demonstrators set lighted candles on the pavement at their feet.

Suddenly the seal vanished from our side and forged his way into the human chain opposite the men in uniform. As he did he glanced now left, now right, as if making sure all the others would bow simultaneously with him for the final applause. Instead of moving on and leaving him standing there, Michaela stepped in front of him. Caught up in the thrill of his new role, however, he now ignored her.

Michaela and I trudged in silence past St. Thomas Church, until we arrived at the New Rathaus.

I was amazed by the jubilation all around us. To me it felt more like we had ended up in nowhere. So what now? Another wide turn and back to the Gewandhaus?

Michaela wanted to stay. I kept walking straight ahead toward our car. She had no choice but to follow me. What did I have against ***, she cried, and why in the world was my nose out of joint? She had never told me anything about him, I said. There wasn’t anything to tell, she said, they had met only once in the canteen of the Berliner Ensemble, Thea had introduced them to each other. I said I didn’t believe her…I just didn’t want to admit, she interrupted, that this was perfectly normal for theater people, that they were all one big family and a greeting like that didn’t mean anything at all. Maybe so, I said; she had, in any case, acted as if I didn’t exist.

We didn’t speak the whole ride back.

When I unlocked the door, I at first assumed Aunt Trockel had arrived, but it was my mother who was having supper with Robert. I expected her to upbraid us for our foolishness and having left Robert all alone. But that didn’t seem to bother her. She had just wanted to look in on us, she said and, cocking her head to one side, listened now to Michaela as if this were all about her latest premiere. But when I went to fetch the key, Aunt Trockel wanted a full report. I owed it to her, after all, she had already packed her things. It sounded like a reproach, as if she had been robbed of a trip, of an adventure.

Your Enrico T.

Dear Jo,

I promised you a job, and I’m going to keep my promise, for purely selfish reasons. But I need a couple of days yet, maybe even a week or two, to have a clear picture of it all. I don’t know what’s been going on behind my back for the last few days. Out of the blue, things have taken the nastiest possible turn for the worse. The atmosphere has changed so completely that I can hardly breathe.

I start each morning with the best intentions, but then, with every unreturned greeting, every evaded eye contact, every comment just left hanging in the air, I find myself turning more and more into the shifty character people take me for.

Maybe I should have gone at things with a little more tact. But I don’t like that kind of finagling. Maybe I should have waited, biding my time just with Jörg. But he knew exactly how to prevent that. He and Marion love to play the happy, inseparable couple.

I had asked them what they thought of my worksheet, of my calculations for a free paper financed by ads. Jörg’s jaw literally dropped when he looked up at me. “It’s easy to put stuff on paper,” he said. Marion had buried herself in her work as I stepped in. He hadn’t given up a career as an engineer, Jörg said, to run some fish wrap.

You need to know, Jo, that I don’t want to do a free paper for its own sake, but as a backup, a moneymaking machine, to relieve the Weekly of its burden of ads — but without our losing our advertisers. We have to make the most of our resources, use the structure at hand, just as we did with the city maps or want to do with trips for subscribers, which I’m working on with Cornelia. What I said to Jörg was, “We really both want the same thing!”

“Every respectable newspaper has a chance,” he replied, “if it concentrates on the essentials.” As soon as we started printing in Gera, the paper would be able to take on enough ads without neglecting content. And with that we’d have everything we needed.

I tried to make it clear to him that the one didn’t exclude the other, that we would have to occupy positions before other people could lay claim to them. I’m with Barrista on that — he bends down to pick up coins he finds on the street.

I could set up a free paper on my own, Jörg said, since what I had written up to this point was more suited for that sort of thing anyway. Marion laughed, but didn’t look up — as if she had just read something funny.

I swallowed that too. It was our duty, I said, to make use of any and every possibility in our attempt to protect the newspaper — not only in our own interest, but in our employees’ interest too. I didn’t want anything more than his simple approval to give it a try. “And if it goes bottom up, what then?” he asked.

In that same moment Marion turned around and told Jörg she really couldn’t understand why he was even discussing this with me. He and she didn’t want to do it, and that was surely reason enough. “And if he doesn’t like it, he can give us back his share.” 305

Ah, Jo, I stood there like a stupid little boy. Jörg at least had looked at me when uttering such monstrous things, whereas Marion didn’t think that was even necessary.