New Lives (10 page)

When Fred showed up, I took him to task. But he just turned on his heels, leaving both doors wide open behind him—and switched on the light. The vestibule was bathed in previously unknown radiance. Fred claimed he had put in new bulbs yesterday, something everyone but me had noticed…

Here's hoping you at least believe me,

Your E.

Dear Jo,

And now I've typed your name once again, but the man who wrote you that previous letter, the very same man who two and a half days ago walked out on Market Square with bundles of newspapers, seems so strange and childlike to me. Don't expect any epiphanies! It was all terribly secular and ordinary. As I paged through the newspaper that had seemed so faraway and mysterious during proofreading, I was relieved just to find no white spots. It all had to go so fast. The drivers had been sitting around on their hands since Wednesday. The volunteers from
klartext
days had divvied up the Konsum Markets among themselves. The telephone never stopped ringing. I didn't even finish the champagne that Jörg treated us to. Georg gave Robert a conductor's satchel, plus a supply of small change. I slung an old pouch of crackled patent leather around my shoulder, the strap across my chest. Then we hustled off through the drizzle, each with two bundles of 250 copies.

Once at Market Square, near Sporen Strasse, we set down our bundles and massaged our fingers—they were numb and scarred purple from the cords. Five booths were huddled together as if afraid of the expanse of Market Square. A fruit and vegetable vendor took up residence closest to us. The
D-MARKS ONLY
sign hung above these splendors of paradise was as large as it was unnecessary. He called out the names of exotic fruits, but they might just as well have been oriental spices. The truly fabled wares, however, were the tomatoes and cucumbers, the pears and grapes. The few people scattered across Market Square could hardly have been the reason for his ballyhoos. His highly trained voice was the icing on the artificiality of the cake. He could have been trumpeting arias.

I worked at undoing the knots on my bundle, but never let anyone heading our way out of my eye. I expected every one of them to stop and ask whether we were selling that new newspaper, the
Altenburg Weekly.
Robert was staring at my hands. He was already so unsure of himself that it never occurred to him to hand me his pocketknife. But he readily let me drape a sheaf of papers over his forearm. I stood next to him and unfolded the front page with the masthead at eye level.

After several people had walked past us without asking about the paper, I suggested Robert speak to people. He needed to tell them what he had here. But as soon as anyone approached, instead of opening his mouth he stuck his newspaper arm out a little farther like a clumsy waiter. Michaela had told me it was irresponsible to “corrupt him with child labor.” It was too late now to send him away, he would just have to hold out.

I finally had no choice but to show him how it should be done. I left no one out. I fixed my eye on people, smiled, and spoke to them, even those who passed a little farther away did not escape. “Do you know about the new
Altenburg Weekly
?” I shouted. No one stopped, no one bought. They didn't even look at me. That very morning a large article about us had appeared on the regional page of the
LVZ.
⁵¹
Even they thought we were important.

Now and then someone bought a fish sandwich. I don't know how I would have felt if I had been alone. Robert's presence was agony for me.

Suddenly an elderly woman came up, her shopping bag swaying back and forth, and asked us what we had to offer.

“Well now,” she said, eyeing the front page. Her coat was buttoned wrong and hung askew. “Then give me one.” Her arm plunged up to the elbow into her shopping bag. I asked for ninety pfennigs and handed her a newspaper from the middle of the stack. Her index finger poked around in her change until she found a one-mark piece. I dropped a ten-pfennig piece into her outstretched hand. After she had folded the paper and crammed it into her bag, she gazed at me as if trying to make sure just whom she had been dealing with, and then with a loud “good-bye” moved on.

It works, I thought. Just one success had turned me into an addict. I needed more. I handed the mark to Robert.

It wasn't long before I hit the jackpot again. A slim man with smooth black hair held out a mark to me, waved me off as I held out his change, and smiled so affably that his eyes vanished into a tomcat's little angled slits.

With that I lost all inhibition, walked over to two women, and asked them whether they already had their copy of the
Altenburg Weekly,
the new newspaper for the whole region. I fixed my attention on the younger one. Not until I was standing directly in front of her did I notice the countless wrinkles that blurred the traits of her girlish face. She reached for her wallet, when her companion, a woman dressed all in black, barked at me, asking what all this was about. “It's not important!” the woman in black said, interrupting my reply. “Not important!” She slapped the back of her hand against the newspaper and shouted, “Ninety pfennigs? Ninety pfennigs!”

“Ninety pfennigs,” I insisted, and all I had to do in that moment was take the mark from the open palm of the gentler soul.

“It's not important at all. Not important!”

The hand closed slowly, and I stared at the little fist, delicate enough to be porcelain.

Rage and desperation welled up in me.
“Altenburg Weekly!”
I yelled after them.
“Altenburg Weekly!”
I must have been heard as far away as Martin Luther Church.
⁵²

Ah, Jo, you won't understand how I could carry on like that over something so trivial. But suddenly it was all there again—the last six months, the fear, the desperation, the accusations, the theater and its horrors, the horror of my sickroom, my mother, Michaela, Vera, the whole bottomless pit. And Robert standing beside me, who had set his heart on those bundles, all one thousand copies.

Every bit of reticence left me. I don't even know where the rhythm came from that I adopted to proclaim my AL-TEN-BURG-WEEK-LY! I hammered, banged, punched hard each time, aiming at the black core of my dactylic syllables. AL-TEN-BURG-WEEK-LY. I did it for Robert, for myself, for Michaela, for Georg und Jörg, for my mother and Vera, for the town, for the whole region. And after each verse, I breathed more easily. Someone held a two-mark piece under my nose, he actually demanded two copies and no change. And Robert likewise got rid of his first copy. The two of us quickly sold five papers, one after the other. As if trying to make up for what I had failed to do last autumn, I shouted my AL-TEN-BURG-WEEK-LY to the hammer strokes of SANC-TIONNEW-FO-RUM! This was my revolution now.

The fruit vendor evidently took it as a challenge and responded with a sirenlike yowl.

Ten minutes later I picked up two bundles and took up my post across from the Rathaus. From there the market booths looked like the coastline of home. I don't know why—was I exhausted, had I taken a chill, did I miss Robert—at any rate my cries lost their power. After each verse I stopped to watch what was happening.

I changed positions again, this time farther up Market Square, at the corner leading to the Weiber Market. There were more people there. And I could watch Robert extending his arm to hold out newspapers to passersby. I was responsible for this tragedy. It wasn't hard to imagine how his pride at seeing my name in the imprint, his admiration for the art of making a newspaper, how all that was suddenly collapsing. I had always been afraid the whole thing might fail—because of a lack of authorization, poor delivery, or our incompetence. I had never given sales a thought. If I was wrong about something like that, why shouldn't I doubt everything, our entire strategy? What I wanted more than anything was to tell the whole world that we would be bringing the hereditary prince to Altenburg. Yes, suddenly I wanted that strange man, Clemens von Barrista, beside me. I found thinking about him somehow comforting. But I said nothing and let people pass by as if I were invisible. And then…

I had already grown so used to the fruit siren that I didn't even notice at first. But something at any rate was different. It was now shouting
“Weekly!”
No, shouting isn't even close.
“Weeeekly, Weeeekly, Aaaltenburg Weeeekly!”
—it stressed the first syllable, swallowed the second, then ascended from the depths and like a siren blared the A of Altenburg, his mouth stretched wide. And then came the unmistakable imperative: “Buy it, folks, buy it!” followed at once by the equally urgent “Only ninety pfennigs! Ninety pfennigs for the
Aaaltenburg Weeeekly…
” The beginning and end, the A-E, A-E rose into the air above Altenburg Market.

The town began slowly to come alive, as if the cry of the fruit vendor had found its way to both Altenburg North and Southeast.
⁵³

A group of women surrounded me—they all bought and no one wanted change. To lend support, as they put it. One of them recognized me as the Herr Türmer from the theater, who had given that speech in the church.

My luck held. In a few minutes I had disposed of thirty copies. And it just kept up. I only had to hold up the newspaper and, once the fruit siren's
“Weeeekly”
had died away, to repeat the idea, as if explaining to everyone around: Weekly, he means our
Weekly.
And then—at first I thought it was a woman's voice—I realized that a new
“Weeekly! Weeekly!”
was Robert's.

I didn't need to say anything more, from then on people bought all on their own.

By day's end it was so dark that I could barely make out faces. I could give change with my eyes closed, and I stuffed bills into my pants pockets. My feet were ice cold, I couldn't even feel my toes now. The patent-leather pouch hung heavy at my neck. And whom do you suppose I sold my last copy to? Yes, to Clemens von Barrista. But he and his wolf didn't seem to recognize me in the darkness. Or might I have been mistaken about that?

Robert was still busy, and it was only by his irrepressible smile that I could tell he could see me. Erwin, the fruit siren, didn't want to hear anything about thanks. He handed me a sheet of paper, an ad—we're to publish it every week—and gave me a hundred-D-mark bill! We left the rest of Robert's copies with him; he planned to distribute them in his hometown of Fürth, in Franconia.

We started the walk home empty-handed, but our satchels were stuffed full and banged against our hips with every step. A record—one thousand, one-twentieth of the printing. In four hours Robert had made ninety marks (twenty pfennigs a copy), plus tips.

Jo, my dear friend. What a delight it is to sell something you've made yourself. My laurel wreath is woven from the oak leaves on every coin.

Your E.

PS: Your copy is being sent in a wrapper. Unfortunately the photographs are very dark.

Dear Jo,

We've been working like the devil. And I still didn't get home until after midnight.
⁵⁴
But four hours of sleep are enough, and since I pass the time writing letters, I'm gradually learning to love these long mornings.
⁵⁵

I won't bore you with newspaper stuff, but I do have to tell you something I wouldn't have mentioned if it hadn't been the cause of our first crisis.
⁵⁶

Have I ever told you about the Prophet? He's an odd duck. Everyone notices that right off. The Prophet's mouth is constantly in motion, as if he has just sampled something and is about to announce what it tastes like. He keeps his chin jutted out, so that his beard, which appears to have the consistency of cotton candy, is thrust menacingly forward.

During the demonstration after the wall came down, he demanded the creation of a soviet republic. He's always full of surprises.
⁵⁷

The Prophet arrived early to honor our first-issue celebration
⁵⁸
with his presence, but quickly retreated into a corner. As we've since come to know, he didn't like the look of our guests. Jörg's and Georg's invitations had gone out—as is only proper for a newspaper—to the town council, to the district council, to all political parties (with the exception of the comrades), to the museums and the theater, to Guelphs and Ghibellenes. The only guests to arrive on time, however, were members of the old officialdom, because all the rest, those who felt they naturally belonged at our side (the reception was held in the office of the New Forum), were slow to make an appearance since they had been out selling and delivering our newspaper.

Even the “bigwigs,” as the Prophet later called them, seemed out of sorts. Either they didn't want to talk with one another but with “fresh faces” instead, or they were very skittish. When I suggested to the mayor that I wanted to interview him soon, he removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes for a good while, and then asked, “What is it you want from me?” Before I could reply, he exclaimed, “Do you know what I'm going to do? Not one thing. I've done far too much already!” And sad to say Jörg and Georg weren't exactly at the top of their form, either. Jörg kept pumping the mayor's hand and had hardly been able to unlock his jaw to thank him for a monstrous pot of cyclamens. Georg gazed down on his well-wishers with all the earnestness of a Don Quixote, amazed that the same people he wanted to take on were smiling and squirming at his feet. But all this just in passing.

By the time Dr. Schumacher, the mayor of Offenburg, entered the room surrounded by his minions—with roses for the ladies and a Dictaphone for us—the bigwigs had fled the scene. Once the citizens of Offenburg had vanished and just our sort, as Michaela might have put it, were still amusing themselves, the Prophet tapped his glass with a spoon, jutted out his beard, and asked in a loud voice, “What's in the
Altenburg Weekly
?”