New Lives (14 page)

Ah, Jo! His nose almost touched the label. He removed the first bottle from the basket as if it were a newborn being lifted from its bath to be dried and swaddled.

“Let us begin with the youngest, with you, Herr Türmer—a '61 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou.”

I had stood up, but he motioned for me to remain seated and pretended he could see me over the rim of his glasses. He noted that he never opened an old bottle without consternation, indeed anxiety, for what was to be revealed in a single moment was the work of decades. The baron scratched the enamel seal on the cork with his fingernails—which are far too short, I think he chews them. “Even I am helpless,” he declared, “against the actions of time and chemistry.”

Of course every child knows that wine can turn to vinegar. But none of us comprehended the enormity of this admonition.

We heard the baron bark a laugh. Almost soundlessly he pulled the cork from my bottle and gave it an investigative sniff. “My congratulations!” he said, pouring me some—not much, barely more than a finger. We both reached for the glass at the same time, I jerked back. The baron swirled the wine endlessly, just as Jan Steen had with his brandy, and held it up to his nose. “May it be a blessing,” he said, filling the glass for me. I felt like a charlatan as with purposeful circumspection I gave the wine in its chalice a swirl, smelled it, and then, following the baron's example, set it to my lips. I rinsed my mouth with it properly, but swallowed as I felt the tongue and lining start to turn numb somehow. Well that's that, I thought. The baron fixed me with his eyes, no one said a word.

Gradually something earthy rose up within me—alien and pleasant, the herald of the remembrance of another existence.

Am I boring you? My words awaken no memories within you. It's six o'clock already, it's my turn to read proofs in Leipzig. So I'll cut this a bit short.

What happened next was somehow depressing, although we didn't want to admit it.

The baron passed white bread around before picking up Jörg's bottle and announcing, “Vintage '53!” I wasn't really paying close attention as the baron described this '53 Beaujolais. When I looked up, he was red-faced, struggling with the cork. His cheeks, which had been parentheses for a smile, suddenly went limp. He could tell just from the odor of the cork. We couldn't even persuade him to let us sip at our own risk. Barrista, his face still red, was deaf to our pleas. I was surprised how easily he lost his composure.

Georg muttered something about how
he
was usually the wet blanket on such occasions, Jörg attempted a laugh. He'd never liked the year of his birth anyway, so this hadn't come as much of a surprise. I'm afraid Jörg's remark was closer to the truth than he admitted. But—not that I'm blaming him—it was Barrista's fault. Perhaps Barrista felt he'd been swindled, a wine like that doesn't come cheap.

Georg, our '56 baby, sipped the Barolo dedicated to him. It took a good while, and then he said, “Thanks so much. That was magnificent.”

Then came a most extraordinarily noble chateaubriand and for dessert, chocolate pudding and Italian schnapps.
⁸¹

The baron chattered away about the hereditary prince, but he wasn't able to hide his own disappointment. Just one dud had ruined the atmosphere.

We left the honey gold Prince's Suite shortly before midnight. The waitress escorted us downstairs, along with the wolf, who needed to be walked. Out on the street Jörg asked what Barrista really wanted of us. Whereas I, with a glance toward the old familiar train station, asked myself where we had been exactly. What did he suppose Barrista wanted? To find out who he was dealing with. If only everyone would make half the effort he had.

We had gone our separate ways when it came to me where I knew the waitress from. She was the buxom blonde who had stumbled past us leaving the bar back in January.

Your E.

PS: Something I keep forgetting to write: Gesine's musical presentation so impressed Robert that, although we didn't buy Aunt Trockel's piano from her, we did manage to jockey it into Robert's room. Robert's actually taking lessons. What poor Aunt Trockel was never able to accomplish, Gesine did. We'll see what comes of it. At least he's already learned a few notes.

Dear Nicoletta,

Ever since you left, I've thought only of you. I don't have to imagine you. You're present, and I listen to you. Only sleep interrupts our tête-à-tête. When I awoke, the separation was more than made up for by a sense of incredible joy—it was no dream, you really had visited me. Your presence had restored me to consciousness. Don't laugh! It's not easy to write something like that. I was happy to be with you. When I'm with you I find myself in a state of grace—I don't know what else to call it. Nicoletta, I want to tell you everything, everything, and all at once, but I would give up all those words just to see you.

Do you remember—you were telling me about your famous uncle,
⁸²
about the peculiar circumstances surrounding his death—how you said that when it comes to really important things we never know what we should actually think? You said it so offhandedly and went on to something else. No, we don't, I said, still stuck on that remark, and you looked at me in surprise, and I had to control myself to keep from kissing you.

I was in agony the whole hour I knew you were still in Altenburg. You should have waited here, in my room, even if we hadn't said a word.
That
would have really helped me to “rest up.” I didn't calm down until the moment I could assume you had left town. I hope your train was on time and you made all your connections.

Wasn't the proof room
⁸³
like being in school? You, the
new girl,
looked hesitantly around the classroom, as if not knowing where to sit. Then you decided on me, to share my desk, and stuck out your hand, as if you'd just read in a guidebook that that's how it's done in the East. And while the others were running around during recess, we sat there like model pupils. I watched the calligraphy of your proofreaders' marks grow denser and denser, and my courage failed me. The goose bumps on your arm, clear up to the shoulder, the scar on your left elbow, kept distracting me. There wasn't a single motion of your right hand that I failed to notice. You asked for a dictionary and were so intent on making corrections, it was as if you wanted to give me time to get used to your presence.

It suddenly seems so absurd to be writing you, instead of simply taking off to see you. I can only plead my current condition as my excuse. By now I'm in hardly any pain.
⁸⁴

I kiss your hands,

Your Enrico

Dear Nicoletta,

The first bus has already gone by, and the next thing I hear will be footsteps above me and the sounds of morning. My window is cracked ajar. How are you doing? I would love to talk with you. And when I think of how you won't get this letter before a few days have passed, these lines seem to lose all meaning. I can't wait that long!

The headaches have become bearable. I convinced the doctor at the polyclinic to remove the neck support. Holding his hands to my temples, he watched me as intently as if he expected my head to fall off. I'm supposed to imagine I'm balancing my “skull” on my neck, then the right posture will follow all on its own. I don't think people moved around the Spanish royal court with any more dignity than I do here within my four walls.

I've ordered myself to stay away from the office. I definitely prefer the hope that greetings from you, however cursory, may be waiting for me there to the disappointment of that not being the case.

Maybe I'm lying here in bed so that I can think of you without disruption. How many letters I've already written you—eyes closed, hands folded across my belly. If only we could take up our conversation again where it got broken off! I was so angry and disappointed at the day being ruined and at your having to depart early that I was no longer in any condition to even notice what a stroke of luck your visit has been or, for that matter, how lucky we both are to be alive.

Where did you get the notion that the accident was an intentional attack? The first thing you cried out was: “That was on purpose!”

And so immediately I imagined that I knew the two men in the classy white Lada. I do everything I can to dismiss this as a chimera, but even as a figment of the imagination I don't like the idea. And now, as I write this, it seems totally absurd. And yet those two figures loom up ever more clearly in my mind. It's like in a fairy tale, when the devil demands his tribute at the very instant he's been forgotten.
⁸⁵

         

Dear Nicoletta, it's evening now—and still no letter from you.
⁸⁶
I know, I shouldn't have said that.

I've been in a strange mood all day. I smell unusual odors, suddenly imagine myself being in another room, and need a couple of seconds to come to myself, as if I were just waking up. On days like this you only have to be inattentive, and you stumble and fall and fall. Is it only our imagination that we feel someone's actual grasp, even though they have long since let go? Should I say that the past is grasping me or, better yet, that I've never been young? Do you think someone like me is capable of stealing a weapon? Forgive me my susurrations. It all sounds so preposterous. I'm merely afraid I'll fall back into the same state I was in at the end of last year. I was ill and lay here in my room just like now. And that—and I'm not exaggerating—was the worst time of my life.

For several weeks now I've been toying with a question. At first I didn't take it seriously; it seemed too commonplace. But over time I've come to think it's justified. The question is: What were the ways and means by which the West got inside my brain? And what did it do in there?
⁸⁷

Of course I might also ask how God got inside my brain. It amounts to the same question, though it's less concerned with the matter of my own particular original sin.

Needless to say, I can't offer any precise answer. I can only try to grope for one.

One of the few rituals observed in our family occurred whenever I tried to revive my earliest memories. I had achieved my goal whenever my mother would exclaim, “Impossible! You were barely two!”—or, “At eighteen months, out of the question!” She would successfully manage a good five such exclamations of astonishment. It gave me deep satisfaction to find my memories confirmed. Each incredulous shake of my mother's head made me feel like some sort of wunderkind. (My sister Vera never failed to offer some corrections; I had no chance against her four-year head start and always had to hear how happy everyone had been before I arrived.)

Here's one of my showpieces. I wake up, the room is still dark, but in the next room there's light and voices. My mother carries me out, my grandmother says, “Sweetie pie.” A hat lies on an armchair, two coats with fur collars are draped over its back—strangers! There are strangers in our apartment. I start to cry. The strangers are hiding. Someone gives me a Duplo candy bar that sticks out of its wrapper like a half-peeled banana. My sister has a Duplo too. I can't understand why she's so unconcerned. The Duplo is meant to help me get over these strangers, who are going to move in. I'm given a little red car. A bright rod sticks out between the front wheel and the door on the driver's side. That's for steering it. The headlights are glass beads. “Diamonds,” my mother says, “from the West.”

Present after present is lifted out of suitcases and shown to my mother. My grandpa tickles my palm with an electric razor. It all comes from the golden West. I can see most of the room, but the strangers are hiding. They're whispering with my grandpa.

Back in my bed, I ask whether the strangers are going to stay for a long time. I'm certain they're going to move in with us. I don't believe my mother.

I'm afraid, I'm impressed—toys with diamonds, and they come from a world made of gold. That's also the reason why we're not allowed to go to the West. Of course we'd all rather live in the West. I'm not allowed to play with my car outside, in fact no other kids are supposed to know about my car. Otherwise they'd be jealous because they don't have a red car. The red car is irreplaceable, you can't just buy one. Only a few kids here have Matchbox cars and Lego blocks and tins of Kaba powder. I also had shirts and pants from the West, and in time I would look just as handsome as the boy on that chocolate drink for kids. Actually I was a child of the West myself.

Are you still listening to me? Or do you think by now I'm utterly mad? Let me finish my story. With each passing year I understood better: We had things other families didn't have and couldn't have, no matter how much they longed to have them, even if they earned more than my mother and had more money in the bank than my grandpa. Items from the West were like moonstones, either they were given to you or they remained out of reach. Our relatives in the West were just like God and the Lord Jesus—they loved you, although you didn't know them and never ever saw them face-to-face. And anyone who laughed at me because I believed in God was at least envious of my red car.

There were five special days in the year. St. Nicholas, Easter, my birthday, Christmas—Christmas was the high point, but Christmas was out-shone by the day when my grandparents returned from their visit to the West. The evening of their arrival at the Neustadt train station in Dresden was the real, unsurpassable Christmas Eve.

Every year my mother took off work for the day, and we were allowed to come home for our noon meal. After doing our homework, we helped her with chores, which gave us the feeling that by dusting thoroughly and polishing lots of shoes we were adding to the number of presents.