New Lives (30 page)

Then he laid into the New Forum for having acted so irresponsibly, for being so naive and childish, as if they had never heard of capitalism. And now we can sit back and watch it all get smashed, everything that distinguished it “over against capitalism.”

It's pointless to argue with him, I knew that beforehand. He has a knack for constantly maneuvering you into corners where you start justifying yourself all on your own. For him I was somebody from the New Forum, which, whether it intended to or not, had sold out the GDR to capitalists.

He wasn't interested in our paper. At least there used to be nothing in our newspapers, he said; nowadays they're just full of nonsense. In the very next sentence he claimed I wouldn't publish anything about his lecture—“presumably for reasons of space.” When I asked him why he would accuse me of that, he mocked me, saying he could see my article already before him. I was speechless. And Roland's reaction: he'd always admired reactionaries, the way they fall silent the moment something doesn't suit them, they trust in the way things are, in the power of factuality, so why argue? I asked him whether he now regarded me as a reactionary. He laughed—I'd always been one! Unlike the people from the Party of Democratic Socialism, he has no guilty feelings and sees himself as totally above it all. That's what annoyed me most.

He would probably only be satisfied if I printed his lecture in full, starting on the front page—anything else is censorship. But how do you write about someone who uses the concept of democracy, bourgeois democracy, so cleverly that even a child would have to believe it's something suspicious, yes, despicable.

Roland claimed that his final triumphant
volte
—in which he praised Schalck-Golodkowski as the last internationalist, who was keeping Communist publishing houses and Party headquarters alive in the West, and concluded by calling November 9th the victory of counterrevolution—was an embarrassment to the cadres of the old Socialist Unity Party. They were afraid his lecture would become known to a wider public.

The Soviet Union, the socialist states, he went on, had been the only power in the world that had kept capitalism in check. We, in the East, had been the guarantors that capitalism in the West had worn a human face. But that was all over now. I would see. I would remember what he'd said when the state and its citizens were nothing, and the economy and consumerism were everything, when we'd all have to pay for kindergartens and universities, yes, probably have to pay to die.

Roland doesn't shy away from any exaggeration. Actually what he'd like is to return to the situation in which it was impossible to know anything about capitalism.

Ilona's husband, a former comrade, returned from Bayreuth floating on cloud nine because he'd been able quickly and without any fuss to find trousers that fit him, so that Ilona won't once again have to shorten the cuffs. The comforting reassurance that his body is evidently not abnormal made a convert out of him. You can regard that as ridiculous, and I didn't risk telling Roland about it either, but I understand Ilona's husband. I believe he's found happiness, a happiness that Roland can only scorn as a sign of bedazzlement and corruptibility.

Isn't it a crime to say: You're not allowed to see the Mediterranean—or only when you're old and gray and can't work anymore? Ah, enough of all this! I'm sounding like Michaela, who's forever getting high on the fantasy of running into her former teachers and professors and confronting them. As if she hadn't learned in the theater by now just how pointless that is—pointless, because you can't demand shame and contrition.

But of course I also admire Roland. If only for his vitality, the way he loves to talk, to argue, for his extravagance (and by that I don't mean just his belts, the swing in his hips, and that silk scarf). He's a brilliant logician, unafraid of consequences. Yes, I admire him for his courage, but it's a pernicious logic, not to say lethal.

I told him about how Mamus was arrested and what happened in Dresden last fall. Even while I spoke I was annoyed with myself for using her arrest as an argument, because it suddenly made me sound so self-serving. At least he didn't try to invent justifications for it or go so far as to cast it in doubt. He expressed his disgust, but then couldn't refrain from suggesting that I ask you about Shatila and Badra,
¹⁷⁵
and then asked me about what happened in Greece or Spain, in Argentina and Uruguay.
¹⁷⁶
And there they were again: Victor Jara's hacked-off hands.
¹⁷⁷

Why doesn't he want to live in a world that is halfway decent, why must it always be struggle, suffering, dying? You, my dear Heinrich—I hear you say—you yourself should know the answer to that better than anyone. Because for people like Roland it's not about living in a pleasant world, but about remaining productive. And for that they accept the rest as part of the bargain: revolution, chaos, death. That's why Roland has to view November 9th as a work of counterrevolution. How could he go on writing otherwise? Well, let them all put their Budyonny caps
¹⁷⁸
back on. You'd think there could be no end to the desperation of people like Roland, because history has hurled them back a hundred years, because their whole proletarian hoopla, all those millions of victims that they bore like an indictment on their banners, will now become as meaningless as those other millions of victims who were slain in the name of their own false gods. But that's not the case. His eyes shine more brightly than ever. Are they fools? Maniacs? No matter what happens in the world—they hold on tight to their divine mission. I'm sorry, I'm repeating myself. Roland and his comrades are simply tiresome. In fact it gives me great satisfaction to see their tap turned off just like that and to watch them have to start looking for work like everyone else. We send greetings to the comrades of the German Communist Party for the last time! But let's not waste so much anger, so much energy and emotion on them. They interpret everything that has to do with them—even if you spit at their feet—as a badge of their importance. Roland is completely right to view me as a reactionary. Isn't it marvelous to hold tight to factuality, to fall silent, to smile?

How much does he actually know about us?

Love, Your H.

PS: Strangely enough, he got along famously with your friend Barrista. Barrista calls Lenin and Luxemburg terrorists, for Roland they're revolutionaries. But in terms of their “analysis” Roland and Barrista were in agreement and blamed all the evils of the world on German reactionaries, who always first create for themselves whatever it is they then take up arms against.

With Roland, however, I'm not certain if he wouldn't line us all up and shoot us if he were told to do it in the name of the revolution. There's probably no danger of that in Barrista's case.

PS II: I had a dream about Mamus. She's at a spa for her health and I'm supposed to renovate the apartment. Nothing's been done in preparation; she didn't even take the pictures down. I look everywhere for brushes, buckets, paint. To no avail. But in the cellar I find Neudel's painting equipment, which he had given me to wash out the last time around, but now the paint in the can is hard as stone, there's a round brush stuck in it for good. When I try to push the wall unit toward the middle of the room, the Georgian vase falls off. But Mamus snatches it with one hand, as if she were doing the beer-coaster trick. She wants to know what I think I'm doing. At that moment I realize I've made a mistake. The woman who told me to do the renovation wasn't Mamus at all. Just look around, Mamus says, pointing with a very grand gesture at the walls. They are in fact white, freshly painted white. And outside—she points to the window—there's a blanket of snow. It glistens so dazzlingly that the building across the street is invisible. Mamus tells me to stand in front of the mirror so that I can finally see what I look like now.

Dear Nicoletta,

I sometimes think I'm way too fainthearted. But then I think of how you cautioned the taxi driver to drive less recklessly. I took pleasure in your every gesture. Sometimes I clap my hand to my brow as if I might still find your hand there, when you were checking to see if I was feverish. And I see your other hand hastily buttoning up your coat. And that's supposed to have been six weeks ago now?

         

Within the first few days in the army it was clear: Hell looks different. I was glad to know that, but also disappointed. There were lots of whistles and shouts ordering us around, we were cursed and ridiculed, but it was all just a big show. Besides, as part of the pack your hide gets tougher. Of course, it wasn't pleasant to run in protective gear and a gas mask or do push-ups in a puddle. All the same I put on weight at first, because as trainees to drive an armored personnel carrier (APC) we had almost nothing but political instruction at the start. Except for the room corporals, who were our driving instructors, we were all newcomers, which helped keep stunts by those who had already served six months or more to a minimum. Even when you had room duty, there was still time to read and write.

We were sworn in at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial, where, so we were instructed, antifascists of some eighteen countries had been murdered. During the ceremony we faced the obelisk with eighteen red triangles at its tip—created, it would seem, to help us count off our eighteen-month stint.

I tried to capture as much of daily life as possible. Military jargon, every
terminus technicus
, fascinated me. I was the only one who kept his brochures on “Being a Soldier,” which appeared monthly, each time in a new color. I often took down conversations in shorthand—dialogue was my weak point.

In early December we had six days of home leave, the so-called rest and recreation we were supposed to get every six months. Vera and I borrowed a?

Skoda and toured almost every castle, fortress, and church between Meissen and Görlitz, then sat for hours smoking and drinking gin and tonic (if it could be had) in cafés filled with older women.

Instead of being horrified at the sight of her son in uniform, my mother thought I was “a hoot.” My description of general conditions and the daily routine had reassured her. She could see how well nourished I was.

Vera, however, wept when it was time to say good-bye. I had forbidden her to accompany me to the train station, I didn't want her to see me in uniform.

But why couldn't we—or at least hardly any of us newcomers—sleep until six each morning? I would lie awake for a good while, listening to footsteps in the hall, to the clatter of the metal grill at the entrance, and held the illuminated dial of my watch up to my eye, as if afraid of over-sleeping. The seconds before the wake-up whistle were counted down by beeps from a radio turned up loud.

Once outside, doing calisthenics in the dark—followed by a run that turned into an incredible farting contest—I soon forgot my restlessness.

If an alert had been declared, the morning wait was worse. Officers in full uniform and smelling of aftershave blocked our access to the toilet, while noncoms drove us out of our quarters. Nothing but shouting, clanging, rattling on all sides, as if a huge hunting party were being organized. We ran outside and then along the road in front of the barracks, as far as regimental staff headquarters, then back again, where we finally had to fall in and undergo an endless inspection of our equipment.

On December 13th,
¹⁷⁹
however, an alert roused us out of our sleep. This time the whole regiment was throbbing. The noncoms, who couldn't get into their clothes any faster than we could, didn't want to believe what had happened and hesitated before opening the weapons store. Only after companies from the floors above us fell in did we get ourselves ready—bringing the chaos on the regimental streets to its zenith. I breathed in the exhaust from tanks that came clanking along the concrete slab road. Spotlights everywhere, an unrelenting din, columns of vehicles. I boarded our APC as if it were a cold-started ark. I felt neither fear nor opposition, nothing that could have prevented me from taking part in this decampment. On the contrary: even those of us at the bottom of the totem pole couldn't help viewing the alert as a grand spectacle. We crouched beneath closed hatches, peering out through the embrasures and hoping that we could move out without officers.
¹⁸⁰
They were the chickenshits this time.

No sooner had we left the base than we turned off the highway. For two hours we followed country roads and woodland lanes. We kept banging our helmets against the vehicle roof. Some guys didn't know what else to do, so they pissed into their mess kit.

As it began to turn light, we climbed out and camouflaged our vehicles. We were standing at the edge of a clearing. The staff sergeant on the APC in front of us was fumbling with the antenna of a black Stern recorder, attempting to adjust it. Since this evidently didn't work, he grabbed the apparatus in both arms and spun in a circle like a dancer. We didn't learn anything from him. Gunther, a pale towheaded Saxon, who for a waiter moved with a peculiarly wooden gait and grimaced with zeal during every drill, held his “Micki” radio up to his ear and immediately began spouting off in a whiny falsetto. What a piece of shit, and now of all times. Hadn't he always said that they'd do better to work instead of rocking the boat, that got you nowhere, nowhere, everybody knew that, but now here we were getting mixed up in their shit. Then came the words “Polacks” and “lazy Polacks.”

I realized that what I had wished for had now come true. Every hour on the hour Gunther stomped off into the woods. The first snowfall hadn't melted—a Christmas landscape with evergreens and animal tracks. Ten minutes later he would return cursing. Instead of the latest news from Radio Free Berlin, however, he treated us to cock-and-bull stories about what all he had experienced with the Poles. When the noon meal turned out to be roulades and red cabbage, with canned peach halves for dessert, there was no longer any doubt about the seriousness of the situation. Word was that the corporal had brought boxes of ammunition with him. Our convoy leader was the first one to pass around a picture of his wife. When it came my turn, I produced Vera's photograph.