New Lives (52 page)

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,
²⁹⁷
who 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.

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
²⁹⁸
had 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.

At this point in her narrative Michaela blew her nose. The toilet paper rustled on the coconut-fiber mat.

They figured, Michaela continued, you could talk to the ones without helmets. Thea spoke to several of them, each time mentioning her birthday and the children and guests waiting for her at home. When she got no reply she raised her voice. She hadn't realized that it was now forbidden to return to your home—that would be just like this government, they might as well arrest her on the spot. Thea had just turned back around to Karin and her, Michaela, when three men in civvies stormed through the cordon and pounced on her from behind. One of them had stepped between her and Thea, which was why she, Michaela, couldn't say exactly what happened to Thea in those few seconds. Thea had screamed, probably in pain. They both could see Thea holding up her ID as she was led away. Then she had vanished behind a truck. They picked up Thea's purse, gathered up the spilled contents, and discussed what they should do now. They tried to describe for each other what the three Stasi guys had looked like, but had to admit that they could never identify them in a lineup. Five minutes later they saw Thea being thrown into a truck by two cops. She and Karin could swear to that.

They fled back into the pub and called Thomas, Thea's husband. Karin began to weep hysterically and had to stretch out on the bench of the corner table reserved for regulars. They could hear screams coming from the street, and new people kept dashing inside, many with scrapes, bruises, and bloody noses. They were all afraid the uniformed brigade might storm the pub. She, Michaela, had almost wished they would, since just waiting was the worst thing of all.

When they got back to Thea's apartment around half past midnight, all the birthday party guests were still sitting there. Thomas had first yelled at Michaela and Karin, as if they were to blame for Thea's disappearance. More than ten guests had spent the night in the apartment—on the floor, in armchairs, sleep was out of the question in any case. Thomas spent the entire night making phone calls. He also drove to the police academy in Rummelsburg, but no one would let him in. They waited the whole day and left the apartment only to take the children to a playground.

Talking had helped Michaela calm down somewhat, but only to the extent that she could now be all the more vehement in her self-accusations. Thea had called to them as she was arrested. She, Michaela, had even tried to hold on to Thea, but had been pushed back by the cordon of uniformed men. Michaela broke into tears again now. One of the policemen—or whatever that uniform of his was—had asked her if she wanted to end up there too. “End up there,” those had been his words, and it had been clear that “there” was some horrible place. But now she could only ask herself why she had been so horrified, why she hadn't joined Thea as she ought to have. “No!” Michaela cried, rejecting all our attempts to comfort her, it had been her duty to follow her and not to have let that “there” frighten her. She could understand Thomas's reaction—of course he was right to reproach her. “I let it happen! I abandoned her!”

Robert sat there totally helpless at her side. Then Michaela stood up and announced she was going to the telephone booth to call Thomas. Besides, she could use the fresh air.

Robert and I ate alone. As we were washing up, he told me how his homeroom teacher, Herr Milde, had said we ought never shed a tear for those who turned their backs on our republic (a well-worn phrase in the newspapers at the time), but that his friend Falk had responded that he was sorry that Doreen, his deskmate who had emigrated with her parents a few days before, was no longer here. At first Herr Milde hadn't reacted at all, but then had admonished him to raise his hand if he wanted to say something. Falk had then raised his hand, but wasn't called on. Herr Milde had said it would be easy for a boy like him to find a prettier girlfriend than Doreen. Robert asked me if he should have raised his hand too.

“Bad news,” Michaela said. It seemed to me as if at some basic level she was proud of the fact. Karin had stayed with Thea's children, Thomas had written up a report on Thea's arrest and read it aloud in Gethsemane Church before posting it there. Karin had signed as a witness and had given her address. Karin had promised Michaela that she would add her, that is, our address to it as well. “All hell must have broken loose there,” Michaela said.

We were at the theater by a little before ten the next morning. There was a press of people in the dramaturgy office, a long, low room directly under the roof.

Michaela at once grabbed for the telephone receiver, clamped it to her ear, and put a finger to her other ear while she talked.

Most people seemed to have ended up there out of pure boredom. They inspected our little library, paged through old programs, and spoke about productions and colleagues, as if this were what the occasion required. Each time the door opened, conversations faltered for a moment.

Amanda from props appeared and shortly after her our stage manager, Olaf. Norbert Maria Richter hadn't arrived yet. Amanda lit a cigarette and asked what we planned to do. “I'm not planning anything,” I said.

Some were discussing a resolution that came from the Dresden Theater and was to be read from the stage there, others talked about blood banks and hospital wards cleared for patients. Word of it was in fact circulating in Leipzig, Patrick confirmed—Ellen had called him at the theater just to tell him about it. Amanda showed us an article from the
Volkszeitung.
“Working People Demand: Hostility Toward the State Should No Longer be Tolerated!” read the headline. A cadre that went by the name of Geifert felt inconvenienced by certain unprincipled elements disrupting their well-earned rest after a day's work. The conclusion: they were ready and able to defend and protect the work of their own hands and to effectively put an end to these disruptions once and for all. “With weapons in hand if need be.” I read the article aloud and passed the newspaper around. Amanda held her cigarette butt under the tap and laid it alongside others next to the soap. She smiled.

“Today will decide everything,” I heard Michaela suddenly declare. “If we fail today, then we will have failed for good.” Her eyes wandered from one person to the next. “If we ourselves don't take to the streets today, we'll be betraying every person who's been arrested and tortured.” This was followed by her report of what Thea had just told her.

Michaela took time to give her speech, rarely raised her voice, and let everyone sense that she was struggling to be factual and understood that she had to hold her emotions in check—this was, after all, her best friend. She sounded a lot like a television reporter when she mentioned a girl who had been forced to strip and then chased naked along the hall to the laughter of the police. Thea had been spared that bit of martyrdom. But she could still feel the blow to her head—she had lain unconscious in the truck for several minutes. But even worse was the pain in her back, her whole right side was one single bruise. They had been beaten at every turn, even when they were standing facing the wall with their hands behind their heads. And some of the younger guys had frisked them over and over again.