New Lives (53 page)

After thirty-eight hours without food or sleep they had been released. Yesterday evening someone had thrown the switch for all the streetlights in the area around Gethsemane Church and then uniformed men had started whaling away—to the sound of church bells ringing out a tocsin.

“If we don't act today,” Michaela said, giving her coat collar a tug, “we'll have squandered our chances for a long time, maybe forever.”

All of us were discomfited by Michaela's speech. Which is why news that Norbert Maria Richter had arrived broke things up rather abruptly.

Had it been me and not Thea—of that I was absolutely convinced—Michaela would hardly have been inspired to make such a speech. Once again Thea had been one step ahead of her.
That
's what Michaela found unbearable! Her famous friend was to blame for Michaela's conviction that she would lose face if she didn't risk her own neck.

My dear Nicoletta, I know how petty I must sound to you. Perhaps I still have too little distance on the whole affair. But in this case it's not just my opinion at the time that I'm sharing with you.

There was no cure for Michaela's madness.
²⁹⁹
I knew she would be going to Leipzig. I knew better than to pin any hopes on Norbert Maria Richter or Jonas. Robert remained my sole argument, but then Thea had certainly shown no consideration for her family either.

At noon in the canteen everyone had stories about gyms and emergency rooms that had been cleared to take in patients. Jonas, who had held his tongue until now, said with a knowing smile that he would not advise anyone to travel to Leipzig today.

When we met after rehearsal—a real rehearsal had, of course, been out of the question—we drove to see Aunt Trockel. If she did not hear from us before ten o'clock, she was to look after Robert. After that we went to the Konsum Market—the shelves were incredibly well stocked, but the only thing I recall now are jars of pickles, oodles of them suddenly seemed available—likewise ultrapasturized milk and ketchup. Our refrigerator ended up as crammed full as if it were Christmas time. Michaela laid two hundred marks on the kitchen table, plus our hoard of twenty-pfennig pieces for the telephone, the rest of our pocket change, and my mother's number at the clinic. I also jotted down Geronimo's number. It wasn't until he saw the currency that Robert began to grasp how different this afternoon was from all others. He wanted to come along. I was for it, Michaela against it. She talked with him in his room. When she came back out, I could see she had been crying. We took off around four o'clock. No one at the theater had taken Michaela up on her offer of a comfortable ride.

Just beyond Espenheim we were waved off the road—traffic control. All I would have had to have done was leave my ID at home or put a turn signal out of commission and that would probably have been the end of trip. We were sent on our way with good wishes. Before I got back in the car I surveyed the scrawny trees and shrubs that lined the rest area—and in that moment there was something idyllic about it all. It was relatively warm. It seemed to me as if I had not given a thought to writing for years.

Shortly before Leipzig, Michaela started to put on her makeup. We could do some window-shopping, she said, we had plenty of time, and laid a hand on my thigh as if to buck me up.

What happened then is quickly told:

We parked in front of the Dimitroff Museum. In a side street directly across from us were the special-forces trucks. Tea was being ladled from big buckets for men in uniform. They didn't appear to be armed. We crossed the street and walked up to within ten yards of them. Those few who noticed us quickly looked away.

Passing the New Rathaus, we came to St. Thomas Church. We acted a little like tourists who've been given a free hour before their bus departs. We walked around the church and stood awhile in front of the Johann Sebastian Bach monument. Michaela was drawn to the bookstore across the street. In situations like this, she said, it was especially wonderful to be surrounded by books. I fell into old habits, but before I had scanned even the first few feet of a bookshelf, I knew I wouldn't buy anything. I no longer saw any point in even picking up a book.
³⁰⁰

We must have been fairly near the Opera when we ran into a whole convoy of those troop carriers. We walked on by—and it almost felt like we were reviewing them. A couple of uniformed men were trudging back and forth, eyes focused on their equipment. They also had dogs and water cannons.

We halted in front of the Gewandhaus. From its steps you have a view of the entire square.
³⁰¹

My dear Nicoletta, you may perhaps assume that we had some serious discussions during these hours, conversations about the future and Robert, or that at least we promised each other to relish every moment of our lives from now on and to love one another. But no, nothing of the kind.

What made the scene so unreal was that I had never seen the state massed in such threatening force before. Each time a column of troop carriers turned onto the Ring from the direction of the Grassi Museum, they were greeted with honking cars and shrill whistles. But when the trucks had moved past, it was once again a lovely October evening with people smiling at one another, browsing in bookstores, and waiting for streetcars.

I explained to Michaela—I was carrying her purchases—from what direction the demonstrators would be coming, that was if they were granted access all the way to the main square. Once they got this far, there would be no stopping them. We had found an almost perfect spot. From here we could flee or join in or simply stay where we were. Who was going to prohibit someone from standing in front of the Gewandhaus with a bag of books under his arm?

Suddenly noise started coming at us from all directions. From loudspeakers came an appeal for nonviolence,
³⁰²
and at the same time I could hear chants, some close, some farther away. And all at once there it was, the demonstration. From one second to the next Opern Platz was filled with people, as if they had just cast off their magic caps. We were now part of the demonstration. It's too late now, I thought. Michaela was kneading my hand. I was about to tell her she no longer needed to be afraid, when she pulled me away with her. Michaela was trying to make her way to a man with a mustache and bald head that made him look like a seal. They hugged. He was wearing West-style glasses and pretended not to notice me. For at least thirty seconds I waited behind Michaela and gazed at him over her shoulder. At some point she said, “This is Enrico, he's in the theater too.” I asked what
he
did. To which Michaela exclaimed, “This is ***!” *** gave a quick nod as if deep in thought, then turned his seal eyes back to Michaela. And now we three were walking together in the direction of the post office. I wedged myself in beside Michaela and crooked my right arm for her to link onto. But she did nothing of the sort, just kept her eyes glued on the seal. I didn't even know where she knew him from. “Crazy,” the seal kept saying, “crazy!”

If it hadn't been for me, I think they would have flung their arms around each other several more times. Michaela told him about Thea. Was this what the director who could make Michaela's dreams come true looked like?

I found it unbearable that this day would be eradicably bound up with this man. From now on he would be latched on to our memories like a tick. Comrade Seal had now switched from “crazy” to “not good.” Every one of Michaela's sentences was blessed with this “not good, not good.” She seemed goaded on by it. Suddenly he pointed up at a camera and said, “What if those were machine guns!” Someone else had begun to wave at the camera, and now everyone around me was waving up at it. We halted for the pedestrian stoplight.

I'm sure you've seen the dim televised version. Did you notice how slowly people put one foot in front of the other, the considerable distance they kept from one another? The only demonstrations I knew were those from May Day, where you stood and stood until your leg fell asleep, shuffled a couple of yards forward, waited, only to be driven ahead at double-time so that there was never a gap in the parade before the reviewing stands. But here you strolled across the square in pairs, in threes, in little groups, making sure you didn't crowd up on anyone else. The stoplight turned green. But we just stood there and waited. A man asked, “We can go on the next green, right?” And so when the little green man flashed again, we finally stepped out into the street.

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.
³⁰⁴
In 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.

I didn't need to worry about our employees, Jörg said. None of them wanted to work for a free paper. I could ask them myself. And then he made a comment about Frau Schorba, my best friend, “my bosom buddy,” with an exaggerated accent on the second word. She had chased the new mayor away on her very first day here—which, by the way, was a generally known fact, but something that I had kept from him for whatever deeply regrettable and inexplicable reason. And one could only be thankful she was here strictly on probation.

I asked him to think it over one more time, because I planned to bring the topic up again at our next editorial meeting on Wednesday.

He hoped I wouldn't do that, he said, turning his back on me. Maybe it was simple cowardice that prevented me from demanding a decision then and there. At any rate, yesterday morning (what a long time ago that was!) memories of the conversation seemed more like a bad dream that would be forgotten the next day—that's how much I trusted my arguments.

They, however, had read my amiability as weakness. Ilona, whom I treated to a new “opera bag” a few days ago, was too busy to look up and return my greeting. Jörg muttered something in passing, Marion ignored me entirely, Fred was leaning against the doorframe and talking about something with Ilona (suddenly they get along, suddenly she had time), which so preoccupied him that he just gave me the kind of nod he would give any customer. Even Kurt scurried quickly by and ducked into his office. Pringel was always on his way somewhere. Only Astrid the wolf came bounding happily toward me the way she does every morning. But ever since Ilona sprained her ankle stepping on Astrid's ball, she mistrusts even that greeting. Frau Schorba presented me the booty collected by our sales reps, but without devoting so much as a syllable to the whole brouhaha. She smiled, business was going incredibly well.

To think that I would seek refuge with Georg, my old boss, of all people! I met him on Market Square, at the fish-sandwich stand. Although we had moved out of his place only two months before, I would scarcely have recognized him; his gait, his body language is so different. Not a trace of the old stiff knight on his steed. He moves downright supplely on those long legs now. The deep creases between his eyebrows and across his forehead have likewise vanished. In greeting me he almost gave me a hug. Did I want to have a cup of coffee or tea at his place? Yes I did, if only just to keep from having to go straight back to the office.

The garden gate is now overgrown with roses. But imagine my amazement when I entered our old editorial office and recognized the same screen we use, and the same Apple next to it too. His printer is a little smaller than ours.

The baron had proposed two books, and paid for a thousand copies of each in advance. The book about the hereditary prince will be the first, then a book about the Jews in Altenburg and environs and their deportation. Just on his own, Georg said, he had enough ideas to last for years. Although the barometer and the clock and the postal scales—everything really—were still in their same old places, I felt as if I were in a totally different room. It was the same out in the garden, which is green now and bursting with flowers and almost impenetrable along the edges.

Franka embraced me as if I had just returned from a long journey. When I saw the big table set for coffee and the three boys waiting for us along with their grandparents, Georg admitted it was his birthday.

And so I spent a cheerful hour in the company of his family. Georg told about an extraordinary encounter. Late one evening recently—it was raining cats and dogs—their doorbell had rung. Before him stood a short woman drenched to the bone, her hair plastered to her head. She stepped inside and asked if she might spend the night—her car had broken down and there wasn't a room to be had at the Wenzel for all the money in the world. Just as he was about to ask why she had chosen to ring their doorbell, he recognized her: the newspaper czarina from Offenburg. Franka and Georg spent the night on air mattresses so that their guest could have a real bed to sleep in. The next morning, however, the czarina sat at the kitchen breakfast table pale and with circles under her eyes, claiming she hadn't slept a wink—the bed was a disaster.

Wearing some of Franka's clothes, which were too large for her, she was soon on her way. A trace of her fragrance still hung in the bathroom, or so he claimed. “A real millionaire,” Franka said in conclusion.

Later I climbed the slope with Georg. As we shielded our eyes from the sun with our hands to gaze out over the city—all the way to the pyramids—I told him my troubles.

“You guys have got to do it, just as you've said, it's the only way, otherwise you don't stand a chance,” Georg concurred. I had expected reticence and scruples, if not outright opposition. But now I spoke like a man set free.

If only Jörg had been there! Up there on the hill I could have persuaded him. Never before had even I myself so clearly understood the necessity for a free paper.

According to Georg it's already a done deal that the major presses will be divvying up the Party newspapers among themselves—but dividing them up according to the old state boundaries. Since Altenburg would now be assigned to Thuringia, we'd be the only one to straddle the old lines; and in no time we'd be making deliveries from Ronneburg to Rochlitz, from Meerane to the gates of Leipzig. We wouldn't just be holding the region together, we would be a little empire with Altenburg at its center.

We indulged ourselves in predictions about the size of the printing—I figured 100 to 120,000—and it came to me that the baron had been wrong. It's of no importance whatever whether you want to be rich or not. No matter how many possibilities you think you're choosing from, the crucial point is to make one single decision—the one that guarantees your survival. Yes, in the end there is always just the right decision, and the wrong one. And ultimately it's far better to do something yourself than to write about what others have done.
³⁰⁶

On the way back I applied for the official seal of our
Sunday Bulletin.

Back in the office, Frau Schorba greeted me with bad news. Käferchen has died, the old man is plotting revenge. When he gets back, there'll be no one to protect me from him, because the police can't take him into preventive custody, and he can't be locked up in a psychiatric ward either, not unless he has caused harm of some sort. At least Marion will have something to be happy about.

The one hour each morning when Frau Schorba coaches me on the computer makes me feel like I'm inhaling air for the whole day. If I make no progress, she says, “Yes, just like this,” as if in the next moment I would have stumbled on the solution myself. Only her upper lip betrays her impatience by creeping back and forth like a pink caterpillar over the firm line of her lower lip. The first ad I laid out by myself was Cornelia's “Italian Weeks for Soccer Fans.” We cut the World Cup logo out of the
Leipziger Volkszeitung,
and simply pasted it in.

While I waited for Fred, my mind went limp at the thought of the afternoon's upcoming argument. Fred's reports of his country rounds lay before me. I compared numbers for the last two weeks listed on page one. Here one copy fewer, there three. In the best case, stagnation. But his totals showed an increase of thirty newspapers sold.

Of the ten reports that I had checked by the time Fred arrived late for our meeting, two were correct. I underscored the mistakes in his math with a red marker and exclamation points. Oddly enough, however, the errors more or less balanced out.

When he arrived Manuela, our secret weapon, happened to be in my office—she brings in more ads than our three other reps combined. Legs crossed, hands folded across his belly, Fred rolled his eyes to signal how pointless he found my putting up with Manuela's chitchat. When he started shaking his head too, I handed him his lists without comment. If I didn't know him, I said, I'd have to think he was cheating on us. I then sent Manuela on her way, asking her to have Ilona report to my office.

“Can you explain this?” I asked Fred after a long pause. “Can you tell me how you came up with these numbers?”

He had always turned the money in, never held a penny back, and Ilona had given him receipts.

“And you never,” I asked, putting the pages back in numerical order, “noticed any discrepancies?”

Fred shrugged. I said nothing. Fred asked if he could leave now. “No,” I said, “we'll wait for Ilona.”

That sentence was the last one for a long while, until Fred volunteered to fetch Ilona himself.

“Good heavens!” she said when I spread the reports out for her.

“And you always took his money and wrote receipts?”

“I wrapped the coins and took it all to the bank, what else?” she said as if expecting praise. She didn't seem to be in the least aware what this had to do with her.

“But didn't check the figures?”

She had received the money and taken it to the bank, she repeated.

They competed at sniffing in outrage when I said they should put everything aside and recheck the reports. We would need numbers by afternoon. “Maybe,” I said in conclusion, “we've been broke for a long time.”

When things got underway shortly after five, the mood was excruciating. Ilona and Fred sat directly across from me, talking about something that kept them in stitches. They had had other things to do than to recheck figures, they announced. I was the comptroller, after all, that was really my job.

Pringel sat off to himself and stared at the blank sheet of paper in front of him. He already knew what awaited him, I was the only one still in dark. Kurt was missing, the sales reps hadn't been invited. Only Jörg seemed his old cordial self.

His first question called Ilona and Fred to account: Why hadn't they followed my instructions and studied the totals? They were completely flummoxed.

Frau Schorba gave the figures for the advertising receipts. We no longer had any need of a free paper, Jörg said, we already were one. Starting with the last week in June the
Weekly
would be printed in Gera, with four or eight additional pages. That would make room for more articles, which would be considerably more likely to increase the number of copies sold than this flood of advertising we were drowning in. And with that Jörg's survey of the future came to an end. He presented his new lead article, which the Commission Against Corruption and Abuse of Office had delivered free of charge—they're having to elect their third chairman, since the first two are themselves both under suspicion of corruption.

Then Jörg pulled out a sheet of paper and said, “We need to talk about this, Gotthold, you have to deal with this now.” Pringel's childlike face shrank even smaller. Jörg explained the contents of the letter, signed by more than thirty employees of Air Research Technologies. In it they accused Pringel of being a “Red scribbler.” “What is a Red scribbler doing on the staff of your newspaper?” They had enclosed an article Pringel had written for their house journal in October '89.