New Lives (55 page)

“Hah!” Jambo exclaimed. “Is the wall gone?”

Jonas bellowed, his voice exploded into the room. Michaela claimed later that you could even hear him through the steel-plated door. His head turned such a livid red that I expected to see him collapse onto his desk, eyes staring wide, mouth hanging open.

The cord had got tangled on the bridge of Oliver Jambo's glasses, so that it looked as if he were shaking a thermometer down. “Could you repeat that?” he asked in a low voice.

Instead of hurling himself at Jambo as I expected, Jonas began to preach. His entire statement was so silly that I don't remember any of it except two sentences, which he repeated several times: “There won't be any Chinese solution,” and “The politburo wants an honest face-to-face dialogue with the nation.”

The applause at the final curtain was now coming over the loudspeaker. Jonas kept on talking. He was starting in again with his “face-to-face” when, a little short of breath, Michaela's voice could be heard from the loudspeaker: “Okay, here we go!” “Ladies!” Jambo said, holding the steel-plated door open. I was the last to follow. When I turned around once more, I saw Jonas standing there with one arm raised, pointing vacantly.
³⁰⁸

Michaela stepped forward and began. One couple stood up and dashed for the exit. In the dim light cast over the audience I could see Mother and Robert, both sitting up ramrod straight and listening as if Emilia Galotti had risen from the dead to take her revenge on Marinelli. Her tone of voice when she said, “We're stepping out of our roles here,” was the same with which she had said, “But all such deeds are from times past!”

I felt uncomfortable just standing there, reduced to a physical presence.
³⁰⁹

The audience applauded, most of them stood up, including Mother and Robert. I saw Michaela reflexively want to bow in response to applause. She was just barely able to control herself, but now spread her arms, as if to say, All of us here agree, and then stepped back. People continued to applaud as if waiting for something, a song or a postlude. Some of those onstage followed Michaela's example and extended their arms to applaud the audience. Instead of an orderly exit, a few of us began to wander offstage one by one. The last ones to leave, including Emilia Galotti, looked as if they were in fact fleeing. The audience, 124 purchased tickets, kept on clapping as if to force an encore.

When we arrived at the theater the following day, an emissary of the Library on the Environment was waiting for us at the door. “The whole city is talking about what you did,” he said with an earnest nod, and invited us to Martin Luther Church that evening so that we could inform others about our declaration. Since I had never heard about a Library on the Environment in Altenburg, I thought at first he had come from Berlin.

The invitation extended to us was for a “prayer service.”

At the noon break Michaela took up residence in the canteen and received her due homage, even from the orchestra and chorus. Nothing like this had ever happened to her, not even after a premiere. Michaela announced who would read the resolution that evening, since she intended to appear at the church.

Martin Luther Church, that neo-Gothic forefinger rising at the far end of Market Square, was jam-packed. I followed Michaela down the center aisle to the front, where the emissary greeted us. It had been ages since I had been inside a church!

“Ghastly, truly ghastly,” a woman with short hair and a long, thin scar across her right eyebrow kept repeating. “Truly, truly ghastly!” She was referring to Bodin, the pastor of the church, who had demanded that instead of presenting bombastic speeches they should hold a thanksgiving service. God needed to be thanked for the politburo's declaration, which was an attempt at reconciliation. There were, moreover, strong elements of his congregation who would have no sympathy whatever for such proceedings. If she and her friends did not understand that, he had no choice but to yield to those members of the congregation and close his church's doors to a crowd of rowdies.

Somehow I sympathized with Pastor Bodin, an elderly, totally bald man, who had seated himself in his clerical robes against one wall and now appeared to be deep in thought or prayer.

Michaela and I were greeted by several people. The founder of the Altenburg New Forum (every town had its own New Forum) fought for air as he told us how that same morning he had found the lug nuts loosened on his Trabant. A gaunt long-haired fellow with an inscrutable Chinese smile was holding a rolled-up banner in his arms like a giant doll. There was a steady flow of young women who introduced themselves as members or chairpersons of environmental and peace groups.

Women were likewise in the majority among the people thronging the aisles and balconies. “Something has got to happen today!” the woman with the scar said, and planted herself in front of us.

“What's supposed to happen?” I asked.

“Why, a demonstration,” she exclaimed. “We've got to get things started here! Somebody's got to speak up today for once.”

The long-haired fellow came over and interrupted her to say, “If someone is going to speak, it ought to be a person no one here really knows.” Strangely enough at that moment that seemed plausible to me. I realized too late that by nodding I had got myself into a precarious situation. The fellow from the New Forum returned to repeat his lug-nut story and said he was already asking far too much of his family. Michaela didn't budge. “Can't you do it?” the woman with the scar asked, gazing at me. I was trapped.

“And what am I supposed to say?” I asked. “Super,” she cried, “that's really super!” The fellow with long hair bent down over me and patted my shoulder. “Fine, Enrico, very fine!” I was so discombobulated that I asked how he knew my name.
³¹⁰
In the same moment the church orchestra struck up. The bass player, who had given the downbeat, nodded like one of those plastic dachshunds that for a while you saw in every rear windshield.

After the first few bars I regretted the whole thing, after the first stanza I was desperate. Had I not very wisely kept my distance from such people until now? I could understand Pastor Bodin better and better as he sat there breathing heavily. His pouting lower lip dangled like a trembling reddish blue nozzle through which far too many words had flowed.

While someone from the civil rights movement was speaking, I was passed a note: “Get ready, you're up soon. Thanks.”

Michaela, who had been greeted with lots of applause at the start, made the mistake of reading the Dresden Resolution with the same flair she had at the theater. I could hear Emilia Galotti. She herself was aware how from one line to the next she was losing energy and how ultimately all that was left was an artificial theatrical pose. Toward the end she spoke faster—a deadly sin for an actor.

“I wasn't good,” she whispered. I took her cold hand, held it tight for a while. “Doesn't matter,” I said as the bass player gave his downbeat nod to that rotten orchestra.

Hundreds, thousands of times I had imagined giving a revolutionary speech, as if my life had been aimed toward this moment, this wish, this dream, which I was now damned to turn into reality.

Clutching the little note in my left hand, holding fast to the pulpit with my right,
³¹¹
I fought back the urge to laugh.

I looked up. Not a cough, not a cleared throat, not a shuffled foot. And into this perfect silence I said, “My name is Enrico Türmer. For a year and a half now I have been living with my wife and son at 104 Georg-Schumann Strasse. I work in the theater and am a member of no party.”

I looked out over the heads of the people and down the center aisle, and began:

“We have made mistakes, we confess we have, we indict ourselves.

“We tied on our pioneer neckerchiefs and sang the song about the dove of peace, while tanks drove through Budapest.

“We wept and laid our hands in our laps as we were being walled in.

“We said nothing while Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring.

“We paid our solidarity dues while workers were being shot and killed in Gdansk.”

The breathless silence lent my words a strength that had nothing to do with me, these were no longer my words.

“On May Day we demonstrated in honor of our unending loyalty to the Soviet Union while its troops murdered people in Afghanistan.

“We cracked jokes about lazy Polacks while the Poles were fighting for free labor unions, and we swore an oath to our flag as the National People's Army took up its position along the Oder and Neisse.

“In the midst of the graveyard silence that has reigned over Tiananmen Square for months, we still hear Honecker and Krenz clapping their approval.”

I could feel the words whirling about me, felt them rip me from the spot, felt myself being swept away with them.

“We put on our finest clothes when we went to vote.

“We learned to talk about our country without using the word ‘wall.'

“We let ourselves be draped along the curb like living garlands.

“We went to our Youth Consecration and swore loyalty to the state.

“We practiced throwing grenades and shooting air guns while the best of our writers, actors, and musicians were forced to leave the country.

“We congratulated one another on our brand-new apartments while the old centers of our towns were being razed.

“We counted our Olympic gold medals, but the dentist didn't know where he would get material to fill our teeth.

“We hung flags from our windows, although in Prague and Budapest we were ashamed to be recognized as citizens of the GDR. We rose from our seats for the national anthem, although we would have preferred to sink into the ground.”

I cast my eyes into the distance.

“We do not want to burden ourselves with guilt any longer. Our patience is at an end. We will let them see us, on the streets, in the marketplaces, in churches and theaters, in the Rathaus, in front of the buildings of local government and the State Security's villas. We have nothing to hide, we will show our faces. There is no reason for us to keep silent, we will speak our names. The time for begging is past. The wall must go, State Security must go, the Socialist Unity Party must go! Bring on free elections, a free media, bring on democracy! We need no one's permission. We will now take to the streets! This is our country!”

The silence burst open. The whole room was in an uproar—stomps, applause, whistles. If it doesn't sound too absurd, I stared out into the clamor, clutching the pulpit, dizzy from my own words. People were crowding out the doors. “Super,” the woman with the scar shouted, “really super!” Michaela had crossed her arms, clutching her elbows with her hands. Later she said the pastor had pushed me aside to get to the microphone. But the organ had drowned him out.

The closer we got to the exit the more clearly we could hear the chants.

The demonstration moved past the police station, past the Rathaus, on across Market Square, and turned left at the far end onto Sporen Strasse. We formed the rear guard. Suddenly someone opened the police-station door, two uniformed men raced toward us, and asked where we were headed. How should we know, the long-haired fellow shouted as he started to unroll his banner (
FREE ELECTIONS!
). The woman with the scar described our probable route for them: past State Security and the District Council and then up the hill to District Administration. They should probably block Zeitzer Strasse and Puschkin Strasse.

As we crossed Ebert Strasse, we heard a concert of whistles that could only be directed at the Stasi villa. “Let's hope they don't do anything stupid! Let's hope, let's hope,” Michaela whispered.

That night around one thirty, I heard car doors slamming directly below our window, I listened for footsteps, thought I could already hear the doorbell. But then nothing more happened. And that was almost more unnerving.

Your Enrico T.

Verotchka,

now I really must write you a letter:
³¹²
Mamus was here for two days.

The first evening Michaela invited us over.

Suddenly it was all just like old times, each of us sitting in his chair, and if our friend Barrista hadn't been running around in his slippers we might have taken him for a guest. Mamus acted as if nothing had happened and ignored the new constellation. Robert is her grandchild and Michaela her daughter-in-law, and now as luck would have it the baron has been added to the mix. Mamus agreed with everything he said and praised Herr von Barrista's objectivity several times. He kept going on about Dresden and how much he had enjoyed the tour by streetcar and her warm hospitality. That was three weeks ago.
³¹³

It was news to Mamus that Michaela has given notice at the theater. “But why?” she exclaimed. Michaela just went on eating, as if she hadn't heard the question. And instead her baron began to hold forth for her. First he talked about the state of the world and declared our current situation to be flat out the best this old earth has ever known—strong democracies without rivals and technological progress that increasingly relieves man of his burdens and allows him the freedom to pursue his true calling. Now that the iron curtain has fallen, what lies before us, or so the baron said, is an era of action and deeds, while contemplation and brooding belong to the past. Things change now more in one week than they used to over the course of years, which means that art, be it in the East or the West, is a losing proposition. Life's experiences are not to be found in the theater nowadays, but in commerce, in the marketplace. The changes we see daily are not only more exciting than Shakespeare, but also can no longer be grasped through Shakespeare.

He was basically saying nothing all that different from what I had heard him articulate last January. At times he used the very same words. But now Michaela was nodding with egregious eagerness, and Mamus seconded the baron and kept repeating that we needed to see things with businesslike objectivity now.