New Lives (56 page)

After the meal our friend Barrista passed around something in a little box with a glass lid. It didn't look at all promising, some sort of desiccated stuff in a kind of mousetrap. Have you guessed? It gave our poor Mamus such a fright that she flinched and pressed her back to her chair—a couple of Boniface's knuckles.

Our farewells were also “businesslike,” although each of us felt embarrassed. Robert came with us to the car. (Our friend Barrista has such a bad conscience that not only has he transferred the car's title to me, he's also paying the insurance.)

As I drove I told Mamus about the new apartment, described to her the view to the castle and the spaciousness of our rooms. I mentioned it in the hope that it would make the bleak room where she would be spending the night with me more bearable.
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Besides which, it seemed to me it was better to talk with her than to leave her wrapped in silence.

“I'm not moving in alone,” I suddenly said—it just slipped out. Mamus didn't react. Only when we came to a stop did she announce the results of her ruminations: “Vera!”

“Yes,” I said, “Vera.” I asked Mamus if she wanted to take a walk with me, because besides the two air mattresses there was only one chair in the room. She shook her head. I was truly alarmed at how slowly she climbed the stairs.

Cornelia and Massimo weren't home. We could have sat in the kitchen, but Mamus wanted to “get ready for bed.” When I used the bathroom after her I discovered a whole hodgepodge of medications and salves in her cosmetic bag.

Mamus had already turned out the light and instead of lying down on the air mattress with fresh linens, had stretched out on mine.

I asked her what she needed all those medicines for. “All sorts of things,” she said. I wanted to know if “all sorts of things” also meant she was still in pain from her beating.

“Serves me right,” she said.

“Who says so?” I asked. “Your colleagues?”

“No,” Mamus replied, “I say so, I do.”

She had pulled the blanket up to her chin, the sharp profile of her nose jutting up. I would have loved to turn the light on again.

Suddenly she said, “I'm so ashamed of myself,” and rolled over with her back to me.

I stood up and knelt down beside her. I begged her to talk to me, I tried to pat her cheek, I bent down to look into her eyes. But nothing I did was right—I was told to lie back down, to please lie back down. No, I said, she needed to tell me what was wrong.

She said nothing.

“That damn camera,” she announced, after I had retreated to my air mattress. “That damn camera.”

I barely dared take a breath, as if I were eavesdropping.

On Friday, October 6th, Mamus had taken the streetcar from the clinic to the Central Station. She had been curious, wanted to see what was really going on. And she had her old camera with her. She had stuck it in her purse without thinking much about it. On the streetcar she ran into C., a pediatrician, whose consignment seat for the Staatskapelle was right next to hers. C. rode with her to the Central Station. At first it all seemed harmless enough. But then the demonstrators began to throw stones. Mamus held up her camera and snapped a shot. The police started going after the demonstrators, and C. shouted, “Now!” “There!” “And there!” “Now!” and pulled her along with her. Mamus told how, egged on by a megaphone, some special forces turned on the demonstrators. Suddenly everything started getting blurry. “Tear gas!” C. had shouted—she needed to close her eyes tight and put her hands to her face. They linked arms. Without being able to see where they were going they walked about a hundred or two hundred yards, until they thought they might be out of the cloud.

After that Mamus said good-bye to C. and boarded the first streetcar that came by. The driver, however, refused to ring the bell for departure because he claimed demonstrators were attacking the streetcar. People on the car started loudly offering their two bits—you couldn't even take a streetcar to go see a movie in the evening anymore. A couple of rowdy demonstrators climbed aboard, and one of them shouted, “Fucking pigs!” Then everything just went “lickety-cut.” Mamus had no idea what was happening to her. The rear car was emptied of its passengers. She saw people get off, fall to their knees, then stretch out, facedown, on the paving stones in front of the Central Station, while policemen with truncheons and dogs stood over them. “Just like Chile,” she said, and when she paused I could hear her breathing.

“I was so damn stupid,” she went on, “so damn stupid, because I thought it was none of my business. A fat man in a uniform got on at the front of the car and shouted, ‘Everybody off, please, and then lie flat on the ground.' He said it very politely, as if there had been some accident. But a wiry guy, who approached from the rear, started shouting, ‘Out! Facedown on the ground!' And silly willy that I am, I do what he says. I go right ahead and do it. Do you understand? Your mother gets off the streetcar, gets off and lies down flat on the ground in the filthy street—do you understand?”

In a voice choked with tears she said, “I was a failure, an utter failure…” I didn't dare touch her. I said she had no reason to blame herself. What did any of this have to do with failure?

“Oh, but it does, it does,” she whispered, only to suddenly bark at me, “Of course I failed.”

Mamus asked for a handkerchief and blew her nose.

“Next to me,” she begin again, “a woman lay whimpering and sobbing like a child throwing a tantrum. I raised my head to look at the streetcar, and there in the empty car sat an older, very well-dressed woman. She looked incredibly elegant. Twenty, thirty people were lying there on the ground, and there's just that one person sitting there, looking out the window to the other side. Suddenly a woman tugs the sobbing creature beside me to her feet, links arms with her, and walks her right past the ‘polite' policeman and climbs aboard. But as for me, my head is full of utter nonsense, not one rational thought. I'm thinking, Well, that's the last of that contingent, they can't make any more exceptions. I'm thinking that they mustn't find my camera, if they find it they'll arrest me. And the whole time I kept looking at the elegant lady, and then the streetcar bell rings and it pulls out with those three women in the front car.”

Mamus gave a laugh. “If it weren't for that elegant woman I wouldn't blame myself now. They simply broke us, Enrico, they broke us!”

It was pointless to try to comfort Mamus. She would permit no excuses. She had already seen how they were running people down, whaling away at them. But that really had nothing to do with it, that's what she wanted me to understand. “I put up no defense, I just yielded to my fate, I was submissive, nothing else, just submissive.”

Everything that happened afterward, what those younger guys had done to her, how she had been forced to kneel on her hands—all because of that damn camera—was, as she sees it now, punishment for her own failings.

She had whispered these last words because Cornelia and Massimo had returned home. When I made some remark, Mamus hissed for me to hush. Floorboards creaked. We listened to Cornelia's shrill giggle and Massimo's permanently hoarse voice. I heard a bottle being uncorked and the chink of a toast. And then suddenly I heard Mamus snoring.

She slept until eight, and declared she hadn't slept that late in years. At breakfast she said that the pictures had all turned out jiggled.

Robert spent all of Sunday with us. And on the drive to the train station, Mamus said she was glad to learn that the family would all be back together again soon.

         

Should I try to make you jealous? Do you know who visited me on Friday? My handsome Nikolai!
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Suddenly there he stood, in the middle of the office, smiling, practically melting with smiles. But not to worry, he's built a family around himself too—Marica, “pretty as a picture,” as Mamus would say, a Yugoslav, who, when she wasn't ordering her two girls around, talked about what all Nikolai had told her about me. Sometimes she has the impression, she said, that she knows more about me than about him. Nikolai left for the West in '84, to Bielefeld, where his father had settled. He took technical courses, something to do with electronics, and is making “good money,” as Marica puts it. At any rate they drive a huge Mercedes, big as an official limo, that makes my LeBaron look like a toy. We hadn't heard anything from each other in seven years.

Johann will be starting with us in August. Franziska has finally agreed to check in to a clinic, their apartment will be ready in September, it's to mark a new start for both of them.

With love, your Heinrich

Dear Jo,

I apologize if my most recent letter left you feeling uneasy. Please believe me that your job was never in jeopardy for a moment. But I thought it best to let you know what's what.

You can't imagine the incredible hysteria and acrimony. I had no choice, I had to pull the emergency brake. Even now, after all the garbage dumped on me, the separation still leaves me feeling more disheartened than gratified. Things could have gone so well for us. We would have been invincible. Toward the end Jörg himself saw he had overshot his mark, but he already lacked the strength and courage to rescind his decision. Now he's suffering for it. No wonder, given all the missed opportunities.

Since I wasn't prepared to submit to his dictate I had no choice but to do precisely what Jörg proposed was my only recourse, that is, together with the baron, to launch a free paper financed by ads.
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Do you know what happened when I informed Jörg and Marion of my decision? They demanded “their share” back. At first I didn't even grasp what they meant. I was sitting at the computer beside Frau Schorba and could hear Marion and Co. squawking in the next office—instead of using my name, they referred to me only by pronouns. I wasn't expecting good news when Jörg came in.

“I have just one question,” he said. Was I prepared to repay my share, which had been given me gratis?

“Which is to say,” I said as softly as possible, “I should pack my things and go?” No, that's not what he meant, Jörg said, rubbing the back of his neck. I gave him plenty of time. But when he just went on massaging his neck, I asked him how he pictured the situation.

He didn't know himself, he said just as softly, but it couldn't go on like this. I pleaded with him one last time to let me do a free paper.

Jörg, however, repeated that there was no way we could expand, especially not at this critical juncture.

“The money's there!” I cried, and pointed to the stack of ads. “It's there!”

“Are you going to give back your share?” he asked.

“And what do I get in return?” I asked.

“So just as I thought,” he said with a bitter laugh. I asked what “just as I thought” meant. But he had already ducked out of my office. Shortly thereafter Marion stormed in like a Fury. She called me Herr Türmer. To be on a first-name basis with someone like me was an insult. And then she really let loose. She even called me a thief, and a shadow of a man. I was a shadow, nothing more than a shadow. I have no idea what she meant. They would do anything to be rid of me.

“There'll come a time when you'll regret saying such things,” I said. My reply was in reference to their ruining the paper. I said it with great sadness. But Marion screeched, “And now he's threatening us!” And pointed her finger at me: “He's threatening us!” Jörg came bounding in and forbade me to harass his wife like this. And it went on and on like that. How disgusting! Jörg and Ilona tried to calm Marion down by laying into me. I've never seen such bogus theatrics on a stage. Frau Schorba sat there next to me like a block of ice. In all the excitement Astrid the wolf started barking. Even ever-silent Kurt can't take it anymore and wants to quit.

So now I've come to an agreement with the baron, and am transferring my share in the
Weekly
to him. He figures it's worth thirty thousand D-marks—if Jörg can come up with the money, then of course he has first right of purchase. Which means we're starting fresh again and will use the thirty thousand for computers, printers, layout tables, a pasting machine, a camera, and a car—Andy offers the baron better deals than he does us. The baron's going to deposit the other thirty thousand in a checking account so that we can stay in the black. Until we can become a limited liability corporation, Michaela will once again be my official partner, which is not without its humor.

It's an ideal solution inasmuch as the baron will not only be our chief negotiator but will also necessarily have a strong interest in the success of both papers, which obliges everyone to cooperate. For now we'll share our present office space. And for the time being the sales reps will be working for both papers, which means that—at the baron's strong urging—there'll be a discount for advertising with both. In principle we'll be doing everything just as I had planned, except we'll be keeping two sets of books and will have to almost double the staff.

Frau Schorba is, of course, coming with us. I can do without the rest of them. You'll be the editor for Altenburg, Pringel has applied for Borna/Geithain, where it's unlikely anyone will recognize him as a “Red scribbler.” But we should decide that together.

The biggest problem is distribution. We need to be in every household.

The baron is looking forward to meeting you. There are days when I never see him at all. If he isn't assisting his people in opening new branches, then he's busy with his “Boniface hobby.” He's planning a show, an open-air spectacular, that is evidently dearer to his heart than anything else. Andy's wife, Olimpia, is his right-hand woman for the project. The rest of us know nothing except for vague hints. And he's using his reliquary to wangle the Madonna away from the Catholics. He's constantly cracking jokes—some of them rather off-color—about it all.