New Lives (81 page)

“Imagine we're talking about lightbulbs or cars or anything of that sort.”

“Why should I?”

“You don't know any more about those things than I do, do you?”

“He wants me to draw conclusions…”

“Everyone has to draw their own conclusions.”

“Mama…”

What had become of his ideas, of the arguments he wanted to present her with. Why couldn't he convince her? Was it so easy to put him in checkmate? Joachim was right, Gunda Lapin was right, his mother was right, they were all right each in their own way—only he was wrong.

         

(Or better, set in a telephone booth.)

“He asked if I had settled in okay, how I was doing meeting the challenges of a new class, and then he said that this wasn't some attempt to talk me into enlisting, into hiring me as a mercenary, those days were over, thank God. That wasn't how we did things. But a government of workers and peasants that made it possible for us to get such an education surely ought to be able to demand something in return from those to whom it gave special assistance.”

“He was very calm, but stern, calm and stern. He asked why I didn't want peace. I told him that of course I wanted peace. Was I prepared then to defend my homeland with a weapon in hand, or would I just stand aside and watch my family slaughtered before my eyes.”

“Then I'll just become a garbage collector. I don't think I'll starve.”

“‘Here on our side no one is left to make his decisions all alone,' he said.”

“A short report, by Monday.”

“I don't know, I really don't. He gave me a book to read…”

Then Titus didn't say anything for a long time. It was almost dark now.

“It will just go on like this,” he said finally. “Over and over and over.” “Yes,” he said then, “yes.”

5

Five thirty. Titus saw the drops on the windowpane. He rolled over on his back and listened. Something had awakened him, sort of like when the cat used to jump up on his bed. Everything sounded very close—tires on asphalt, the streetcar, buses on their way up to the airport, trains out on the heath.

Titus squeezed his eyes tight. His heart was making progress, beating fasting, closer to his skin.

Six thirty, seven thirty…he counted on his fingers, twelve thirty…in seven hours it would be time, in eight hours his life would be different.

He rolled onto his side, doubled the pillow, and pressed his face into it as if he were crying. The front door clicked into its lock. Footsteps on the sidewalk. He wanted to enjoy the next seven minutes, as if it were the middle of the night, kept cutting the remaining time in half so there was always one half left. He tucked up his legs and pulled the covers higher.

Seconds before it rang, Titus reached for the alarm clock and got up. He closed the window, knelt down, and started his push-ups. He shouted the count to himself. As if an officer were standing beside him, each shout was a blow across his back. He didn't stop until forty, he was out of breath, but forced himself to keep going to the point of exhaustion. He could see his distorted face and hear himself gasping for air. At forty-seven he no longer felt the riding crop on his back, forty-eight, forty-nine…even after his stomach touched the floor, his arms were still supporting his shoulders. Then he lay there, awaiting his sentence.

Titus was awake now, wonderfully awake. He leapt to his feet like a sprinter from the starting block. He put water on, got the butter from the fridge, and washed at the sink. Seven hours. All he had to do was stick to his opinion. The worst part, yesterday afternoon with his mother, was behind him now. Maybe Petersen would take him to see the principal. Titus smiled while he dried himself.

At seven thirty-five he left the apartment, gym bag in hand, sprinted when he heard the streetcar coming, and leapt onto the last car just as the final bell rang.

The man beside him smelled of cigarettes, shaving lotion, alcohol, and peppermint. Titus pushed his way to the middle of the car, found an opening on the handrail to hang on to. He positioned his satchel and gym bag between his legs.

Hadn't the people around him already agreed to live out their lives with the least expenditure of energy possible, as if saving all their strength for the beyond? Had not one of these people ever received the call of God?

At the Platz der Einheit he had to get off the 7 and cross to catch the 6. At the stoplight his mother was standing directly opposite him. He didn't spot her and was startled when he heard his name spoken so close to his ear.

“Good morning, Titus,” she said. They hugged.

“All you have to do is read it to them,” she said, and held out the book and some sheets of paper. “Ten minutes, if you read it slowly.”

He looked at the pages. The book was in a plastic bag decorated with pictures of coins.

“This is not your decision, Titus,” she said. “This is how I want it, and you have to behave accordingly.”

Titus looked to one side. It was as if she were grounding him.

“You're fifteen. When you're eighteen, after you've graduated, you can be as much of a conscientious objector as you want.”

“Not so loud,” Titus whispered. What was she thinking, ambushing him here like this?

“Promise me that!” Titus looked across to the Red Army Monument; the soldier carrying the flag had his other arm drawn back to toss a hand grenade. He was aiming directly at his mother and him.

“You have to promise me!”

“I'll try,” Titus said.

“Not just try!” she cried sternly. “This has nothing to do with ‘trying.' You will do what I tell you to do. Do you understand, Titus?”

“Mama,” he said with a smile. He didn't understand what was happening inside him. Everything was tumbling, it was as if something had broken loose inside him—something pleasant. She had forbidden him. Just like that. Suddenly everything had returned to square one. He tried to suppress his smile, he wanted to gaze at his mother with a suffering look. He couldn't admit defeat without any resistance. He had to challenge her.

“I've made my decision,” Titus said. “I'm not going to serve in the army.”

“I don't object to that,” she said. “Just don't say it now, but when the time comes, before you're drafted.”

“Petersen wants to know now. I don't want to lie anymore.”

“It isn't your decision, Titus. I want you to read this report. And that's why you're going to read it too. And if he asks you, then you say what you've said all along, eighteen months and not a day longer.”

“I'm not going to read lies.”

“What do you mean, lies? I've cut out all the foolishness. You tell them about the Nazi generals that they've had and still have, about the names of the bases, the old songs they still bellow, the organizations looking for revenge, and above all about the money. The big companies that profit from it. And if you want to make money selling arms, you need fear and war. Your conscience will be clear, which is true in any case, and as for this…” She turned around because a streetcar was pulling in.

“The eleven,” he said.

“You'll see,” she said.

Even in the open air Titus could smell the chloramine on her hands.

“Was it a slow night?” he asked.

“It was okay,” she said. “You've made me a promise.” She lifted his chin, he turned his head away. But when he looked at her, he couldn't suppress his smile any longer.

“You promise me you'll read it?”

“Yes,” Titus said.

Because their routes took them in opposite directions, they stood opposite each other at the stop like total strangers—until two streetcars crossed in front of them almost simultaneously.

         

Sanddorn, their music teacher, slammed the door behind him, loped in great bounding strides to the piano, put down the grade book, and shouted, “Friends one and all, take your seats!”

Sanddorn raised the lid, plopped down onto the piano bench, and played a couple of bars, a variation on, “Hark, What Comes Now to Us from Afar,” the same song they each had had to sing for him solo a few weeks before.

“We need men,” Sanddorn cried, “more men!” And the melody wandered off into the bass voices. Sanddorn opened his grade book, thumbed through a few pages, and propped his forearms on it, so that all the class could see was his large head.

Titus liked Sanddorn, although when he had had to sing solo for him, he sent him back to his seat after the first stanza and to everyone's delight played Titus's warped version of the melody on the piano. But Sanddorn never gave anything lower than a B when you sang for him. Titus was glad the week began with a stress-free hour.

“Mario Gädtke.” Sanddorn had read the name from his grade book. He only knew the names of those who sang in the school chorus by heart. Mario had stood up.

“An A in singing, and you're not in the choir?” Mario listed all the things he was involved in and why he couldn't join the choir. Titus wished Sanddorn would ask him something like that—and meantime Mario talked about the chemistry club, the brass ensemble, and judo. What Titus wouldn't have given to be in the choir. They sang the
Christmas Oratorio,
Brahms's
Requiem,
Verdi, Mozart. And they only wore their blue FGY shirts at start-of-the-year ceremonies. When Peter Ullrich was asked to come forward to sing a second time, Titus began to worry that this least dangerous of classes might turn dangerous today. But Sanddorn would never ask him, not him, to come forward again. He would be the last person Sanddorn would test a second time. And in fact Sanddorn now closed the grade book.

“Haydn Variations!”
he cried, and quoted what Brahms had said about the symphony—that writing a symphony is a matter of life and death—and that Haydn (“How many symphonies did Haydn compose?”) was a master at it, Haydn and Mozart, Haydn and Esterházy, Brahms and Haydn.

The record crackled. The music began. Titus leaned back. The motif was obvious.

While he listened to the music, he watched Sanddorn pace back and forth between the piano and the window, his eyes fixed on the floor, his right hand marking each entrance.

Sanddorn's corpulence struck Titus as a provocation—it rendered Sanddorn unacceptable for military service. On the other hand, Sanddorn knew how to carry his weight with such grace that you suspected he would make a good dancer. During breaks between classes it looked like he was promenading up and down in the hallway outside the music room—you couldn't possibly picture Sanddorn in the teachers' lounge—all the while humming some melody, which the moment he stopped he would write out with his finger on a radiator, a windowsill, or the window itself. He returned every greeting very amiably, bowing with his entire large upper body to faculty and students alike.

Sanddorn, who had stopped by the window, raised a finger to underscore the original motif. Titus would have loved to ask Sanddorn whether he had been in the army and what advice he had to give him.

         

[Letter of June 21, 1990]

Titus walked to the front. He didn't want to sing, he couldn't sing, Sanddorn had to know how impossible it was for him to be put through this torture a second time. He would have accepted any black mark against him.

Sanddorn first ran the piano through an eerie rumbling prelude, only to follow it with a very spare version of the lines: “And 'cause a man is just a man he needs his grub to eat, dig in!”

“Just sing along,” Sanddorn cried, “just join in!” Sanddorn started all over again, nodding to him in encouragement, and Titus sang along. He didn't even hear his classmates laughing, Sanddorn was singing so loud.

But when it came to the “So left, two three, so left, two three,” Titus thought he might have to start marching around with Sanddorn, while he and Sanddorn sang, “Find your place, good comrades! Join with us in the Workers Front, 'cause you're working men too!”

The second stanza began and they marched forward together. Titus could hear himself now, he leaned on Sanddorn's voice—or it embraced his own. He knew the words, had memorized them. And Titus instantly cheered up when the “So left, two three” came round again. He sang loudly—and when Sanddorn and the piano fell silent, he sang on alone. But a moment later Sanddorn reentered, and they marched in step to stanza three.

“Wednesday, one thirty p.m.
,
choir!” Sanddorn shouted as Titus returned to his seat. The burst of laughter was worse than ever before. Titus turned to stone, Sanddorn was toying with his most sacred feelings. Titus hated Sanddorn now, that fat reptile at the piano. It was not until Sanddorn exclaimed, “We'll make a real tenor out of him yet,” that Titus began to realize what had just happened. Sanddorn entered an A in the grade book.

Titus had to hurry, the bell for the end of class had rung in the middle of the second stanza. But he took his time, because he knew he still had Joachim ahead of him. There he was waiting on the stairs beneath the mural with the eleventh Feuerbach thesis.

“My mother wants me to read it,” Titus said quickly.

“What?” Joachim smile.

“About the Bundeswehr, she wrote it.”

“Your mother? Your mother wrote it?”

Titus shrugged.

“Your mother is actually a very wise woman,” Joachim said, sucked his lips in, and then opened them with a soft pop. “Why isn't she helping you? Why is she making it more difficult for you?” Titus greeted Frau Berlin, who was glancing back and forth between Joachim and him as if she had been eavesdropping.

“Why is she doing this?”

“For my sake,” Titus said defiantly, and with two quick steps slipped in front of Joachim to avoid opposing traffic. He couldn't spot Bernadette anywhere. Only when they had reached the broad middle flight did Joachim appear again at his side.