New Lives (88 page)

178. Budyonny—a general in the cavalry of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Isaac Babel—famous for his short-story collection,
Red Cavalry
—served under Budyonny.
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179. On Dec. 13,
1981,
the Polish military, under the leadership of General Jaruzelski, declared martial law throughout Poland and banned the independent labor union, Solidarnóśćc. T. evidently assumed that N. H. would recognize the significance of “December 13th.”
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180. Unless on duty, officers slept at home and first had to make their way to the base.
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181. Pejorative Saxon slang for people who live on the Baltic coast.
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182. Evidently T. considered her support a matter of course.
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183. Gojko Mitíc was famous for his roles as an Indian chief in GDR films. For a long time he was considered the epitome of male beauty. T. is assuming that N. H. knows who he was.
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184. Translator's note: Käferchen means “little beetle,” or better perhaps, “little bug.”
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185. Barrista's entourage evidently had considerable practice at scenes like this.
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186. Monetary union with the Federal Republic was scheduled to begin July 1, 1990.
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187. T. initially gave the sum as twelve hundred, cf. his letter of March 28, 1990.
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188. T. was now in the second six months of his eighteen-month service.
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189. This is a surprising statement inasmuch as at the end of his previous letter to N. H., T. had claimed that he was “not going to tolerate” Nikolai in his presence anymore.
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190. Understandably enough, T. wanted to conceal his homoerotic relationship with Nikolai, but was also evidently unable to do without Nikolai in his cast of characters.
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191. Forty-eight-hour sentry duty.
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192. T. knew whereof he spoke. His letters to Nicoletta read like a settlement of accounts with a life made up of “intentionally arranged incidents.” At the same time the question necessarily arises as to whether his letters to Nicoletta are not also “an intentionally arranged incident.”
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193. Corporal stripes are incomprehensible as a reason.
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194. V. T. and Johann Ziehlke are in agreement that in the first few days after their discharge, T. and Nikolai were a couple.
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195. T. feared any and all competition in this regard as well.
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196. T. leaves unmentioned the fact that he knew the person in question from his school-days: to wit, the publisher of these letters. I would have loved to know T.'s opinion of my texts, but he never again refers to them here.
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197. The Army District Command was where one's identification papers were returned, after having been held there for the duration of one's military service.
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198. The edition he means was probably that of the Verlag Kultur und Fortschritt [Culture and Progress Publishers] (Berlin, 1964), on the cover of which is a saber-brandishing, mustachioed cavalryman.
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199. Matthias Domaschk of Jena was arrested on April 10,
1981,
and the following morning was handed over to the district office of the Ministry for State Security in Gera. On April 12th, Matthias Domaschk died in the ministry's pretrial detention facility in Gera under circumstances still unexplained today. The Ministry for State Security reported that he had hanged himself with his own shirt.
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200. An elegant new spelling. One presumes it was also meant to invoke echoes of Beethoven.
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201. A note paper-clipped to this carbon copy contains the following quoted observation: “What one perceives in the presence of one's beloved is only a negative that must first be developed when one returns home and can use the darkroom of one's own interior, the entrance to which is ‘nailed shut' as long as one can see the other person.” Thus far no source for this quote has been determined.
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202. The five weeks of reserve training were graded as if they were regular coursework. Anyone who did not “pass” was dismissed from the university.
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203. A description of the enemy on the basis of certain predetermined criteria.
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204. Officers were usually not from one's own university or technical school.
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205. The firm was a synonym for the State Security.
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206. The analogy between the situation described here and that in which T. now found himself as a letter writer is certainly self-evident. Both women “fit in with all the rest” and into his “calculation” as well.
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207. As a rule each student received two hundred marks per month, with which one could just eke out an existence without assistance from home or taking a part-time job.
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208. “I still recall that ‘Maria Theresia' meant Bratislava and ‘go to work' meant Brno, but I've forgotten how the mistake happened and whether it was Enrico's or my fault.”—Sabine Kraft in a letter to the editor.
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209. Power plants in the “three-country triangle” of the GDR, Czechoslovakia, and Poland had badly damaged the flora and fauna of these low mountains.
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210. Beer.
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211. Apparently an allusion by T. to an imaginary quasi-incestuous relationship with V. T. This fantasy later takes on outright delusional dimensions.
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212. What lay behind this offer was the outcome of local elections held on May 6, 1990. Johann had campaigned as a candidate of Alliance 90, but had failed to be elected to the city council.
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213. He means that the page count can be increased or decreased in increments of four.
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214. On March 29th, the executive board of the German Bundesbank had recommended an exchange rate of 2:1, arguing that the GDR economy could not support a conversion at 1:1. The new head of government in the GDR, de Maizière, was afraid that cutting wages in half would result in “intolerable social tensions,” and advocated a 1:1 rate for salaries and pensions. On July 1st savings up to four thousand marks (and up to six thousand marks for citizens over sixty) were to be exchanged at 1:1, anything beyond that at 2:1. Since the exchange rate at the end of January had been 5:1 or even higher, T. is engaging in one of his typical speculations.
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215. For the local elections of May 6, 1990.
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216. T. surely knows more than he admits here, cf. his article in the
Altenburg Weekly,
no. 13; the most extensive and well-researched study on the history of the Altenburg hand reliquary has been done by Hans Dörpfeldt, published unfortunately in an obscure periodical,
Heidelberger Studien zur katholischen Dogmatik
[Heidelberg studies on Catholic dogmatics], no. 66, p. 55 ff.; cf. P. Schnabel,
Die Heimkehr des Patrons
[The patron returns home], in
Altenburger Pfade in die Vergangenheit
[Altenburg paths into the past], no. 1, p. 7 ff.; suitable as an introduction to the topic, especially for young readers, is
Arbeiten und Beten mit Bonifatius
[Work and prayer with Boniface] (Altenburg, 2004), 12th edition.
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217. T. apparently had in mind
Horace: Works in One Volume
, Manfred Simon, ed. and trans. (Berlin, 1972).
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218. A sweet Romanian white wine.
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219. T. was evidently still of this opinion in May 1990.
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220. It is rather unlikely that Roland, who according to V. T. was relatively well informed about conditions in the GDR, would have asked such a question. Perhaps here as well T. is sacrificing truth for the sake of a punch line.
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221. When had he ever previously arrived “at just such a point”?
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222. A standard textbook.
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223. By now at least it should be apparent how preoccupied T. was with questions of composition when writing these letters.
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224. It should be remembered that, as he did with the majority of his letters, T. made a carbon copy of these pages.
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225. The assumption that there was a homoerotic relationship between Johann and T. sheds relatively clear light on this enigmatic situation. The following remark from the copy, rendered illegible in the original, also indicates as much: “Just as with Vera before him, I had no choice but to interpret this as Johann's payback for my love affair with Nadja.”
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226. On Dec. 6, 1989, representatives of the civil rights movement had, as was the case in many other towns as well, occupied the local offices of State Security.
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227. T. evidently thought he was being reduced to a “deduction.” It is said of him that later on he would make a point of crumpling up the bill after a business lunch and tossing it into the ashtray. (As reported by Johann Ziehlke.)
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228. T. was probably afraid that Frau Schorba would be too heavy for a room declared off-limits by the police.
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229. This letter is among the most illegible, due primarily to cross-outs and insertions, especially in the final third.
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230. From this point on T. insinuates—evidently intentionally—a suspicion. It is as if no letter can fail to mention some connection between Vera and State Security. And yet nothing in his presentation, either to this point or afterward, points to any such relationship. An unbiased reader will be unable to share T.'s qualms on the basis of remarks made here by V. T.
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231. The next three lines are blacked out in both original and copy.
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232. Crossed out: if only for this one night.
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233. Crossed out: and all my problems.
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234. T. is mistaken here. Sunday was the 13th.
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235. V. T. lived in West Beirut during her three months there. On April 18, 1990, a school bus got caught in an exchange of fire between rival Christian militias. Fifteen children lost their lives.
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236. Saxon slang for “head,”“skull.”
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237. T. means dozen. Correct terminology, as we shall soon see, would have spared him a moment of panic.
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238. The agreement with Barrista was that he would risk everything, not just his interim winnings. Judged on that basis, T. did fail.
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239. In his letter to Johann, T. had just boasted of having handed Vera his winnings.
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240. The university was required to find a job for each of its graduates.
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241. Wolfgang Hilbig, born in Meuselwitz in 1943, was allowed to publish only one thin volume of poems and short stories in the GDR,
Stimme, Stimme
[Voice, voice] (Leipzig, 1985); since 1979 his books have been published by S. Fischer in Frankfurt am Main.
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242. The collection consists of 180 early Italian paintings on wood panels.
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243. Something she might very well have suspected. T. was only fleetingly familiar with the museum and regarded exhibition openings there primarily as an opportunity for nurturing social contacts—both Johann Ziehlke and V. T. agree this was the case. Moreover this passage about the museum interrupts, for no good reason, the description of his theater experiences.
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244. T. is quoting the same passage from the introduction to the museum's catalog that was already mentioned by C. von Barrista, cf. the letter of March 28, 1990. The panels referred to in the next paragraph are found in the same sequence in the registry of the collection.
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245. T. evidently failed to notice that he was describing himself here as the quintessential observer, the voyeur.
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246. Here as well T. is fantasizing. For if in fact it was as dark as he describes, he could scarcely have experienced a fly “whirling” around him.
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247. One cannot avoid the impression that T. was reveling in a certain nostalgia during the period of separation from Michaela.
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248. It would be interesting to learn what T. imagined a love affair was supposed to be.
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249. Presumably T. has once again forgotten the complimentary close that had already been reduced to a rather mechanical “Your Enrico T.” in his preceding letters.
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250. Cf. Appendix, “May.”
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251. T. means September 1988. Because of construction work that began without warning in the fall of '87, the theater was closed for almost an entire season. The company did not resume production until September '88.
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252. Legendary productions directed by Alexander Lang at the Deutsches Theater and by Heiner Müller at the Volksbühne.
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253. East German term for “subscription series.”
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254. During World War II only the industrial plants on the periphery of Altenburg were bombed, which was why the city had taken in a disproportionate number of refugees.
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