New Lives

by Ingo Schulze

  At this point in her narrative Michaela blew her nose. The toilet paper rustled on the coconut-fiber mat.

  They figured, Michaela continued, you could talk to the ones without helmets. Thea spoke to several of them, each time mentioning her birthday and the children and guests waiting for her at home. When she got no reply she raised her voice. She hadn’t realized that it was now forbidden to return to your home—that would be just like this government, they might as well arrest her on the spot. Thea had just turned back around to Karin and her, Michaela, when three men in civvies stormed through the cordon and pounced on her from behind. One of them had stepped between her and Thea, which was why she, Michaela, couldn’t say exactly what happened to Thea in those few seconds. Thea had screamed, probably in pain. They both could see Thea holding up her ID as she was led away. Then she had vanished behind a truck. They picked up Thea’s purse, gathered up the spilled contents, and discussed what they should do now. They tried to describe for each other what the three Stasi guys had looked like, but had to admit that they could never identify them in a lineup. Five minutes later they saw Thea being thrown into a truck by two cops. She and Karin could swear to that.

  They fled back into the pub and called Thomas, Thea’s husband. Karin began to weep hysterically and had to stretch out on the bench of the corner table reserved for regulars. They could hear screams coming from the street, and new people kept dashing inside, many with scrapes, bruises, and bloody noses. They were all afraid the uniformed brigade might storm the pub. She, Michaela, had almost wished they would, since just waiting was the worst thing of all.

  When they got back to Thea’s apartment around half past midnight, all the birthday party guests were still sitting there. Thomas had first yelled at Michaela and Karin, as if they were to blame for Thea’s disappearance. More than ten guests had spent the night in the apartment—on the floor, in armchairs, sleep was out of the question in any case. Thomas spent the entire night making phone calls. He also drove to the police academy in Rummelsburg, but no one would let him in. They waited the whole day and left the apartment only to take the children to a playground.

  Talking had helped Michaela calm down somewhat, but only to the extent that she could now be all the more vehement in her self-accusations. Thea had called to them as she was arrested. She, Michaela, had even tried to hold on to Thea, but had been pushed back by the cordon of uniformed men. Michaela broke into tears again now. One of the policemen—or whatever that uniform of his was—had asked her if she wanted to end up there too. “End up there,” those had been his words, and it had been clear that “there” was some horrible place. But now she could only ask herself why she had been so horrified, why she hadn’t joined Thea as she ought to have. “No!” Michaela cried, rejecting all our attempts to comfort her, it had been her duty to follow her and not to have let that “there” frighten her. She could understand Thomas’s reaction—of course he was right to reproach her. “I let it happen! I abandoned her!”

  Robert sat there totally helpless at her side. Then Michaela stood up and announced she was going to the telephone booth to call Thomas. Besides, she could use the fresh air.

  Robert and I ate alone. As we were washing up, he told me how his homeroom teacher, Herr Milde, had said we ought never shed a tear for those who turned their backs on our republic (a well-worn phrase in the newspapers at the time), but that his friend Falk had responded that he was sorry that Doreen, his deskmate who had emigrated with her parents a few days before, was no longer here. At first Herr Milde hadn’t reacted at all, but then had admonished him to raise his hand if he wanted to say something. Falk had then raised his hand, but wasn’t called on. Herr Milde had said it would be easy for a boy like him to find a prettier girlfriend than Doreen. Robert asked me if he should have raised his hand too.

  “Bad news,” Michaela said. It seemed to me as if at some basic level she was proud of the fact. Karin had stayed with Thea’s children, Thomas had written up a report on Thea’s arrest and read it aloud in Gethsemane Church before posting it there. Karin had signed as a witness and had given her address. Karin had promised Michaela that she would add her, that is, our address to it as well. “All hell must have broken loose there,” Michaela said.

  We were at the theater by a little before ten the next morning. There was a press of people in the dramaturgy office, a long, low room directly under the roof.

  Michaela at once grabbed for the telephone receiver, clamped it to her ear, and put a finger to her other ear while she talked.

  Most people seemed to have ended up there out of pure boredom. They inspected our little library, paged through old programs, and spoke about productions and colleagues, as if this were what the occasion required. Each time the door opened, conversations faltered for a moment.

  Amanda from props appeared and shortly after her our stage manager, Olaf. Norbert Maria Richter hadn’t arrived yet. Amanda lit a cigarette and asked what we planned to do. “I’m not planning anything,” I said.

  Some were discussing a resolution that came from the Dresden Theater and was to be read from the stage there, others talked about blood banks and hospital wards cleared for patients. Word of it was in fact circulating in Leipzig, Patrick confirmed—Ellen had called him at the theater just to tell him about it. Amanda showed us an article from the Volkszeitung. “Working People Demand: Hostility Toward the State Should No Longer be Tolerated!” read the headline. A cadre that went by the name of Geifert felt inconvenienced by certain unprincipled elements disrupting their well-earned rest after a day’s work. The conclusion: they were ready and able to defend and protect the work of their own hands and to effectively put an end to these disruptions once and for all. “With weapons in hand if need be.” I read the article aloud and passed the newspaper around. Amanda held her cigarette butt under the tap and laid it alongside others next to the soap. She smiled.

  “Today will decide everything,” I heard Michaela suddenly declare. “If we fail today, then we will have failed for good.” Her eyes wandered from one person to the next. “If we ourselves don’t take to the streets today, we’ll be betraying every person who’s been arrested and tortured.” This was followed by her report of what Thea had just told her.

  Michaela took time to give her speech, rarely raised her voice, and let everyone sense that she was struggling to be factual and understood that she had to hold her emotions in check—this was, after all, her best friend. She sounded a lot like a television reporter when she mentioned a girl who had been forced to strip and then chased naked along the hall to the laughter of the police. Thea had been spared that bit of martyrdom. But she could still feel the blow to her head—she had lain unconscious in the truck for several minutes. But even worse was the pain in her back, her whole right side was one single bruise. They had been beaten at every turn, even when they were standing facing the wall with their hands behind their heads. And some of the younger guys had frisked them over and over again.

  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 cas
e 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.