New Lives (36 page)

Vera had slammed the door in her face. But Nadja was stubborn and had been trying to talk with Vera. And then I showed up. As if I had fallen out of a clear blue sky, there I suddenly stood before her…I can't tell you how often we told each other the story in the months that followed. She had known at once: He's the one! I want him!

I had a date with Vera, but I couldn't bring myself to leave Nadja just standing there. Nadja asked if I would accompany her on a walk to see her old school, and told me about how often she had tried to get back to Dresden. We then walked to Rosengarten and the Elbe, which we followed until we crossed the Blue Wonder Bridge—without Nadja's flow of words stopping for a second or her uncoupling her arm from mine. It was already dusk as we made our way back across the Elbe meadows.

My role was reduced to that of the listener, while she talked about money, work, her university studies, and her apartment in Salzburg, where she had landed the year before. She liked Austria better than Switzerland. Nadja didn't seem to me all that content with her life, but my question of why she hadn't changed jobs or her major was answered with a curt toss of the head and an almost irate “Why should I?”

Perhaps our meeting would have ended with that, but the sunset and the silhouette of the old city toward which we were now walking lent our silence greater meaning.

Nadja knew a waiter in the café Secundo Genitur on the Brühlsche Terrace, so we had a table all to ourselves. Nadja asked if I was still writing. I told her about my army book, but said nothing about having to report for the army base in Seeligenstädt two days later. Even after discharge, every male student in the GDR had to serve an additional five weeks.

I brought Nadja to a streetcar stop—she was staying with a girlfriend in Dresden-Laubegast. We said our farewells, precisely because we both could rely on a nose for dramatic possibilities. After all, there weren't that many afternoon trains to Munich.

Beneath the arch of the train station roof and against the dazzling sunlight streaming in from outside, Nadja was just a silhouette with hat. When she came running toward me in her dark brown tailored suit, threw her arms around my neck, and whispered, “I knew it, I just knew it,” I was certain I loved her. How else could I explain the humiliation that I felt in saying good-bye—the humiliation of not being able to board the train with her—and that brought tears to my eyes.

My mother greeted me with a scolding. I had missed my appointment with a neighbor lady to have my hair cut. She now took scissors in hand herself, shaved the back of my neck, and plopped my packed bag at my feet.

The train to Jena was overcrowded. Which was fine by me. I didn't want to read, I didn't want peace and quiet. All I wanted was already inside me. I finally had time to develop
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the scenes with Nadja and discover new details.

When Nadja whispered in my ear, she had tugged at the lobe. I could feel her breath, the tips of her fingers on the nape of my neck, on my cheeks. I could feel the strength in her arm, I could feel her breasts, her lips.

The last thing Nadja heard from my lips was, “Have a good trip!” I felt my face burning for the shame of it. And Nadja? What had she said? We were holding hands, I ran alongside the train as it pulled away. The faster I ran the more rollicking her laughter, the farther she leaned out, until she pulled back in fright, as if the end of the platform were some unexpected stroke of fate. The fright was still reflected in her face until all I could see of her was her swirling hair. And finally, the moment came when I turned around and walked back along the empty platform.

I don't recall if we were loaded onto trucks or transported by train from Jena to Seeligenstädt, nor who was in command and divided us into companies. All that emerges from the fog are the explosions of laughter that greeted each newcomer to a drunken bash that lasted till dawn—as if shorn heads were an original costume. I drank from every bottle offered me.

My memories first begin with a gesture, a motion of the right hand, that opens a belt buckle and grabs it by the last punch hole as it falls, while the left doffs the cap. I executed this gesture with so little thought it frightened me, as if someone were mimicking me.

This horde of buzz-cut, uniformed men bewildered me. All it took was a certain way of walking or a twitch of the mouth and I would find myself greeting someone I presumed I knew from Oranienburg. On day two I was certain it was Nikolai I saw walking directly toward me. By the time I realized my mistake I had already called out his name. Faces I was actually familiar with, however, were the ones I didn't recognize. Anton, my friend and fellow student, stumbled around so blindly and apathetically under his helmet that it was days before we discovered each other.

The instant I had a few free minutes, I would stretch out on my bed as if it were the only spot where I could think of Nadja.

Within a few hours it was clear to me that I had been mistaken, that there was nothing for me here in Seeligenstädt. What was going on around me neither belonged in my army book nor needed to be shared in a letter. This studious submissiveness of men of above-average intelligence was abysmally shameful.
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And I was one of them.

My group, students from Jena and Ilmenau who were sports majors, fired one another up as they ran the obstacle course and once we were off duty tried to teach me how to take the scaling wall in one assault. They liked to play room check, showed one another how to “do a package” (folding underwear), were jealous if other men were issued more blank ammo to waste, and for pedagogic purposes liked to step on the heels of the man ahead of them on the drill field. There was no sand thrown in the gears here, no drunkenness or disorderly conduct, no reporting late or grousing. In Seeligenstädt there was no longer any need for orders—one nod, and the pack of hounds heeled.

Seeligenstädt didn't match my experiences in basic training—or those I had hoped to have here. The opposing fronts had disappeared.

I shriveled, something crumpled inside me. I kept my mouth shut during political instruction and was glad to hang my helmet from my belt during marching drills—a noncom privilege.

Nadja's letters reached me two and a half weeks later by way of my mother. Nadja had also telephoned her.

When the alarm whistle sounded the next morning—a good many slept in their sports gear in order to appear punctually out in the hall—I just lay there and fell in only after someone ripped my blanket off.

Instead of joining the morning workout I slunk over to the regimental dentist, complained about pain under a filling—and was actually sent on to Ronneburg. The dentist there didn't even make me wait, just stamped the referral and wished me a nice day. Suddenly school was canceled, and my gait was as light as if a cast had just been removed from my foot. I rummaged through a bookstore, lay in the grass beside an old cemetery wall, and enjoyed the perfect quiet. When the clock struck twelve, I went in search of a meal, drank some beer, and then took another sunbath.

It was almost three o'clock when I stepped into a phone booth and for the first time heard the ringtone of Nadja's phone, a velvety deep hum that would become so familiar in the coming months. There was no answer.

Just short of five o'clock, before boarding the bus with a bundle of books under my arm, I tried a last time. Again with no success.

Caught up in the triumph of having managed a free day, I wrote my first letter. I printed
AUSTRIA
and
SALZBURG
on the envelope in capital letters, as if they were the slogan that would guarantee me immunity.

The next morning I fell in again. Thus far I had been able to avoid issuing orders, but this time I couldn't get out of a “target objective.”
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I reported pails of unidentified grub in the advance units, heavy friendly fire from goulash cannons that fell short of their mark, and ordered retreat. I know, that's pretty wretched too, but at the time I basked in the laughter it earned me. The lieutenant, a student from Ilmenau,
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ordered retreat and had me repeat my target objective.

My second, and third, attempts were greeted with laughter. But then they all, without exception, wanted me to give some real orders. The other groups were waiting to move out. Now they had me where they wanted me. The humiliation was worse than having to march past a reviewing stand on the 1st of May. That afternoon I found a pass on my bed.

I rounded up some change and by eight o'clock was camped out in a functioning telephone booth.

It was after ten before Nadja finally answered. I had assumed she knew of my whereabouts from my mother and could picture my circumstances during these weeks. But she seemed happy just to hear from me and rattled off the names of friends who wanted to meet me. She asked for a picture of me, and letters, lots of letters.

I had to explain to her where I was and what I was doing here, and the longer I spoke the more palpable her silence became, a silence that forced me to reveal more and more of my daily life. I was hoping the connection had gone bad, when Nadja snapped at me, “Why would you go to a camp like that?”

Instead of answering, I began to tell her about my target objectives and how I had put my group practically into stitches and had been working on some new scenarios…“Don't make such a fool of yourself,” Nadja shouted.

In that moment I turned very calm. The battle was over, I had lost, all the rest no longer mattered to me.

“It's not worth it,” I then heard Nadja say. She knew a lovely bed-and-breakfast in Prague—when would I be able to come, she longed so much to see me…

         

My army book had become my blind spot. I didn't know when I would ever be able to work on it. At the end of a day's duties I played chess—when I didn't just lie on my bed. Since I usually lost, I was everyone's favorite partner.

At the end of our five weeks, on the next-to-last day, we had political instruction one final time. I don't remember the exact question or my answer either, which evoked no response whatever. The topic was probably the global arms race.

At the start of the last hour—there was to be a test—previous grades were announced. With a D—in the first seminar, my silence had been rewarded with a B—I was the worst in the class.

No sooner had the lieutenant, an introverted computer science student, announced the results than a “storm of indignation” burst, derisive laughter and lots of catcalls. Gorbachev had been in power for a few weeks.

During the pause I was summoned by an officer, a colonel, who taught plastics in civilian life, who knew me by my first name, used the familiar pronoun, and did everything he could to “appeal to my conscience.” I was told I shouldn't ruin my career for the sake of a few stupid remarks. He called me naive, accused me of a “running-your-head-into-the-wall” attitude. I should make compromises and so on. I replied like some simpleton that I was merely expressing my opinion, just as was always expected of us.

“It isn't worth it, Enrico,” he shouted, “it really isn't.” Resignation now dragged his voice down to a low, trust-inspiring register. I let him talk and gazed at the thin smile of a Honecker portrait against a blue background. And from one moment to the next I no longer felt like a castaway, but was once again the captain of my ship, the only honest man still standing, who was not going to let himself be infected with this general depravity.

I answered the poor lieutenant's question about where I had been—I was late getting back to the seminar room—with a smart-aleck “Where do you suppose?” which I regarded as a strong gambit.

Within the hour I might very well be dismissed from the university. This sad sack of a lieutenant, this tool of fate, didn't know himself which end was up—at least the red splotches on his neck seemed to indicate as much—but was able, strangely enough, to hold to his guidelines. And so inside of a few minutes he would have me on his conscience for the rest of his life.

I let question after question go by without volunteering an answer. But while I lay in resolute ambush, something happened that you might call either touching or dreadful: my chess partner from several desks away passed along a note with the “right answer.” One after the other they stood up and answered; some were given two, even three tries.

When I finally raised my arm, all the other arms dropped. They were directing the poor lieutenant's attention to me. But it wasn't me who was called on, it was my neighbor.

Before I could raise my arm again, I heard my last name, and a drum-roll inside my head. I asked the poor lieutenant to repeat the question.

I answered hesitantly, as if struggling with myself, wrestling for the truth, this time I added the adjectives “stupid” and “inhuman.” I hope, I concluded, that I've expressed myself clearly this time. From both the silence in the room and the look on the lieutenant's face I assumed that that was that.

Everyone had “passed” the test. The lieutenant announced this at the end of the hour almost casually and left the room without another word. They celebrated me as the victor, wildly clapping me on the shoulder and back. The fact that I stood there turned to stone was taken as baffled happiness. “I never believed,” the jock from the bunk below me confessed solemnly, taking me in from head to toe, “that you belonged to the firm.”
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On the evening of a day that began with a whistle to wake up and calisthenics, I found myself in Prague, a beautiful woman from Salzburg in my embrace.

I had spotted Nadja on the milk train as it pulled in (as I recall it was coming from Linz), and was standing directly in front of her as she set her foot on the platform. She pushed me away, dropped her plastic bags and suitcase, and threw her arms around my neck. As if playing peek-aboo, from over her shoulder I watched the other passengers detrain.