New Lives (54 page)

Jörg began to quote from it, and after citing phrases like “with the full force of the law,” “a threat to the health and welfare of our children,” broke off with an “and so forth and so on.”

When Pringel looked up he was hardly recognizable. His lips were quivering. He tried to smile, his glance skittered across the room.

He couldn't really understand, Jörg said, why this letter came as such a surprise. But above all he wanted to ask why Pringel hadn't shown his cards to us to begin with. In his mind that was the real offense. Pringel nodded. By October no one had had to write stuff like that anymore, Fred muttered, squelching Pringel's own answer after he had just taken a deep breath.

It had been right after the riots in Dresden, Pringel finally stammered. But the text had been shoved in front of him, he had had no choice but to publish it, it hadn't been his article at all, but he had had to sign off on it—as the accountable editor he had to put his name to it. His eyes wandered wildly. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Show us the article,” Marion said, which set Pringel stammering again—but it hadn't been his article.

I asked him what he had been afraid of. Of course I meant in terms of the situation last autumn. But he misunderstood me.

“That you wouldn't let me go on writing,” he said. Working for a newspaper had never been such fun before, so fulfilling. He was so happy to show up every morning…

What was the point of torturing him any longer? He agreed that for now his name would no longer appear in the paper. Pringel is an amiable fellow, and intelligent. You only need to tell him what you want, and the next morning you've got it. His little stories about various firms are a big hit at Gallus. Hausmann furniture has been placing half a page a week with us ever since.

Were there any questions, Jörg wanted to know.

Yes, I said, we hadn't yet discussed the most important topic.

This was an editorial meeting, he interrupted, any discussion of fundamentals would have to be between the two of us. He wished I would finally get that into my head. Besides which, the matter was already settled.

As far as I was concerned, I replied, the matter was not settled, and the others should at least have a chance to hear my arguments. But “the others” had already stood up. Even Frau Schorba was reaching for her handbag. Only Pringel had remained in his seat. The two of us had evidently forfeited any power to influence decisions. But then I felt Astrid the wolf's muzzle against my knee. She was looking up at me with her one good eye. Sure, you can make fun of me, but I'm certain that the wolf understood my situation precisely. I am going to have no other choice than to double my bet. I believe in winning.

Hugs, Your E.

PS: Maybe it would be better to publish Anton Larschen's memoirs with Georg. I think Georg would be pleased, and the book would have a real publisher.

Dear Nicoletta,

I hadn't actually been all that surprised that my mother had shown up at our place on October 9th. But after Robert was in bed, she said, “I've got something to tell you two.” And after a short pause: “I was arrested.”

My mother's report was far less detailed than Mario's. She had also been arrested on Friday evening, that is, on the 6th, in front of the Dresden Central Station. She had wanted to verify with her own eyes what she had heard in the clinic and on the radio. But no sooner had she stepped off the streetcar—that is, well before she was able to get any sort of sense of demonstrators and uniformed personnel—than she was grabbed and thrown into a truck. They had beaten and cursed her. After her release on Sunday morning, she had taken a streetcar to Laubegast, to see Gunda Lapin, a painter and friend of hers. She had recuperated there until Monday morning. She had then had herself examined at the polyclinic and placed on medical leave for a week. If she were still locked up, she said, no one would know where she was.

Listening to her was pure agony. Michaela fought back her tears and tried to clasp Mother's hands in hers. That seemed wrong to me, because it was like a restraint on my mother, and I was glad when Michaela left to call Thea from a phone booth. Being left alone with Mother, however, was even less bearable. I turned on the television. But neither she nor I watched. We cleared the table without saying a word, and didn't break our silence as we made up her bed. Mother went to the bathroom, and I could hear her gargle and spit into the basin. I sat in front of the television—I had turned it back off—and gazed at my silhouette on the dark screen. I kept taking deeper breaths, until the rise and fall of my shoulders was clearly visible in the reflection too.

Suddenly my mother was standing before me in her underwear and asked me to rub her with lotion. Her back was covered with bruises, they had even struck her on the thighs and calves. She braced herself against the table and bent forward. There was a slight odor of sweat. In prescribing such things, she said, few doctors actually thought about the fact that old people are usually alone and can't rub themselves down. We exchanged good-night kisses. My mother hadn't turned the bathroom light off or screwed the top back on the toothpaste. Her towel lay on the toilet lid.

Michaela asked what that odor was, and then said that Thomas had just rubbed Thea down with liniment too. The word had a cozy sound, as if we'd put everything behind us now.

By Tuesday there was no longer any way to prevent the Dresden resolution from being read from the stage. Except for Beate Sebastian, who was unwilling to take part in such an action unless the Party gave its approval, the whole house was for it.

As for as the resolution itself, I didn't share the others' enthusiasm. When I proposed we write our own, I was told that the orchestra, most of the singers, and the corps de ballet had already agreed to it and that we couldn't start all over again now.

The whole tone was taken from the ritual of criticism and self-criticism. There's a worried functionary hiding behind every line, I said. Michaela shook her head, no, I was mistaken. We went through it line by line, and even I was surprised at how with just the slightest pressure on the lever, the pseudorevolutionary rhetoric gave way. For instance, this sentence: “A national leadership that does not speak with their people is not credible.”

“Don't you hear the whimpering of some disillusioned lickspittle?” I asked. “Who says I'd ever want to speak with that bunch? Why call them our national leadership when they came to power by fraudulent elections? And what does that mean: with
their
people? Why don't they quote Brecht: ‘They should dissolve
their
people and elect another…'”

Michaela admitted that those lines could be deleted, but that the formulation “a people forced to be speechless will turn to violent action” was not just courageous, but true as well in the present situation. Why, I asked, didn't they write: “A people imprisoned for twenty-eight years and treated as property of the state, punished and bullied for the slightest contradiction, has finally taken over the street! Down with a band of criminals who beat defenseless people, mock and torture them.”

Michaela didn't reply. “Why,” I asked, “don't they simply say: Tear down the wall, throw out the Socialist Unity Party, establish human rights, take to the streets, be brave, don't let them bully you anymore.”

“That's going too far,” Michaela said, “that calls everything into question.”

“Of course,” I shouted, “it calls everything into question! Leipzig calls everything into question, what happened to my mother, to Thea, calls everything into question. We have to call everything into question.” Why was she willing to put up with the same old crap from the pens of apparatchiks? “‘It is our duty,'” I quoted scornfully, “‘to demand that the leadership of our country and Party restore their trust in the population.' Isn't that disgusting? To conclude with that? Doesn't that mean, please don't beat us, we're really in favor of socialism? That's more wretched than wanting some prince to take us by the hand? You know what that Dresden crowd is like.”

“Then why,” Michaela asked, “don't
you
say it?”

“I will say it,” I replied. “You can depend on it!”

I have to add that we weren't alone. We were standing beside the little round table in the dramaturgy office and had those who were sitting at it or leaning against their desks for an audience. Ever since her performance of the day before and our return from Leipzig, Michaela had become the Bärbel Bohley of the theater and I her husband, whose mother had been beaten, no, tortured by the police. One by one the others had all fallen silent. We had spoken the last sentences as if onstage.

Under their attentive eyes, Michaela walked over to my desk to get her purse. “There is a difference,” she said, returning to her first position, “whether something is said in the theater or on the street. There is no anonymity in the theater—”

“Which simply means,” I broke in, “that the street needs to enlighten the theater. God knows, not a single person arrested was anonymous. They all had to present their IDs!”

In her eyes, she said, it would be an achievement for the theater to arrive at a point where the resolution could be read at all. With that Michaela left the dramaturgy office. From my vantage point at the window I saw her walk to the bus stop. Yet another
Gotham
rehearsal had been canceled.

My arguments were so irrefutable that I found myself in a state of euphoria. I had given my aversion free rein and, by following it as if it were a divining rod, had discovered a logic that worked. Do you understand me? Suddenly I had cogent reasons why I did not want to be a part of it all.

My new outlook provided me, I thought, a line of defense that no one would breach all that soon and that allowed me to observe these theatrical follies with a derisive smile. Of course people said I was right, but they took Michaela's side and talked about small steps, cunning, patience.

At two o'clock on the dot I drove home. Mother had prepared a meal. She had filled Robert in on what had happened to her. He enjoyed the “extended family” and the “Sunday dinner.” “The longer I think about it,” Mother said, “the more clearly I realize they all belong behind bars, not just their bullyboys and officers, but all of them, Modrow, Berghofer, Honecker, Mielke, Hager, the whole rotten pack. And if they didn't know anything about it, so much the worse.” Michaela didn't look up. Had I arrived earlier, she probably would have thought I had coached my mother. For coffee we drove to Kohren-Sahlis. There was poppy-seed cake and whipped cream. Mother ordered seconds and said she'd earned it. Then I drove Michaela to the theater. The
Gypsy Princess
matinee for retirees had begun at three o'clock.

While the performance went on up front, backstage the battle over the resolution had flared up again.

The orchestra and corps de ballet had voted yes, as had the soloists, with one exception, but the chorus was divided. The gypsy princess herself could not be persuaded to read the resolution. Kleindienst, the conductor, likewise refused. Finally we had a volunteer, Oliver Jambo, our gay heldentenor—I mention this only because Jambo celebrated being our gay heldentenor with every step he took. He would consider it an honor to read the letter. And with that I drove home.

That evening Michaela told us that the whole thing had fallen apart because of Jonas. He had sat in the smoking corner, smiling. He asked everyone who made the mistake of wandering past to put a hold on “this gesture.” He was asking for just one day. They should wait one day more. He had spoken to Michaela as well. It was difficult even for her to hold her own against him. One day, he kept saying over and over, just one day. When asked how that would change anything, he cited the meeting of the politburo.

At this point in Michaela's narrative I couldn't help laughing. Yes, she said, she found it shameful too, but in the end there had been nothing she could do. The singers were suddenly in favor of a one-day postponement. But the orchestra hadn't been informed, so they had waited in the wings. Finally Kleindienst called them onstage to receive, or so he said, their well-deserved applause. The musicians had left in such a rage that they probably couldn't be counted on from now on.

Wednesday, however, was to be Michaela's big day. Mother, Robert, and I took our seats for the performance of
Emilia Galotti.
Michaela wasn't at her best. At the point where Emilia starts to tell her story, she forgot her lines.

At intermission I ducked out to go to the dramaturgy office. All the lights were on in the general manager's office. The technical director, the office manager—she was also a Party secretary, and is currently the general manager—were sitting with three or four others whose voices I didn't recognize.

I kept hearing footsteps and the sound of a door opening and closing. All the same I was surprised at how many people had gathered. On the lowest tread of the little set of steps that led to the stage stood Jambo, lost in thought and playing with the cord of his glasses. A woman's voice whispered, “The general manager!”

I hadn't even noticed him. He was sitting at the table, his head resting on his crossed arms as if he were asleep, his shoulders jerking. At first I thought there had been an accident, that someone was dead.

There was a crackle in the loudspeaker, and Olaf, the stage manager, called the actor playing Odoardo onstage. He left the loudspeaker on, so that we could now follow the performance. “Is no one here? Good, I shall be colder still,” snarled the loudspeaker.

“Didn't you hear it on the radio?” Jonas asked in the middle of the line, “He who obeys no law, is equal in power to him who knows none.”
³⁰⁷

Jonas's eyes, veiled with tears, moved around the room, crawling from one person to the next in search of mercy. “Didn't you hear it on the radio? Don't you pay attention anymore? Can you think only in one direction?” He shook his head. “So you don't know,” he shouted, “you don't know about the most important change in decades. Haven't any of you heard the politburo's announcement this evening?”