New Lives (57 page)

Because of the old man upstairs I'm never without my flashlight. I don't want to encounter him in the dark at any rate. Last Monday he unscrewed all our fuses.

We've lost another hostile neighbor, however. As I was passing the hardware store today on the way to my car, the whole family came out. I greeted them and then turned away to look straight ahead. Then I heard my name called. The hardware lady came right up to me. She has a firm handshake. It was a little premature to be saying good-bye, and it made her a little sad too, because we had all actually got used to one another, but this seemed like a good opportunity. Her husband also gave me his hand. “Well, yeah,” he said, “it's jist about over.”—“You're not giving up, are you?” I asked. All three nodded.

“Yep, yep,” she said. They had started drawing their pensions in the spring, and there wasn't a red cent to be made out of a shop like theirs anyway, why should they keep on slaving away.
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They looked at me as if they had said it just to test my reaction. Before I could put together an answer she reminded me of the free ad I had once promised them. I renewed the offer. The sooner they're out of there, the sooner we'll be able to move our ad office into their space.

Ah Jo, my dear friend, so many things happen every day. When I got to my parking space, a woman was leaning on my car. She was embarrassed that I spotted her before she saw me. It was the wife of Ralf, the brown-eyed man whom I had sat at the same table with at a New Forum meeting last January. Come July, Herr Ralf will be losing his job as an auto mechanic. “He doesn't talk, doesn't sleep, doesn't eat,” she said. And now I'm supposed to help in some way. We made a date for her and Ralf to drop by and see me. Then I made the mistake of driving her home. “There he sits, behind that window there,” she said as she got out, and begged me to come inside with her.

I've never seen anything like it. He glanced up, but didn't return my greeting, stared off to one side, and let me do the talking. What could I say? I can't hire him as a sales rep. It was totally pointless. My stopping by had robbed his wife of her last remaining hope. When I promised to look in again in a couple of weeks, she began sobbing.

After that I drove to Referees' Retreat, but went the long way around on country lanes—with the top down to give myself a good airing out.

And finally some good news: Nikolai, the handsome Armenian, sends his greetings. He's married to a Yugoslavian girl now. We made a bet on the game.
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Whoever loses has to go visit the other guy…

Hugs, Your. E.

Dear Nicoletta,

With my speech at the church I had shot my wad, I had done whatever it was in my power to do. I didn't know what more I could do. I felt a great void. Michaela talked about depression and she was not about to let go of the term, either. I couldn't blame her. After all, she was the one who had to suffer the most from it.

“They understand only if you rub your fist under their nose,” was my mother's comment to my “incendiary” speech. And that was the end of the matter as far as she was concerned. Robert was uncertain whether to be proud of me or if my performance at the church was just one more thing for him to be embarrassed about.

Michaela was called out of rehearsal the next day. Together with Anna (the woman with the scar), the long-haired fellow, Pastor Bodin, the man from New Forum, and a couple of women whom we had first met the previous evening, she was invited to the Rathaus for a discussion with the district secretary of the Party. Michaela described the old Rathaus main hall with its inlaid wooden ceiling, the council chamber with its antique furniture, and told how scared she had been when she saw Naumann, the first secretary of the Party. She had never seen him close up before.

He'd crush you without batting an eyelash, she thought. The head of the “bloc” parties sat there with her head lowered and literally cringed whenever Naumann said anything to her. Only the Christian Democrat, whose name she hadn't registered (Piatkowski), had blatantly checked her over. Whereas the mayor was so agitated that he had spoken far too loudly. Naumann remarked several times how moved he was by our town's first demonstration—which left her feeling a bit less afraid. The whole time she couldn't stop thinking about Robert. Piatkowski, however, kept insisting that what they were talking about here was an illegal, unauthorized demonstration that had endangered people's lives—something he could not reconcile with his Christian conscience. He was talking about the lack of traffic control. To which blue-lipped Pastor Bodin had replied that they should be glad they had people they could talk to. There were some who were no longer willing to engage in conversation, for whom actions spoke louder than words. It wasn't until she was out on Market Square again that Michaela realized what Bodin had in fact said. It was his way of distancing himself from me—who else could he have meant?

Saturday noon we took Mother to the train. On the drive home Michaela asked if we thought it might be fun to drive to Berlin—she had no performances that weekend. I said yes. Robert thought I was joking. He couldn't believe I was prepared to give up a free weekend—that is, two days when I could be writing—without a struggle.

After Michaela had organized the reading of the resolution for the weekend performances, all she had to do was notify Thea we were coming.

Michaela had always described Thea's apartment on Hans Otto Strasse—just a minute from Friedrichshain Park—as grand and bourgeois. And it was, too, compared to our new little apartment. There was plenty of room for the forty people who gathered there that evening.

How I had once been thrilled by the thought of carrying the day at such a gathering, as the man whose book—published in Frankfurt am Main—would be prominently placed on the coffee table beside the art nouveau lamp. But that evening pretzel sticks were set out on it, and sprawled beside it was ***, a tall and gaunt fellow who was held to be the most promising young actor in Berlin and who stuck one pretzel after the other in his mouth, breaking off each protruding stick with a loud crunch.

Michaela sat like the court jester at the foot of the armchair to which Thea had withdrawn, tucking her legs up under her. Plucking at the fleece throw rug that surrounded her like an ice floe, Michaela talked about Leipzig and the seal. Not one word about me. Earlier Thea had pulled me aside in the kitchen and warned me in that caring, confidential way of hers not to do anything stupid, not to play the hero—Micki (as she calls Michaela) was very worried about me. Thea instructed me on the difference between bravado and courage. But all the same she couldn't help admiring me—and instantly took on that shy girlish expression actresses evidently love to use when they themselves want admiration.

Berlin chitchat was no different from what I knew from Altenburg—except that here big shots were called by their first names, so that I often didn't know who was meant.

Thea's husband, the perfect host, was the only person with whom I conversed for more than a few minutes—about their two children, both girls, into whose room Robert had vanished.

It was around eleven o'clock—all I wanted was to get some sleep—before someone finally decided to talk to me. It was Verena, a professional potter. What you first noticed about her was the fresh, smooth skin of her cheeks. There wasn't much to say about her work, she said, and warded off any further questions with a shake of her head, even as she gazed at the roughened palms of her hands. Her voice took on a downright humble tone when she spoke of “this circle of people” and how she considered herself ennobled when “people like Thea” praised her work.

“Once the wall is gone,” I replied, “everyone here will be like fish stranded on the beach, their eyes bulging. It'll be a good thing then to have a real profession.” Although I had intended this as encouragement, she pulled back in fright. But it was just really getting started, she said—no censorship, no boundaries, we'd soon be able to do just as we wanted. All the things that had been forbidden were only waiting to be taken out of the drawer. She talked about an “incomparable new start” and “a blossoming like none we've ever known.”

“But will anyone still be interested?” I said.

“Why not?” she exclaimed testily. “What would be the reason?”

“Because it'd be just too lovely,” I said evasively, and sensed how ideas fall back on you with their full weight when they're yours alone.

“Thea can always find a theater anywhere she wants,” Verena said, of that much she was certain.

Perhaps a scene might have been avoided if Thomas hadn't asked me to come with him to fetch a couple of bottles from the cellar. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Verena sit back down in the circle around Thea.

Later, in front of the bookcase, out of habit I took note of what we didn't have—a complete Proust, for example—but I no longer felt any envy. I stood in front of their books like someone who doesn't recall that his friend has moved away until he's standing at his door.

Suddenly I heard Thea's voice behind me. Somehow I felt caught red-handed and reached for the slim orange-bound Strindberg.

I immediately knew what was up. All the same I asked, “What fish are you talking about?” She repeated what I had said to Verena.

“When the wall goes, it's all over for us here,” I said, and thumbed through
Fräulein Julie.
Conversations had already died before my reply.

“But it's really quite clear. No wall, no GDR,” I said, and kept on thumbing.

“I earn seven hundred marks,” I said, after things had quieted down, “that's less than two hundred West-marks, maybe less than a hundred and fifty. I'd pull down that much in West Berlin as a waiter on a good weekend.”

I turned to the guests like their teacher. “If I can earn ten or twenty times more at odd jobs than I earn as a dramaturge, why shouldn't I be an odd-jobber? What does society need theater for these days anyway?” They laughed and booed and called me a clown and a traitor.

“What duties are those?” I called back. “Who am I leaving in the lurch?”

Pretzel-cruncher said he didn't know who I was and what I did, and he didn't care either, because whatever changes needed to be made, he didn't want anything to do with reactionaries. ***, an actress from the Deutsches Theater, said in a high falsetto that I was a provocateur, yes, a provocateur.

“What I mean is,” I exclaimed, temporizing now, “is that your audience is going to run in the other direction…”

Ah, Nicoletta! I chose the word “audience,” but meant something different, something fundamental—the term “audience” didn't do it justice. Any attention paid to us—the attention that had called us onstage—would vanish from the face of the earth, that's what I was trying to say. But no one understood that. They didn't even realize this was pure masochism on my part, that I—terrible to say—was losing much more than these actors were. Yes, of course, they would always find something. Thea would always have a role of some kind to play. They didn't need to be afraid. But I was losing everything, EVERYTHING! My weal and woe! West and East! Heaven and hell!

Michaela sat pale and miserable on her ice floe and attempted a smile.

Around two we went to bed. The stuffed animals above my head—a dog that had tipped over and a bear lying on its back—seemed to be resting from play. Robert and the two girls had listened to music till after midnight and were now sleeping in another room.

Michaela entered in rumpled blue silk pajamas. Thea, she said, had intended to throw them out because they had been ruined in the wash. Now they belonged to her. Her weeping woke me up in the middle of the night. It was all too much, she said, just too much. With her wet check resting on my hand, she fell back asleep before I did.

The next morning Thea and Thomas served a breakfast that I took as a kind of apology, but it was also a ritual that Michaela held in high esteem. A snow-white starched cloth had been spread over the Biedermeier table. If your thigh touched the hem, the cloth rose up along the edge of the table. Our hosts' napkins were inserted in silver rings bearing their initials, our napkins were folded to form a kind of crown. Michaela's attempt to imitate her hosts failed in the same moment that the two girls unfolded their napkins with a casual flick and leaned back as if waiting to be served.

The table gleamed with porcelain rimmed in red and gold, real silverware, including the serving forks—and, yes, knife rests. Two kinds of bittersweet jam glistened in crystal bowls, making a plastic container for mustard and a jar of horseradish look like harlequins at court. Except for them, the only comparable item in our household was a small Russian pewter frame for the saltcellar, although our little spoon had wandered off somewhere.

Our table conversation had nothing to do with what had been said the evening before. Mostly it was the girls who talked. Robert ignored us completely. He had fallen in love with one of them—or maybe both, I never quite figured it out. The background music was a Chopin piano concerto. It had all been staged in order to convince me that the world was still the same as during my last visit in April.

Suddenly Thomas was in a big hurry. This was the first I had heard of a meeting of “Theater Union representatives.” Thea was supposed to deliver a “personal report” of her arrest. I hoped that my promise to spend the day with Robert would spare me from having to attend. But Robert had suddenly lost all interest in the planetarium. And so I had to set out for the Deutsches Theater.

We found seats in the second balcony. I swore to myself this would be the last time I would be so considerate of Michaela's feelings. The only person seated onstage that I recognized was Gregor Gysi. We needed to realize, he said, that the special alert police were under psychological pressure, their structure was very basic and they weren't prepared for a situation like this.