New Lives (67 page)

Locating the tracks with the tips of my shoes, I groped my way across and could at least see just enough to avoid puddles.

I kept on going. Can you guess what I was looking for?

An intersection, a crossroads,
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as remote as possible. After a hundred yards, just as the moon appeared, the lane led me to a narrow asphalt road.

Of all the people who have ever sought out a crossroads, I am probably the only one who couldn't have explained even vaguely what he wanted there. And then once again I almost died of shame at the idea that someone might learn what I was up to here.

I waited. My breathing was rapid, I was sweating. Where had this fear suddenly come from? What if a feral dog were to come bounding at me, or a rabid fox? Would I shoot?

Just hold on, stand still—I bolstered my spirits—you have nothing else to do. You're not going to leave here.

The reel of moments and minutes unwound, time whirled and spun. It was now after midnight, then half past. The cold crept up through me. I had to cough. The sky turned black. I found it unpleasant just to look up, as if I were exposing my throat. To be strong means to stand still, to hold on, I repeated.

And of course nothing happened. Did you perhaps think that I really expected something to?

When the moon came out again, I tried to memorize the few square yards within my field of vision: porous asphalt that formed little fjords along its edges. At one spot it was so thin that you could trace the network of cobblestones beneath it. Two scrawny trees off to one side, and all around me: weeds, fields of winter grain, and islands of caked snow.

But to the south, to my great astonishment, I made out a mountain jutting up out of the moonlit landscape—a head without a neck, trees suggesting hair, two serpentine paths as furrows across the brow…and something glowering at me from two eye sockets
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—but in the next moment it vanished, reemerged, dissolved. The whole thing seemed to tilt to the left, shaping and reshaping itself like clouds. Sometimes I could immediately make out the mouth and the snub nose, over which a veil would then fall.

Suddenly I was freezing, my feet felt as if they were shrinking, I was amazed that I didn't lurch or stumble. It was after one, maybe one thirty, when I started treading in place. Finally I ran a few steps back and forth, picked up a stick, and drew a circle around me, like a child playing a game.

I sneezed, sneezed again and again. I was on the verge of catching a cold, my laughter sounded hoarse. Was something happening, or not?

Was I supposed to take the light breeze or the distant barking of a dog as an answer? I felt like singing nursery rhymes. “The moon arises nightly,” I began, then, a little louder, “the stars they shine so brightly against a velvet sky.” I faltered and then started up again with whatever came to mind. “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.” Then: “Itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout, along came the rain and washed the spider out.” This last one was the only one I knew from start to finish. I repeated it several times. Later I began to count, I could count to the end of my days…

I spun around. No scream, no wolfish howl could have chilled my blood like that chirping had. I was convinced I had heard a cricket, a cricket right next to me in the grass. I listened, snapped for air, listened. The silence was like a lump of amber enclosing that chirping sound.

“Ah,” I sighed, and once again, “ah!” And in that moment I understood what it was I wanted. It was nothing more and nothing less than
my life.
I wanted
my life
back, the one that I could barely remember, that I had given away far too soon. Everything I had done—and I had long since known this—had not been a life, but a crude misunderstanding, a muddle, a madness!

I wanted at last to know who I was, if not the person I had thought myself to be for all this time. It didn't matter what would be revealed to me. I would accept it. I would give anything for a new life, anything!

I reached for the pistol. It was warm. I held it in my hands for a while, then flung it away with every ounce of strength I had.
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It came to me that it was the only thing I could offer in exchange. I didn't hear it land. Silence pressed down on my shoulders, silence filled my ears.

Then a bark again, longer this time, joined by another, then another, one dog waking a second, then the hush returned—like a blow to the head. The scraping of my shoe soles was horribly loud. Me. Nothing but silence and the void into which I stared wide-eyed.

“What the hell is so bad about that?” What, I asked myself, could be more desirable than to be a void, to be emptied out, to be cleansed of the madness of words and fame, of the beyond and immortality. Wasn't it splendid to be rid of all that?

What I had taken for illness, was it not in fact healing? Had I not wished for something that would be more than a mere realization? Was I not finally free to do what I wanted? With everything behind me, everything before me!

I was thirsty, I had lost my train of thought. Only the cold—cold within and without.

In sharing so much palpable experience, am I not lying? Such hours in life cannot be grasped, either with the hand or the mind, they are at home alone in the night, which turns us inside out.

I had no idea how long I had stood there. Church bells had stopped ringing the hour. Not a rustle, not a bark anywhere in the distance.

At some point the rumbling began. I wasn't afraid, it was more like a disturbance. Two points of light appeared, two shining eyes that had opened in the darkness. The rumbling drew ever closer from all sides, it thudded across the fields, through the air. Soon a second pair of shining eyes appeared behind the first, then a third, a fourth. They seemed to be floating above the ground, yet approaching rapidly. Suddenly it all merged as one—blinded, I hid my eyes in the crook of my arm, no longer knowing where the road was, whether I should move forward or backward. And in that same instant, the horn, a ship's horn, the trumpet at the Last Day. Four semis on their wild ride between autobahn and highway thundered past me, the undertow of air sucked me up, whirled me around, set me tumbling. I staggered a few steps in their wake—and that was enough, the spell was broken. I put one foot in front of the other again and made my way home.

It was noon when I awoke. Had I dreamt it? It was midday, quiet, bright midday. In my room lay mud-caked hiking boots and splash-soiled trousers. That frightened me, but only for a moment.

As always

Your

Enrico Türmer

My poor Jo,

You really are missing something. I had found all the talk about this “very special person” insufferable, but when we in fact met him, Vera and I were taken by him at first glance: his delicate frame, his bright eyes, his fine head, his “accomplished” hands. His manners brought to mind that long-forgotten ideal of the well-educated prince. Despite his advanced age the effect is boyish—not even the wheelchair he is forced to use most of the time can alter that.

The program is built around his own preferences; no one suspected, however, that he would be more interested in a two-bedroom apartment in one of the new complexes in Altenburg Nord than in the castle. He last saw the town in 1935. In comparison to how he treats others—“just call me ‘hereditary prince'”—he is somewhat condescending only to the baron. He responds to all of the baron's whispers and explanations with barely a nod. He frequently interrupts him by bending forward, extending a hand, and addressing someone nearby in the most cordial fashion.

Andy, Massimo, and the baron take turns pushing his wheelchair, Olimpia (Andy's wife), Michaela, and Vera are his ladies-in-waiting, although Mother, Cornelia, and I are part of his retinue as well—and, of course, Robert.

No one says it, but I think the hereditary prince is gay, at least he never married, has no children, and appears too gossamer for family life.

Actually, the baron had wanted to prepare him for our coup, but then agreed with me that it would be better if I took the hereditary prince into our confidence myself. Our dilemma is that our paper has to be at the printer by Friday evening if we want it back late Saturday for delivery early Sunday morning. Our report would come out a week late, and others would reap the harvest of our labors. And so we wrote about the events of Saturday—especially the grand reception in the afternoon and the enthronement of the Madonna in the museum—ahead of time.

The hereditary prince responded with an almost roguish smile and asked if he could read our article about the near future in order to do his part at turning prophecy into reality. He noticed that the phrase irritated me, and so he calmed me down with the most cordial words—he would gladly do his best to be of benefit and assistance to us, since he was, to be sure, in our debt. I could have kissed his lovely hands out of sheer gratitude.

We then drove to the castle—at the same hour of the day that the reception is to begin tomorrow—to photograph him in the middle of a crowd: Barrista's host of attendants, including Proharsky and Recklewitz-Münzer and their families, plus the newspaper staff—without Marion and Pringel, but with Jörg, who is not looking good—and Georg's family. (Franka in a knockout stylish dress, a gift of the newspaper czarina from Offenburg.) The photo is a four-column spread.

Next came his visit to our offices. He kept that same roguish smile as Schorba and I locked hands to make a seat so that we could carry him up the narrow stairs. He's as light as a bird. I barely registered his arm draped over my shoulders. Andy and the baron dragged the wheelchair up, while the women stood waiting and applauding at the top. Astrid could barely be restrained. She wagged her tail like crazy and didn't calm down until she could lay her muzzle on the hereditary prince's knee.

In greeting the prince Frau Schorba immediately got tangled up in ceremonial phrases she had jotted down, blushed, and it took the prince himself to soothe her. He was just a frail old retiree, he said, who was happy and grateful to be allowed to return to Altenburg. His voice is as fragile as his frame. He wears no rings on his hands, which he keeps on his knees outside the thin blanket and which always tremble slightly. When he wants to speak, he first moistens his lips. Sometimes he does it quite unconsciously, which is why he then looks up with a questioning glance, wondering why we have fallen silent.

Although I talked about the
Weekly
and the
Sunday Bulletin,
which would appear this Sunday for the first time, it probably sounded as if we were still one firm. Then Georg was allowed to present him a reprint of the
Dukes of Altenburg.
The hereditary prince paged through it and right away found the inscribed dedication: “Presented with greatest respect and pleasure to His Highness, Hereditary Prince Franz Richard of Sachsen-Altenburg on the occasion of his visit to Altenburg on July 7 and 8, 1990.”

The prince overheard Georg's polite remark that he had been able to publish the book solely because of Herr von Barrista's magnanimity, bringing a scowl to Barrista's face.

We rolled the hereditary prince into the computer room. Mother, Vera, and Michaela had a chance to see our holy of holies now as well. Everyone smiled. I remarked into a lull that we saw ourselves as rebels and insurgents. Since all the major local Party papers would soon be divvied up between conglomerates—Springer, WAZ and Co.—we would be standing alone against entire armies. There were hardly any East German newspapers still in the hands of East Germans.
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Yes, the hereditary prince said, nevertheless he wished us the all luck in the world—because one's own voice is important.

Frau Schorba nodded and, hoping to make people forget her initial blunder, attempted to announce, in lofty phrases free of her native dialect, how important it was for her to be fully responsible for her own work. We wouldn't have to first learn what work meant, she concluded abruptly, as if already tired of her own rhetoric.

In order to avoid an embarrassing pause, the hereditary prince inquired about our likes, our habits, our favorite foods, and the state of local agriculture. A few sparse responses inspired him to give a little lecture. He advocated that each vegetable, each fruit be served in nature's season. Strawberries in spring, baked apples in winter. The immoderate cornucopia we were about to experience was not healthy for humankind.

That might well be, Mona replied; she didn't know anything about that, but she would never again, not for anything in the world, want to be without the goods she had been introduced to this past week, even if she couldn't always pay for them. The days of having to stand in endless lines to buy peaches or bell peppers for her son—she didn't ever want to see those days return. Several people backed her up. To the extent his wheelchair allowed, the hereditary prince turned to each person speaking, smiled, and held a hand to his ear now and then. Even when he didn't know quite what to make of what was said, it was—so he later confessed—the sound of the Altenburg dialect that intoxicated him like a fragrance. Suddenly everyone wanted to get a word in.

Pringel, his face pale within the frame of his beard, called out over Evi and Mona's heads that he had been a Party member and written articles for a house journal—he needed to explain what that was—and he was now ashamed of them, yes, profoundly ashamed.

Pringel had gotten to his feet, as if that were the only position from which he could talk about his articles. “Nonetheless, nonetheless,” he continued breathlessly, when you took into account all that he had written, that was much more—much more than what people now pointed fingers at him for, some even tongue-lashing his wife. Hundreds of articles!

And out of the blue, without any change in his tone of voice, Pringel called it a stroke of luck by a gracious fate to be given another chance, a chance unlike any ever offered him, yes, that he had no longer believed possible. Life outside the confines of his family now had meaning for the first time, he felt needed for the first time. He lowered his head and stared at the floor. His silence seemed almost defiant.

People sighed, cleared their throats, looked at each other only to look away at once. The hereditary prince called him an honest lad and was about to say something more, when Pringel walked right up to the prince, grasped his hands, and brought his face problematically close to them. “Thank you for having taken the trouble to visit us.” He fell silent, like a man who's spoken the wrong lines and is waiting for the prompter's whisper.

“I was truly in love once,” Evi said, as if to help Pringel out of his jam, “but after the third miscarriage, Matthias left me.” She had thought of suicide, it was all over for her. But the day after her job interview here, she had taken up jogging daily, because she liked herself again and wanted to slim down. She was embarrassed to say it, but she was convinced that as long as she kept up her jogging, she would be immune to any kind of bad luck, would keep her job, find a husband, have children. For a lot of people that was nothing special, but it was for her. “So,” she said in conclusion.

He really didn't have that much to say, Kurt noted. He was sitting on the table, jiggling his legs and playing with his stubbly mustache. He had never expected great things. He had tried hard, actually he had been trying hard his whole life, but without much success—what sort of success was he supposed to have? He'd always liked the saying “I'm a miner, so who's better.” That's why he had hired on at Wismut, and for the money. His whole family had always done the grunt work, and so had he. He'd never had any illusions. Which was why he was content. And now that the deal was fairer, that was fine with him too. He needed to be paid a fair wage, or at least halfway fair—for him that was the main thing.

Schorba talked about how it had been his dream to experience and achieve something real, something right for him. That's why he had spent three years in the army, as a parachutist, then on to Wismut, later right down at the mine face, until his foreman convinced him he ought to study to qualify as a mining engineer, to put his nose in books for five years—no quick money in that. Although Irma, his wife, had always encouraged and supported him, yes, had even had to give up her own studies because of the kids, who suddenly came toppling into the world one after the other, making him doubt whether he'd made the right decision. Of course, there had been privileges at Wismut—the best vacation spots, a three-bedroom apartment, and the offer of a car. But they couldn't afford the car. And they didn't think it was right to accept it and then resell it. They had handed the registration back, people had called them crazy.
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He didn't even know why he was telling all this, minor details really, but he had never understood the hatred that had been aroused by a decision that was in line with social norms at the time—he still had nightmares about it.

“Well, yes,” Frau Schorba said after a pause filled with a breathless hush, “well, yes, men, they like to just rattle things off and worry about stuff that we probably don't even think is important. Well, yes, there ain't much you can do about that, not in the future either, I don't suppose. He's always been my husband, my first and only husband—I wasn't even seventeen at the time. And by the time I was eighteen, here came Tanja, and at twenty, Sebastian, and when I was pregnant with Anja, he'd already gone back to school and was screwing around with other women, even though I never turned him down—he's got kids he's paying for and that's why we were always coming up short. He's in the Party, otherwise they would have tossed him out, from school I mean, because they kept a close eye on who had a family and whether he was behaving himself. He was actually going to leave me—me, with three kids. And I told him, I'll kill you. You do that, and I'll kill you. I didn't say anything more than that, and that was the end of it, and he started coming home every Friday again, and then he finished school. He's come around to saying that I was right back then. And I tell him now—Herr Türmer thinks so highly of me—that I earn just as much as you do. I mean, he ought to be glad to earn as much as I do and that just in general he can be part of something as big as this is here.”

“Yes,” Mona said, “something as big as this, yes, it's really great. But as for men, they're only interested in screwing, that's for sure. I've got nothing against screwing, but when that's the only thing…And when I see how they just up and leave their wives after ten or twenty years, that's brutal, really brutal, as if screwing was all there is. That's why it's so wonderful that there's something else, something really big. And next year I plan to travel everywhere. We're so glad you've come!”

I figured we now had all this behind us, when Ilona started in with her suicide attempt, a story I already knew, but she reeled the whole thing off so fast that no one actually understood her. Fred merely said that he was sorry he'd been a conscientious objector. Because now he didn't have the luxury of starting to study again, and besides the noggin—and he gave it a rap with his fist—“ain't used to stuff like that.” So that he and everybody like him were now just—sorry, he didn't know any other way to put it—a pile of shit. In the GDR it hadn't been so bad just to stoke a furnace. But now? What could he learn now? He'd lost all interest in the whole hoopla. A nice new car maybe, but what else? Now, if he were ten, fifteen years younger…

As our eyes met, Fred said, “Hey, it's true, it's really true.”

“I'm doing very well,” Manuela said, standing up and setting her hands to her hips as if modeling her green pantsuit. “I didn't think it would ever happen, that it could ever be like this, but I always hoped I'd find something fun that brings in lots of money. I'm earning way more than the boss,” she cried, rotating from side to side. “Once I have the newspaper in my hand, all I'll have to do is collect the ads.” Kurt gave a whistle through his teeth, but Manuela wasn't about to be dissuaded from finishing her advertising dance.

Suddenly all eyes were directed at me. Even Vera and Michaela were looking my way, not demanding, but patient, willing to wait. “And now you,” Fred said.

“His Highness,” Jörg exclaimed, “His Highness has performed a miracle, the way he's got us all to speak out. And we're all grateful to him for that.”

I then talked about how things were a year ago and then six months ago, and that I would never have imagined it could be such fun to pursue a business life.