New Lives Read online

  I found his insinuations tactless, removed the pillow from my swivel chair, and offered it to him. “There’s not a lot of luxury here,” I said.

  That wasn’t what he meant, not for the world! It had been a quote, intended as a compliment, a quote from the treasure chest of a relative, of a true friend of animals, an adage that had become dear to his heart.

  “What is it you would have of me? How may I be of service?” I asked, sensing how his stilted phrasing was already rubbing off on me.

  Clemens von Barrista looked up from the bottom of the sea, bowed slightly, and said without any accent whatever, “You hoped to have reached your decision by today.”

  After a bow that imitated his I replied we had first met each other on Tuesday,50 at the Volkspolizei kennel, where, much to my regret, we had barely spoken and had departed without arranging any further meeting…

  “I banged my left knee at your place yesterday,” he said, flaring up, “because the light wasn’t working, and still isn’t.” With each word he gained better control over his exasperation. “We sat here and I offered suggestions. Your newspaper”—he took off his glasses and massaged his eyes with thumb and forefinger—“was recommended to me!” I expressed my regret that I knew nothing of this.

  “Then you are not Herr Schröder?” His google-eyes were now peering through his glasses again.

  I introduced myself, mentioned again our meeting at the VP kennel, and was about to step out and turn on the vestibule light, when he halted me with a vigorous motion of his upper body.

  “My concern is the visit of the hereditary prince!”

  Finally the coin dropped. Of course I knew about the prince’s ambassador. Barrista is an acquaintance, if not to say admirer, of Vera’s. Except that I had pictured him quite differently.

  “We’ve been notified of your visit, accompanied, of course, by the loveliest expectations on all sides,” I offered by way of apology. I had jumped up, but then, as if this knowledge had robbed me of my energies, I realized that I was having trouble speaking. I was suddenly afraid I might spoil things, very important things. Hadn’t a smile meandered across his lips at my mention of “loveliest expectations on all sides”? It can’t have been just my fault that I caught only some words, a few fragments of a sermon, like an AM broadcast after nine at night. “…excellent reputation!…accomplishments, commitment, will…substantial…can well imagine…new energy, new energies…waiting for this…resurrected out of…trust…impeccable…times such as these…speculating…congratulations, yes, my congratulations.”

  He was doling out compliments. That much I understood. His turns of phrase had me on the verge of laughter. “We bid you the warmest of welcomes. We do indeed,” I managed to say, but was afraid it may have sounded like a parody. I weighed words in my mouth as if they were fillings that had fallen out, and it wouldn’t have taken much and I would have bowed and scraped like a lackey.

  Barrista had warmed to his topic, spoke, if I rightly recall, without accent now and rubbed his hands as if under a tap. With total determination he cried, “Not I! I am not one of those for whom speech is silver and silence gold. Balderdash, no, no, my good man,” he said with a smile, “special considerations not even on behalf of those involved, even a child knows that, truly, even a child. Moaning and groaning, the sooner the better, wean themselves, aware of that myself, does no good, no training, can’t fail to be noticed, no one left, nowhere, no father confessor, unoccupied position, second-rank, third-rank, an enormous transformation, absolute void, on this side and that, unique chance!”

  I was no longer trying to follow his leaps and bounds from one thought to another, and assembled a few sentences about myself instead. Sprawled now on his chair, Barrista gave me exaggerated nods as I started to speak, raised his eyebrows, and with a flood of ahs and ohs urged me on—his shy pupil, who kept to short statements in order to maintain his footing. It was all so terribly simpleminded, but his encouragement calmed me. When I fell silent, Barrista look disconcerted. What did he expect? I shrugged.

  “Well, he’ll probably not be stopping by now,” he sighed, and rummaged in his pants pocket. Before I could ask whom he meant, he apologized. “Oh, beg your pardon. It really is late.” He scrutinized a wristwatch without its strap. “Ten till twelve,” he said, suppressing a yawn.

  “Ten till twelve?”

  “My first thought,” he said, ignoring my astonishment, “was that your eyes were shining with enthusiasm. But, my dear Herr Türmer, you need to look after yourself. May I give you a ride, may I take you home?”

  I pointed to the window. “I have my own—” was all I managed. I meant my car.

  “Then perhaps I may escort you?” He extracted two slightly used red candles from an attaché case that I had not noticed until then, held the wicks together, and lit them both at the same time with a lighter. A candle in each hand, the attaché case under his left arm, he stood there like a Saxon Christmas ornament, his deep-sea eyes directed at me. You know my weakness for courteous people, but I had to smile all the same. He waited until I had gathered up my things. The wolf scraped with its front paws. Before I turned off the light, I noticed wax running down over Barrista’s hands and dripping on the floorboards in front of the wolf’s muzzle. I edged past the two of them, opened the door to the small antechamber, then the one to the vestibule, where I groped for the switch.

  “Why do you mistrust me?” he asked. His eyes swam toward me. The switch clicked, but nothing happened. “No problem, no problem,” he cried, raising the candles higher. I was embarrassed and angry, and especially the latter because I could hear Fred’s excuses.

  “I have made it my firm custom to be prepared for anything here in the East.” He again gave a hint of an apologetic bow, because he would not let me precede him. “Dealing with people is a fine art, truly a fine art.” Undaunted, he hobbled ahead of me, holding the burning candles as far away from his body as circumstances allowed. “Work must be learned as well, and never make any exceptions to that!” He anticipated my move and opened the front door with his elbow. The draft blew out the candles. Clemens von Barrista, however, strode ahead by the streetlamp’s murky glow as if he himself were still lighting the way. Then the bell of Martin Luther Church began to toll. The next moment the streetlamps went out. A brief flicker, and night had swallowed Barrista and his wolf. For a while I still heard footsteps and his English singsong. I called out my good-byes twice in his wake, and waited for the lights of his car to come on at any moment. But it stayed dark, and after the last toll of the bell there was universal silence.

  I slept like a stone.

  Enrico

  PS: When I got to the office today, Jörg was already fully informed and asked what I thought of Barrista. “A special case,” I said, and immediately wanted to correct myself. I don’t like the term. But Jörg agreed with me at once. “A special case” was probably the best way to put it. “But whatever the case,” he said, turning to Georg, “Barrista wants us! Us and nobody else.”

  Jörg had dropped by the Wenzel at eight o’clock, where he had in fact found Barrista eating breakfast and joined him in “beheading a soft-boiled egg,” as he put it. Barrista had not only filled him in on his fellow guests, but was also able to mimic their gestures and speech. It had struck Jörg as “funny as hell!”

  What Barrista had to say about the hereditary prince had, despite requisite caution, pricked his—Jörg’s—interest and curiosity about the old gentleman’s upcoming visit. Barrista’s sole proviso had been a “reasonable outcome of the election.”

  When Fred showed up, I took him to task. But he just turned on his heels, leaving both doors wide open behind him—and switched on the light. The vestibule was bathed in previously unknown radiance. Fred claimed he had put in new bulbs yesterday, something everyone but me had noticed…

  Here’s hoping you at least believe me,

  Your E.

  Saturday, Feb. 17, ’90

  Dear Jo,

>   And now I’ve typed your name once again, but the man who wrote you that previous letter, the very same man who two and a half days ago walked out on Market Square with bundles of newspapers, seems so strange and childlike to me. Don’t expect any epiphanies! It was all terribly secular and ordinary. As I paged through the newspaper that had seemed so faraway and mysterious during proofreading, I was relieved just to find no white spots. It all had to go so fast. The drivers had been sitting around on their hands since Wednesday. The volunteers from klartext days had divvied up the Konsum Markets among themselves. The telephone never stopped ringing. I didn’t even finish the champagne that Jörg treated us to. Georg gave Robert a conductor’s satchel, plus a supply of small change. I slung an old pouch of crackled patent leather around my shoulder, the strap across my chest. Then we hustled off through the drizzle, each with two bundles of 250 copies.

  Once at Market Square, near Sporen Strasse, we set down our bundles and massaged our fingers—they were numb and scarred purple from the cords. Five booths were huddled together as if afraid of the expanse of Market Square. A fruit and vegetable vendor took up residence closest to us. The D-MARKS ONLY sign hung above these splendors of paradise was as large as it was unnecessary. He called out the names of exotic fruits, but they might just as well have been oriental spices. The truly fabled wares, however, were the tomatoes and cucumbers, the pears and grapes. The few people scattered across Market Square could hardly have been the reason for his ballyhoos. His highly trained voice was the icing on the artificiality of the cake. He could have been trumpeting arias.

  I worked at undoing the knots on my bundle, but never let anyone heading our way out of my eye. I expected every one of them to stop and ask whether we were selling that new newspaper, the Altenburg Weekly. Robert was staring at my hands. He was already so unsure of himself that it never occurred to him to hand me his pocketknife. But he readily let me drape a sheaf of papers over his forearm. I stood next to him and unfolded the front page with the masthead at eye level.

  After several people had walked past us without asking about the paper, I suggested Robert speak to people. He needed to tell them what he had here. But as soon as anyone approached, instead of opening his mouth he stuck his newspaper arm out a little farther like a clumsy waiter. Michaela had told me it was irresponsible to “corrupt him with child labor.” It was too late now to send him away, he would just have to hold out.

  I finally had no choice but to show him how it should be done. I left no one out. I fixed my eye on people, smiled, and spoke to them, even those who passed a little farther away did not escape. “Do you know about the new Altenburg Weekly?” I shouted. No one stopped, no one bought. They didn’t even look at me. That very morning a large article about us had appeared on the regional page of the LVZ.51 Even they thought we were important.

  Now and then someone bought a fish sandwich. I don’t know how I would have felt if I had been alone. Robert’s presence was agony for me.

  Suddenly an elderly woman came up, her shopping bag swaying back and forth, and asked us what we had to offer.

  “Well now,” she said, eyeing the front page. Her coat was buttoned wrong and hung askew. “Then give me one.” Her arm plunged up to the elbow into her shopping bag. I asked for ninety pfennigs and handed her a newspaper from the middle of the stack. Her index finger poked around in her change until she found a one-mark piece. I dropped a ten-pfennig piece into her outstretched hand. After she had folded the paper and crammed it into her bag, she gazed at me as if trying to make sure just whom she had been dealing with, and then with a loud “good-bye” moved on.

  It works, I thought. Just one success had turned me into an addict. I needed more. I handed the mark to Robert.

  It wasn’t long before I hit the jackpot again. A slim man with smooth black hair held out a mark to me, waved me off as I held out his change, and smiled so affably that his eyes vanished into a tomcat’s little angled slits.

  With that I lost all inhibition, walked over to two women, and asked them whether they already had their copy of the Altenburg Weekly, the new newspaper for the whole region. I fixed my attention on the younger one. Not until I was standing directly in front of her did I notice the countless wrinkles that blurred the traits of her girlish face. She reached for her wallet, when her companion, a woman dressed all in black, barked at me, asking what all this was about. “It’s not important!” the woman in black said, interrupting my reply. “Not important!” She slapped the back of her hand against the newspaper and shouted, “Ninety pfennigs? Ninety pfennigs!”

  “Ninety pfennigs,” I insisted, and all I had to do in that moment was take the mark from the open palm of the gentler soul.

  “It’s not important at all. Not important!”

  The hand closed slowly, and I stared at the little fist, delicate enough to be porcelain.

  Rage and desperation welled up in me. “Altenburg Weekly!” I yelled after them. “Altenburg Weekly!” I must have been heard as far away as Martin Luther Church.52

  Ah, Jo, you won’t understand how I could carry on like that over something so trivial. But suddenly it was all there again—the last six months, the fear, the desperation, the accusations, the theater and its horrors, the horror of my sickroom, my mother, Michaela, Vera, the whole bottomless pit. And Robert standing beside me, who had set his heart on those bundles, all one thousand copies.

  Every bit of reticence left me. I don’t even know where the rhythm came from that I adopted to proclaim my AL-TEN-BURG-WEEK-LY! I hammered, banged, punched hard each time, aiming at the black core of my dactylic syllables. AL-TEN-BURG-WEEK-LY. I did it for Robert, for myself, for Michaela, for Georg und Jörg, for my mother and Vera, for the town, for the whole region. And after each verse, I breathed more easily. Someone held a two-mark piece under my nose, he actually demanded two copies and no change. And Robert likewise got rid of his first copy. The two of us quickly sold five papers, one after the other. As if trying to make up for what I had failed to do last autumn, I shouted my AL-TEN-BURG-WEEK-LY to the hammer strokes of SANC-TIONNEW-FO-RUM! This was my revolution now.

  The fruit vendor evidently took it as a challenge and responded with a sirenlike yowl.

  Ten minutes later I picked up two bundles and took up my post across from the Rathaus. From there the market booths looked like the coastline of home. I don’t know why—was I exhausted, had I taken a chill, did I miss Robert—at any rate my cries lost their power. After each verse I stopped to watch what was happening.

  I changed positions again, this time farther up Market Square, at the corner leading to the Weiber Market. There were more people there. And I could watch Robert extending his arm to hold out newspapers to passersby. I was responsible for this tragedy. It wasn’t hard to imagine how his pride at seeing my name in the imprint, his admiration for the art of making a newspaper, how all that was suddenly collapsing. I had always been afraid the whole thing might fail—because of a lack of authorization, poor delivery, or our incompetence. I had never given sales a thought. If I was wrong about something like that, why shouldn’t I doubt everything, our entire strategy? What I wanted more than anything was to tell the whole world that we would be bringing the hereditary prince to Altenburg. Yes, suddenly I wanted that strange man, Clemens von Barrista, beside me. I found thinking about him somehow comforting. But I said nothing and let people pass by as if I were invisible. And then…

  I had already grown so used to the fruit siren that I didn’t even notice at first. But something at any rate was different. It was now shouting “Weekly!” No, shouting isn’t even close. “Weeeekly, Weeeekly, Aaaltenburg Weeeekly!”—it stressed the first syllable, swallowed the second, then ascended from the depths and like a siren blared the A of Altenburg, his mouth stretched wide. And then came the unmistakable imperative: “Buy it, folks, buy it!” followed at once by the equally urgent “Only ninety pfennigs! Ninety pfennigs for the Aaaltenburg Weeeekly…” The beginning and end, the A-E, A-E ro
se into the air above Altenburg Market.

  The town began slowly to come alive, as if the cry of the fruit vendor had found its way to both Altenburg North and Southeast.53

  A group of women surrounded me—they all bought and no one wanted change. To lend support, as they put it. One of them recognized me as the Herr Türmer from the theater, who had given that speech in the church.

  My luck held. In a few minutes I had disposed of thirty copies. And it just kept up. I only had to hold up the newspaper and, once the fruit siren’s “Weeeekly” had died away, to repeat the idea, as if explaining to everyone around: Weekly, he means our Weekly. And then—at first I thought it was a woman’s voice—I realized that a new “Weeekly! Weeekly!” was Robert’s.

  I didn’t need to say anything more, from then on people bought all on their own.

  By day’s end it was so dark that I could barely make out faces. I could give change with my eyes closed, and I stuffed bills into my pants pockets. My feet were ice cold, I couldn’t even feel my toes now. The patent-leather pouch hung heavy at my neck. And whom do you suppose I sold my last copy to? Yes, to Clemens von Barrista. But he and his wolf didn’t seem to recognize me in the darkness. Or might I have been mistaken about that?

  Robert was still busy, and it was only by his irrepressible smile that I could tell he could see me. Erwin, the fruit siren, didn’t want to hear anything about thanks. He handed me a sheet of paper, an ad—we’re to publish it every week—and gave me a hundred-D-mark bill! We left the rest of Robert’s copies with him; he planned to distribute them in his hometown of Fürth, in Franconia.

  We started the walk home empty-handed, but our satchels were stuffed full and banged against our hips with every step. A record—one thousand, one-twentieth of the printing. In four hours Robert had made ninety marks (twenty pfennigs a copy), plus tips.