New Lives Read online

  Jo, my dear friend. What a delight it is to sell something you’ve made yourself. My laurel wreath is woven from the oak leaves on every coin.

  Your E.

  PS: Your copy is being sent in a wrapper. Unfortunately the photographs are very dark.

  Tuesday, Feb. 20, ’90

  Dear Jo,

  We’ve been working like the devil. And I still didn’t get home until after midnight.54 But four hours of sleep are enough, and since I pass the time writing letters, I’m gradually learning to love these long mornings.55

  I won’t bore you with newspaper stuff, but I do have to tell you something I wouldn’t have mentioned if it hadn’t been the cause of our first crisis.56

  Have I ever told you about the Prophet? He’s an odd duck. Everyone notices that right off. The Prophet’s mouth is constantly in motion, as if he has just sampled something and is about to announce what it tastes like. He keeps his chin jutted out, so that his beard, which appears to have the consistency of cotton candy, is thrust menacingly forward.

  During the demonstration after the wall came down, he demanded the creation of a soviet republic. He’s always full of surprises.57

  The Prophet arrived early to honor our first-issue celebration58 with his presence, but quickly retreated into a corner. As we’ve since come to know, he didn’t like the look of our guests. Jörg’s and Georg’s invitations had gone out—as is only proper for a newspaper—to the town council, to the district council, to all political parties (with the exception of the comrades), to the museums and the theater, to Guelphs and Ghibellenes. The only guests to arrive on time, however, were members of the old officialdom, because all the rest, those who felt they naturally belonged at our side (the reception was held in the office of the New Forum), were slow to make an appearance since they had been out selling and delivering our newspaper.

  Even the “bigwigs,” as the Prophet later called them, seemed out of sorts. Either they didn’t want to talk with one another but with “fresh faces” instead, or they were very skittish. When I suggested to the mayor that I wanted to interview him soon, he removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes for a good while, and then asked, “What is it you want from me?” Before I could reply, he exclaimed, “Do you know what I’m going to do? Not one thing. I’ve done far too much already!” And sad to say Jörg and Georg weren’t exactly at the top of their form, either. Jörg kept pumping the mayor’s hand and had hardly been able to unlock his jaw to thank him for a monstrous pot of cyclamens. Georg gazed down on his well-wishers with all the earnestness of a Don Quixote, amazed that the same people he wanted to take on were smiling and squirming at his feet. But all this just in passing.

  By the time Dr. Schumacher, the mayor of Offenburg, entered the room surrounded by his minions—with roses for the ladies and a Dictaphone for us—the bigwigs had fled the scene. Once the citizens of Offenburg had vanished and just our sort, as Michaela might have put it, were still amusing themselves, the Prophet tapped his glass with a spoon, jutted out his beard, and asked in a loud voice, “What’s in the Altenburg Weekly?”

  He gave a table of contents, page by page. It sounded more than just a bit too droll, but I laughed along—certain that kudos would follow. But by the time he got to Jan Steen’s ad, which he called a mockery of our customers and readers, the effrontery of his speech began to dawn on me. “What was it we wanted?” the Prophet thundered, paused—while his mouth began the search for some new taste—and asked in a tone of bitterest accusation, “No, what was it you wanted?” And it was not a rhetorical question. But to make a scene? Because of this crazy man?

  He laid into each of us, even nitpicked at my gardener Dippel article. There hadn’t been one thing in our paper he couldn’t read these days in the Leipziger Volkszeitung.

  And finally, alluding to our launching celebration, he added, “Are you once again the lackeys of authority, the lackeys of the same bigwigs who harassed us for forty years?”

  Naturally I hoped that one of our guests would defend us. They had been listening to the Prophet somewhat too eagerly while they sipped at our wine and champagne. Only Wolfgang the Hulk and his wife bravely shook their heads, but even they did not risk protesting aloud.

  Presumably they considered any disagreement superfluous, that a response would lend this farce too much significance. “What do you plan to do?” the Prophet boomed in conclusion and, after shooting a glance around the room, marched straight out the open door.

  Now people began to mimic and make fun of him. The mood grew more relaxed, and there was even some dancing after Fred discovered a piano in an adjoining room and “cracked” the fallboard. Although I was glad that Barrista had been spared the crazy man’s theatrics, I also regretted that our invitation had evidently not reached him in time.

  On Friday Georg confessed that it never would have occurred to him in the old days to drink champagne with bigwigs, and I didn’t realize at first just what he was getting at. But Marion now joined in the self-flagellation. Suddenly once again none of our articles was good enough for them. It was totally absurd. Even Jörg strewed ashes on his head and no longer understood why we had invited erstwhile officialdom. When I asked him what harm the invitations had done, a hush first fell over the room. “They harmed our reputation,” Georg said finally, and Marion added, “Our dignity.”

  “Not mine,” I replied, which initiated a great silence that didn’t lift until yesterday.

  Hugs, Enrico

  PS: We’ve heard that we were rebuked as idolaters from a Protestant pulpit last Sunday—because of the horoscope on the next-to-last page.

  Tuesday, Feb. 20, ’90

  Dear Frau Hansen,

  If you knew what it had cost me to bring myself to ask Frau *** for your address. I puffed myself up like a fourteen-year-old and claimed you had promised to show me Rome.59

  I’m sorry I was of so little help to you and that it was on our account that you missed meeting the museum staff. To make up for it, I’m enclosing the little Reclam volume60 and a few other items about the pavilion. I’ve prepared a list of a dozen people for Frau *** to interview and have already sent it to her. I think that ultimately it doesn’t really matter with whom she talks. The best choices are left to chance.61

  When do you plan to or when will you be able to come back again? I would love to know for all sorts of reasons.

  With warmest regards, Your Enrico T.

  Saturday, Feb. 24, ’90

  Dear Jo,

  Yesterday, as if meeting me for an appointment, Barrista came bounding down the long stairway of the Catholic rectory. The man at the front door with whom he’d been talking watched us without budging from the spot. Which was why I thought Barrista would be returning to him. Instead, he asked if he could join me, and was soon sitting in the passenger seat with the wolf in the middle behind us. He had made a find. “A Madonna,” Barrista said, “a Madonna, Herr Türmer, a Madonna…And no one knows where she comes from.” I barely recognized him, his speech was so lively—without accent or stilted bombast.

  He said he didn’t care where I was going, that I should make no special allowances for him, if need be he’d simply wait and walk the dog. When I stopped at the gate of Larschen’s farm, I interrupted Barrista’s gushings about the Madonna. He ignored what I had said and followed me with his wolf. I had to express myself more clearly and ask him to excuse me for a few minutes. He stopped in his tracks in the middle of the courtyard, muttered something, and only now seemed to notice where he had landed. A couple of chickens beat a retreat and a farm dog was barking close by. Anton Larschen appeared before I had even found the doorbell. He grabbed me by the elbow and led me to a low doorway, commanded Barrista to follow us, and insisted on treating us as his guests. “Ten minutes!” he exclaimed, and preceded us up a steep set of stairs that I wouldn’t have ventured on my own. Barrista hesitated as well. The low room was very overheated, the bed, the only object of normal size, looked huge. Anton Larschen hurried to set anoth
er place at the table, buttoned the top button of his jacket, and plucked at both trouser legs. He wasn’t wearing socks, so his naked heels were visible with every step of his felt slippers. The top of his tower of white hair brushed the ceiling beams. “Please!” he cried. We sat down at the table, he vanished back downstairs.

  “Splendiferous!” Barrista whispered, holding his cup up to the light. I no longer remember the name, but evidently Larschen’s porcelain is Chinese. The room looked like a museum, everything in perfect order. The only chaos was a hodgepodge of items that lay or stood atop the radio: a battered convention mascot, a mug from Karlsbad, a ship in a bottle, a darning egg, a straw doll, a pair of framed photographs, and other stuff. The wolf had stretched out in front of the dark blue upholstered armchair and now blinked up into the narrow boxes of light—the windows were barely larger than roof scuttles. I was about to tell Barrista a little about Larschen when he came climbing back up the stairs, teapot in hand. He passed us a plate of licorice cookies and ginger pastries. (No novelties to Barrista!) These, as well as the tea and the lump sugar, came from relatives in Bremen, Larschen explained.

  Barrista apologized for his barging in like this, but he spoke so softly that he was interrupted by Larschen, who announced how glad he was to be able to welcome two guests into his modest home. Yes, it was an honor, and now he began a speech he had evidently prepared for the occasion. As he spoke he held a folder clamped under his arm, stroking it constantly, as if to dust it off and press its corners flat. With downright frightening candor he described what he called the dramatic high point of his “little opus”—that is, his failed attempt at flight to the West. Not only would it have provided him with a farm to match his wishes, it also would have meant the fulfillment of his love for a married woman. The woman had not been willing to get a divorce, but was prepared to flee with him. They were betrayed, arrested, interrogated. He didn’t recognize his lover in the courtroom. Her hair had turned white as snow. He knew the people who had betrayed them—but that knowledge would never give him back those lost years. For him, the knowledge was an additional punishment. Larschen used the phrase “a nobody like me” several times, and in conclusion asked if I would be willing to cast a brief glance at his “memoirs.” I reminded him that that was, after all, why I had come. Barrista’s wolf, which had at first been startled by Larschen’s rhetoric—there’s barely a sentence he doesn’t speak with added emphasis—was now dreaming and shuffling its paws.

  As we were climbing back down the stairs, the grandfather clock struck eleven. Exactly twenty minutes had passed since our arrival.

  Barrista had again spoken too softly for Larschen, who therefore didn’t hear the answer to his question about whether Barrista would also like to read the manuscript. “If it’s only half as good as what he told us,” he said, “you should print it.” He even suggested that we turn it into a book. Barrista thanked me profusely. I couldn’t imagine, he told me, how much this meeting had meant to him. And had I seen the darning egg? He had been genuinely touched. He himself always carried a darning kit with him, not because he couldn’t afford new socks, but because darning had a calming effect on him, took him back to the evenings of childhood, and inspired his best ideas. He described for me at length his vain attempt to find a darning egg. No one had been able to help him—not in department stores, variety shops, not even in secondhand stores, until finally a salesclerk had taken pity on him and brought him a darning egg from home.

  As I was about to drop Barrista off in Altenburg, he asked if there was any reason why he could not accompany me farther. It was so interesting to him, he said, all the things I had to do, all of it without exception. And so I turned up everywhere with my little companion—the council hall in the village of Rositz, the town hall of Meuselwitz. I introduced Barrista to secretaries and in Wintersdorf even to the mayor. The wolf remained in the car, and I enjoyed the freedom—at Barrista’s encouragement—of leaving the keys in the ignition. He’s right. It is a different way of living.

  On the return trip Barrista urged me to turn right on the far side of Rositz, he wanted to show me a discovery.

  The scene presented to me was desolate: a soccer field overgrown with weeds, next to it a barracks with a sign reading REFEREES’ RETREAT and white grating at the windows and doors. Not a soul far and wide. Barrista strode ahead in his old-fashioned pointed boots, and although his left knee was still giving him trouble, he nimbly took the few steps of the small porch, opened the grated door, and stepped inside. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The interior was furnished as a hunting tavern, neither the wainscoting nor the numerous guests matched the wretched exterior. Barrista took off his coat, rapped each table affably, greeted those behind the bar, and slipped into the corner bench set aside for regulars. I was barely seated before a beer was placed in front of me. The most remarkable thing was that the innkeeper, a bald-headed man, called the wolf “Astrid”—and Astrid came trotting over, looking neither left nor right, and vanished through the open kitchen door. Barrista rubbed his hands. “Isn’t it wonderful here?”

  We had mutz roast.62 It was so tender and so well seasoned that I would have loved to place a second order.

  Barrista was in his element. I told him how we had all gathered to count the take from our first issue, had rolled the coins, and been halfway satisfied with the results—until it occurred to Georg that the currency was still in the safe. Barrista couldn’t get enough of such stories.

  I kept my eye on the innkeeper the whole time. There was something unusual about him. It came as something of a relief to realize that it was just that he had no eyelashes.

  Let me hear from you! E.

  Wednesday, Feb. 28, ’90

  Dear Frau Hansen,

  Here is a little scene on the topic of art that might interest you: I was on the telephone this morning, when a man with fire in his eyes entered the office, doffed his seaman’s cap, pulled over a chair, and slipped a well-worn wallet from his hip pocket. My hunch told me he wanted to buy an ad.

  “May I speak?” the man asked, even though he saw that I still hadn’t hung up.

  “Does this mean anything to you?” he asked, thrusting both arms up high and tucking his head between his shoulders. “Doesn’t this mean anything to you?” He repeated the gesture. “We’ve got to get rid of them—our monuments to the cult of the proles!” We as the “new media” had to take up the issue. “Communist art belongs on the junk heap!” He offered to write a letter to the editor.

  You would probably have grasped more quickly than I what he wanted, and been quicker at showing him the door. He wants to tear down your favorite statue63 outside the museum. He crammed his wallet back into his hip pocket and departed with a promise to finally bring the West German tabloid Bild to Altenburg.

  We’re still waiting for our Golden Age of art. But as for what lies hidden in our desk drawers, which is the hot topic at the moment—you can forget it. Who’s still interested in that? Our experiences are as much use to us now as a medical education from the last century.

  All the mistrust with which people such as ourselves64 have been regarded for thousands of years was far more justified than any respect or admiration.65 No, I no longer have any part in it, thank God that’s behind me. It wasn’t easy. You think you have talent, and then you screw up your life with it.

  It’s a new experience to be living without a future, in a world where a D-mark will get you anything you want, but with no prospect of redemption. But I far prefer this present state of affairs to that of the past. Even the loveliest memories seem obscene now.66

  I’d like to tell you about Johann, a friend of mine. He is too clever not to realize that not one stone will be left on another, but too in love with himself not to keep on going just as before all the same. Johann studied—although not quite voluntarily—theology in Naumburg and this summer will have to report as a pastor to a village in the Ore Mountains. In Dresden, however, he’s known as an underground poet and musician
. Besides which, his wife has a last name that counts for something even outside of Weisser Hirsch (the neighborhood for bigwigs that looks down over the city) and the city of Dresden. He’s trying to save himself by going into politics. Even if he should get elected, he will quickly sense that as an ersatz drug it’s too weak.67

  I don’t know whether this is of any interest to you at all. I simply wanted to send you greetings that, even if they may not quite read that way, are sent with the warmest intentions.

  Your Enrico T.

  Thursday, March 1, ’90

  Dear Frau Hansen,

  Had the letter not been in your handwriting, I wouldn’t have believed it could possibly have come from you. Please don’t let this be your final word.

  I shall never forget how you came bounding down the broad stairs of the museum and did not look up until I greeted you. And your confusion, because you thought we knew each other, and hesitated to go on your way. You didn’t belong in Altenburg, anyone could see that. But in that moment what I lacked was more than courage—I had no notion what to ask you, how to address you.

  I had decided during the press conference in the museum to invite you to join me somewhere—if good fortune should give me a second chance.

  And that is why I regarded our second meeting as a special dispensation. I don’t want to make excuses by appealing to unlucky chance, but your friend, your colleague, was directly blocking our line of sight. And to be quite honest, I noticed your reaction and had no objection, because I was afraid that I would betray myself too soon otherwise. You can accuse me of that. But only of that!

  The way you leaned against the windowsill, camera in hand—I was happy to be in the same room with you, and tried hard not to stare too often, forced myself, that is, to look only rarely in your direction. But my looks could not have been taken wrong […]