New Lives Read Free

tilted wall—the world turns more hospitable again. Georg’s house is in the middle of a garden, a country home
en miniature.
The garden gate is arched over by a rotting wooden structure, a rose lattice. The bell could wake the dead.
    â€œYou’ve actually come,” he said. The vestibule was filled with all sorts of garden tools and quite a few bicycles.
    Turning left, opposite the stairs, you first enter a windowless antechamber and then a small room with a floor of wide planks and a beamed ceiling that I can touch with my outstretched arm. A table and chairs take up almost the whole room. It smelled of furniture polish and coffee. When seated I’m taller than Georg, whose short, skewed upper body squats atop endlessly long legs. The whole time he talked about plans for the newspaper he stared at his folded hands. Whenever he paused, his mouth vanished into his beard. Then he would glance up at me as if checking the effect of his words. I was uncertain how to address him—at our first meeting we had used formal pronouns with each other.
    There are various postal scales on the windowsills. The glass of the panes is old, distorting the view to the garden. You only have to move your head a little and trees shrink to bushes or shoot up sky high.
    Later we climbed up behind the house, the garden rises in several terraces. When I thought we would have to turn back, Georg made an opening in the thicket and began walking up a steep footpath. I had trouble following him. Then a marvelous view: the town lay at our feet under a lilac sky, the hill with its castle to our right, Barbarossa’s Red Tips to our left. 7 There was something agreeably unfamiliar about it all, it even felt like I was looking at the theater for the first time.
    I inhaled the cold air and the smell of moldy soil and felt very glad that from now on I’ll be able to enjoy the view whenever I want.
    Jörg, my other boss, had arrived in the meantime and made tea. He’s that same little bit shorter than Georg is taller than I. Jörg formulates his sentences so that they’re ready to be set in print. He seems to have his doubts about me. He never let me out of his sight and responded to everything I said with a slightly mocking smile. But I won’t let that scare me.
    Georg and Jörg want to pay me the same salary they make, which means I’d earn two thousand net a month, almost three times my wages as a dramaturge. They’ve given up trying to get money out of the New Forum. 8 The main thing is that I don’t have to go to the theater anymore. I was falling apart there. There’s no place more boring!
    A little before six o’clock Georg invited us to a light supper. His wife, Franka, and his three sons had already gathered round the table. As we sat down there was a sudden silence, I automatically expected someone to say grace. But it didn’t happen.
    I’m now reading newspapers. On the first page of the
ND
9 is a photograph of Havel. 10 He changed professions just in time. Whereas Noriega’s picture looks like a mug shot. 11 Some soldiers in Gleina went on strike for a few days. 12 They demanded a new military code. Even an army prosecutor was sent in. But they refused to be cowed. And now, so I read, there actually is a new military code.
    I think about you all the time.
    Your Heinrich
[Sunday, Jan. 14, ’90]
    Verotchka,
    Your letter has been lying here in the kitchen, on top of the fridge, since yesterday. Michaela brought the mail in, so the mailbox was empty when I took a look. Just now, right after breakfast, I suddenly recognized your handwriting on an envelope.
    Now that the date is set and you’ve booked your flight…for the last few days I’ve been feeling stronger than I have for a long time. I was even a match for Jörg, who’s like a fox lying in ambush. But it won’t be long now and you’ll be so far away…oh my, I’m sounding like Mamus.