New Lives by Ingo Schulze Page A

because he needs the tension to be productive. I can’t help thinking of that when I see Franziska like this.
    She knows about my letters, because Johann reads them to her to prove that “nothing’s going on” between him and me.
    Gesine will soon be five. At first glance she seems untouched by all this unhappiness. She chose Robert as her knight, led him through the apartment, and played the piano for him. It was something new for her to learn that there are people who don’t play some instrument.
    When Jo’s finished with his theology exams, there’s a pastorate with three parishes waiting for him in the Ore Mountains, not far from Annaberg-Buchholz. Franziska and he have already visited it; the parsonage is large and has a huge orchard. It would never have come to this a year ago, Franziska said, because Johann would have looked for a job that left him time for writing and his band. Franziska doesn’t want to leave Dresden come hell or high water, or at least not to go to Annaberg. And then came the bombshell! She was sure I already knew that Johann planned to be a candidate in the local elections. And three weeks ago it was he who accused me of betraying art.
    When I asked him about it later, he beat around the bush. He had wanted to tell me in person and not write me. He didn’t have a chance anyway, was doing it out of sense of responsibility, people had pushed him into it, maybe he could make a little difference. He sounded like someone who had just become a “candidate of the Party.” 32 I told him there was no need for a bad conscience or for him to justify himself and that I thought he had made the right decision.
    He also mentioned a bit too offhandedly that he hopes to publish a book about the events in Dresden last October. 33 Jo resents his own fate, because he was denied the privilege of being arrested, interrogated, and beaten. Believe me, I know him.
    Jo had no questions for me. His aloofness, if not to say coldness left me paralyzed. If it hadn’t been for Franziska, who was constantly passing me something, filling my teacup, and fussing over Robert, it would have felt like being shown the door.
    But when I talked about you, he slowly thawed, and suddenly smiled at me with a heartfelt warmth that left me more helpless than his silence had. He jumped up and presented me with a book, a duplicate he had found in a rare bookstore—a first edition of Eisler’s
Faustus
34 —and said that we definitely had to see each other more often, especially now. In the end we are all left with only a few friends anyway. He insisted, absurdly enough, on fixing sandwiches for our trip back; there might be a traffic jam. Robert and I took turns pointing to what we wanted and watched our sandwiches being prepared. Like a mason working plaster, Jo pushed the butter to the outer edge, spreading it around again several times as if to make certain everything was well greased. Then he looked up as if to say, this is something I’d do only for you.
    Hugs, your Heinrich

    PS: I’m sitting at the “green monster” and feel a draft at my back. I think Jörg or Georg has just come in. I turn around—and have to sneeze. “Gesundheit,” a woman’s voice says. I hear the door close. I sneeze two more times, and each time the same composed female voice blesses me.—“Who are you?” I ask, and walk toward her. She is crouched next to the stove, massaging her toes. A smile skitters across her face, briefly easing the tenseness in her features. Then she makes a hissing sound as she draws air in through her mouth and breathes it out again audibly through her nose. Her stockings have holes in the heels. “Don’t look,” she says. “I thought,” she continues, and presses her lips together for a second, “I thought you asked me to come in. I knocked.” With her back to the tile stove she slowly pushes herself to her