New Lives by Ingo Schulze Page B

feet. She tries to slip into her shoes. “Ouch! Ouch!” she whines. “That hurts!”
    â€œFor heaven’s sake,” I exclaim. She is looking up now, and what I had taken for a strand of hair stuck in the corner of her mouth turns out to be a scar. I realize that she’s a noblewoman.
    â€œIt no longer keeps me warm,” I say apologetically, pointing to my coat hanging beside the door. I am angry at myself because I’ve been planning for days to take it to the cleaners so they can restore its old qualities. “Would you like to come along?” I ask. “If we leave now we can make it to the cleaners by six.”
    â€œHow can I possibly do that?” she cries. Her voice is clogged with tears. Didn’t I have eyes in my head, even a blind man could that see she was in no condition to take so much as a single step.
    â€œMay I carry you?” I ask, unable to suppress the expectation in my voice. Her blouse has come open at the waist, and I see a triangle of her stomach, her navel at its center—just like the eye of God, I think. The comparison pleases me. The most wonderful opportunities often arise out of minor inconveniences, I say. She bursts into laughter. She lets her eyes wander openly over me. Evidently everything about me makes her laugh, I appear to provoke it. Finally, putting both hands over her mouth, she is overcome by a seizure of laughter she cannot control. She struggles for air, buckles over. Her hair, the tips bright red, falls down over her face, hiding it completely.
    By now I was sitting on the edge of the bed and listening intently, I was that certain I had heard laughter. It was four in the morning. My day had begun.
Tuesday, Feb. 6, ’90
    Verotchka,
    I don’t like leaving the office here because I’m afraid I’ll miss your call. Each time I come in it’s all I can do to keep from asking about you. I get testy if Jörg or Georg stays on the telephone too long. I tried reaching you from Paris, but I was doing something wrong and couldn’t understand the recording either.
    Yes, we were in Paris, at least we claim we were. We were back by nine on Sunday. “We’ve just come from Paris,” Robert announced to a neighbor in the stairwell. Instead of being amazed or asking questions, she gave Michaela and me a nasty look, as if we tolerated lying. Then what Michaela told her about the procedure with our papers made her all the more suspicious. Truth is no help when you’re trying to convince someone.
    I’m glad it’s behind us. I finally let myself be talked into going along for Robert’s sake—it was a family outing. Michaela was sure we’d have a fine time even without money. The official title was “Three-Day Trip.” The first day was Friday. We were scheduled to leave Eisenach at 5 p.m.
    Hundreds of people were waiting on a muddy square surrounded by buildings waiting to be demolished and a couple of murky streetlamps. If it hadn’t been for the bags and plastic sacks, it would have looked like the start of a demonstration. Mamus had been waiting for us in Eisenach since two in the afternoon. She was all on edge because we didn’t arrive until around four thirty. As the armada of buses pulled in, we were shooed from one end of the square to the other. When the bus doors opened the drivers appeared and called out their destinations, then sat down behind the wheel again.
    There were two for Paris. We were afraid they were going to pull out without us, but then found seats in the third and fourth rows, far enough forward to see out the windshield. Next to us was the ferry to Amsterdam, on our left one for Venice. The procedure was the same for everyone. First we were given West German papers that—except for name and address—had all the details right, down to height and eye color. At the French border, so we were instructed, we were to hold the papers up 35 and look