Schulze - Simple Stories

Table of Contents

For Jette

Acclaim for Ingo Schulzes

simple stories

The originality of this wonderful novel derives in good part from Ingo Schulzes gift for gleeful pastiche.... He appropriates the famously deadpan diction and flat affect of Raymond Carvers hard-luck stories to describe stodgy small-town East Germans forced to reinvent themselves when their world collapses. Its a brilliant narrative strategy for capturing a time of giddy terror andmuch more rarelyexhilaration.... Schulze himself is no minimalist; instead, hes a baroquely expansive comic.

The New York Times Book Review

It is impossible to do justice to the complexity of this novel.... The fact that it vibrates so oddly and beautifully demands that we see it as a startling achievement.

Review of Contemporary Fiction

Ingenious.... Brilliantly composed and astringently written.... This sovereignly crafted novel deserves to be read by those seriously interested in the art of fiction.

The Boston Globe

Parts of Simple Stories are the funniest, saddest and most deadly fiction I have read since that Wall came tumbling down.

The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)

Remarkable.... Slowly, page by page, the fragments become whole and it begins to dawn on readers that these stories are anything but simple, told by a brilliant storyteller with a voice very much his own.

Santa Fe New Mexican

A dizzying tapestry of interconnected former East Germans.... Schulze masterfully handles the interweaving story lines of a small town of New Germans trying their best to get right with capitalism, the new European order, and each other.... An entertaining soap opera full of social commentary.

St. Petersburg Times

A novel about ordinary people living in extraordinary times, told with persuasive honesty and gentle poignancy.

Elle

CHAPTER 1

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Renate Meurer tells about a bus trip in February90when the wall was already gone, but the two Germanys were not. In celebration of their twentieth wedding anniversary, the Meurers are in the West for the first time, in Italy for the first time. A bus breakdown outside Assisi drives a fellow passenger, Dieter Schubert, to an act of desperation. Shared memories and provisions.

It just came at the wrong time. Five days on a bus: Venice, Florence, Assisi. It all sounded like Honolulu to me. I asked Martin and Pit how they even came up with the idea and where exactly the money was coming from and how did they picture us taking an illegal trip for our twentieth anniversary?

I was depending on Ernst not to go along with it. The last few months had been hell for him. We had anything but Italy on our minds. But he didnt say a word. And in the middle of January, he asked if we shouldnt be making some preparationswe were supposed to leave on February 16, a Friday during school breakand how were we supposed to get over the Italian border, the Austrian border, with our GDR papers? I figured that at the latest, once Id told him what the kids had told mehow wed be getting West German IDs from a travel agency in Munich, counterfeit most likelythatd be that, you could count Ernst Meurer out. But he just asked whether that had been why wed had the two passport photos taken. Yes, I said, the two passport photos, our birth dates, height, and color of eyesthats all they need.

It was just like always. We packed clothes in our dark green suitcase, put dishes, cutlery, and food in the black-and-red-checked bag: canned sausages and fish, bread, eggs, butter, cheese, salt, pepper, zwieback, apples, oranges, and two thermoses, one for coffee, one for tea. Pit drove us to Bayreuth. At the border they asked where we were going, and Pit said, Shopping.

The train stopped in every jerkwater town. Except for snow, streetlights, cars, and stations, I didnt see much. We were sitting with men on their way to work. I didnt really think about Italy until Ernst peeled an orange.

At the station in Munich he and Ernst must have recognized each other. I didnt pick up on it. How was I supposed to know what he looked like? I couldnt even have told you his real name.

I remember him from about Venice on. An average-sized man with quick movements and a badly fitting glass eye that never blinked. He was dragging some huge book around with him, one finger stuck in between pages, so that whenever Gabriela, our Italian tour guide, explained something, he could put his two cents in. Your typical know-it-all. He kept pushing back his salt-and-pepper hair, which would promptly fall down over his forehead and eyebrows again.

I recognized the Doges Palace and the column with the lion from TV. The Venetian womeneven those my agewore short skirts and beautiful, old-fashioned caps. We had all dressed too warmly.

During the day, so that we could be on our own, we took along our bag of supplies with a couple of cans, bread, and apples. We ate in the room in the evening. Ernst and I didnt talk much, but at least more than we had over the last months. Una gondola perfavore, he shouted one morning while washing up. On the whole, I had the impression that Ernst liked Italy. Once he even took my hand and held it tight.

He never said one word about him. Not till the very end. Although in Florence, while we were waiting for everybody to come down from the bell tower, Ernst asked, Wheres our mountaineer? I didnt pay it much attention or maybe I thought the two of them had talked at some pointErnst always went down to breakfast before me. Then he mentioned something about doing pull-ups in a doorway. Before that, in Padua, the mountaineer had insisted we stop and visit some chapel or arena that wasnt even on the tour. I turned aroundhe was sitting way at the back. His glance said that nothing was going to bother him and was directed straight at the windshield, as if we all were there to finally get this gentleman where he was going. Maybe Im being unfair, maybe I wouldnt even remember if it hadnt been for the brouhaha later on, maybe Ive got the sequence of events mixed up, too, but Im not inventing any of it.

You have to try to imagine it. Suddenly youre in Italy and have a West German passport. My name was Ursula and Ernst was Bodo, we lived in Straubing, Bavaria. Ive forgotten our last names. You wake up on the other side of the world and are amazed to find yourself eating and drinking just like at home, putting one foot in front of the other as if this were all perfectly natural. Brushing my teeth and looking into the mirror, I found it even harder to believe that I was in Italy.

Before we left Florence for Assisi on our last day, the bus stopped in a parking lot so we could look back at the city. The sky was overcast. Ernst bought a plate with a picture of Dante and gave it to mean anniversary present.

Then we drove through rain, and slowly it turned so foggy that I couldnt see anything but guardrails and fell asleep.

When Ernst woke me up, the others were already getting off. We had stopped at a gas station. There was something wrong with the motor or the muffler. Snow was falling on the umbrellas, and cars had their headlights ongreat weather for a breakdown. Our driver went looking for a phone. I can still remember his gestures exactly, the way he kept crossing and uncrossing his forearms. Gabriela announced that wed have to wait for repairs. She suggested we take in the sights of Perugia.