They Divided the Sky: A Novel by Christa Wolf

15.

Christa Wolf 71 couldn’t get enough of this light, which she couldn’t name and that compared with nothing she knew, that was both soft and hard at once. On their left, just at the spot where heaven and earth met, an island of light popped up. They drifted toward it. Soon they could discern the differences in the colour and power of the lights: yellow chains of light on the ground, and higher up, individual red lights. Then black shadows of chimneys could be made out against the lighter sky. A stench wafted into the car; they had to roll up their windows. They were back under the spell of the big plants. Rita was already in bed, her face turned toward the wall, when she heard Manfred come in quietly. She heard paper rustle. He said, “At this very moment, somebody is turning twenty. It’s midnight.” Rita turned toward him. He stood there with a large bouquet of carnations. She counted them: twenty. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.” 15. Nobody could have imagined that the first hot days of summer that year would bring on many more weeks of a malevolent, scorching sun. An unearthly being spewed its searing breath over the land. They got out of their beds exhausted, and over the course of the day, watched with burning, light-sated eyes as the glowing planet made its majestically slow way across the pale blue sky. They saw the meadows wither, the grain burn down on the stalk. At midsummer, trees lost their leaves and produced new ones, a phenomenon they’d never seen before. In the gardens, the fruit ripened, fat, sweet and juicy, like the fruit that usually only came from the south. Nobody could deal with the bounty, and at night they would hear ripe apples and pears thud to the ground. Rita was unaffected by the strange indifference of the forces of nature. The image she recalls most strongly from this time is that of they divided the sky 72 Rolf Meternagel’s face. His eyes, which she had known as mocking and expectant, were now attentive, energetic, hard and intransigent. Sometimes, in moments of doubt and desperation, these eyes were the only real thing she could hold on to. Later, she knew that this gaunt, dogged man had, more than anyone else, saved her from placing fruitless hopes in some phantom solution. Here is what really happened, and not in the name of any self-delusion: she saw a man take on an enormous burden; of his own free will and without demanding extra wages, he began a struggle he had virtually no hope of winning—like some valiant hero in the old stories. He gave up his sleep and his tranquility, was jeered at, harassed, ostracized. Rita saw him so downcast she thought he’d never get up again. But he got up again, with a frightening, almost wild look on his face, and just at that moment, others quite unexpectedly stepped up beside him, and said what he said and did what he suggested. Rita saw him breathe a sigh of relief and finally win; it was something she never forgot. Rolf Meternagel opened up his book. He passed it around and let everyone read a number, in red, on the last page: a number made up of three figures. “Time wasted by our brigade over the past month.” They shrugged. This was nothing new. They glanced at Günter Ermisch. He was scribbling in his account book and said nothing. Who was the foreman around here anyway? “I’ve been compiling the reasons,” Meternagel said. “Why don’t you just go talk to management,” one man said. Meternagel opened his book at another page. He was patient and careful, which irritated the others even more. “Downtime due to poor organization is one reason.” He read out the number of hours they hadn’t worked. “It accounts for half of the hours lost. I’m concerned with the other half.” “I’m not,” Franz Melcher said, and he got up and left. “Why do you have to keep on arguing?” Karβuweit muttered reproachfully. Meternagel looked at Günter Ermisch until he got up, collected his Christa Wolf 73 things and said, “There’s definitely something we can do about that.” When Ermisch talked like that, not much could happen to them. “If the cockerel...