The Draining Lake

13

The couple walked along the pavement, the man slightly ahead of the woman. It was a glorious spring evening. Rays of sunshine fell on the surface of the sea and in the distance showers of rain tumbled down. It was as if the couple were impervious to the evening’s beauty. They strode forward, the man seemingly agitated. He talked incessantly. His wife followed silently, trying not to be left behind.

He watched them pass his window, looked at the evening sun and thought back to when he was young and the world was beginning to become so infinitely complex and unmanageable.

When the tragedy began.

He completed his first year at the university with flying colours and went back to Iceland in the summer. During the vacation he worked for the party newspaper, writing articles about the reconstruction of Leipzig. At meetings he described being a student there and discussed Iceland’s historical and cultural links with the city. He met leading party members. They had big plans for him. He looked forward to going back. He felt he had a role to play, perhaps a greater one than others. It was said that he was highly promising.

That autumn he returned to East Germany; his second Christmas at the residence was approaching. The Icelanders looked forward to it because some would be sent food parcels from home: traditional Icelandic Christmas delicacies such as smoked lamb, salted fish, dried fish, confectionery, even books too. Karl had already received his parcel and when he began boiling a huge leg of lamb from Hunavatnssysla where his uncle was a farmer the aroma filled the old villa. In the box there was also a bottle of Icelandic schnapps, which Emil requisitioned.

Only Rut could afford to go home to Iceland for Christmas. She was also the only one who felt seriously homesick after she returned from summer vacation, and when she left for the Christmas break some said she might not be back. The old villa was emptier than usual because most of the German students had gone home, as had some of the Eastern Europeans who were permitted to travel and were entitled to cheap rail transport.

So it was only a small group that gathered in the kitchen around the leg of smoked lamb and the bottle of schnapps that Emil had placed in the middle of the table. Two Swedish students had supplied potatoes, others brought red cabbage and Karl had somehow managed to produce a decent white sauce for the meat. Lothar Weiser, the liaison who had especially befriended the Icelanders, dropped by and was invited to join the feast. They all liked Lothar. He was talkative and entertaining. He seemed profoundly interested in politics and sometimes probed them for their views on the university, Leipzig, the German Democratic Republic, First Secretary Walter Ulbricht and his planned economy. He wondered whether they thought Ulbricht was too closely aligned to the Soviet government, and asked repeatedly about the events in Hungary and the American capitalists” attempts to drive a wedge into its friendship with the Soviet Union through their radio broadcasts and endless anticommunist propaganda. In particular he felt that young people were too gullible towards the propaganda and blind to the real intentions of the Western capitalist governments.

“Can’t we just have a bit of fun?” Karl said when Lothar began talking about Ulbricht, and downed a shot of spirit. Grimacing terribly, he said that he had never liked Icelandic schnapps.

“Ja, ja, naturlich,” Lothar laughed. “Enough of politics.”

He spoke Icelandic, which he said he had learned in Germany, and they thought he must be a linguistic genius because he spoke the language almost as well as they did, without ever having visited the country. When they asked how he had gained such a command of it he said he had listened to recordings and radio broadcasts. Nothing amused them more than when he sang old lullabies.

“Approaching rain,” was another phrase that he repeated endlessly, from the Icelandic weather forecasts.

In the box there were two letters to Karl which delivered the main news from Iceland since the autumn, along with some newspaper cuttings. They talked about the news from home and someone remarked that Hannes was absent as usual.

“Ja, Hannes,” Lothar said, with a smirk.

“I told him about this,” Emil said, downing a glass.

“Why is he so mysterious?” Hrafnhildur asked.

“Ah yes, mysterious,” Lothar said.

“It’s so strange,” Emil said. “He never turns up to the FDJ meetings or their lectures. I’ve never seen him doing volunteer work. Is he too good to work in the ruins? Aren’t we good enough for him? Does he think he’s better than us? Tomas, you’ve talked to him.”

“I think Hannes just wants to finish his course,” he said, with a shrug. “He’s just got this year left.”

“Everyone always spoke of him as a future star of the party,” Karl said. “He was always described as leadership material. He doesn’t look very promising here. I think I’ve only seen him twice this winter and he hardly said a word to me.”

“You barely see him,” Lothar said. “He’s rather glum,” he added, shaking his head, then sipped the schnapps and pulled the same sort of face that Karl had.

Down on the ground floor they heard the front door open, followed by quick footsteps up the stairs. Two males and a female appeared at the gloomy far end of the corridor. They were students, passing acquaintances of Karl’s.

“We heard you were having an Icelandic Christmas party,” the girl said when they entered the kitchen and saw the spread. There was plenty of lamb left and the others made room for them at the table. One of the men produced two bottles of vodka, to riotous applause. They introduced themselves: the men were from Czechoslovakia and the girl was Hungarian.

She sat beside him and he felt himself go weak. He tried not to stare at her after she emerged from the darkness of the corridor, but when he saw her there for the first time a wave of feelings rushed through him that he would never have thought himself capable of and found difficult to understand. Something strange happened and he was suddenly overwhelmed by a peculiar joy and euphoria, mixed with shyness. No girl had ever had such an effect on him.

“Are you from Iceland too?” She turned to him and asked her question in good German.

“Yes, I’m from Iceland,” he stammered, also in German, which he could speak well by now. He dragged his gaze away from her when it dawned on him that he had been staring at her ever since she’d sat down beside him.

“What monstrosity is that?” she asked, pointing to a boiled sheep’s head on the table, still uneaten.

“A sheep’s head, sawn in half and charred,” he said, and saw her wince.

“What sort of people do that?” she asked.

“Icelanders,” he said. “Actually it’s very good,” he added rather hesitantly. “The tongue and the cheeks…” He stopped when he realised that it did not sound particularly appetising.

“So, you eat the eyes and lips too?” she asked, not trying to conceal her disgust.

“The lips? Yes, those too. And the eyes.”

“You can’t have had much food if you had to resort to that,” she said.

“We were a very poor nation,” he said, nodding.

“I’m Ilona,” she said, holding out her hand. They exchanged greetings and he told her that his name was Tomas.

One of her companions called out to her. He had a plate full of smoked lamb and potatoes and urged her to try it, telling her that it was delicious. She stood up, found a plate and cut a slice of the meat.

“We never get enough meat,” she said as she sat down beside him again.

“Umm, wonderful,” she said with her mouth full of smoked lamb.

“Better than sheep’s eyes,” he said.

They went on celebrating into the early hours. More students heard about the party and the house filled up. An old gramophone was taken out and someone put some Sinatra records on. Late in the night the different nationalities took turns singing songs about their countries. Karl and Emil, both definitely feeling the effects of the consignment from Iceland, began by singing a melancholy ode by Jonas Hallgrimsson. Then the Hungarians took over, followed by the Czechs, the Swedes and the Germans, and a student from Senegal who pined for the hot African nights. Hrafnhildur insisted on hearing the most beautiful words in all their mother tongues, and after some confusion it was agreed that one representative from each country would stand and recite the most beautiful passage in it. The Icelanders were unanimous. Hrafnhildur rose and declaimed the finest piece of Icelandic poetry ever written:

Her delivery was shot through with emotion and even though only a few of them understood it, the group was stunned into momentary silence, until a mighty round of applause broke out and Hrafnhildur took a deep bow.

He was still sitting with Ilona at the kitchen table; she looked at him inquisitively. He told her about the character in the poem that had been recited, who was reflecting on a long journey through the Icelandic wilderness with a young girl for whom he yearned. He knew that they could never be lovers and with those morose thoughts he returned alone to his valley, weighed down by sorrow. Above him twinkled the star of love that had once lit his way but had now disappeared behind a cloud, and he thought to himself that their love, although unfulfilled, would last for ever.

She watched him while he was talking and whether it was his story of the sorrowful young lover, or the way he told it, or just the Icelandic schnapps, she suddenly kissed him right on the lips, so tenderly that he felt like a little child again.

Rut did not return from her Christmas vacation. She sent a letter to each of her friends in Leipzig, and in his she mentioned the facilities and various other complaints, and he understood that she had had enough. Or perhaps she was just too homesick. In the dormitory kitchen, the Icelanders talked it over. Karl said he missed her and Emil nodded. Hrafnhildur said she was soft.

The next time he met Hannes he asked why he had not wanted to join them at the residence. This was after a lecture on structural stress which had taken a strange turn. Hannes had attended it too. Twenty minutes after the lecture began, the door had opened and in walked three students who said they were from the FDJ and would like to say a few words. With them was a young man he had sometimes seen at the library and had assumed was a student of German literature. The student looked down at the floor. The leader of the group, who introduced himself as the secretary of the FDJ, began speaking about student solidarity and reminded them of the four aims of the university’s work: to teach them Marxist theory, make them socially active, have them work in the service of society within a programme organised by young communists, and establish a class of intellectuals who would later become professionals in their respective fields.

He turned to the student with them and described how he had admitted listening to western radio broadcasts and then had promised to mend his ways. The student looked up, took one step forward, confessed his crime and said he would not tune in to western programmes again. Said they were corrupted by imperialism and capitalist profiteering, and urged everyone in the hall to listen only to Eastern European radio in future.

The secretary thanked him, then asked the students to join him in a pledge that no one in the room would listen to western radio. After everyone had repeated the oath, the secretary turned to the teacher and apologised for disturbing him, and the group left the room.

Hannes, sitting two rows in front, turned round and looked at him with an expression that combined deep sadness with anger.

When the lecture was over Hannes beat a hasty retreat, so he ran after him, grabbed him and asked quite brashly if everything was all right.

“All right?” Hannes repeated. “Do you think what happened in there just now was all right? Did you see that poor bloke?”

“Just now,” he said, “no, I… but, of course… we need—”

“Leave me alone,” Hannes interrupted. “Just leave me alone.”

“Why didn’t you come round for Christmas dinner? The others think you’re rather full of yourself,” he said.

“That’s bollocks,” Hannes said, quickening his pace as if wanting to shake him off.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Why are you acting like this? What’s happened? What have we done to you?”

Hannes stopped in the corridor.

“Nothing. You haven’t done anything to me,” he said. “I just want to be left alone. I’ll graduate in the spring and then it’s over. That’s it. I’ll go back to Iceland and it’s over. This farce. Didn’t you see it? Didn’t you see how they treated that bloke? Is that what you want in Iceland?”

Then he strutted away.

“Tomas,” he heard a voice calling from behind him. He turned round and saw Ilona waving. He smiled at her. They were planning to meet up after the lecture. She had been to the dormitory to ask for him the day after the feast. From then on they met regularly. On this day they went for a long walk around the city and sat down outside Thomaskirche. He told her stories about the two Icelandic writer friends who had once stayed in Leipzig and had sat where they were sitting now. One died of tuberculosis. The other became the greatest writer his nation had ever produced.

“You’re always so sad when you talk about those Icelanders of yours,” she said with a smile.

“I just think it’s a brilliant story. Them walking the same streets as me in this city. Two Icelandic poets.”

By the church, he had noticed that she was uneasy and seemed on her guard. She glanced around as if looking for someone.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“There’s a man…”

She stopped.

“What man?”

“That man over there,” Ilona said. “Don’t look, don’t turn your head, I saw him yesterday too. I just can’t remember where.”

“Who is he? Do you know him?”

“I’d never seen him before, but now I’ve seen him twice in two days.”

“Is he from the university?”

“No, I don’t think so. He’s older.”

“Do you think he’s watching you?”

“No, it’s nothing. Come on.”

Instead of living on campus, Ilona rented a room in the city, and they went there. He tried to be sure whether the man from Thomaskirche was tracking them, but could not see him anywhere.

The room was in a little flat belonging to a widow who worked in a printshop. Ilona said she was very kindly and allowed her to waltz around the flat as she pleased. The woman had lost her husband and two sons in the war. He saw photographs of them on the walls. The two sons wore German army uniforms.

In Ilona’s room were stacks of books and German and Hungarian newspapers and magazines, a dilapidated portable typewriter on the desk and a futon. While she went into the kitchen he browsed through her books and struck a few keys on the typewriter. On the wall above the futon were photographs of people he presumed were her relatives.

Ilona returned with two cups of tea and kicked the door to with her heel. She set the cups down carefully beside the typewriter. The tea was piping hot.

“It’ll be just right by the time we’ve finished,” she said.

Then she walked over to him and gave him a long, deep kiss. Overcoming his surprise, he hugged her and kissed her passionately until they fell onto the futon and she began hitching up his sweater and undoing his belt. He was very inexperienced. He had had sex before, the first time after the school’s farewell dance and once after that at the party paper’s annual get-together, but those had been fairly clumsy efforts. He was not particularly skilled, but she seemed to be and he gladly let her take control.

She was right. When he slumped down beside her and she smothered a long groan the tea was just the right temperature.

Two days later in the Auerbachkeller they talked politics and argued for the first and only time. She began by describing how the Russian revolution had spawned a dictatorship, and that dictatorships were always dangerous no matter what form they took.

He did not want to argue with her although he knew perfectly well that she was wrong.

“It was thanks to Stalin’s programme of industrialisation that the Nazis were defeated,” he said.

“He also made a pact with Hitler,” she said. “Dictatorship fosters fear and servility. We’re bearing the brunt of that in Hungary now. We’re not a free nation. They’ve systematically established a communist state under Soviet control. No one asked us, the nation, what we wanted. We want to govern our own affairs but can’t. Young people are thrown in prison. Some disappear. It’s said that they’re sent to the Soviet Union. You have an American army in your country. How would you feel if it ran everything by its military might?”

He shook his head.

“Look at the elections here,” she said. “They call them free, but there’s only one real party standing. What’s free about that? If you think differently you’re thrown in prison. What’s that? Is that socialism? What else are people supposed to vote for in these free elections? Has everyone forgotten the uprising here the year before last that the Soviets crushed by shooting civilians on the streets, people who wanted change!”

“Ilona…”

“And interactive surveillance,” Ilona continued, seriously agitated. “They say it’s to help us. We’re supposed to spy on our friends and family and inform on antisocialist attitudes. If you know that one of your fellow students listens to western radio you’re supposed to report him, and he’s dragged from one lecture to the next to confess his crime. Children are encouraged to inform on their parents.”

“The party needs time to adapt,” he said.

When the novelty of being in Leipzig had worn off and reality confronted them, the Icelanders had discussed the situation. He had reached a firm conclusion on the surveillance society, about what was called “interactive surveillance’, whereby every citizen kept an eye on everyone else. Also on the dictatorship of the communist party, prohibition of freedom of speech and the press, and compulsory attendance at meetings and marches. He felt that instead of being secretive about the methods it employed, the party should admit that certain methods were needed during this phase of the transformation to a socialist state. They were justifiable if they were only temporary. In the course of time such methods would cease to be necessary. People would realise that socialism was the most appropriate system.

“People are scared,” Ilona said.

He shook his head and they started arguing. He had not heard much about events in Hungary and she was hurt when he doubted her word. He tried to employ arguments from the party meetings in Reykjavik, from the party leadership and youth movement and from the works of Marx and Engels, all to no avail. She just looked at him and said over and again: “You mustn’t close your eyes to this.”

“You let western imperialist propaganda turn you against the Soviet Union,” he said. “They want to break the solidarity of the communist countries because they fear them.”

“That’s wrong,” she said.

They fell silent. They had finished their glasses of beer. He was angry with her. He had never heard or seen anyone describe the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries in such terms, apart from the conservative press in Iceland. He knew about the strength of the western powers” propaganda machine, which worked well in Iceland, and he admitted that it was one reason for needing to restrict freedom of speech and press freedom too in Eastern Europe. This he could understand while socialist states were being constructed in the aftermath of the war. He did not regard it as repression.

“Let’s not argue,” she said.

“No,” he said, putting some money on the table. “Let’s get going.”

On the way out, Ilona tugged lightly at his arm and he looked at her. She was trying to communicate something by her expression. Then she nodded furtively towards the bar.

“There he is,” she said.

He looked over and saw the man Ilona had said she thought was pursuing her. Dressed in an overcoat, he sipped his beer and acted as if they were not there. It was the same man from outside Thomaskirche.

“I’ll have a word with him,” he said.

“No,” Ilona said. “Don’t. Let’s go.”

A few days later he saw Hannes sitting at his table in the library, and sat down beside him. Hannes went on writing in pencil in his exercise book without looking up.

“Is she winding you up?” Hannes asked, still writing in the book.

“Who?”

“Ilona.”

“Do you know Ilona?”

“I know who she is,” Hannes said, and looked up. He was wearing a thick scarf and fingerless gloves.

“Do you know about us?” he asked.

“Everything gets around,” Hannes said. “Ilona’s from Hungary so she’s not as green as us.”

“As green as us?”

“Forget it,” Hannes said, burying his head back in his exercise book.

He reached across the table and snatched the book away. Hannes looked up in surprise and tried to grab the book back, but it was out of his reach.

“What’s going on?” he said. “Why are you behaving like this?”

Hannes looked at the book that Tomas was holding, then stared at him.

“I don’t want to get involved in what’s going on here, I just want to go home and forget it,” he said. “It’s completely absurd. I hadn’t been here as long as you when I got sick of it.”

“But you’re still here.”

“It’s a good university. And it took me a while to understand all the lies and lose my patience with them.”

“What is it that I can’t see?” he asked, fearing the answer. “What have you discovered? What am I missing?”

Hannes stared him in the eye, looked around the library and then at the book that Tomas was still holding, then back into his eyes.

“Just carry on,” he said. “Stick to your convictions. Don’t go off the tracks. Believe me, you won’t gain anything by it. If you’re comfortable with it, then it’s all right. Don’t delve any deeper. You can’t imagine what you might find.”

Hannes held out his hand for his exercise book.

“Believe me,” he said. “Forget it.”

“And Ilona?” he said.

“Forget her too,” Hannes said.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Why do you talk in riddles?”

“Leave me alone,” Hannes said. “Just leave me alone.”

Three days later he was in a forest outside the city. He and Emil had enrolled in the Gesellschaft fur Sport und Technik. It advertised itself as an all-round sports club that offered horse riding, rally driving and much more. Students were encouraged to take part in club activities, just like the volunteer work organised by the FDJ. It involved a week’s harvesting in the autumn, one day a term or in the vacations clearing air-raid rubble, factory work, coal production or the like. Attendance was voluntary, but anyone who did not enrol was liable to be punished.

He was pondering this arrangement while standing in the forest with Emil and his other comrades, a week’s camp in front of them which, as it turned out, largely involved military training.

Such was life in Leipzig. Very little was exactly what it seemed. Foreign students were under surveillance and took care not to say anything in public that might offend their hosts. They were taught socialist values at compulsory meetings and voluntary work was voluntary in name only.

As time went by they grew accustomed to all this and referred to it as “the charade’. He believed the present situation would be temporary. Others were not so optimistic. He laughed to himself when he found out that the sports and technology club was merely a thinly veiled military unit. Emil was not so amused. He saw nothing funny in it and, unlike the others, never called it “the charade’. Nothing about Leipzig struck him as funny. They were lying stretched out in their tent on their first night with their new companions. All evening Emil had talked with fervour about a socialist state in Iceland.

“All that injustice in such a tiny country where everyone could so easily be equal,” Emil said. “I want to change that.”

“Would you want a socialist state like this one?” Tomas asked.

“Why not?”

“With all the trappings? The surveillance? The paranoia? Restrictions on freedom of expression? The charade?”

“Is she starting to get through to you?”

“Who?”

“Ilona.”

“What do you mean, get through to me?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you know Ilona?”

“Not at all,” Emil said.

“You’ve had girlfriends too. Hrafnhildur told me about one from the Red Cloister.”

“That’s nothing,” Emil said.

“No, quite.”

“Maybe you’ll tell me more about Ilona sometime,” Emil said.

“She’s not as orthodox as we are. She sees problems with this system and wants to put them right. It’s exactly the same situation here as in Hungary, except that young people there are doing something about it. Fighting the charade.”

“Fighting the charade!” Emil snarled. “Fucking bollocks. Look at the way people live back in Iceland. Shivering in old American Nissen huts. Children are starving. People can hardly clothe themselves. And all the time the bloated elite gets richer and richer. Isn’t that a charade? Who cares if you need to keep people under surveillance and restrict freedom of speech for a while? Eradicating injustice can mean making sacrifices. Who cares?”

They stopped talking. Silence had descended on the camp and it was pitch black.

“I’d do anything for the Icelandic revolution,” Emil said. “Anything to eradicate injustice.”

He stood at the window watching the sunbeams and a distant rainbow and smiled to himself when he remembered the sports club. He could see Ilona laughing at the smoked-lamb feast and thought about the soft kiss that he could still feel on his lips, the star of love and the young man grieving, deep in his dark valley.