The Draining Lake

28

Everywhere he turned he ran up against antipathy and total indifference on the part of the authorities in Leipzig. No one would tell him what had happened to her, where she had been taken, where she was being detained, the reason for her arrest, which police department was responsible for her case. He tried to enlist the help of two university professors but they said they could do nothing. He tried to get the university vice-chancellor to intervene but he refused. He tried to get the chairman of the FDJ to make enquiries but the students” society ignored him.

In the end he telephoned the foreign ministry in Iceland, which promised to enquire about the matter but nothing came of it: Ilona was not an Icelandic national, they were unmarried, Iceland had no vested interest in the matter and did not maintain diplomatic relations with East Germany. His Icelandic friends at university tried to pep him up, but were equally at a loss about what to do. They did not understand what was going on. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. She would turn up sooner or later and everything would be clarified. Ilona’s friends and other Hungarians at the university, who were as determined as he was to find answers, said the same. They all tried to console him and told him to keep calm — everything would be explained eventually.

He discovered that Ilona had not been the only person arrested that day. The security police raided the campus and her friends from the meetings were among others taken into custody. He knew she had warned them after he found out they were being watched, that the police had photographs of them. A few were released the same day. Others were detained longer and some were still in prison when he was deported. No one heard anything of Ilona.

He contacted Ilona’s parents, who had heard of her arrest, and they wrote moving letters asking whether he knew of her whereabouts. To the best of their knowledge she had not been sent back to Hungary. They had received no word from her since she wrote to them a week before her disappearance. Nothing suggested that she was in danger. Her parents described their fruitless efforts to persuade the Hungarian authorities to look into their daughter’s fate in East Germany. The authorities were not particularly upset that she was missing. Given the situation in their own country, officials were not concerned about the arrest of an alleged dissident. Her parents said they had been refused permission to travel to East Germany to enquire into Ilona’s disappearance. They seemed to have reached a dead end.

He wrote back telling them he was looking for answers himself in Leipzig. He longed to tell them all that he knew, how she had spread underground propaganda against the communist party, against the student society FDJ, which was an arm of the party, against the lectures and against restrictions on freedom of speech, association and the press. That she had mobilised young Germans and organised clandestine meetings. And that she could not have foreseen her arrest. No more than he did. But he knew he could not write that kind of letter. Everything he sent would be censored. He had to be careful.

Instead, he said he would not rest until he had found out what had happened to Ilona and secured her release.

He stopped attending lectures. During the day he went from one government office to the next, asked to meet officials and sought help and information. As time went by, he did this more out of habit, as he received no answers and realised he never would. At night he paced the floor of their little room in anguish. He hardly slept, dozing for a few hours at a time. Strode back and forth hoping that she would appear, that the nightmare would come to an end, that they would let her off with a warning and she would come back to him so that they could be together again. He woke up at every sound on the street. If a car approached he went to the window. If the house creaked he stopped and listened, thinking it might be her. But it never was. And then a new day dawned and he was so terribly alone.

Eventually he summoned up the courage to write a new letter to Ilona’s parents telling them that she had been pregnant by him. He felt as though he could hear their cries with every key he struck on her old typewriter.

Now, all those years later, he was sitting with their letters in his hands, rereading them and sensing again the anger in what they wrote, then despair and incomprehension. They never saw their daughter again. He never saw his girlfriend again.

Ilona had disappeared from them once and for all.

He heaved as deep a sigh as ever when he allowed himself to delve into his most painful memories. No matter how many years passed, his grief was always as raw, his loss as incomprehensible. These days he avoided imagining her fate. Previously he would torture himself endlessly with thoughts of what might have happened to her after she was arrested. He envisaged the interrogations. He saw the cell beside the little office in the security police headquarters. Had she been locked away there? For how long? Was she afraid? Had she fought back? Did she cry? Had she been beaten? And of course the biggest question of all: what fate did she meet?

For years he had obsessed over these questions; there was room for little else in his life. He never married or had children. He tried to stay in Leipzig for as long as he could, but because he no longer went to lectures and was challenging the police and FDJ, his grant was withdrawn. He tried to persuade the student paper and local press to print a photograph of Ilona with a report about her unlawful arrest, but all his requests were turned down and in the end he was ordered to leave the country.

There were various possibilities, judging from what he read later when he probed into the treatment of dissidents across Eastern Europe at that time. She could have died at the hands of the police in Leipzig or East Berlin, where the headquarters of the security police were located, or been sent to a prison such as the Honecker castle to die there. That was the largest female prison for political prisoners in East Germany. Another infamous prison for dissidents was Bautzen II, nicknamed “Yellow Misery” after the colour of its brick walls. Prisoners were sent there who were guilty of “crimes against the state’. Many dissidents were released soon after their first arrest. That was regarded as a warning. Others were let out after a short internment without trial. Some were sent to prison and came out years later; some never. Ilona’s parents received no notification of her death and for years they lived in the hope that she would come back, but that never happened. No matter how they implored the authorities in Hungary and East Germany, they received no information, not even whether she was alive. It was simply as if she had never existed.

As a foreigner in a country that he did not know well and understood even less, he had few recourses. He was well aware how little he could do against the might of the state, of his impotence as he went from office to office, from one police chief to the next, one official to another. He refused to give up. Refused to accept that someone like Ilona could be locked away for having opinions that didn’t match the official line.

He repeatedly asked Karl what had happened when Ilona was arrested. Karl was the only witness to the police raid on their home. He had been to collect a manuscript of poems by a young Hungarian dissident which Ilona had translated into German and was going to lend him.

“And then what happened?” he asked Karl for the thousandth time as he sat facing him in the university cafeteria with Emil. Three days had passed since Ilona disappeared and there was still hope that she might be released; he expected to hear from her at any minute, even for her to walk into the cafeteria. He glanced regularly towards the door. He was out of his mind with worry.

“She offered me some tea,” Karl said. “I said yes and she boiled the water.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing really, just the books we were reading.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. It was just empty conversation. We didn’t talk about anything special. We didn’t know she’d be arrested a moment later.”

Karl could see how he was suffering.

“Ilona was a friend to all of us,” he said. “I don’t understand it. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“And then what? What happened next?”

“There was a knock on the door,” Karl said.

“Yes.”

“The door to the flat. We were in her room, I mean in your room. They hammered on the door and shouted something we couldn’t make out. She went to the door and they burst in the moment she opened it.”

“How many of them were there?”

“Five, maybe six, I don’t remember exactly, something like that. They piled into the room. Some were in uniform like the police on the streets. Others were wearing ordinary suits. One of them was in charge. They obeyed his orders. They asked her name. If she was Ilona. They had a photograph. Maybe from the university files. I don’t know. Then they took her away.”

“They turned everything upside down!” he said.

“They found some documents that they took away with them, and some books. I don’t know what they were,” Karl said.

“What did Ilona do?”

“Naturally she wanted to know their business and kept asking them. I did too. They didn’t answer her, nor me. I asked who they were and what they wanted. They didn’t give me as much as a look. Ilona asked to make a phone call but they refused. They were there to arrest her and nothing else.”

“Couldn’t you ask where they were taking her?” Emil asked. “Couldn’t you do something?”

“There was nothing that could be done.” Karl squirmed. “You have to understand that. We couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything! They meant to take her and they took her.”

“Was she scared?” he asked.

Karl and Emil gave him a sympathetic look.

“No,” Karl said. “She wasn’t scared. Defiant. She asked what they were looking for and if she could help them find it. Then they took her away. She asked me to tell you that everything would be okay.”

“What did she say?”

“I had to tell you that everything would be okay. She said that. Told me to pass it on to you. That everything would be okay.”

“Did she say that?”

“Then they put her in the car. They had two cars with them. I ran after them but it was hopeless, of course. They disappeared around the next corner. That was the last I saw of Ilona.”

“What do they want?” he sighed. “What have they done with her? Why won’t anyone tell me anything? Why don’t we get any answers? What are they going to do with her? What can they do with her?”

He rested his elbows on the table and clutched his head.

“My God,” he groaned. “What has happened?”

“Maybe it will be okay,” Emil said, trying to console him. “Maybe she’s back home already. Maybe she’ll come tomorrow.”

He looked at Emil with broken eyes. Karl sat at the table in silence.

“Did you know that… no, of course you didn’t know.”

“What?” Emil said. “What didn’t we know?”

“She told me just before she was arrested. No one knew.”

“No one knew what?” Emil said.

“She’s pregnant,” he said. “She’s just found out. We’re expecting a baby together. Do you get it? Do you realise how disgusting it is? That fucking bloody interactive fucking surveillance! What are they? What kind of people are they? What are they fighting for? Are they going to make a better world by spying on each other? How long do they plan to rule by fear and hatred?”

“Was she pregnant?” Emil groaned.

“I should have been with her, Karl, not you,” he said. “I would never have allowed them to take her. Never.”

“Are you blaming me?” Karl said. “There was nothing to be done. I was helpless.”

“No,” he said, burying his face in his hands to hide the tears. “Of course not. Of course it wasn’t your fault.”

Later, on his way out of the country after being ordered to leave Leipzig and East Germany, he sought out Lothar for the final time and found him in the FDJ office at the university. He still had no clue as to Ilona’s whereabouts. The fear and anxieties that had driven him on for the first days and weeks had given way to an almost intolerable burden of hopelessness and sorrow.

In the office, Lothar was cracking jokes with two girls who were laughing at something he had said. They fell silent when he entered the room. He asked Lothar for a word.

“What is it now?” Lothar said without moving. The two girls looked at him seriously. All the joy was purged from their faces. Word of Ilona’s arrest had spread around the campus. She had been denounced as a traitor and it was said she had been sent back to Hungary. He knew that was a lie.

“I just want a word with you,” he said. “Is that okay?”

“You know I can’t do anything for you,” Lothar said. “I’ve told you that. Leave me alone.”

Lothar shifted round to entertain the girls further.

“Did you play any part in Ilona’s arrest?” he asked, switching to Icelandic.

Lothar turned his back on him and did not answer. The girls watched the proceedings.

“Was it you who had her arrested?” he said, raising his voice. “Was it you who told them she was dangerous? That she had to be removed from circulation? That she was distributing anti-socialist propaganda? That she ran a dissidents” cell? Was it you, Lothar? Was that your role?”

Pretending not to hear, Lothar said something to the two girls, who returned silly smiles. He walked up to Lothar and grabbed him.

“Who are you?” he said calmly. “Tell me that.”

Lothar turned and pushed him away, then walked up to him, seized his jacket by the lapels and thrust him against the filing cabinets. They rattled.

“Leave me alone!” Lothar hissed between clenched teeth.

“What did you do with Ilona?” he asked in the same collected tone of voice, not attempting to fight back. “Where is she? Tell me that.”

“I didn’t do a thing,” Lothar hissed. “Take a closer look, you stupid Icelander!”

Then Lothar threw him to the floor and stormed out of the office.

On the way back to Iceland he got the news that the Soviet army was crushing an uprising in Hungary.

He heard the old grandfather clock strike midnight, and he put the letters back in their place.

He had watched on television when the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunited. Seen the crowds scale the wall and hit it with hammers and pickaxes as if striking blows against the very inhumanity that built it.

When German reunification had been achieved and he felt ready, he travelled to the former East Germany for the first time since he had studied there. It now took him half a day to reach his destination. He flew to Frankfurt and caught a connection to Leipzig. From the airport he took a taxi to his hotel, where he dined alone. It was not far from the city centre and campus. There were only two old couples and a few middle-aged men in the dining room. Salesmen perhaps, he thought. One nodded at him when their gazes met.

In the evening he took a long walk and remembered the first time he had strolled around the city when he arrived there as a student, and he reflected on how the world had changed. He looked around the university quarter. His dormitory, the old villa, had been restored and now served as the headquarters of a multinational company. The old university building where he had studied was gloomier in the dark of night than he remembered it. He walked towards the city centre and looked inside Nikolaikirche, where he lit a candle in memory of the dead. Crossing the old Karl-Marx-Platz to Thomaskirche, he gazed at the statue of Bach that they had so often stood beneath.

An old woman approached him and invited him to buy some flowers. With a smile, he bought a small posy.

Shortly afterwards he went where his thoughts had so often returned. He was pleased to see that the house was still standing. It had been partly refurbished and there was a light in the window. Much as he longed to, he did not dare peek inside, but he had the impression that a family lived there. A television set gave off a flickering light from what had been the living room of the old landlady who had lost her family in the war. Everything inside would be different now, of course. Perhaps the eldest child was sleeping in their old room.

He kissed the posy of flowers, placed it at the door and made the sign of the cross over it.

A few years earlier he had flown to Budapest and met Ilona’s elderly mother and two brothers. Her father was dead by then, never having discovered his daughter’s fate.

He spent all day sitting with Ilona’s mother, who showed him photographs of Ilona from when she was a baby through to her student years. The brothers, who like him were beginning to age, told him what he already knew: nothing had come of their search for answers about Ilona. He could sense their bitterness, the resignation that had taken root in them long ago.

The day after he arrived in Leipzig he went to the old security police headquarters, which were still in the same building on Dittrichring 24. Instead of police at the reception desk in the foyer, there was now a young woman who smiled as she handed him a brochure. Still able to speak passable German, he introduced himself as a visitor to the city and asked to look around. Other people had entered the building for the same purpose, and walked in and out through open and unlocked doors, free to go where they pleased. When she heard his accent the young woman asked where he was from. Then she told him that an archive was being set up in the old Stasi offices. He was welcome to listen to a talk that was about to begin, then tour the building. She showed him to the corridor leading to where chairs had been arranged, every one of them occupied. Some of the audience were standing up against the walls. The talk was about the imprisonment of dissident writers in the 1970s.

After the talk he went to the office in the alcove where Lothar and the man with the thick moustache had interrogated him. The cell next door was open and he went inside. He thought again that Ilona might have been there. There were graffiti and scratches all over the walls, made with spoons, he imagined.

He had put in a formal application to look at the files when the Stasi archive opened after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its purpose was to help people delve into the fate of loved ones who had gone missing, or find information about themselves that had been collected by neighbours, colleagues, friends and family, under the system of interactive surveillance. Journalists, academics and people who suspected they had been documented in the files could apply for access, which he had done by letter and telephone from Iceland. Applicants had to explain in detail why they needed to study the files and what they were looking for. He knew there were thousands of large brown paper bags full of files that had been shredded in the last days of the East German regime; a huge team was employed on taping them back together. The scale of the records was incredible.

His trip to East Germany produced nothing. No matter how he searched, he could not find a scrap of information about Ilona. Her file had probably been destroyed, he was told. Possibly she had been sent to a labour camp or gulag in the old Soviet Union, so there was a slim chance that he could find some record of her in Moscow. It was also conceivable that she had died in police custody in Leipzig or in Berlin if she had been sent there.

Nor did he find any information in the Stasi files about whichever traitor had turned his beloved girlfriend over to the security police.

He sat and waited for the police to call. He had done that all summer; now it was autumn and nothing had happened yet. Certain that the police would knock on his door sooner or later, he sometimes wondered how he would react. Would he act nonchalantly, deny the accusations and feign surprise? It would depend on what evidence they had. He had no idea what this might be, but imagined that it would be substantial, if they had managed to trace a lead to him in the first place.

He stared into space and drifted back once again to his years in Leipzig.

Four words from his last encounter with Lothar had remained etched into his mind right up to the present day and would remain there for ever. Four words that said it all.

Take a closer look.