The Draining Lake

29

Erlendur and Elinborg arrived unannounced, knowing very little about the man they were going to see, except that his name was Hannes and he had once studied in Leipzig. He ran a guest house in Selfoss and grew tomatoes as a sideline. They knew where he lived, so they drove straight there and parked outside a bungalow identical to all the others in the little town, apart from not having been painted for a long time and having a concreted space in front of it where a garage was perhaps supposed to stand. The garden around the house was well kept, with hedges and flowers and a small birdhouse.

In the garden was a man they took to be in his seventies struggling with a lawnmower. The motor would not catch and he was clearly out of breath from tugging at the starting cord, which as soon as he released it darted back into its hole again like a snake. He did not notice them until they were standing right next to him.

“A heap of old junk, is it?” Erlendur asked as he looked down at the lawnmower and inhaled smoke from his cigarette. He had lit up the moment he got out of the car. Elinborg had forbidden him to smoke on the way. His car was awful enough anyway.

The man looked up and stared at them, two strangers in his garden. He had a grey beard and grey hair that was starting to thin, a tall and intelligent forehead, thick eyebrows and alert brown eyes. On his nose sat a pair of glasses that might have been in fashion a quarter of a century before.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Is your name Hannes?” Elinborg asked back.

The man said yes and gave them a probing look.

“Do you want some tomatoes?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Erlendur said. “Are they any good? Elinborg here is an expert.”

“Didn’t you study in Leipzig in the 1950s?” Elinborg said.

The man regarded her blankly. It was almost as if he did not understand the question, and certainly not the reason it was being asked. Elinborg repeated it.

“What’s going on?” the man said. “Who are you? Why are you asking me about Leipzig?”

“You first went there in 1952, didn’t you?” Elinborg said.

“That’s right,” he said in surprise. “So what?”

Elinborg explained to him that the investigation into the skeleton found in Kleifarvatn in the spring had led to Icelandic students in East Germany. This was merely one of many questions raised in connection with the case, she told him, without mentioning the Russian spying device.

“I… what… I mean…” Hannes stuttered. “What does that have to do with those of us who were in Germany?”

“Leipzig, to be absolutely precise,” Erlendur said. “We’re enquiring in particular about a man called Lothar. Does that name ring a bell? A German. Lothar Weiser.”

Hannes stared at them in astonishment, as if he had just seen a ghost. He looked at Erlendur, then back at Elinborg.

“I can’t help you,” he said.

“It shouldn’t take very long,” Erlendur said.

“Sorry,” Hannes said. “I’ve forgotten all that. It was so long ago.”

“If you could please…” Elinborg said, but Hannes interrupted her.

“Please leave,” he said. “I don’t think I have anything to say to you. I can’t help you. I haven’t talked about Leipzig for a long time and I’m not going to start now. I’ve forgotten and I won’t stand for being interrogated. You’ll gain nothing from talking to me.”

He returned to the starter cord of his lawnmower and tinkered with the motor. Erlendur and Elinborg exchanged glances.

“What makes you think that?” Erlendur said. “You don’t even know what we want from you.”

“No, and I don’t want to know. Leave me alone.”

“This isn’t an interrogation,” Elinborg said. “But if you want we can bring you in for questioning. If you’d prefer that.”

“Are you threatening me?” Hannes said, looking up from the lawnmower.

“What’s wrong with answering a couple of questions?” Erlendur said.

“I don’t have to if I don’t want to and I don’t intend to. Goodbye.”

Elinborg was on the verge of saying something which, judging from her face, would have been quite a scolding, but before she had the chance Erlendur took her by the arm and dragged her off towards the car.

“If he reckons he can get away with that kind of bullshit—” Elinborg began when they were sitting in the car, but Erlendur interrupted.

“I’ll try to smooth things over and if that doesn’t work it’s up to him,” he said. “Then we’ll have him brought in.”

He got out of the car and went back to Hannes. Elinborg watched him walking off. Hannes had finally started the lawnmower and was cutting the grass. He ignored Erlendur, who stepped in front of him and switched off the machine.

“It took me two hours to start that,” Hannes shouted. “What’s all this supposed to mean?”

“We’ve got to do this,” Erlendur said calmly, “even if it’s no fun for either of us. Sorry. We can do it now and be quick about it, or we can send a patrol car round for you. And maybe you won’t say anything then, so we’ll send for you straight away the next day and the day after that, until you’re one of our regulars.”

“I don’t let people push me around!”

“Nor do I,” Erlendur said.

They stood facing each other with the lawnmower between them. Neither was going to yield. Elinborg sat watching the standoff from the car, shook her head and thought to herself: Men!

“Fine,” Erlendur said. “See you in Reykjavik.”

He turned away and walked back towards the car. Frowning, Hannes watched him.

“Does it go in your reports?” he called out after Erlendur. “If I talk to you.”

“Are you afraid of reports?” Erlendur said, turning round.

“I don’t want to be quoted. I don’t want any files about me or about what I say. I don’t want any spying.”

“That’s all right,” Erlendur said. “Neither do I.”

“I haven’t thought about this for decades,” Hannes said. “I’ve tried to forget about it.”

“Forget about what?” Erlendur asked.

“Those were strange times,” Hannes said. “I haven’t heard Lothar’s name for ages. What’s he got to do with the skeleton in Kleifarvatn?”

For a good while Erlendur just stood looking at him, until Hannes cleared his throat and said they should maybe go inside. Erlendur nodded and waved Elinborg over.

“My wife died four years ago,” Hannes said as he opened the door. He told them that his children sometimes dropped by with his grandchildren on a Sunday drive in the countryside, but that in other respects he was left to himself and preferred it that way. They asked about his circumstances and how long he had lived in Selfoss; he said he had moved there about twenty years before. He had been an engineer with a large firm engaged on hydropower projects, but had lost interest in the subject, moved from Reykjavik and settled in Selfoss, where he liked living.

When he brought the coffee into the living room Erlendur asked him about Leipzig. Hannes tried to explain what it was like to be a student there in the mid-1950s and before he knew it he was telling them about the shortages, voluntary work, clearing of ruins, the Day of the Republic parades, Ulbricht, compulsory attendance at lectures on socialism, the Icelandic students” views on socialism, anti-party activities, the Freie Deutsche Jugend, Soviet power, the planned economy, collectives and the interactive surveillance which ensured that no one could get away with causing trouble and weeded out all criticism. He told them about the friendships that were formed among the Icelandic students, the ideals they discussed, and about socialism as a genuine alternative to capitalism.

“I don’t think it’s dead,” Hannes said, as if reaching some kind of conclusion. “I think it’s very much alive, but in a different way from what we may have imagined. It’s socialism that makes it bearable for us to live under capitalism.”

“You’re still a socialist?” Erlendur said.

“I always have been,” Hannes said. “Socialism bears no relation to the blatant inhumanity that Stalin turned it into or the ridiculous dictatorships that developed across Eastern Europe.”

“But didn’t everyone join in singing the praises of that deception?” Erlendur said.

“I don’t know,” Hannes said. “I didn’t after I saw how socialism was put into practice in East Germany. Actually I was deported for not being submissive enough. For not wanting to go the whole hog in the spy network they ran and so poetically described as interactive. They thought it was acceptable for children to spy on their parents and report them if they deviated from the party line. That has nothing to do with socialism. It’s the fear of losing power. Which of course they did in the end.”

“What do you mean, go the whole hog?” Erlendur asked.

“They wanted me to spy on my companions, the Icelanders. I refused. Other things I saw and heard there made me rebel. I didn’t go to the compulsory lectures. I criticised the system. Not openly, of course, because you never criticised anything out loud, just discussed the flaws in the system with small groups of people you trusted. There were dissident cells in the city, young people who met secretly. I got to know them. Is it Lothar you found in Kleifarvatn?”

“No,” Erlendur said. “Or rather, we don’t know.”

“Who were “they”?” Elinborg asked. “You said “they” asked you to spy on your companions.”

“Lothar Weiser, for one.”

“Why him?” Elinborg asked. “Do you know?”

“He was nominally a student but didn’t seem serious about it and went about his own business as he pleased. He spoke fluent Icelandic and we believed he was there explicitly on the orders of the party or student organisation, which was the same thing. Clearly, one of his functions was to keep an eye on the students and try to enlist their cooperation.”

“What kind of cooperation?” Elinborg asked.

“It took all kinds of forms,” Hannes said. “If you knew someone listened to western radio, you were supposed to let an official from the FDJ know. If anyone said he couldn’t be bothered to clear the ruins or do other voluntary work, you were meant to inform on him. Then there were more serious offences such as allowing yourself to air anti-socialist views. Not attending the Day of the Republic parade was also seen as a sign of opposition rather than simple laziness. Likewise if you skived those pointless FDJ lectures on socialist values. Everything was under close control and Lothar was one of the players. We were urged to report on others. Really you weren’t showing the right spirit if you didn’t inform.”

“Could Lothar have asked other Icelanders to give him information?” Erlendur asked. “Could he have asked other people to spy on their companions?”

“There’s no question about it. I’m sure he did,” Hannes said. “I imagine he tried that on every one of them.”

“And?”

“And nothing.”

“Was there any particular reward for being cooperative or was it purely idealistic?” Elinborg asked. “Spying on your neighbours?”

“There were systems to reward those who wanted to impress. Sometimes a bad student who was loyal to the party line and politically sound would get a bigger grant than a brilliant student who had much higher grades but was not politically active. The system worked like that. When an undesirable student was expelled, like I was in the end, it was important for the other students to show what they thought by siding with the party apparatchiks. Students could gain kudos by denouncing the offender to show loyalty to the general line, as it was called. The Freie Deutsche Jugend was in charge of discipline. It was the only student organisation that was allowed and it had a lot of power. Not belonging to it was frowned upon. As was not attending their talks.”

“You said there were dissident cells,” Erlendur said.

“I don’t even know if you could call them dissident cells,” Hannes said. “Mainly they were young people who got together and listened to western radio stations and talked about Bill Haley and West Berlin, where many of them had been, or even religion, which the officials didn’t think highly of. Then there were other proper dissident groups that wanted to fight for reforms to the political structure, real democracy, freedom of speech and the press. They were crushed.”

“You said Lothar Weiser “for one” had asked you to spy. Do you mean there were others like him?” Erlendur asked.

“Yes, of course,” Hannes said. “Society was strictly controlled, both the university and the public at large. And people feared surveillance. Orthodox communists took part in it wholeheartedly, the sceptics tried to avoid it and come to terms with living under it, but I think most people found it at odds with everything socialism stands for.”

“Did you know any Icelandic student who may have worked for Lothar?”

“Why do you want to know that?” Hannes asked.

“We need to know whether he was in contact with any Icelanders when he was here as a trade attache in the 1960s,” Erlendur said. “It’s a perfectly normal check. We’re not trying to spy on people, just gathering information because of the skeleton we found.”

Hannes looked at them.

“I don’t know of any Icelander who paid any attention to that system, except Emil maybe,” he said. “I think he was acting under cover. I told Tomas that once when he asked me the same question. Much later, in fact. He came to see me and asked exactly the same question.”

“Tomas?” Erlendur said. He remembered the name from the list of students in East Germany. “Do you keep in touch with Leipzig alumni?”

“No, I don’t have much contact with them and never have,” Hannes said. “But Tomas and I had one thing in common: we were both expelled. Like me, he came back home before he finished his course. He was ordered to leave. He looked me up when he got back to Iceland and told me about his girlfriend, a Hungarian girl called Ilona. I knew her vaguely. She wasn’t the type to toe the party line, to put it mildly. Her background was rather different. The climate was more liberal in Hungary then. Young people were starting to say what they thought about the Soviet hegemony that covered the whole of Eastern Europe.”

“Why did he tell you about her?” Elinborg asked.

“He was a broken man when he came to see me,” Hannes said. “A shadow of his former self. I remembered him when he was happy and confident and full of socialist ideals. He fought for them. Came from a solid working-class family.”

“Why was he a broken man?”

“Because she disappeared,” Hannes said. “Ilona was arrested in Leipzig and never seen again. He was totally destroyed by it. He told me Ilona was pregnant when she went missing. Told me with tears in his eyes.”

“And he came to see you again later?” Erlendur asked.

“That was quite strange actually. Him coming after all those years to reminisce. I’d forgotten the whole business really, but it was obvious that Tomas had forgotten nothing. He remembered it all. Every detail, as if it had happened yesterday.”

“What did he want?” Elinborg said.

“He was asking me about Emil,” Hannes said. “If he’d worked for Lothar. If they’d been in close contact. I don’t know why he wanted to know, but I told him I had proof that Emil needed to get into Lothar’s good books.”

“What kind of proof?” Elinborg asked.

“Emil was a hopeless student. He didn’t really belong at university, but he was a good socialist. Everything we said went straight to Lothar, and Lothar made sure that Emil received a good grant and good marks. Tomas and Emil were good friends.”

“What proof did you have?” Elinborg repeated.

“My engineering professor told me when I said goodbye to him. After I was expelled. He was hurt that I wasn’t allowed to finish the course. All the teaching staff talked about it, he said. The teachers disliked students like Emil, but couldn’t do a thing. They didn’t all like Lothar and his ilk, either. The professor said that Emil must have been valuable to Lothar, because there was hardly a worse student around, but Lothar ordered the university authorities not to fail him. The FDJ sanctioned the move and Lothar was behind it.”

Hannes paused.

“Emil was the staunchest of us all,” he said after a while. “A hardline communist and Stalinist.”

“Why…” Erlendur began, but Hannes continued as if his mind were elsewhere.

“It was all such a shock,” he said, staring ahead. “The whole system. We witnessed absolute dictatorship by the party, fear and repression. Some tried to tell the party members here about it when they got back, but made no headway. I always felt that the socialism they practised in East Germany was a kind of sequel to Nazism. This time they were under the Russian heel, of course, but I pretty quickly got the feeling that socialism in East Germany was essentially just another kind of Nazism.”