The Draining Lake

17

He opened the box of letters and removed them one by one, read some of the envelopes and put them to one side, opened others and slowly read them through. He had not looked at the letters for years. They had come from Iceland, from his parents and sister and comrades in the party’s youth movement who wanted to know about life in Leipzig. He remembered the letters he wrote in reply describing the city, the reconstruction and the morale there, and how it had all been in positive terms. He wrote about the collective spirit of the proletariat and socialist solidarity, all that dead, cliche?ridden rhetoric. He wrote nothing about the doubts that were beginning to stir within him. He never wrote about Hannes.

He delved deeper into the pile. There was a letter from Rut and beneath it the message from Hannes.

And there, at the bottom of the pile, were the letters from Ilona’s parents.

He hardly thought about anything other than Ilona during the first weeks and months that they were together. Having little money, he lived frugally and tried to please her with small presents. One day, when his birthday was approaching, he received a package from Iceland, including a pocket edition of Jonas Hallgrimsson’s poems. He gave the volume to her and told her that it was by the poet who had written the most beautiful words in the Icelandic language. She said she looked forward to learning Icelandic from him so that she could read them. She said she had nothing to give him in return. He smiled and shook his head. He had not told her it was his birthday.

“I just like having you,” he said.

“O-ho,” she said.

“What?”

“Naughty boy!”

She put down the book, pushed him back onto the bed he was sitting on, and straddled him. She gave him a long, deep kiss. It turned out to be the most pleasurable birthday of his life.

That winter he became closer friends with Emil and they spent a lot of time together. He liked Emil, who became more hardline the longer they stayed in Leipzig and the better he knew the system. Emil was unruffled by the other Icelanders” criticism of personal spying and surveillance, the shortage of consumer goods, compulsory attendance at FDJ meetings and the like. Emil scoffed at all that. Given the ultimate goal, such short-term considerations were trivial. He and Emil got on well together and backed each other up.

“But why don’t they produce more goods that people need?” Karl asked once when they were sitting in the new cafeteria discussing Ulbricht’s government. “People have such an obvious point of comparison in West Germany which is swamped with consumer goods and everything anyone could desire. Why should East Germany put such a huge emphasis on industrial development when there are food shortages? The only thing they have plenty of is lignite, which isn’t even proper coal.”

“The planned economy will deliver in the end,” Emil said. “Reconstruction has hardly started and they don’t have the same stream of dollars from the US. It all takes time. What matters is that the Socialist Unity Party is on the right track.”

Tomas and Ilona were not the only couple in their circle in Leipzig. Karl and Hrafnhildur both met Germans who fitted in well with their group. Karl was increasingly seen with a petite, brown-eyed student from Leipzig; her name was Ulrika. Her ill-tempered mother disapproved of the match and Karl’s descriptions of their awkward dealings sent everyone into hysterics. He said they had discussed living together, even getting married. They were compatible, both cheerful and easygoing types, and she talked about going to Iceland, even living there. Hrafnhildur started going out with a shy and rather nondescript chemistry student from a little village outside Leipzig, who sometimes supplied moonshine for their parties.

It was February. He saw Ilona every day. They no longer discussed politics, but everything else was smooth and they had plenty to talk about. He told her about the land of boiled sheep heads and she told him about her family. She had two elder brothers, which did not make things easier for her. Both her parents were doctors. She was studying literature and German. One of her favourite poets was Friedrich Holderlin. She read a lot and asked him about Icelandic literature. Books were a common interest.

Lothar spent more and more time with the Icelanders. He amused them with his mechanical, formal Icelandic and incessant questions about everything to do with Iceland. Tomas got along well with Lothar. They were both hardline communists and could discuss politics without arguing. Lothar practised his Icelandic on him and Tomas spoke German back. Lothar was from Berlin, which he said was a wonderful place. He had lost his father in the war but his mother still lived there. Lothar urged him to visit the city with him sometime — it was not far by train. In other respects the German was not very forthcoming about himself, which Tomas put down to the hardship that he had suffered as a boy during the war. He asked all the more about Iceland and seemed to have an unquenchable interest in the country. Wanted to know about the university there, political conflict, political and business leaders, how people lived, the US base at Keflavik. Tomas explained that Iceland had profited enormously from the war, Reykjavik had mushroomed and the country had been transformed almost overnight from a poor farming community to a modern bourgeois society.

Sometimes he spoke to Hannes at the university. Normally they ran into each other at the library or in the cafeteria in the main building. They became good friends in spite of everything, in spite of Hannes’s pessimism. He tried to talk Hannes round, but in vain. Hannes had lost interest. His only thoughts were about finishing his studies and going home.

One day he sat down beside Hannes in the cafeteria. It was snowing outside. He had been sent a warm overcoat from Iceland at Christmas. He had mentioned in one of his letters how cold it was in Leipzig. Hannes made a point of asking about the overcoat and he could detect a hint of jealousy in his voice.

What he did not know was that this would be the last time they would speak together in Leipzig.

“How’s Ilona?” Hannes asked.

“How do you know Ilona?” he replied.

“I don’t know her,” Hannes said, looking around the cafeteria as if to make sure that no one could hear them. “I just know that she’s from Hungary. And she’s your girlfriend. Isn’t she? Aren’t you going out?”

He sipped his turgid coffee without replying. There was a strange tone to Hannes’s voice. Tougher and more obstinate than usual.

“Does she ever talk to you about what’s going on in Hungary?” Hannes asked.

“Sometimes. We try not to talk much about…”

“You know what’s going on there?” Hannes interrupted. “The Soviets will use military force. I’m surprised they haven’t already. They can’t avoid it. If they allow what’s happening in Hungary to escalate, the rest of Eastern Europe will follow and there’ll be a full-scale revolt against Soviet authority. Doesn’t she ever talk about that?”

“We talk about Hungary,” he said. “We just don’t agree on it.”

“No, of course, you know more about what’s going on there than she, the Hungarian, does.”

“I’m not saying that.”

“So what are you saying?” Hannes said. “Have you ever wondered seriously about that? When the red glow has faded from your eyes?”

“What happened to you, Hannes? Why are you so angry? What happened after you came here? You were the Great Hope back in Iceland.”

“The Great Hope,” Hannes snorted. “I’m probably not that any more,” he said.

They fell silent.

“I just saw through all this crap,” Hannes said after a while in a low voice. “The whole fucking lie. We’ve been spoon-fed the workers” paradise, equality and brotherhood until we sing the Internationale like the needle’s stuck. One big hallelujah chorus without a word of criticism. Back home we go to campaign meetings. Here there’s nothing but eulogies. Where do you see debate? Long live the party and nothing else! Have you spoken to people who live here? Do you know what they’re thinking? Have you talked to a single ordinary person in this city? Did they want Walter Ulbricht and the Communist Party? Do they want a single party and a centralised economy? Did they want to ban freedom of speech and freedom of the press and real political parties? Did they want to be shot on the streets in the 1953 uprising? Back in Iceland, at least we can argue with our opponents and write articles in the newspapers. That’s banned here. There’s just one line, finito. Then, when people are herded up to vote for the only party that’s allowed to operate in the country, they call it elections! The locals think it’s a total farce. They know this is no democracy!”

Hannes paused. He was seething.

“People don’t dare say what they think because everything here is under surveillance. The whole fucking society. Everything you say and do can rebound on you and you’re called in, arrested, expelled. Talk to people. The phones are bugged. They spy on the citizens!”

They sat in silence.

He knew that Hannes and Ilona had a point. And he thought it was better for the party to come clean and admit that free elections and free discussion were for the time being impossible. They would come later, when the goal had been achieved: a socialist economy. They had sometimes made fun of the Germans for agreeing to every proposal at meetings and then saying the exact opposite in private. People were afraid to be straightforward, hardly dared to advance an independent view for fear that it would be interpreted as antisocialist and they would be punished.

“They’re dangerous men, Tomas,” Hannes said after a long silence. “They’re not playing games.”

“Why are you always talking about freedom of opinion?” he said angrily. “You and Ilona. Look at the witch hunt against communists in America. You can see how they drive people out of the country, out of their jobs. And what about the surveillance society there? Did you read about the cowards who informed on their comrades to the House Un-American Activities Committee? The communist party’s outlawed there. Only one opinion’s permitted there, too — the opinion of the capitalist cartels, the imperialists, the warmongers. They reject everything else. Everything.”

He stood up.

“You’re here at the invitation of the proletariat of this country,” he said angrily. “It pays for your education and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for talking like that. Ashamed of yourself! And you ought to fuck off back home!”

He stormed out of the cafeteria.

“Tomas,” Hannes called after him, but he did not answer.

He strode down the corridor away from the cafeteria and bumped into Lothar, who asked what the hurry was. Glancing back, he said it was nothing. They left the building together. Lothar offered to buy him a beer and he accepted. When they sat down in Baum next to Thomaskirche he told Lothar about the argument and how Hannes, for some reason, had turned completely against socialism and denigrated it. He told Lothar that he could not tolerate Hannes’s hypocrisy in arguing against the socialist system but reaping its benefits by studying there.

“I don’t understand it,” he said to Lothar. “I don’t understand how he can abuse his position like that. I could never do that,” he said. “Never.”

That evening he met Ilona and told her about the argument. He mentioned that Hannes sometimes gave the impression that he knew her, but she shook her head. She had never heard his name and never spoken to him.

“Do you agree with him?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yes,” she said after a long pause. “I agree with him. And not just me. There are many, many others. People of my age in Budapest. Young people here in Leipzig.”

“Why don’t they speak out?”

“We’re doing that in Budapest,” she said. “But we face huge opposition. It’s awesome. And there’s fear. Fear everywhere about what could happen.”

“The army?”

“Hungary is one of the Soviet Union’s trophies from the war. They won’t give it up without a fight. If we manage to break free from them, you couldn’t say what would happen in the rest of Eastern Europe. That’s the big question. The chain reaction.”

Two days later, without warning, Hannes was expelled from the university and ordered to leave the country.

He heard that a police guard had been stationed outside Hannes’s digs and that he had been escorted to the airport by two members of the security police. As he understood it, none of the courses that Hannes had taken would be recognised by any other university. It was as if Hannes had never been a student. He had been erased.

He could not believe his ears when Emil burst in and related the news. Emil did not know much. He had met Karl and Hrafnhildur, who told him about the police guard and how everyone was saying that Hannes had been taken to the airport. Emil had to repeat it all before it sank in. Their compatriot was being treated as if he had committed some appalling offence. Like a common criminal. That evening the dormitory buzzed with the news. No one knew for sure what had happened.

The following day, three days after their argument in the cafeteria, he received a message from Hannes. Hannes’s room-mate delivered it. It was in a sealed envelope with only his name on the front. Tomas. He opened the envelope and sat on his bed with the note. It did not take long to read.

He read the message over and again and still could not believe what it said. A shiver ran down his spine and his head spun.

Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?

Hannes blamed him for his expulsion. Hannes believed that he had gone to the university authorities and reported his opinions, his opposition to the system. If he had left him alone, it would never have happened. He stared at the letter. It was a misunderstanding. What did Hannes mean? He had not spoken to the university authorities, only to Ilona and Lothar, and in the evening he had mentioned his surprise at Hannes’s views to Emil, Karl and Hrafnhildur in the kitchen. That was nothing new. They agreed with him. They felt that the way Hannes had changed was at best excessive, at worst despicable.

It could only have been a coincidence that Hannes was expelled after their argument, and a misunderstanding on Hannes’s part to link it to their meeting. Surely he could not think that it was Tomas’s fault he was not allowed to finish his course. He hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t told anyone except his friends. Wasn’t the man being paranoid? Could he seriously believe this?

Emil was in the room with him, and he showed him the note. Emil snorted. He thoroughly disliked Hannes and everything he stood for, and did not conceal it.

“He’s nuts,” Emil said. “Take no notice of it.”

“But why does he say that?”

“Tomas,” Emil said. “Forget it. He’s trying to blame his own mistakes on someone else. He should have been out of here long ago.”

Tomas leapt to his feet, grabbed his coat, put it on rushing down the corridor, ran all the way to Ilona’s digs and banged on the door. Her landlady answered and showed him in to Ilona. She was putting on a cap and already had her jacket and shoes on. She was going out. Clearly surprised to see him, she realised that he was very agitated.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, moving towards him.

He closed the door.

“Hannes thinks I had something to do with him getting expelled and deported. Like I gave something away!”

“What are you saying?”

“He blames me for his expulsion!”

“Who did you talk to?” Ilona asked. “After you met Hannes?”

“Just you and the others. Ilona, what did you mean the other day when you were talking about young people in Leipzig? The ones who agreed with Hannes? Who are they? How do you know them?”

“You didn’t talk to anyone else? Are you sure?”

“No, only Lothar. What do you know about young people in Leipzig, Ilona?”

“Did you tell Lothar what Hannes had said?”

“Yes. What do you mean? He knows all about Hannes.”

Ilona stared at him thoughtfully.

“Please tell me what’s going on,” he asked her.

“We don’t know exactly who Lothar is,” Ilona said. “Do you think anyone followed you here?”

“Followed me? What do you mean? Who doesn’t know who Lothar is?”

Ilona stared at him with a more serious expression than he had ever seen before, a look almost of terror. He had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that his conscience was gnawing him about Hannes, who thought he was to blame for all that had happened. But he had done nothing. Nothing at all.

“You know the system. It’s dangerous to say too much.”

“Too much! I’m not a child, I know about the surveillance.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I didn’t say anything, except to my friends. That’s not illegal. They’re my friends. What’s going on, Ilona?”

“Are you sure no one followed you?”

“No one followed me,” he said. “What do you mean? Why should anyone follow me? What are you talking about?” Then he thought about it: “I don’t know whether anyone followed me. I wasn’t watching for that. Why should I be followed? Who would be following me?”

“I don’t know,” Ilona said. “Come on, let’s go out the back door.”

“Go where?” he said.

“Come with me,” she said.

Ilona took him by the hand and led him out through the little kitchen where the old woman was in a chair, knitting. She looked up and smiled, and they smiled back and said goodbye. They came out in a dark backyard, climbed over a fence and ended up in a narrow alleyway. He had no idea what was happening. Why was he chasing behind Ilona on a dark evening, looking over his shoulder to check whether anyone was following them?

She took detours, stopping every so often and standing still to listen for footsteps. Then she continued on, with him in pursuit. After a long trek they emerged in a new residential quarter where blocks of flats were being built on an otherwise empty site a fair distance from the city centre. Some of the buildings had no windows or doors but people had moved in to others. They went inside one of the partially occupied blocks and ran down to the basement. Ilona banged on a door. Voices could be heard on the other side: they fell silent suddenly at the knock. The door opened. About ten people were in a small flat, looking out at them in the doorway. They scrutinised him. Ilona walked in, greeted them and introduced him.

“He’s a friend of Hannes,” she said, and they looked at him and nodded.

A friend of Hannes, he thought in astonishment. How did they know Hannes? He was caught completely off his guard. A girl stepped forward, held out her hand and welcomed him.

“Do you know what happened?” she asked. “Do you know why he was expelled?”

He shook his head.

“I have no idea,” he said. He surveyed the group. “Who are you?” he asked. “How do you all know Hannes?”

“Did anyone follow you?” the girl asked Ilona.

“No,” Ilona said. “Tomas doesn’t know what’s going on and I wanted him to hear it from you.”

“We knew they were watching Hannes,” the girl said. “After he refused to work for them. They were just waiting for a chance. Waiting for the opportunity to expel him from the university.”

“What did they want him to do?”

“They call it serving the communist party and the proletariat.”

A man came over to him.

“He was always so careful,” the man said. “He made sure never to say anything that could get him into trouble.”

“Tell him about Lothar,” Ilona said. The tension had eased slightly. Some of the group sat back down. “Lothar is Tomas’s Betreuer.”

“Nobody followed you?” someone else from the group asked, casting an anxious look at Ilona.

“No one,” she said. “I told you. I made sure of that.”

“What about Lothar?” he asked, incredulous about all that he heard and saw. He looked around the little flat, at the people staring at him in fear and curiosity. He realised that he was at a cell meeting, but in reverse. This was not like when the young socialists met back in Iceland. It was not a meeting to campaign for socialism but a clandestine gathering of dissidents. These people met in secret for fear of being punished for anti-socialist behaviour.

They told him about Lothar. He had not been born in Berlin as he claimed. He was from Bonn and had been educated in Moscow, where Icelandic was one of the subjects he studied. His mission was to recruit young people at the university into the communist party. He made a particular effort with foreign students in places such as Leipzig who could conceivably be of use when they went home. It was Lothar who had tried to get Hannes to work for him. It was without doubt Lothar who had eventually played a part in his expulsion.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you knew Hannes?” he asked Ilona, perplexed.

“We don’t talk about this,” Ilona said. “Not to anyone. Hannes never mentioned it to you either, did he? Otherwise you would have leaked it all to Lothar.”

“To Lothar?” he said.

“You told him about Hannes,” Ilona said.

“I didn’t know…”

“We have to guard what we say all the time. You certainly didn’t help Hannes by talking to Lothar.”

“I didn’t know about Lothar, Ilona.”

“It needn’t be Lothar,” Ilona said. “It could be anyone. You can never tell. You never know who it is. That’s how the system works. That’s how they work.”

He stared at Ilona and knew she was right. Lothar had used him, taken advantage of his anger. What Hannes had written in his message was right. He had said something to someone that should have remained unspoken. No one had warned him. No one had talked about secrets. But he also knew in his heart that no one should have needed to tell him. He felt awful. Consumed by guilt. He was well aware how the system worked. He knew all about interactive surveillance. He had let his rage lead him astray. His naivety had helped them take Hannes.

“Hannes had stopped hanging around with the rest of us Icelanders,” he said.

“Yes,” Ilona said.

“Because he…” He did not finish the sentence.

Ilona nodded.

“What’s going on?” he asked. “What’s really going on here? Ilona?”

She glanced around the group as if waiting for a response. The man who had spoken earlier nodded to her and she revealed that they had contacted her on their own initiative. One member of the group — Ilona pointed to the girl who had greeted him with a handshake — was studying German with her at the university and wanted to know details of what was happening in Hungary, dissent against the communist party there and fear of the Soviet Union. After cautious overtures to probe her views, and once she was convinced that Ilona was in favour of the uprising in Hungary, she asked her to come and meet her companions. The group held clandestine meetings. Surveillance was being stepped up considerably and people were urged increasingly to notify the security police if they became aware of anti-socialist behaviour or attitudes. This was connected with the 1953 uprising and was to some extent a reaction to the situation in Hungary. Ilona had met Hannes at her first meeting with the young activists in Leipzig. They wanted to know about Hungary and whether similar resistance could be built up in East Germany.

“Why was Hannes in this group?” he asked. “How does he come into all this?”

“Hannes was completely brainwashed, just like you,” Ilona said. “You must have strong leadership in Iceland.” She looked towards the man who had spoken before. “Martin and Hannes are friends from engineering,” she said. “It took Martin a long time to get Hannes to understand what we were saying. But we trusted him. We had no reason not to.”

“If you know all this about Lothar, why don’t you do something?” he asked.

“We can’t do anything except avoid him, which is difficult because he’s trained to be friends with everyone,” a man said. “What we can do if he gets too inquisitive is to lead him astray. People don’t cotton on to him. He says what we want to hear and agrees with our views. But he’s false. And he’s dangerous.”

“Wait a minute,” he said, looking at Ilona. “If you knew about Lothar, didn’t Hannes know who he is?”

“Yes, Hannes knew,” Ilona said.

“Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he warn me? Why didn’t he say anything?”

Ilona went up to him.

“He didn’t trust you,” she said. “He didn’t know where you stand.”

“He said he wanted to be left alone.”

“He did want to be left alone. He didn’t want to spy on us or his fellow countrymen.”

“He called after me when I walked out on him. He was going to say something else but he… I was angry, I stormed out. And bumped straight into Lothar.”

He looked at Ilona.

“So that wasn’t a coincidence?”

“I doubt it,” Ilona said. “But it was sure to have happened sooner or later. They were keeping a close watch on Hannes.”

“Are there more people like Lothar at the university?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ilona said. “But we don’t know who they are. We only know about some of them.”

“Lothar is your Betreuer,” said a man sitting in a chair who had been listening to the proceedings without saying a word.

“Yes.”

“What’s your point?” Ilona said to the man.

“Liaisons are supposed to watch the foreigners,” the man said, standing up. “They’re supposed to report everything about the foreigners. We know that Lothar is also meant to get them to collaborate.”

“Tell him what you want to say,” Ilona said and took a step closer to the man.

“How do we know we can trust this friend of yours?”

“I trust him,” Ilona said. “That’s enough.”

“How do you know Lothar is dangerous?” he asked. “Who told you that?”

“That’s our business,” the man said.

“He’s right,” Tomas said, looking towards the man who had doubted his integrity. “Why should you trust me?”

“We trust Ilona,” came the reply.

Ilona smiled awkwardly.

“Hannes said you’d come round eventually,” she said.

He looked at the faded sheet of paper and read the old message from Hannes. Soon it would be evening and the couple would walk past his window. He thought about that night in the basement flat in Leipzig and how it had changed his life. He thought about Ilona and about Hannes and Lothar. And he thought about the terrified people in the basement.

It was the children of those people who had turned Nikolaikirche into their fortress and had rushed out onto the streets when, decades later, the situation finally reached boiling point.