The Draining Lake

7

Sometimes, when he thought back, he could smell the headquarters on Dittrichring, the smothering stench of dirty carpet, sweat and fear. He also remembered the acrid stink of the coal smog that blanketed the city, even blocking out the sun.

Leipzig was not at all as he had imagined. He had swotted up before leaving Iceland and knew that it was located on the confluence of the Elster, Parthe and Pleisse rivers, and was an old centre of the German publishing and book trades. Bach was buried there and it was home to the famous Auerbachkeller, the beer cellar on which Goethe modelled a scene in Faust. The composer Jon Leifs studied music in Leipzig and lived there for years. In his mind’s eye he had seen an ancient cultural German city. What he found was a sorry, gloomy post-war place. The Allies had occupied Leipzig but later handed it over to the Soviets, and the bullet holes could still be seen in the walls of buildings and half-collapsed houses, the ruins left by war.

The train arrived in Leipzig in the middle of the night. He was able to store his suitcase at the railway station and he walked the streets until the city began to awaken. There was an electricity shortage and the city centre was dark but he felt good at having arrived and he enjoyed the adventure of being alone so far from his native haunts. He walked up to Nikolaikirche and when he reached Thomaskirche he sat down on a bench. He recalled the account of the writer Halldor Laxness and poet Johann Jonsson walking together through the city so many years before. Dawn was breaking and he imagined them looking up at Thomaskirche just as he was, admiring the sight before continuing their stroll.

A girl selling flowers walked past him and offered him a bouquet, but he had no money to spare and gave her an apologetic smile.

He was looking forward to everything that lay ahead. Standing on his own two feet and being the master of his own fate. Although he had no idea what awaited him, he intended to face it with an open mind. He knew that he would not feel homesick because he had set off on an adventure that would shape his life permanently. And while he realised that his course would be demanding, he was not afraid of applying himself. He had a passionate interest in engineering and knew that he would meet new people and make new friends. He was impatient to get down to studying.

He walked around the ruins and the streets in the light drizzle and a faint smile crossed his face when he thought again of the two writer friends walking the same streets long before.

At daybreak he fetched his suitcase, went to the university and found the registration office without any trouble. He was shown to a student residence not far from the main building. The dormitory was an elegant old villa that had been taken over by the university. He would be sharing a room with two other students. One was Emil, his classmate from school. The other was Czechoslovakian, he was told. Neither of them was in the room when he arrived. It was a three-storey house with a shared bathroom and kitchen on the middle floor. Old wallpaper was peeling from the walls, the timber floors were dirty and a musty smell permeated the building. In his room were three futons and an old desk. A bare light bulb hung down from the ceiling, whose old plaster had flaked off to reveal rotting timber panelling. There were two windows in the room, one of which was boarded up because the glass was broken.

Drowsy students were emerging from their rooms. A queue had already formed outside the bathroom. Some went outdoors to urinate. In the kitchen a large pot had been filled with water and was being heated on an ancient cooker. There was an old-fashioned stove beside it. He looked around for his friend, but could not see him. And as he was looking at the group in the kitchen, he suddenly realised that it was a mixed residence.

One of the young women came over to him and said something in German. Although he had studied German at school, he did not understand her. In halting German, he asked her to speak more slowly.

“Are you looking for someone?” she asked.

“I’m looking for Emil,” he said. “He’s from Iceland.”

“Are you from Iceland too?”

“Yes. What about you? Where are you from?”

“Dresden,” the girl said. “I’m Maria.”

“My name’s Tomas,” he said and they shook hands.

“Tomas?” she repeated. “There are a few Icelanders at the university. They often visit Emil. Sometimes we have to throw them out because they sing all night. Your German’s not so bad.”

“Thanks. Schoolboy German. Do you know about Emil?”

“He’s on rat duty,” she said. “Down in the basement. It’s swarming with rats here. Do you want a cup of tea? They’re setting up a canteen on the top floor, but until then we have to cater for ourselves.”

“Rat duty?!”

“They come out at night. That’s the best time to catch them.”

“Are there a lot?”

“If we kill ten, twenty take their place. But it’s better now than it was during the war.”

Instinctively he looked around the floor as if expecting to see the creatures darting between people’s feet. If anything repulsed him it was rats.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and when he turned round he saw his friend standing behind him, smiling. Holding them by their tails, he lifted up two gigantic rats. He had a spade in his other hand.

“A spade’s the best thing to kill them with,” Emil said.

He was quick to adjust to his surroundings: the smell of rising damp, the appalling smell from the bathroom on the middle floor, a stink that spread through the whole building, the rotten futons, the creaking chairs and the primitive cooking facilities. He simply put them out of his mind and knew that the post-war reconstruction would be a lengthy process.

The university was excellent despite its frugal facilities. The teaching staff were highly qualified, the students were enthusiastic and he did well on his course. He got to know the engineering students who were either from Leipzig or other German cities, or from neighbouring countries, especially from Eastern Europe. Like him, several were on grants from the East German government. In fact, the students at the Karl Marx University seemed to be from all over the world. He soon met Vietnamese and Chinese students, who tended to keep themselves to themselves. There were Nigerians too, and in the room next door to his in the old villa lived a pleasant Indian by the name of Deependra.

The small group of Icelanders in the city stuck very closely together. Karl came from a little fishing village and was studying journalism. His faculty, nicknamed the Red Cloister, was said to admit only party hardliners. Rut was from Akureyri. She had chaired the youth movement there and now studied literature, specialising in Russian. Hrafnhildur was studying German language and literature, while Emil, from western Iceland, was an economics undergraduate. One way or another most of them had been picked out by the Socialist Party of Iceland for study grants in East Germany. They would meet up in the evenings and play cards or listen to Deependra’s jazz records, or go to the local bar and sing Icelandic songs. The university ran an active film club and they watched Battleship Potemkin and discussed film as a vehicle for propaganda. They talked politics with other students. Attendance was compulsory at the meetings and talks held by the students” organisation Freie Deutsche Jugend — abbreviated as FDJ — the only society allowed to operate at the university. Everyone wanted to forge a new and better world.

All apart from one. Hannes had been in Leipzig the longest of all the Icelanders and avoided the others. Two months passed before Tomas first met him. He knew about Hannes from Reykjavik: the party had big plans for him. The chairman had mentioned his name at an editorial meeting and referred to him as material for the future. Like Tomas, Hannes had worked as a journalist on the party paper and he heard stories about him from the reporters. Tomas had seen Hannes speaking at meetings in Reykjavik and was impressed by his zeal, his phrases about how warmongering cowboys could buy out democracy in Iceland, how Icelandic politicians were puppets in the hands of American imperialists. “Democracy in this country is not worth a shit for as long as the American army spreads its filth over Icelandic soil!” he had shouted to thunderous applause. In his first years in East Germany, Hannes had written a regular column called Letter from the East, describing the wonders of the communist system, until the articles had ceased to appear. The other Icelanders in the city had little to say about Hannes. He had gradually distanced himself from them and had gone his own way. Occasionally they discussed this but shrugged as if it were none of their business.

One day he came across Hannes in the university library. Evening had fallen, there were few people at the desks and Hannes had his head buried in his books. It was cold and blustery outside. Sometimes it was so cold in the library that people’s breath steamed when they talked. Hannes was wearing a long overcoat and a cap with ear muffs. The library had suffered badly in the air raids and only part of it was in use.

“Aren’t you, Hannes?” he asked in a friendly tone. “We’ve never met.”

Hannes looked up from his books.

“I’m Tomas.” He held out his hand.

Hannes stared at him and the outstretched hand, then buried his head back in his books.

“Leave me alone,” he said.

Tomas was surprised. He had not expected such a reception from his compatriot, least of all from this man, who enjoyed great respect and had impressed him so deeply.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Of course, you’re studying.”

Instead of answering, Hannes went on jotting notes from the open books on the table in front of him. He wrote quickly in pencil and was wearing fingerless gloves to keep his hands warm.

“I was just wondering if we could have a coffee sometime,” Tomas went on. “Or a beer.”

Hannes did not reply. Tomas stood over him, waiting for some kind of response, but when none came he slowly backed off from the table and turned away. He was halfway behind a rack of books when Hannes looked up from his tomes and at last answered him.

“Did you say Tomas?”

“Yes, we’ve never met but I’ve heard…”

“I know who you are,” Hannes said. “I was like you once. What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just to say hello. I was sitting over on that side and I’ve been watching you. I only wanted to say hello. I went to a meeting once where you—”

“What do you think of Leipzig?” Hannes interrupted.

“Brass-monkey weather and bad food but the university’s good and the first thing I’m going to do when I get back to Iceland is to campaign for legalising beer.”

Hannes smiled.

“That’s true, the beer’s the best thing about this place.”

“Maybe we could have a jar together sometime,” Tomas said.

“Maybe,” Hannes said, and delved back into his books. Their conversation was over.

“What do you mean, you were like me once?” Tomas asked hesitantly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Hannes said, looking up and scrutinising him. He hesitated.

“Take no notice of me,” he said. “It’ll do you no good.”

Confused, he walked out of the library and into the piercing winter wind. On the way to the dormitory he met Emil and Rut. They had been to collect a package posted from Iceland for her. It was a food parcel and they were gloating over it. He did not mention his encounter with Hannes because he did not understand what he had meant.

“Lothar was looking for you,” Emil said. “I told him you were at the library.”

“I didn’t see him,” he said. “Do you know what he wanted?”

“No idea,” Emil said.

Lothar was his liaison, his Betreuer. Every foreigner at the university had a liaison who was available for help. Lothar had befriended the Icelanders at the dormitory. He offered to take them around the city and show them the sights. He assisted them at the university and sometimes paid the bill when they went to Auerbachkeller. He wanted to go to Iceland, he said, to study Icelandic, and he spoke the language well, could even sing the latest hit songs. He said he was interested in the old Icelandic sagas, had read Njal’s Saga and wanted to translate it.

“Here’s the building,” Rut said all of a sudden, and stopped. “That’s the office. There are prison cells inside.”

They looked up at the building. It was a gloomy stone edifice of four storeys. Plywood boarding had been nailed over all the ground-floor windows. He saw the name of the street: Dittrichring. Number 24.

“Prison cells? What is this place?” he asked.

“The security police are in there,” Emil said in a low voice, as if someone might hear him.

“Stasi,” Rut said.

He looked up along the building again. The pallid street lights cast a murky shadow onto its stone walls and windows, and a slight shiver ran through him. He felt clearly that he never wanted to enter that place but had no way of knowing then how little his own wishes counted for.

He sighed and looked out to sea where a little sailboat was cruising by.

Decades later, when the Soviet Union and communism had fallen, he had returned to the headquarters and noticed at once the old nauseating smell. It produced the same effect on him as when the rat had got trapped behind the dormitory stove and they had unwittingly roasted it over and again, until the stench in the old villa became unbearable.