The Draining Lake de-6 Read online

  It dawned on him how much he still had to learn about the game he was beginning to play, not only with Lothar but also his fellow Icelanders and in fact everyone he met, apart from Ilona.

  “I what?” Lothar said stubbornly.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Hannes didn’t belong here any more,” Lothar said. “He had no business being here. You said that yourself. You said that to me. You came to me and we talked about it. We were sitting in the pub and you told me what a cheapskate you thought Hannes was. You and Hannes weren’t friends.”

  “No, that’s right,” he said, an unsavoury taste in his mouth. “We weren’t friends.”

  He felt he had to say that. He was not fully aware who he was covering for. He no longer knew exactly where he stood. Why he did not speak his mind as he had in the past. He was playing some game of bluff that he barely understood, trying to inch his way forward in total darkness. Maybe he was no braver than that. Maybe he was a coward. His thoughts turned to Ilona. She would have known what to say to Lothar.

  “I never said he ought to be expelled,” he said, steeling himself.

  “Actually, I recall you talking along exactly those lines,” Lothar said.

  “I didn’t,” he said and raised his voice. “That’s a lie.”

  Lothar smiled.

  “Calm down,” he said.

  “Just leave me alone.”

  He was about to walk away but Lothar stopped him. This time he was more menacing and gripped his arm tighter, pulling him close and whispering in his ear.

  “We need to talk.”

  “We have nothing to talk about,” he said and tried to tear himself loose. But Lothar held him fast.

  “We just need to have a word about your Ilona.”

  He felt his face flush suddenly. His muscles slackened, and Lothar felt his arm go powerless for an instant.

  “What are you talking about?” he said, trying not to give himself away.

  “I don’t think she’s good enough company for you,” Lothar said, “and I say that as your Betreuer and your comrade. I hope you’ll forgive me for intruding.”

  “What are you talking about?” he repeated. “Good enough company? I don’t think it’s any of your business what—”

  “I don’t think she associates with the likes of us,” Lothar interrupted him. “I’m afraid she’ll drag you down into the mire with her.”

  Speechless, he stared at Lothar.

  “What are you talking about?” he blurted out for the third time; he did not know what else he ought to say. His mind was a blank. All he could think about was Ilona.

  “We know about the meetings she organises,” Lothar said. “We know who goes to the meetings. We know that you’ve been at those meetings. We know about the pamphlets she circulates.”

  He could not believe what he was hearing.

  “Let us help you,” Lothar said.

  He stared at Lothar, who fixed him with a serious expression. Lothar had dropped all the charades. His false smile was gone. He could see only unflinching harshness on his face.

  “Us?” he said. “What us? What are you talking about?”

  “Come with me,” Lothar said. “I want to show you something.”

  “I’m not coming with you,” he said. “I don’t have to come anywhere with you!”

  “You won’t regret it,” Lothar said in the same steady voice. “I’m trying to help you. Try to understand that. Let me show you something. So you understand exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “What can you show me?”

  “Come on,” Lothar said, half-pushing him along in front. “I’m trying to help you. Trust me.”

  He wanted to resist, but fear and curiosity drove him on and he yielded. If Lothar had something to show him it might be worth seeing it, rather than turning his back on him. They left the university building for the city centre, heading across Karl Marx Square and along Barfussgasschen. Soon he saw that they were approaching Dittrichring 24, which he knew was the city headquarters of the security police. He slowed, then stopped dead when he saw that Lothar intended to go up the steps into the building.

  “What are we doing here?” he asked.

  “Come on,” Lothar said. “We need to talk to you. Don’t make this more difficult for yourself.”

  “Difficult? I’m not going in there!”

  “Either you come now or they come and get you,” Lothar said. “It’s better this way.”

  He stood still in his tracks. He would have liked to run away. What did the security police want of him? He hadn’t done anything. From the street corner he looked in all directions. Would anyone see him go inside?

  “What do you mean?” he said in a low voice. He was genuinely afraid.

  “Come on,” Lothar said, and opened the door.

  Hesitantly, he walked up the steps and followed Lothar into the building. They entered a small foyer with a grey stone staircase and brownish marble walls. A door at the top of the steps led to a reception room. He immediately noticed the smell of dirty linoleum, grimy walls, smoking, sweat and fear. Lothar nodded to the man at reception and opened a door onto a long corridor. The walls were painted green. Halfway down the corridor was an alcove, inside it an office with the door open and beside it a narrow steel door. Lothar went into the office where a weary middle-aged man was sitting at a desk. He looked up and acknowledged Lothar.

  “Hell of a long time that took,” the man said to Lothar, ignoring the visitor.

  The man smoked fat, pungent cigarettes. His fingers were stained yellow and the ashtray was crammed with minuscule cigarette butts. He had a thick moustache, discoloured by tobacco. He was swarthy, with greying sideburns. He pulled out one of the desk drawers, took out a file and opened it. Inside were a few typed pages and some black-and-white photographs. The man removed the photographs, looked at them, then tossed them across the desk to him.

  “Isn’t that you?” he asked.

  Tomas picked up the photographs. It took him a while to realise what they were. They had been taken in the evening from some distance and showed people leaving a block of flats. A light above the door illuminated the group. Peering more closely at the photo-graph, he could suddenly see Ilona and a man who had been at the meeting in the basement flat, another woman from the same meeting and himself. He leafed through the photographs. Some were enlargements of faces — Ilona’s face and his own.

  After lighting a cigarette, the man with the thick moustache leaned back in his seat. Lothar had sat down on a chair in a corner of the office. On one wall was a street map of Leipzig and a photograph of Ulbricht. Three sturdy steel cupboards stood against another wall.

  He turned to Lothar, trying to conceal the trembling in his hands.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “You ought to tell us that,” Lothar retorted.

  “Who took these photos?”

  “Do you think that matters?” Lothar said.

  “Are you spying on me?”

  Lothar and the man with the burnt moustache exchanged glances, then Lothar began laughing.

  “What do you want?” he said, addressing Lothar. “Why are you taking these photographs?”

  “Do you know what this gathering is?” Lothar asked.

  “I don’t know those people,” he said and was not lying. “Apart from Ilona, of course. Why are you photo-graphing them?”

  “No, of course you don’t know them,” Lothar said. “Apart from pretty little Ilona. You know her. Know her better than most people do. You even know her better than your friend Hannes did.”

  He did not know what Lothar was driving at. He looked at the man with the moustache. He looked out into the corridor where the steel door confronted him. There was a small hole in it with a shutter across. He wondered whether anyone was inside. Whether they had anyone in custody. He wanted to get out of the office at whatever cost. He felt like a trapped animal looking desperately for an escape route.

  “Do yo
u want me to stop going to those meetings?” he offered. “That’s no problem. I haven’t been to many.”

  He stared at the steel door. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by fear. He had already started to back down, already started to promise that he would mend his ways, despite not knowing exactly what he had done wrong or what he could do to appease them. He would do anything to get out of that office.

  “Stop?” said the man with the moustache. “Not at all. No one’s asking you to stop. On the contrary. We’d like you to go to more meetings. They must be very interesting. What’s their purpose?”

  “Nothing,” he said, struggling to put on a brave face. They must be able to tell. “No purpose. We just talk about university matters. Music. Books. Stuff like that.”

  The man with the moustache grinned. Surely he recognised fear. Must see how obvious his fear was. Almost tangible. He had never been a good liar anyway.

  “What were you saying about Hannes?” he asked hesitantly, looking at Lothar. “That I know Ilona better than Hannes did? What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t you know?” Lothar said, faking surprise. “They were together, just like you and Ilona are together now. Before you appeared on the scene. Didn’t she mention that?”

  Lost for words, he gaped at Lothar.

  “Why do you suppose she never told you?” Lothar said in the same tone of mock surprise. “She must have a knack with you Icelanders. You know what I think? I don’t think Hannes was willing to help her.”

  “Help her?”

  “She wants to marry one of you and move to Iceland,” Lothar said. “It didn’t work out with Hannes. Perhaps you can help her. She’s wanted to leave Hungary for a long time. Hasn’t she told you anything about that? She’s made quite an effort to get away.”

  “I don’t have time for all this,” he said, trying to brace himself. “I must be going. Thanks for telling me all this. Lothar, I’ll discuss it better with you later.”

  He walked towards the door, half-falteringly. The man with the moustache looked at Lothar, who shrugged.

  “Sit down, you fucking idiot!” the man screamed as he leaped out of his chair.

  He stopped by the door, stunned, and turned round.

  “We don’t tolerate subversion!” the moustachioed man shouted in his face. “Especially not from fucking foreigners like you who come here to study under false pretences. Sit down, you fucking idiot! Shut the door and sit down!”

  He closed the door, went back into the office and sat down on a chair by the desk.

  “Now you’ve made him angry,” Lothar said, shaking his head.

  He wished that he could go back to Iceland and forget the whole business. He envied Hannes for having escaped this nightmare. This was the first thought to cross his mind when they finally released him. They forbade him to leave the country. He had been instructed to hand in his passport the same day. Then his thoughts turned to Ilona. He knew he could never leave her and, when his fear had largely subsided, neither did he want to. He could never leave Ilona. They used her as a threat against him. If he didn’t do what they said, something might happen to her. Although not explicit, the threat was clear enough. If he told her what had happened, something might happen to her. They did not say what. They left the threat hanging to allow him to imagine the worst.

  It was as if they had had him in their sights for a long time. They knew precisely what they were going to do and how they wanted him to serve them. None of this had been decided on the spur of the moment. As far as he could tell they planned to install him as their man at the university. He was supposed to report to them, monitor antisocial activity, inform. He knew that he would be under surveillance from now on, because they had told him so. What interested them most were the activities of Ilona and her companions in Leipzig and the rest of Germany. They wanted to know what went on at the meetings. Who the leaders were. The guiding ideology. Whether there were links with Hungary or other Eastern European countries. How widespread the dissent was. What was said about Ulbricht and the communist party. They recited more points but he had long since ceased to listen. His ears were buzzing.

  “What if I refuse?” he said to Lothar in Icelandic.

  “Speak German!” the man with the moustache snapped.

  “You will not refuse,” Lothar said.

  The man told him what would happen if he did. He would not be deported. He would not get off as lightly as Hannes. In their eyes, he was worthless. He was like vermin. If he did not do as instructed, he would lose Ilona.

  “But if I tell you everything I’ve lost her anyway,” he said.

  “Not the way we’ve arranged it,” the man with the moustache said, stubbing out yet another cigarette.

  Not the way we’ve arranged it.

  This was the sentence that would haunt him after he had left the headquarters and it rang in his head all the way home.

  Not the way we’ve arranged it.

  He stared at Lothar. They had arranged something involving Ilona. Already. It simply had to be enacted. If he didn’t do as he was told.

  “What are you anyway?” he said to Lothar, rising nervously from his chair.

  “Sit down!” shouted the man with the moustache, who also stood up.

  Lothar looked at him, a vague smile playing across his lips.

  “How do you sleep at night?”

  Lothar did not answer.

  “What if I tell Ilona about this?”

  “You shouldn’t,” Lothar said. “Tell me another thing, how did she manage to win you over? According to our information, you were the hardest of the hardliners. What happened? How did she manage to turn you?”

  He walked over to Lothar. He mustered the courage to tell him what he wanted to say. The man with the moustache walked around the desk and stood behind him.

  “It wasn’t her who won me over,” he said in Icelandic. “It was you. Everything you stand for persuaded me. Your cynicism. Hatred. Lust for power. Everything you are won me over.”

  “It’s very simple,” Lothar said. “Either you’re a socialist or you’re not.”

  “No,” he said. “You don’t get it, Lothar. Either you’re a human being or you’re not.”

  He hurried home, thinking about Ilona. He had to tell her what had happened, no matter what they demanded or had arranged. She had to flee the city. Could they go to Iceland together? He felt how infinitely far away Iceland was. Maybe she could escape back to Hungary. Maybe even cross over to West Germany. To West Berlin. The controls were not that strict. He could tell them everything they wanted to hear to keep them off Ilona’s back while she set up her escape. She had to leave the country.

  What was that about Hannes? What had Lothar said about Hannes and Ilona? Were they together once? Ilona had never told him that. Only that they were friends and had got to know each other at the meetings. Was Lothar playing mind games with him? Or was Ilona really using him to get away?

  He had broken into a run. People flashed past without him noticing them. He went from one street to the next completely oblivious, his mind racing with thoughts about Ilona and himself and Lothar and the security police and the steel door with the hatch on it and the man with the moustache. He would be shown no mercy. That much he knew. Icelandic citizen or not. It made no difference to these men. They wanted him to spy for them. Submit reports about what went on at the meetings with Ilona. Inform on what he heard in the corridors of the university, among the Icelanders at the dormitory and other foreign students. They knew they had leverage. If he refused he would not get off as lightly as Hannes.

  They had Ilona.

  By the time he finally reached home he was in tears, and he hugged Ilona speechlessly. She was worried. She said she had spent ages waiting for him outside Thomaskirche. He told her everything, even though they had ordered him to tell her nothing. Ilona listened to him in silence, then began questioning him. He answered her as accurately as he could. The first thing she asked about was her group of friends
, the Leipzigers, whether they could be identified from the photographs. He said he thought the police knew about every single one of them.

  “Oh my God,” Ilona groaned. “We have to tip them off. How did they find out about this? They must have followed us. Someone’s blown the whistle. Someone who knew about the meetings. Who? Who’s informed on us? We were always so cautious. No one knew about those meetings.”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I must contact them,” she said, pacing the floor of their little room. She stopped by the window overlooking the street and peeped outside. “Are they watching us?” she asked. “Now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Oh my God,” Ilona groaned again.

  “They said that you and Hannes were together,” he said. “Lothar said so.”

  “That’s a lie,” she said. “Everything they say is a lie. Surely you know that. They’re playing a game, playing a game with us. We need to decide what to do. I must warn the others.”

  “They said you hung around with us in order to escape to Iceland.”

  “Of course they say that, Tomas. What else would they say? Stop being so stupid.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything, so we have to act carefully,” he said, knowing she was right. Everything they said was a lie. Everything. “You’re in great danger,” he said. “They let me know that. We mustn’t do anything stupid.”

  They looked at each other in desperation.

  “What have we got ourselves into?” he sighed.

  “I don’t know,” she said, hugging him and calming down slightly. “They don’t want another Hungary. That “s what we’ve got ourselves into.”

  Three days later, Ilona went missing.

  Karl was with her when they came and arrested her. He went running to Tomas on the campus and gasped out the news. Karl had gone to collect a book she was going to lend him. Suddenly the police appeared in the doorway. He was slammed against the wall. They turned the room upside down. Ilona was led away.

  Karl was only halfway through his account when Tomas ran off. They had been so cautious. Ilona had passed on a message to her companions and they had made arrangements to leave Leipzig. She wanted to go back to Hungary to stay with her family; he was going back to Iceland and would meet her in Budapest. His studies no longer mattered. Only Ilona mattered.