The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

“Yes, Frau Aner,” you reply, though you have no idea what Comrade Schwarz just said.

  Soon you’ll be out of here. You’ll be at Shakespeare Street with Kerstin, pulling on your own clothes. Then you’ll drive off in her father’s much-repaired Trabant to spend the weekend at the hut that her parents rent by the lake to the south of the city. For now, you must concentrate. Everything, all your future plans, depends on your getting a place on the Study in the Non-Socialist Abroad Programme and travelling to Great Britain. And only the best students and the most politically reliable – the ones like Jana who don’t ask awkward questions about the air in Berlin or even think awkward thoughts about it – get places on that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was my counsellor, Sally, who got me thinking about Leipzig again. We did an exercise one day. She got me to write things down. It was hard at first, but after a while I got into the swing of it.

  “Start with your name,” she said. “Just write it down. My name is Robert. I know it sounds silly, but it’ll get you going.”

  She always insisted on calling me Robert. My name is Bob, I wrote.

  After my name I was to write down some basic facts about myself. “By facts we mean things that are indisputably true,” Sally said.

  I gave it a go. I am Scottish. I have green eyes. I used to work in financial services. Now I am a consultant (=unemployed). I have thinning, gingerish hair. I am not tall.

  I could have written: I am an alcoholic. But I never say those words. And Sally wouldn’t have liked it. They don’t believe in alcoholism at the South Islington Alcohol Advisory Centre. They believe that some people need help to manage their alcohol consumption, and that there are various ways of doing this. That was one of the things Sally and I talked about during our sessions: how to manage my alcohol consumption. According to Sal, that could mean total abstinence or it could mean a return to normal drinking. A return to normal drinking. What a joke! Sally has no idea what it’s like. She doesn’t know how reduced my life is. She doesn’t understand that when you drink everything gets chipped away until there’s almost nothing left. She doesn’t realise that I’m only a tiny fragment of a person.

  Next Sally asked me to write about what happened. She meant What Happened to Me in Leipzig. She said that was how I saw it: in italics with capitals, like the title of a book or film. I didn’t want to write about that. Or talk about it. I’d only told her that I’d spent time behind the Iron Curtain to counter any idea she might have that I was some kind of Tory City boy because I worked at Liebermann Brothers for fourteen years and went out with a girl who worked as a PA for a hedge fund manager in Mayfair. I wanted her to understand that I was as much of a fish out of water at Liebermann Brothers as she would have been. That I was a Labour voter just like her. A woolly liberal with a bleeding heart. But she latched on to it – with a hint of desperation, I thought – and so I played along.

  The trouble with counsellors is they’re just people. They have their problems, their issues. Take Sal. I’d been seeing her for nearly six months by then and I reckon I’d got to know her pretty well. I knew that when she crossed her legs and leant forward clutching her clipboard to her chest, she was about to make an important point. We’d reached a crossroads and she wanted to make sure we went the right way. And I knew that when she turned up in trousers and flats she was having her period. Normally, she wore smart above-the-knee skirts with glossy tights and high heels that showed off her slender ankles and shapely calves. But once a month, regular as clockwork – trousers and flats. And a couple of times when we had morning appointments, her eyes were red-tinged and she was distracted and found it hard to get the session going, and I knew she’d had a fight with her boyfriend. Maybe even had a few too many the night before. And why not? There’s no law against alcohol counsellors having a drink.

  The thing was Sally was new to the job. She was still on day-release training. She wasn’t getting anywhere with me, and she thought it was her fault. It wasn’t. It was me. I’m a cagey bastard. But she thought it was. She was worried. I could see it in her eyes. She was starting to think maybe she wasn’t going to be any good at this counselling lark. The writing was her brilliant idea to draw me out. She thought she was on to something with my Leipzig story and maybe she was. But that’s not why I agreed to write about it. Or why I carried on talking to her about it when the exercise was over. I carried on because Sally was interested in a way that she wasn’t interested in Liebermann Brothers and Annabel, my ex.

  “That must have been fascinating,” she said when I first told her I’d studied in Leipzig back in 1985.

  “Well, yeah,” I said, feeling for the first time that she wasn’t listening to me because she was paid to but because she wanted to, that she was just a girl and I was just a guy. Maybe I was a little bit in love with her.

  The big problem with writing about what happened to me in Leipzig was: where to start?

  “Start at the beginning,” Sally said in her brisk, that’s-enough-now voice.

  But where was the beginning?

  I was born in a caravan at Uig on the Isle of Lewis that my Uncle Norman had lent to us. My mum went into labour unexpectedly, and my big sister Shona, who was only four at the time, had to go and get the farmer to drive us to Stornoway because my dad was out fishing. By the time the farmer got there, it was too late and he had to deliver me himself. It made the Stornoway Gazette: ‘Ardroil Man in Caravan Birth Drama’.

  No. That wasn’t it. Neither was the beginning in Calderhill, the Lanarkshire village in the shadow of the Ravenscraig steel works where I grew up. The story began in St Andrews where I began my DPhil on Heinrich Heine. If I hadn’t gone there – and hadn’t hated it so much I was willing to do anything to get out – I wouldn’t have met John Bull-Halifax and he wouldn’t have organised a study place for me in Leipzig.

  I went to St Andrews because Eugene Bramsden, the head of the German Department, was the leading Heine scholar in the UK – or so I told myself. Unfortunately, Bramsden was also a right-wing prick. He regretted the presence of students from state schools at ‘Scotland’s premier university’, and rumour had it he’d once dismantled a wheelchair ramp with his bare hands to prevent a disabled student from entering the modern languages building.

  Bramsden and I never got on. He was a relic of a bygone age: a time when the likes of me would’ve been down the mines and students wore cream-coloured cricket jumpers and drank Pimms. The grubby reality of university life in the 1980s, when, even at as august an institution as St Andrews, one could be confronted by a postgraduate student who’d clawed his way out of a Lanarkshire comprehensive and somehow wangled a first-class degree (even if it was only from Glasgow) was not really to Bramsden’s taste.

  Our first meeting of the term set the tone for our future dealings. Bramsden was in convivial mood. He had on one of his spotty bow ties, and there was a decanter of port on his desk from which, it was clear, he had already liberally imbibed. In the manner of a bachelor uncle conferring a substantial inheritance on a much-loved nephew, he informed me that I might call him ‘Prof Bram’. I told him I’d stick to Professor Bramsden if he didn’t mind.

  “Ah-ha!” he sniffed. “I see.”

  He slid the decanter across his desk for another salvo. “Fancy a tipple?” He smiled, revealing a mouthful of crumbling teeth.

  “No, thank you, Professor Bramsden.”

  His eyes hardened and he sat back in his chair. I could see the cogs turning beneath the wisps of grey hair that dotted his cranium. A mistake had been made. I wasn’t at all the kind of chap one could do business with. After that, his nose twitched whenever I entered his office as if he expected me to stink of manure or chip fat or both. He winced at my accent, rubbished my ideas, and when I tried to explain my thinking, he stared out of the window, a pained smile etched on his thin lips.

  It was a sorry state of affairs. A good working relationship with your supervisor is essential for a DPhil. I should have transferred back to
Glasgow. But I didn’t. I persevered because, whatever I’d told my friends and the Arts & Humanities Research Council – and myself – I hadn’t really chosen St Andrews because of Bramsden. I’d chosen it because Chris, my best pal in the whole world, was already there doing his PhD. I’d known Chris since I was five. At twelve we were separated when he was sent to a fee-paying school in Glasgow. Since then we’d never been in the same place at the same time. This was a chance to put that right.

  It was a stupid reason to choose a university. Childish. Ridiculous. The stage was set for me to do something daft. And what could be more daft than completing my DPhil at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig?

  CHAPTER THREE

  You’re lying on your back on Hencke’s bed counting the polystyrene squares on his bedroom ceiling, wondering if he’ll notice if you pick your nose. Hencke’s bald freckled head is between your legs and he is licking you, jabbing at you with his tongue. It’s your own fault. You told him you liked it.

  “Oh, Heinzi,” you said. “I like that.”

  You’ve been coming here for more than six months now. It’s always the same. Two bottles of beer on the coffee table when you arrive and a glass for you. You have a drink together. You sit on the beige plastic armchair and he sits on the beige plastic sofa. It’s part of his thing. It’s a social call. You like him.

  The first time you came you thought maybe it was a social call. He talked for a long time. About the difficulties of learning English with its irregular spelling and pronunciation. “Tja,” he said, shaking his head, “very tricky.” He talked about the telephone that had recently been installed in his apartment. “If you ever wish to receive or make a telephone call, you are very welcome to do so here in my little apartment.” And about your family.

  “State Secretary Comrade Reinsch,” he said, according your father the title he never achieved, rolling the words round in his mouth like boiled sweets. “Hmm. Yes. How is he?”

  “Fine,” you muttered, keeping your tone even.

  “And Frau Reinsch?”

  He knows all about your parents. Your mother’s affair and your father’s revenge. The cello that was once your mother’s saviour and now languishes in a dusty cupboard in her tiny apartment in Pankow.

  You squeezed out the word: “Better.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I’m so glad. Such a lovely woman. I mean, she was so lovely.” A sly gleam came into his eye when he said that. “Of course, she suffered so much when Jürgen – ” He spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.

  You turned away and swallowed hard. Impossible to talk to Hencke about what happened to your brother Jürgen.

  “Have you ever been to West Berlin?” you asked, knowing how much Hencke loves to talk about the legendary time a few years back when he visited the capitalist enclave. (It’s a lie. He told you before that he’d never been to the West. Or maybe that was the lie.)

  “I did visit West Berlin once, yes. Of course, it seems very bright and colourful when you arrive at Berlin Zoo, but one quickly notices certain problems.”

  He rattled on like this for a while, then he said, “A schnapps perhaps, little mouse?” and you knew what was coming next.

  It takes all your self-control to remain supine on his brown nylon sheets and not knee him in the face. It’ll be worth it, you tell yourself, it’ll be worth it in the end. This is your insurance policy, your way of making sure that your plan works. Later, you’ll laugh about Hencke with Kerstin. She’ll poke fun at his jam-jar spectacles, his little pot belly and the West jeans he wears low on his hips. Then it won’t seem so terrible.

  Hencke pulls himself up the bed. His eyes are bleary with lust as he fumbles for his cock.

  The first time it happened you were almost pleased. That’s it, you thought. I’m home and dry. I’ll definitely get a place now. But it gets harder each time. And recently it’s stopped just being sex. He wants to hold your hand when you sit beside him on the sofa. “You do love your Heinzi a little bit, don’t you?” he says, chucking you under the chin.

  Now he’s heaving up and down on top of you. His face is beetroot, and his bald head is covered in fat beads of sweat. You have a terrible thought: what if he has a heart attack and dies before he can sign the form that will allow you to travel to Leeds University in England and never come back?

  You must have made a sound because Hencke is saying, “What’s the matter?”

  Before you can answer, he rams his tongue into your mouth. You think of the words on a flyer you have tacked to the wall at Shakespeare Street. It’s for a nightclub in Munich, a city you’ve never visited. Marek gave it to you. He knew you’d like it because it’s from over there. He got it from an American called Vincent he met in a club in Berlin. On the flyer is a photo of a crazy guy with wild staring eyes and below the photo are the words:

  Mittwoch, 22H – 4H

  Lindwurmstraße 18, 80337 München

  DJs G.R.O.S.S & PHONETIC

  PRETTY FUCKING FAR FROM OKAY!

  The ‘C’ in fucking is a hammer and sickle. The ‘K’ is a star.

  That’s what screwing Hencke is like. It’s pretty fucking far from okay. But not as far from okay as spending the rest of your life in a country that has already destroyed so much that was dear to you.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Chris. My old pal. I hadn’t thought about him in years. Hadn’t let myself. Now it all came out. I suppose Sally knew that would happen. That was the idea behind her writing ploy.

  “Chris was a good friend of mine,” I told her at our next session. “Yup,” I added, filling the silence as she presumably knew I would, “Known him since I was five.”

  “Was a good friend?” Sally asked, clasping the clipboard to her chest.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Haven’t seen him in a while.” Then, knowing that I was playing right into her hands but unable to stop myself: “I don’t believe all this crap about everything being rooted in your childhood. That’s just … crap.” God, I was Mr Articulate today. “He was a pal. That’s all there is to say.”

  I scowled at her then looked away. When was the last time I’d seen Chris? When I first moved to London to take up the job at Liebermann Brothers he used to visit me every couple of months. Then he got married and he came down less. Then he had kids. And then … Well, I suppose he got a bit fed up with me after the hospital incident.

  Sally sat back in her chair and smiled her counsellor smile. She’d touched a nerve and she knew it. Good session, she was probably thinking. Well done me.

  *

  I met Chris on my first day at primary school, and we became instant firm friends. He sought me out. I never knew why. We were chalk and cheese. He was Mr Popularity; I was your archetypal ginger-no-friends. He was tall and good-looking with curly black hair; I was wee and specky with thick glasses to correct a lazy eye. I was embarrassingly clever and painfully shy. Chris was clever too, but his smarts fell off him like rain off a cagoule, whereas mine stuck to me like dog shit.

  Chris was exotic; I wasn’t. His family lived in a bought house on the outskirts of town. We lived in a rabbit hutch rented off the council. Their house had a room lined with books called ‘the study’ and a spare bedroom for guests. There were fruit trees in the garden and a patio where the family had their tea in good weather. His mother was off Italian. She wore her glossy black hair piled high on her head and had full, red-painted lips. In the summer, Chris’s family went to the Amalfi coast and Capri, returning copper-coloured. His three wee sisters were precocious and bonny, destined to break many a heart.

  My mum was from the windswept Isle of Harris. Her hair was permed in tight curls, and she wore tweed skirts and sensible shoes. I loved the holidays we took at my grandparents’ house in Geocrab, but they didn’t have the glamour of Capri – especially in the retelling. My big sister, Shona, was lumpen, ugly and dull.

  But none of it mattered, because I was Chris’s best pal. That protected me from the slagging and name calling that would
otherwise have been my due. Then, when we were twelve, a terrible thing happened. Mr O’Driscoll sent Chris to St Ignatius’ College, an independent Catholic secondary school in Glasgow. I knew, of course, that the O’Driscolls were Catholics. My dad, a dyed-in-the-wool Rangers man, had sniffed that out straight away. But I hadn’t expected this. Mr O’Driscoll had always been against separate schools. “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” said my dad. “The old man says I’ll get better marks there,” said Chris.

  And so I had to face the secondary school in Motherwell alone. The first year was a nightmare. With my ally out of the picture, I got picked on. My glasses got smashed. My school blazer got dunked in a vat of Copydex. I had my head kicked in more than once. All the wee neds from Calderhill Primary School had been dying to have a go at me for years. Now there was no more “Hands off the wee man, sparko” from Chris, they could do me over and make themselves look big. If Chris had been there it wouldn’t have happened. But he wasn’t. He was at St Ignatius’ College, where they wrote ‘AMDG’ on every piece of school work, short for Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam: ‘To the Greater Glory of God’. As I trudged the two miles to school every morning, I thought of Chris being driven into Glasgow in his dad’s sleek maroon Jaguar with cream leather seats. Mr O’Driscoll had once let me sit in the driver’s seat and play with the controls. The engine made a thrilling, throaty roar when I pushed down on the accelerator.

  My mum said I’d lose touch with Chris when he went to St Ignatius’: “It’s a different world.” She was trying to soften the blow, but I hated her for it. And she was wrong. We still met up at weekends and in the holidays and did the same things we’d always done. Mucked about by Legbrannock Burn. Built fires on the waste ground across from the chippy. Pissed up the walls in the underpass and ran away.

  Often we hung out with boys from my school who ordinarily wouldn’t have given me the time of day. They were all impressed by Chris. If any other boy had been sent to a school where they wrote ‘To the Greater Glory of God’ on their jotters it would’ve been social death. But it made no difference to Chris. He wore his new situation lightly, like he did everything. When he was around, my life was transformed. I stopped being the wee freaky guy with specs and a hideous flesh-coloured eye patch and became Big Chris’s Pal. Not only did nobody dare touch me when Chris was there, his charisma rubbed off on me, floating down on to my shoulders like angel dust. Suddenly, my jokes were funny. The fact that I was clever and knew things wasn’t pathetic. It was actually quite cool.