The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  You walk towards him, lift your hand and slap him full in the face. The sting feels good. “You’re an arsehole, Heinz,” you say. “That’s what I came here to tell you. And all the pretty speeches in the world won’t make you any less of an arsehole.” You pick up your bag and turn to go. He grabs your arm and yanks you back round to face him.

  “You are making a big mistake, Comrade Reinsch,” he spits, switching from the informal Du to the formal Sie. A vein twitches in his neck. He grabs you by the collar. His face is very close. His spit speckles your cheeks. “So you didn’t get your little trip to England, hmm? You won’t get to see the Golden West. What a pity. My heart bleeds. Do you know what that makes you, Comrade Reinsch? That makes you the same as ninety-five per cent of the citizens of our Republic. Are you ashamed to count yourself among their number? You should be proud to be one of them. But no. You think you’re different. You think you deserve special treatment. And when you don’t get it, what do you do? You barge in on a respected citizen such as myself who has laboured all his life to fulfil the goals of the Party in the interests of the working class and make obnoxious insinuations. Well, it won’t do, Comrade Reinsch. You will pay dearly for this. This little disappointment regarding England will shortly seem like a very small matter. When you lose your university place. When your old friends in Berlin are detained. Oh yes, I know all about them. When your special friend, Comrade Marek Dembowski, is picked up by our People’s Police after one of his nights out.”

  He releases you with a shove. “He sleeps with men, you know. Rather disgusting, wouldn’t you say? But then what can you expect from a Jew boy.”

  His mouth is a little round hole, and he spits the insult out. How thin the veneer is. How many times have you heard Hencke’s Holocaust speech? And his Spiel about Israel? How painful it was for a German state to have to break off diplomatic relations.

  His face softens. “Little mouse,” he says, switching back to Du, “don’t be foolish. You’re upset. That’s understandable. But do you know what I think? I think we can resolve this situation to our mutual satisfaction. Why don’t you sit down?”

  “There’s nothing you can offer me.”

  “What if I were to say that it might be possible to organise an additional place on the Study in the Non-Socialist Abroad programme even at this late date?”

  He sits down on the sofa and pats the cushion next to him. “Sit down, my dear.”

  You sit down and wait to hear what special favour will buy you a trip to England. Nothing would surprise you. He opens his briefcase and takes out a piece of paper, places it on the coffee table and slides it towards you.

  “Don’t look so worried. All you have to do is copy out this statement in long hand and sign it.”

  You read the paper:

  Leipzig,

  28.09.1985

  COMMITMENT

  I, Magdalena Maria Reinsch of 2034 Leipzig, Tarostraße 14, freely commit myself to work for the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR. I have taken this decision of my own free will and as a result of my political-ideological convictions.

  My work will have an unofficial character and will therefore require the utmost discretion with respect to all third parties, institutions and other organs, which I declare myself ready to maintain.

  I will support the MfS to the best of my ability and will deliver honest, objective and thorough information regarding the designated object, DEMBOWSKI, Marek, to the MfS colleague who has been made known to me.

  In order to protect the secrecy of the operation, I will adopt the following code name, chosen by me: “CORALIE STREIBERT”

  “Coralie,” Hencke says, “it’s a lovely name, isn’t it? I chose it myself. It suits you. And do you know what name I’ve chosen for Comrade Dembowski? Lech. Perfect, isn’t it, for a little Polack?”

  He places a blank sheet of paper from his briefcase on the coffee table and hands you a pen. “Just copy the statement out in long hand and sign at the bottom. Think! This time next year you’ll have been to England. You’ll have seen the Golden West with your own eyes.”

  You stare at the sheet of paper. It’s your ticket out. You might never get another one. If you refuse him, he’ll cause you all sorts of problems. You don’t know how far his connections reach.

  “Why do you want me to copy it out? Couldn’t I just sign it?”

  He waves an admonitory finger. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, little mouse. We mustn’t be lazy. Commitments from unofficial collaborators must always be written out. That way no one can wriggle out of it later, hmm?”

  You sit on Hencke’s plastic sofa holding the pen. Would it really be so bad to do this? You could tell them things that weren’t important – things that perhaps weren’t even true. You could be clever.

  Hencke is watching you. “You are right to consider carefully.” His tone is flat, his eyes cold. “This is a very serious matter. Our State Security Service is the sword and shield of the Party. It protects our socialist way of life. A commitment to work for the MfS should not be undertaken lightly.” He sits back. “But I know you. I am fully convinced you are up to the task.”

  For a moment, you’re tempted. Betray a friend in exchange for freedom. It must happen all the time. Marek need never know. No one need know. And soon you’ll be gone anyway, both of you, and then none of it will matter. You turn the pen in your hand and suddenly you see: there was never going to be any deal without this. You pull the sheet of paper towards you. Sometimes it is necessary to be hard and selfish to get what we want in life. We can’t always think of others and be kind.

  “Good,” says Hencke. “It will also be better for your family if you follow this course.”

  Your family. The paper swims before you, and it all comes back to you – what it was like in the days after your brother’s accident. Marek was the one who helped you then, the only one who stood up to your father. You’re in this together, you and he. Always have been, always will be.

  You put the pen down and turn to Hencke. “Fuck off,” you spit. Then you grab your bag and run.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I decided to leave St Andrews in the summer term of my first year. I had to get out of that wee, grey town and fast. Relations with Bramsden had deteriorated. I’d heard he was telling people I didn’t have the wherewithal to complete my DPhil. “This is what happens – ” I imagined him saying, leaving the sentence for others to complete. This is what happens when you let scumbags from dying Lanarkshire steel towns into Scotland’s premier university. Still, if it had just been Bramsden, I could have coped. But it wasn’t. It was the whole place. It did my head in. I was a fish out of water: an East End boy in a West End bar. It was great sharing with Chris, but he wasn’t there that much. Slowly, I came to realise that the kind of friendship we’d had in the past was just that – in the past.

  I didn’t choose Leipzig as a destination. I was all set to spend a year in Düsseldorf, a pleasant West German town on the banks of the Rhine. Why would I go to Leipzig? I wasn’t particularly political. I hated Thatcher and voted Labour, but where I came from that was par for the course. I had only the vaguest of notions as to what lay behind the Iron Curtain. When Dr Bull-Halifax first mentioned Leipzig to me, I wasn’t even sure where it was. I had to look it up in an atlas. All I knew about East Germany was that it won a lot of Olympic medals – and of course that there was a wall in Berlin, dividing the city.

  And if I didn’t choose Leipzig, I most certainly did not choose John Bull-Halifax, the junior Soviet Studies lecturer who organised my study place. I didn’t know him, but I’d seen him about and I didn’t like what I saw. Self-consciously political, he made sure everyone knew he was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. The door to his small office in the modern languages building was always open, revealing walls decorated with posters in the socialist-realist style. He walked about town with a copy of Marxism Today tucked under his arm, dressed in old-fashioned suits from second hand shops, always with a CPGB pin
in the lapel. Given that he’d gone to some minor public school and then to Cambridge and was now teaching at St Andrews rather than, say, Bradford, I assumed that, like his fake streets-of-London accent, it was all a pose. He carried it off, I believed, because he was good-looking, with strong regular features, a mop of red-gold curls and a big film star smile. He even wore black National Health specs because paying for glasses was private health care, which was wrong. Having endured National Health glasses all through primary school, I had no time for this. But other people didn’t see it for the affectation I thought it was.

  One afternoon, Bull-Halifax buttonholed me on the stairs in the Modern Languages building. I’d never spoken to him, but he clearly knew who I was. I tried not to be flattered. I might feign to despise him, but he did know his stuff and he was something of a legend in the department. Rumours, most of them contradictory, flocked to him like seagulls to a discarded chip poke: He was ultra-fit and didn’t drink or smoke because he modelled himself on the Bolsheviks. He was a secret alcoholic now on the wagon. He slept with a different girl every night. He never touched a woman because sex would distract him from his work.

  Girls loved him, especially the glossy, upper-class Yah girls with whom St Andrews was stuffed. I often saw them fluttering their eyelashes at him in the corridors: Dr Bull-Halifax, have you got a moment? Oh really? Oh yah. Oh, that’s so interesting.

  He told me he was in the process of setting up a number of student exchanges between the UK and the Eastern Bloc countries. He had already arranged for three Russian under-graduates from St Andrews to spend a term in Vladivostok. He also had connections in East Germany and he could almost certainly organise a research place for me at the Karl Marx University Leipzig if I was interested.

  “I know you want out of here,” he said in a confidential tone. “Can’t say I blame you. I’ve got a flat in Edinburgh and I spend as much time there as I can. A place at Leipzig could be just the ticket. Very well regarded in East Germany, Heinrich Heine. And it would fit well with your topic. You’re looking into the political side of his work, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh,” I mumbled. So he knew about my research. “But I’ve already got something sorted out.”

  “Oh, yes? What’s that?” He probably knew all about that too but he acted like he didn’t.

  “I’m going to Düsseldorf.”

  “Düsseldorf?” He made it sound like Ulan Bator.

  “The archive’s there. Professor Bramsden suggested it.”

  “Of course. He was a visiting lecturer there once, wasn’t he? Well, I wish you the best of luck.” He fished a card out of his pocket. “But if it doesn’t work out for any reason, give me a call. They really do respect solid intellectual endeavour over there, you know.”

  “Why would it not work out?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.

  “Oh, I’m sure it will.” He gave me one of his film star smiles and clapped me on the shoulder.

  I smiled back, feeling grim. He knew it wasn’t going to work out, I realised. This wasn’t a chance encounter on the stairs. He’d planned it. There had been rumours in the department about Bramsden’s health. He was drinking too much, going ga-ga. My application was in his hands. I was funded from home, so it should have been a formality, but what if he’d forgotten about it?

  I went to see Bramsden that very afternoon. He was a little drunk, his eyes bleary. He scratched his head as he rifled through the papers on his desk.

  “Well,” he said at last. “I’m afraid I can’t find it, Robert. Awfully sorry.”

  He smiled gamely, but there was desperation in his eyes. I’d found him out, and he knew it. I had a choice: I could lodge a complaint about him with the university authorities – I knew it wouldn’t be the first – or I could phone John Bull-Halifax. I despised Bramsden but seeing him sat slumped behind his desk with all the drive gone out of him, I found myself unable to finish him off.

  I hurried back to the beautiful flat overlooking the sea that I shared with Chris and phoned John Bull-Halifax.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  You scramble down the stairs of Hencke’s building and burst out on to the street. Hencke is shouting your name. Is he following you? You glance back. He is! You sprint down Carnation Way, your bag banging against your hip. He’s running behind you, screaming abuse. People are staring. He must have lost his mind. You swing on to Daisy Way. There’s a tram at the stop. One last push. Your lungs are bursting as you jump aboard. For agonising moments the doors remain open. Hencke appears on Daisy Way, panting. He sees you and ups his pace. Then the doors bang shut and the tram shudders into motion. You stumble to the back and collapse into a seat. Out of the window, you see Hencke slumped against the tram stop, glaring after you. You’re shaking, you suddenly realise, as pent-up tears prick your eyes.

  At the train station, you change to the tram that goes to Shakespeare Street. That’s where you need to be right now. Impossible to go to the room at the student residence that you share with three fellow students from the English interpreting and translation course, including Jana. She’s hardly ever there because she has a nice room at her parents’ house in the suburbs. But she’ll be there today. They all will.

  When you get off the tram, you head to Körner Street where old Frau Dannewitz lives. It’s your habit to enter the rear house at Shakespeare Street through the Körner Street back courts. That way you don’t have to go through the main house at the front. No one at the university knows about your hideaway at Shakespeare Street, and that’s how you want to keep it. The building is dilapidated and no one ever comes here, but you can’t be too careful.

  As you run upstairs, you hear the Kempners bawling at each other in their second-floor apartment. Most of the apartments in the rear house are empty, but the Kempners cling on, along with mad Herr Hempelmann and his cats on the ground floor. You sprint past the communal toilet on the third floor, which as usual is leaking water to the steps, and up to the top floor. As you stick your key in the door, you hear voices; Kerstin is home from Halle, and Frau Dannewitz is in the apartment with her.

  “Hello,” Kerstin calls and comes out to meet you in the hall. “Well?” she mouths. “When are you off to England?”

  “I’m not. I didn’t get a place.”

  “No!” She clutches at your arm. “What do you mean? I thought Hencke told you he’d fix it.”

  You shrug. “He did.”

  “Is that you, Magda?” Frau Dannewitz calls from the main room.

  “Yes, it’s me,” you reply. “We’ll talk about it later,” you say to Kerstin.

  She follows you into the room, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it. That dirty, lying old bastard.”

  “Frau Dannewitz!” You stretch out your hand to the old lady and tell her not to get up. She’s sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and a slice of Kerstin’s home-made cheesecake. “How are you, Frau Dannewitz?”

  “Exceedingly well, my dear.” Despite her arthritis, Frau Dannewitz is always exceedingly well. That’s why she can climb the five flights of stairs to your apartment. “That girl can bake,” she says, patting her lips with a napkin.

  “I know.” You drop down on the divan.

  “So that’s it, then,” Frau Dannewitz says. “You’re going to England. Well, I shall miss you.”

  You shake your head. “I’m not going. I didn’t get a place.”

  Frau Dannewitz’s mouth drops open. “What? But you’re the best student in your year. Everyone says so. Even that friend of yours, the sarcastic one.”

  She means Marek. She doesn’t like him.

  Kerstin brings you a cup of coffee, sits down beside you on the divan and slings her arm round your shoulders. “Unfortunately, it’s not just about being the best, Frau Dannewitz,” she says. “There are other considerations – if you know what I mean.”

  “Ach.” Frau Dannewitz shakes her head. “This is all wrong. This is not what we fought for, you know. This is not what we wanted.”

 
Frau Dannewitz is an old Communist who was in the Anti-Fascist resistance during the war. It’s because of this that you got to know her. When you rejoined the Free German Youth, you made a pledge to help elderly comrades who live alone. As a much decorated ‘Fighter Against Fascism’, Frau Dannewitz was the ideal candidate. It suits you to help Frau Dannewitz because it gives you a ready alibi should anyone ever ask about all the time you spend in this run-down area of town. But over time you’ve come to admire the old lady. She stayed put and fought for what she believed in. She didn’t scuttle off into exile in the Soviet Union like your father. And she paid the price. She spent nine months in Buchenwald concentration camp. The stories she can tell about that and the day the Americans liberated the camp. We prisoners had already taken control, she always says.