The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  “I won’t.” You turn away. “I see you’ve already met,” you say to Marek.

  “Oh yes,” he smirks.

  You grab the westerner’s hand. “Let’s dance.”

  “Just a moment.” Marek pulls you to one side. “He’ll do just fine,” he whispers in your ear.

  Later, when the music slows down, the westerner pulls you into his arms on the dance floor. You feel his hands on your back, pressing you close.

  “I know somewhere we can go,” you say, slipping your hand in his.

  It’s a risk taking him to Shakespeare Street, but you reckon it’s worth it. If your plan is to work he has to trust you. In the back courts at Körner Street he stumbles and falls against you. He’s had too much to drink. You steady him, and he pulls you close and bends to kiss you. “Not here,” you say.

  He nuzzles your neck. “But I want you.” His breath is hot. He’s hard against you. Everything is going to plan. You feel relief. And an unexpected stab of desire.

  You take his hand and lead him up the stairs to your hideaway.

  “This is a cool place,” he says.

  “There’s something I have to tell you about it.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Nobody knows about this place,” you say, going round the room lighting candles. “You mustn’t ever tell anyone you’ve been here.

  “Wow,” he says. “Okay.”

  “It’s important.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course.” He fixes you with his green eyes. “But why is it such a secret?”

  “We just don’t want anyone to come here. We don’t want people to know we use this place. Above all, you must never tell Hencke that you’ve been here.”

  “I won’t,” he says. “You can trust me.”

  Trust. It’s an easy word for westerners to say. To you it means something more.

  You sit down beside him on the divan. He reaches across and touches your face.

  “Magda,” he says, and you feel his hand caressing your thigh under your skirt. When you don’t push it away, his fingers creep up your leg and hook round your pants. You look into his green eyes as he pushes you on to the divan and kisses you. His tongue is in your mouth and his hands are on your back, pulling at the zip of your dress. You squeeze his thickening cock and think: our plan is working.

  A moment later, you’re naked beneath him on the divan. He kneads your breasts and sucks each of your nipples in turn, breathing hard.

  “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he says, sitting back and running his fingers over your stomach. He begins to massage your clitoris. And you feel it again. That pulse of desire that is more than mechanical. He presses down on top of you and holds you tight. Then he’s inside you. You move with him, digging your fingers into his strong, pale back. You gasp, and it’s not pretend.

  What did you think? Did you think it would be like fucking Hencke? Well, it’s not. You remember then what Marek whispered to you before you left The Sharp Corner: Don’t fall in love with him now, will you?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  My therapist, Sally, was fascinated by Magda. Women aren’t really interested in men. What they’re really interested in is other women.

  “Magda sounds amazing,” she gushed. “Was she really so beautiful?”

  “Incredibly beautiful,” I said, warming to my subject. “She had this … special quality. I don’t know. It was like she shone or something. And in Leipzig at that time, surrounded by brown coal pits and chemical plants, I suppose she seemed quite exceptional.”

  Sally nodded dreamily. “I don’t think she just seemed exceptional. I think she was exceptional.”

  I shifted on my orange plastic bucket chair, basking in Magda’s reflected glory.

  “Have you got any photos of her?” Sally asked.

  This was strictly out of bounds, and she knew it. However, I’d anticipated it. I whipped out the photos.

  “Oh, I don’t want to see them,” she said. “I just, you know, wondered.”

  “Go on. Have a look. I don’t mind.”

  She grabbed them from me. “Wow!” she gasped, impressed as I’d hoped she would be.

  “Who’s the guy?” Sally asked, looking at a photo with Marek in it. He’d come up behind us one afternoon when I was taking some snaps of Magda near the Thomas Church. He said exactly what he’d said to me the first time I met him at The Sharp Corner: “Well, well, well, what have we here?”

  “That’s Marek,” I said.

  “They make a handsome couple.”

  “Yes,” I replied stiffly. “Except of course they weren’t a couple.”

  “Of course not,” Sally said. We’d already excavated my past enough for her to know that she’d blundered. “I just mean … well, I think they both look very nice.”

  She handed the photos back, all brisk and professional. I expected her to change the subject, but she didn’t.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

  “About what?”

  “Marek. He’s the key, isn’t he?”

  She smiled. She’s a sharp one, I thought.

  *

  I never liked Marek: let me be clear about that. That only made it worse, of course, when the end came. If you like someone and they die, it’s easy. They’re alive; you like them. They’re dead; you’re sorry. If you don’t like them, it’s more complicated.

  There were many reasons for my antipathy. Marek was smug, conceited, snide, bitchy and deceitful. He was also charming, good-looking, insightful and far cleverer than I would ever be. But mainly I didn’t like him because he was always there, lurking in the background – and sometimes, it seemed, cavorting in the foreground.

  I wasn’t the only person who disliked him. He had many enemies. I’ve never known someone to have quite so many enemies and to care so little. In that paranoid little state, he had one rare quality that inspired both admiration and envy: he appeared to be free. He didn’t kowtow to anyone; he didn’t care what anybody thought. It was a dangerous way to be, but he somehow got away with it.

  I was warned about him countless times. Watch out for that one. He’s a slippery fish. Everyone had an opinion on him, an incredible story, a damning titbit.

  When I first met him, I asked Dieter, a student on the ‘Aspects of political and social life in Britain’ discussion class I taught on Friday afternoons, about him. I often went drinking with Dieter after class in the Moritzbastei, a student club in an historic cellar near the University Tower. We were the same age, Dieter being older than the earnest girls in the class because of his four years’ military service, and we shared a love of beer. He had taken it upon himself to guide me through the idiosyncrasies of life in East Germany.

  “Trust me, in this shithole you need an insider to show you the ropes.”

  He hated the GDR and loved all things American. It was a miracle he kept his university place. Regime critics like him often found themselves inexplicably unable to continue their studies. After a couple of beers, he’d always ask me the same question: “What the fuck are you doing here, man? You could live in England and be free.”

  “Scotland,” I’d say.

  “Scotland, England, whatever. Give me a train ticket out of here, man? I’d grab it like a shot. Choo-choo!”

  He rolled his eyes when I mentioned Marek. “Oh, this one. No one knows how he manages it. Look at the clothes he wears: all things from the West. Where does he get the money? Trust me, one day we’ll see him driving round the Ring in a Porsche, and no one will be surprised. You wanna hear my advice regarding Dembowski? I’ll tell ya: there’s something about that guy that doesn’t add up. I’d stay away from him.”

  But I couldn’t stay away from him. He was part of Magda’s life.

  The whole time I was in Leipzig, I only spent any time alone with him once. He came round one morning to the apartment on 18th October Street that I shared with an English teacher called Kevin.

 
I was still in bed when the doorbell rang. Kevin was in, but I knew he wouldn’t get it. I’d come home the night before to find him shagging Gaby, another student from my ‘Aspects of political and social life in Britain’ discussion class, on the sofa. Kevin’s main motivation for being in Leipzig was to get laid. Being from the West afforded a person a certain cachet, even a person as unprepossessing as Kevin, a podgy Londoner with an obsessive love of Tottenham Hotspur FC and a fondness for phrases such as ‘bloody Nora’. Kevin was working his way through his female students – and mine too, it seemed. I grabbed a towel, wrapped it round me and headed for the door.

  Marek was on the landing, smoking a Kent cigarette, his signature brand. He was wearing a light leather coat and a pair of Rayban sunglasses although it was the middle of December and bitterly cold.

  “Hi,” he said, barging past me into the flat.

  We hadn’t made an arrangement for him to come round – I hadn’t even told him where I lived – but he acted like we had. He marched into the living room, humming ‘Addicted to Love’ by Robert Palmer, and I trailed after him, uncertain what to do.

  “So?” he said, settling on the sofa and flicking his ash into the ashtray.

  “Eh…?” I said.

  “We should probably go into town to complete our little piece of business. Change money,” he mouthed.

  I stared at him. I’d told Magda I was running short of cash, but I hadn’t said anything about wanting to change money.

  “Ah, I didn’t actually – ”

  “It’s better if we talk about it in town,” he interrupted, putting a finger to his lips. “Can’t be too careful.”

  “I’m, eh, not dressed.”

  “I can wait a few minutes.”

  “That’s magnanimous.”

  If he detected any sarcasm, he didn’t show it. Instead, he picked up the latest chapter of my thesis entitled ‘Heine and the Impetus towards Socialism’ from the coffee table and started to flick through it. Seeing no alternative, I went to my room and got dressed. When I came back, he was smiling.

  “Now, listen to this,” he said and read me the lines about the Prussian border guards I’d quoted from Germany, A Winter’s Tale:

  And still they strut about as stiff,

  As straight and thin as a candle,

  As if they’d swallowed the corporal’s stick

  Old Fritz knew how to handle.

  The stick has never quite been lost,

  Although its use has been banned.

  Inside the glove of newer ways

  There’s still the old iron hand.

  “But isn’t it a little fanciful to suggest that those words somehow tie Heine to a socialist agenda? I mean, if he went to the border today he might very well think the ‘old iron hand’ was still there.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m covering that. That’s kind of my point actually.”

  “But you don’t say anything about it here.”

  “I haven’t got to that bit yet.”

  “I see.” He put the chapter down on the coffee table. Then he caught sight of the title page and picked it up. “Tripping the Light Fantastic: Political Virtuosity in the Works of Heinrich Heine. Is that your title?”

  Bramsden had said the same thing in exactly the same incredulous tone of voice.

  “Yes,” I snarled.

  “Interesting.” He let the page drop on to the coffee table. “Shall we go?”

  The heating in the building on 18th October Street was controlled centrally, and my apartment was suffocatingly warm. The freezing air hit me like a punch. I pulled my sheepskin hat down and huddled inside my coat, but Marek didn’t seem to feel the cold. He had no gloves or hat. We went to an expensive little bar in the Mädler Arcade, which also sold ice cream and disappointing cakes made with synthetic cream. Without asking me what I wanted, and although it was just after ten, Marek ordered a beer and schnapps for us both.

  “Your very good health,” he said, knocking his shot back. Wearily, I did the same.

  He picked up his beer and led me to a booth at the back. “So,” he said, lowering his voice, “I can change money for you. It’s not a problem. I know some Polish people here who want Deutschmarks. How much do you want to change?”

  The deal – a deal that I hadn’t asked for but that was certainly going to help to tide me over – was done in a matter of seconds. He offered me an excellent rate. There was no reason to say no.

  “You should come up to Berlin sometime,” he said as we finished our beers. “You know I have a place there? It’s bang in the middle of Prenzlauer Berg, where all the action is. I know how you westerners like to romanticise our little underground scene. We’ll show you round. Berlin is a great city, even today.”

  We’ll show you round. I knew what that meant and I didn’t like it. That meant him and Magda. Magda and him.

  Five days later, I met him on a park bench by the lake in Clara Zetkin Park. I gave him my Deutschmarks, and he handed me an envelope stuffed with East Marks.

  “Count them,” he said, and I did.

  Everything was in order. It was a good deal. I should have been pleased.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  One Friday shortly after New Year, you take the train to Berlin with Kerstin. She has an interview at the Pergamon Museum for a temporary position as a researcher. You tell everyone you’re going to the launch party for the latest issue of Not Only But Also, which features some photographs you took in November of the area around Shakespeare Street. You are going to the party, but that’s not all.

  It’s cold on the train. You and Kerstin sit in the dining car wrapped up in your coats, drinking endless cups of coffee and smoking cigarettes.

  “I can’t believe Marek invited your British friend to the party,” Kerstin says.

  “I can’t believe he accepted the invitation.”

  She smiles and stubs out her cigarette. “He probably wants to keep an eye on you.”

  “Maybe. I think he would’ve suggested coming up tonight, which wouldn’t have been great given the other business, but he has that class he teaches.”

  The other business is meeting Uncle Ivan, who is going to help you with your new plan.

  “Ah yes. Gaby says you should hear the questions Jana asks. Apparently, your British friend’s not used to discussing dialectical materialism. So, when is he coming up?”

  “Saturday evening. Marek has given him keys to the apartment so he can drop off his bag there and join us at the party.”

  “Really? That’s a first.”

  “I know. Perhaps Marek thinks it doesn’t matter because he’s from the West.” Few people make it over the threshold of Marek’s apartment on Pflaster Street. It’s stuffed full of appliances and furniture from West Germany, procured by Uncle Ivan, and Marek keeps all his personal things there, including books and pictures, which reveal personal tastes not exactly forbidden in the Workers’ and Farmers’ State but not encouraged either. Just as Shakespeare Street is your sanctuary, Pflaster Street is his. It says things about him.

  “Or perhaps he thinks a visit to Pflaster Street will throw him off the scent. About you two, I mean.”

  “I don’t think he suspects anything. He’s too, you know, straightforward.”

  “He doesn’t like Marek.”

  “I know. But lots of people don’t like him. I don’t think he dislikes him for any particular reason.”

  “How long are you going to keep this up?” she asks, and there’s an unfamiliar edge in her voice.

  You take a cigarette from the packet on the table and light it. “As long as it takes. We need some cover. He can give us that.”

  “It’s a dangerous game.”

  “Do you think it’s wrong?”

  She sighs. “I can see that you need a decoy. But you know, Magda, you don’t have to leave. You could stay. Plenty of people manage to make a life for themselves here.”

  You glance over at her. You understand what she means. You’ve though
t about it too. Couldn’t you take the well-trodden German path of internal emigration? Get a hut in the country like the one her parents have. Spend weekends there with a few trusted friends. Grill sausages and drink beer. Live only in the private sphere and find a simple kind of happiness.

  “I can’t,” you say. “After Jürgen’s accident, I lost the ability to think like that. I can’t do it. ”

  She nods. “Okay. Fair enough. I’ll miss you, that’s all.”

  “I’ll miss you too, but – ”

  “I know.” She waves a dismissive hand. It’s too painful to talk about. The train is pulling into the station in Berlin. “Do you want me to come with you to your mother’s?” she asks.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “I have time. My interview’s not until 15:00.”

  Your mother takes a long time to answer the buzzer for the two-room apartment she’s lived in since your father divorced her. It’s not one of her better days.

  “Ach, Magda,” she says. “I thought you would be here sooner.”

  “How could we have been here sooner? I told you we were getting the 09:30 train.”

  “Did you? I don’t remember. Would you like some coffee, Kerstin?”

  Kerstin smiles. “Yes, please, Frau Reinsch.”

  Your mother shuffles through to the kitchen. “Don’t get angry,” Kerstin says to you in an undertone.

  You sit down on the sofa. On the bookshelf is a photograph of your mother playing the cello, taken at a concert to mark German-Soviet Friendship Day in 1976. It’s like looking at a photograph of a completely different woman. You remember the woman in the photograph with the glossy blonde page boy from your childhood. She used to come into your bedroom smelling of hairspray and Queen of the Night perfume to leave a Bambino chocolate on your pillow after she’d played a concert. You liked her.

  Your mother returns from the kitchen with coffee and slightly stale poppy seed cake. “So, how have you been, Frau Reinsch?” Kerstin asks.

  Your mother likes Kerstin and so she makes an effort. “Oh, not too bad, dear. You know, the usual.”

  If you were here on your own, she’d say: I have terrible pains in my leg. Or: I’ve been so dizzy lately. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.