The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  You shake your head. “No. I wish it had been. His training partner, Olaf, took me aside at the hospital and told me he was pretty sure it was caused by doping.”

  The westerner’s eyes widen. “No!”

  “Apparently, Jürgen’s coach had been giving him steroids and telling him they were vitamins. Olaf got suspicious after Jürgen’s seizure. Eventually, he found proof. It seems Manfred, Jürgen’s coach, had upped the dose because they were preparing for the Olympic trials. Jürgen had a real chance of gold in Los Angeles, and Manfred wanted to make sure he got it. More glory for him that way. We didn’t even bloody well go in the end because of the Soviet boycott.”

  “Jesus,” the westerner says. “That’s unbelievable. What did you do when Olaf told you?”

  “I told him I’d tell my father and that he’d press for an investigation. But he said he’d already told my father, and he didn’t want to do anything. He wanted to hush it all up.”

  “Christ. Why?”

  “I’ve asked myself that many times. We’re not close, but I would never have thought that he would let something like that happen to his son and do nothing about it. To begin with, I thought maybe he was scared. But I don’t think it was that. I think he wanted to save his career. He’d been at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and had hoped to make State Secretary. That didn’t happen. He went out of favour when Honecker came to power and was moved to the Ministry for Light Industry. But he was still a fairly important man. I think he wanted to keep his position.”

  “Maybe he just couldn’t handle it,” the westerner says. “Maybe he just kind of blocked it out.”

  “Maybe.” He has no idea. He’s never met someone like your father, someone who has spent his entire life manipulating his way to the top in a system where favour counts for everything and merit for very little.

  “That must have been really hard,” the westerner says. “What did you do when Olaf told you about your dad? Did you take it further yourself?”

  “No. That would have been impossible. I ran away. I couldn’t deal with it … I came here.” You smile. “That’s why I know this place so well. I left without a word to anyone. A friend organised a visa, and Aunt Vladka spoke to people here who got me a job in a private café and a bed in an apartment a bit like the one at Shakespeare Street. I never meant to go back.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “My father fetched me, and I had to go. I was living here illegally. And he said Aunt Vladka would be expelled from Germany if I didn’t come back.”

  “What happened to you then?”

  “I dropped out. Hung around in Prenzlauer Berg. I couldn’t go on with my studies.”

  “You probably needed time to adjust to the shock. You don’t get over something like that in a couple of months.”

  “It wasn’t just that. I used to believe in our system, you see. I thought we really were building a better society, where everyone would be equal. When Jürgen had his accident I realised overnight that it was all a lie. What’s the point of going to university if everything you learn is a lie?”

  He leans across and touches your cheek. “But you’re at university now.”

  “Yes, well, a point came when … I guess I changed my mind.”

  “Really?”

  You shrug and light another cigarette. “Kind of.”

  “Have you never thought of leaving?”

  “No, we never think about this.”

  “We?”

  “I never think about this.”

  He looks into your eyes and smiles. “We could get married, you know.” He takes your hand. “I mean, I love you, so why not?”

  I love you. For a moment, you’re tempted. There are thousands of East German girls who pray for an offer like this every night. But it’s impossible. You have Marek to think about. You stub out your cigarette, though you’ve only smoked half of it. You’ve told the westerner too much. It’s time to stop talking.

  “I’ll think about it,” you say, leaning over and kissing him. “Thank you for the offer.”

  *

  You spend the next days sightseeing. The westerner takes hundreds of photographs with the second-hand camera he paid too much for in the camera shop on Schloss Lane, not thinking about the cost of developing the films. You eat in cafés, and the westerner pays. Each time a waiter sidles over and says, “Change money?” but the westerner, having learnt from you, says: “No.”

  On the second to last day, you’re drinking coffee on the terrace of a café near the National Museum when a movement on the street opposite catches your eye. At first you’re not sure it’s her. But then she moves again, and you see her more clearly.

  Jana has followed you to Prague. Your plan is working.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I forgot about my dad’s illness when I was in Prague, but guilt plagued me as soon as I got back to Leipzig. I wrote home asking how he was and received a reply from my mum, which said: much the same. Towards the end of term, I made the journey to the central post office again and phoned home. This time Shona, my sister, answered. She set out the situation for me with a bluntness my mum could never have mustered. My dad hadn’t just been unwell, she said, he’d had a heart attack.

  “Mum didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to worry you.”

  “A serious heart attack or a mild one?”

  She didn’t dignify this with an answer. “Our dad is fucking dying, and where the fuck are you, dickhead?”

  “He’s not dying, Shona. He’s had a heart attack. People recover from heart attacks. Calm down.”

  “You should be here. You’re such a selfish wanker. If it was Chris O’Driscoll’s dad you’d be here.”

  I hung up on her. If our dad was as ill as she was making out she wouldn’t be yelling down the phone at me, I reasoned. Nonetheless, I made some changes to my plans. I’d intended to spend the summer with Magda. There had been talk of trips to Hungary or Bulgaria when we were in Prague. I now decided I should go home for at least ten days at the end of term, which by then was only a week away. I booked a train ticket and asked Hencke to organise a new exit visa for me at our weekly Monday morning meeting.

  I never understood the purpose of those meetings. Initially, I assumed we’d discuss my DPhil research, but we never did. No doubt Hencke knew there was nothing to discuss. Researching the topic in Leipzig was a non-starter. There was plenty of material, but it was all rubbish. The GDR is the part of Germany in which Heine’s testament, the ideas for which he lived and struggled as a poet, have been realised, wrote one East German critic. Fine. But he couldn’t back it up. He couldn’t back it up because it wasn’t true. I had a pass for the section of the library that housed western books and newspapers – known colloquially as a ‘poison certificate’ – but it wasn’t well stocked.

  Instead, Hencke usually asked me about the students in my Friday discussion class. “Ah, the lovely Gaby!” he’d say with a little cynical smile. “She has interesting views about Great Britain?” I never knew if he was pumping me for information or just taking the piss. Perhaps he thought Kevin and I were both screwing Gaby. Some people said Hencke was screwing her. Maybe he was.

  Sometimes he asked me about Jana. The little smile would appear again, though this time, presumably, for different reasons. “Such a diligent girl! Really most remarkable. If only they were all like that.”

  And sometimes he probed me for my opinions on the GDR. “Now, tell me honestly, how do you find it here? There are things you like? Maybe some things you don’t like at all?”

  Only a cretin would have honestly told Hencke anything. I made polite noises. It was interesting. The people were friendly. I appreciated the cheap cinema and theatre tickets.

  “Ah yes,” he’d say. “The cultural aspect.”

  But the morning of what turned out to be our final meeting, he was in a less jovial mood.

  “Another visa?” he snapped. “What is the point of all these comings and goings?” I didn�
�t dare tell him that I hadn’t used the previous exit visa. “There will be no problem obtaining an exit permit but how am I to persuade our authorities to issue you with yet another entry visa? What with all these trips to the non-socialist abroad, they might conclude that you don’t like it very much in our little republic.”

  “I’d be grateful if you could try,” I said. “My father’s not well.”

  He peered at me through his jam-jar glasses and drummed his fingers on his insanely tidy desk. “Is that so?” he said.

  “He’s had a heart attack. My sister told me it’s quite serious.”

  He stared for a moment at his bookshelves, which were lined with leather-bound volumes of Capital, the complete works of Lenin and Honecker’s From My Life, all looking as though they’d never been opened. “Very well. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you.”

  He fixed me with a malicious little smile. “By the way,” he said, “I bumped into one of our brighter students yesterday. A certain Magda Reinsch.”

  I froze. “Did you?” I managed.

  A sly look came into his eye. “Do you know her? She isn’t in your discussion class? No? What a pity! Such a delightful girl. But then even if she were in your discussion class, I don’t suppose you would know her socially, would you? Contact with westerners isn’t encouraged among our interpreters and translators. Perhaps you think that’s a lot of nonsense. But then you, dear Robert, are from a NATO country, and our German Democratic Republic is a Warsaw Pact country –”

  I stared at him. He’d gone mad. No contact with westerners was an unwritten rule, not official policy. But he knew about us. That much was clear. And he was furious. I don’t know how long I sat there, parrying his questions and enduring his snide little remarks. Eventually, I could stand it no more. I jumped up and said I had to go.

  “So you must go?” he said, his eyes disappearing into tiny pins of poison. “What a pity! Well, I hope to see you again soon. You may collect your visa from the central police station on Thursday afternoon.”

  I stumbled for the door, banging into the book case. Something clattered to the ground, and I rushed to pick it up. It was a tin with a picture of the Moulin Rouge on it that had once contained chocolates from Paris. Hencke grabbed it from me and replaced it on the shelf with a sound something like a growl.

  I scrambled for the lift and sprinted out of the building when it reached the ground floor. I had to find Magda. If Hencke knew about us she could be in a lot of trouble.

  But Magda had disappeared.

  *

  All that week, I searched for her, but she was nowhere to be found. Suddenly, I realised that I actually had very little idea how to contact her. It was always her who got in touch with me. I didn’t know which hall of residence she lived in. I had no clear idea which classes she attended. And I didn’t really know any of her friends. The only address I had for her was Shakespeare Street, but she’d always told me not to mention that to anyone and never to go there unless she was with me.

  By Saturday evening, I was frantic. My train was at 08:40 on Monday morning. I had to find her and fast. In desperation, I trudged down 18th October Street to the hall of residence where Dieter lived.

  “I’ve got a problem,” I said, when he answered the door. “I need your advice.”

  He slung on a jacket and we went to a nearby beer bar. I was tying myself in knots, trying to explain what had happened without naming names or giving too much away, when he leant across the table and said, “Listen man, I know about you and Magda. It’s okay. You can be straight with me.”

  My mouth fell open. “You do?”

  “Sure. This isn’t such a big town. Don’t worry. People make a fuss about contact with westerners, but that’s just political crap. Nobody really cares about it.” He punched me on the arm and winked. “Lucky guy. She’s a lovely girl, and I hear she’s crazy about you.”

  I beamed. “Yeah?”

  “That’s the word on the street. Now tell me what the problem is.”

  And so I told him about Hencke and my fruitless search for Magda. “You see, there’s this place we sometimes go on Shake –”

  He held up a hand. “Better that I don’t know the name, man.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, we sometimes go to this particular place, yeah? And she’s always told me never to tell anyone about it and never to go there on my own. But now I’m thinking – ”

  “That you should go there because that’s where she probably is, right? Well, let me put it this way, if Hencke had something on me, I’d want to know about it as soon as possible.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Get over there, man. That’s my advice.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He clapped my shoulder. “You’re welcome. That’s what friends are for.”

  *

  The door to the rear house was open when I arrived at Shakespeare Street, and the building was in darkness, apart from a dim glow in Magda’s window. There was no light in the stairwell, and I felt my way to the top floor. I stood for a moment in front of the brown-painted door, breathing hard. When I banged the door knocker, the sound seemed to fill the building.

  For a moment, there was silence. Then I heard footsteps behind the door. A lock scraped back and the door swung open.

  “Hello, Bob,” Magda said. She didn’t sound angry – or even surprised. “Come in,” she said, standing aside to let me pass. She was wearing the sleeveless green dress she’d had on the first night I met her at the train station and she had a champagne flute in her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as she closed the door. “I know you told me never to come here, but there’s something I have to tell you. It’s important.”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed me on the lips. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s about Hencke. Magda, I think he knows about us.”

  “Oh well.” She giggled, and I realised she was really quite drunk.

  “I wanted to warn you,” I said. “I thought – ”

  She put a finger to my lips. “Shh! Come through and meet the others.”

  The others? Numbly, I followed her. Marek was lounging on the divan in black Levi’s and an expensive-looking white shirt, smoking a Kent cigarette.

  “Robert,” he shouted. “Well, well, well.”

  Kerstin was sitting on the floor in the arms of a man I’d never seen before. She fluttered her mascaraed eyelashes at me and blew me a kiss. Torsten was there too with his girlfriend, and Gert, the bouncer from The Sharp Corner, was already pouring me a drink. Champagne. The real stuff from France. There were bottles of it packed in ice in the kitchen sink along with some bottles of vodka. Not the cheap East German stuff. Smirnoff from the Intershop.

  “What’s the celebration?” I asked.

  For a moment, they all looked kind of awkward. Then Magda said, “Marek is leaving.”

  “Leaving?” I said.

  “Yes,” Marek said. “You obviously mustn’t breathe a word about this to anyone, but I’m off to the Golden West. I’ve kind of had enough.”

  “How … how will you arrange that?” I asked.

  “I’ve found a route out in the Harz Mountains,” he said, launching into a long explanation about some underground river that crossed the border, while I stared at him dumbfounded. “The tunnel is wide enough to crawl through and not guarded. The place is swarming with guards above ground, but they’ve completely overlooked the tunnel. Can you believe it?”

  “Perhaps it’s mined?” I said.

  “I’ve looked into it. It isn’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He tapped his nose. “I have my sources. I’m amazed no one’s thought of it before. Why dig a tunnel when there’s one already there?”

  “Maybe someone did think of it. Maybe they got caught.”

  He laughed “No, it’s never been used. We’ve looked into it very carefully.”

  We. I froze and turned to Magda.
“What about you, Magda? Are you going too?”

  She shook her head. “I have my family to think about.” She smiled sweetly. “And … there’s you.”

  It was late when I got back to the apartment on 18th October Street, but Kevin was waiting up for me. He was drinking a cup of tea and he was alone. He stood up when he saw me.

  “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,” he said.

  “Bad news?” I said. “Bloody Nora!”

  He didn’t smile. “Your mum phoned. Your dad’s had another heart attack. I’m afraid he’s in a bad way.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The day after the farewell party, you go to the hairdressers and then to the camera shop on Schloss Lane to get your photo taken. When you return to the apartment on Shakespeare Street in the early evening the Stasi are waiting for you.

  You sense them as soon as you open the door. Instinct takes over. You turn and flee, thundering down the stairs where you bang into two officers who must have been hiding in the stairwell.

  “Stop! State Security!” one of them shouts.

  So this is what they look like – the grey men from the State Security who everyone is so afraid of. The older officer wears tinted glasses and has the yellowed skin of a chain smoker. The younger man is thick-set with a big face and ears like cauliflowers.

  In your apartment, Hencke is standing by the bookshelf. “Quite a collection of West literature you have here, Comrade Reinsch,” he says. “Most interesting. But surely you can’t have read all these books. Which makes it seem rather silly to have them.”

  He turns and smiles, showing his small, pointy teeth. “Please take a seat.” He points to a chair as he tells the Stasi men to start their search.

  Are you surprised? Yes and no. You remain standing, as the agents pull on their gloves and get out their plastic evidence bags.

  “Sit, Comrade Reinsch,” Hencke says.

  “I’d rather stand.”

  Hencke nods to the younger agent with the cauliflower ears. He leaves his search and pushes you into the chair with a violence that surprises you. Hencke takes a bottle of water from a string bag and puts it on the table. “Glasses?” he asks.