The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  In London, I visited the East German Embassy. They told me they couldn’t start a visa application until I had obtained a full passport. I was running out of money – and excuses as to why I wasn’t yet home – and so I got a cheap coach ticket back to Glasgow. I got a new passport there quickly enough, limited to one year because I’d lost the previous one, and restarted communications with the embassy in London. I’d been waiting for a reply when the letter arrived from Kerstin.

  Now there was no point to any of it. I’d been such a fool. Why hadn’t I seen that this would inevitably happen? Why hadn’t I been braver? Why hadn’t I stood up to Sander? He was just a jumped-up policeman.

  I had no idea what to do next but I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t stay at home. Downstairs in the living room my dad was sitting slumped in front of the television in a high-backed hospital chair. The second heart attack had left him a virtual invalid. He was a bag of bones, and his hand shook when he reached for his glass of Lemon Barley Water.

  “It’s that hardening of the arteries,” my mum whispered to me in the hall.

  “No, it’s not,” Shona said. “It’s the smoking.”

  “Smoking causes hardening of the arteries, Shona,” I said.

  “What do you know about it? You haven’t even been here.” It would be her constant refrain for years to come.

  “Everyone knows smoking causes hardening of the arteries,” I said.

  “Oh do they. What, like everyone knows you talk pure pish?”

  “Pet,” my mum said. “Language.”

  It was unbearable. I wished to God that Chris were around. Then I could have gone over to the O’Driscolls and hung out there. But he was Inter-railing round Europe with his new girlfriend, a second-year chemistry student called Joanna.

  The day after Kerstin’s letter arrived, I rang John Bull-Halifax at his flat in Edinburgh, in some desperation. He wasn’t in, and I assumed he’d gone away for the summer, but the following morning he rang back. He was full of a production of Zoyka’s Apartment by Mikhail Bulgakov that he was putting on at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was fascinating to see how people reacted to it. The student actors were absolutely brilliant and had really got the text. And so on. It was like speaking to a visitor from another planet.

  “John,” I interrupted. “I was wondering if I could pop over and see you sometime.”

  “Sure,” he said. “That’d be great. I’d love to hear how’s it all been going in Leipzig. Why don’t you come to the play?”

  I made an arrangement to meet him in a pub at the Grassmarket in Edinburgh the following lunchtime. The place was full of colourful festival goers and Bull-Halifax walked in beaming one of his film star smiles. Never in my life have I seen anyone’s face cloud over so fast.

  “Dead?” he said. “Marek? What do you mean?”

  “I mean … he’s, eh, dead,” I said.

  He look around him wildly. “But – ”

  I told him the whole story. I saw no alternative. Apart from anything else, I wasn’t going to be able to complete my DPhil at Leipzig University now. In any case, I was much too jangled to come up with any plausible lies.

  I knew he’d be angry, and he was. “I thought I told you,” he spluttered, his handsome face suddenly a twisted beetroot mask of fury. “No western contacts. Why didn’t you listen to me, you stupid little prick?”

  For a moment, I thought he was going to hit me. But he just banged his fist on the table, then turned his head away from me and glared at the door as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t … I never thought this would happen.” He sighed and dropped a napkin he’d been scrunching in his fist down on the table. “I feel terrible,” I said. “As well you might.” He glared at me. “Christ, we don’t normally get many casualties on our student exchanges.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  He ran a hand through his red-gold curls and rubbed his face. “Well, I suppose you didn’t pull the trigger,” he said at last. “It’s really the system to blame. I do struggle with it a bit, you know. And it does sound like a completely madcap plan. What was he thinking of? I mean, he’s an intelligent guy.” He looked at the pub door, as if expecting the answer to walk through it. “There’s been absolutely nothing about it in the press here or in the West German press. The East German authorities must have managed to hush it up. They’re getting better and better at that.” He sighed. “What I don’t understand is why he didn’t just apply for permission to leave. He’d probably have got it. His sister’s already in the West.”

  “I’ve no idea,” I said. “I don’t really know how it works.”

  “Apparently not.” His anger simmered back up to the surface, and he glared at me for a moment. “Well, this is a bloody disaster. What are we going to tell the Arts & Humanities Research Council? Expelled from the Republic. Jesus Christ!”

  I looked at the table. “I don’t know,” I said. “And to be honest I don’t care. I think I’m done with academia. I just want to know how Magda is. I know she probably won’t want much to do with me now, but I’d still like to know she’s okay.” I met his gaze. “I know I’ve no right to ask, but do you think you could try to find out?”

  He sighed theatrically. “Yeah, sure,” he said at last. “I’d kind of like to know myself. I’ve always been very fond of Magda. I’ll put a call through to my contact at the university tomorrow. I’ll let you know as soon as I have some information.”

  “You don’t mean Hencke, do you? I don’t think you should speak to him.”

  “Hencke? Never heard of him. I’ll speak to Professor Sahr, the Head of Faculty.”

  I got on to the train back to Glasgow, feeling fairly optimistic. If John Bull-Halifax had never heard of Hencke, I’d never heard of Professor Sahr. John had contacts in the right places – high up. Maybe there was even a chance that Magda would come to see things the way he had in the end. It wasn’t me who pulled the trigger. It was the system to blame. Maybe this whole business would persuade her that the best way forward was for us to get married.

  As I went to sleep that night under the candlewick quilt in my childhood bedroom, I imagined waiting for her at Berlin Zoo. I’d spot her immediately like I had in the Mitropa. She’d run into my arms and I’d whisk her off to a new life. There would be sadness about Marek, of course. But we’d get over it.

  John rang back three days later. Professor Sahr wasn’t at the university, it being the holidays, but he’d been able to get a call through to his summer house by the lake in Markkleeberg.

  “It’s not good news,” he said. “Magda’s no longer a matriculated student at the university. Sahr was actually rather exercised about the amount of paperwork he’d had to process at the end of term because of her. It delayed his departure to his dacha. He’s none too pleased with you either.”

  I swallowed hard. “What does that mean?”

  “Beyond the fact that she’s lost her university place? I don’t know exactly. And there’s no way Sahr would ever tell me. He was doing me a big favour telling me as much as he did.”

  “Did he say anything about Marek?”

  “No, but then I didn’t ask him. Bit of a tricky subject to broach and I wanted to keep him sweet so I could get as much information as possible about Magda.”

  “Do you think she’s all right?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s been detained for questioning because of Marek.”

  “Fuck,” I said. “That’s terrible.”

  “Try not to worry about it too much. They’ll probably release her pretty quickly. After all, it’s too late now, isn’t it?”

  “What can I do?”

  “I’m afraid there’s not much you can do. I don’t think you’ll be allowed back over there, and even if you were it would just cause Magda more problems if you tried to get in touch with her. The best you can hope for is that she applies to leave and her application is granted, and
she then gets in touch with you.”

  “I don’t see that happening,” I said.

  “Frankly neither do I. Look, Bob, I’m afraid your only option is to forget all about Leipzig and get on with your life.”

  “But – ” I began.

  “It’s another world over there. We can’t really influence what happens. I don’t fully understand how it all works and I’ve been working with them for years. You certainly don’t understand it. I think that’s abundantly clear. And you’ve made yourself persona non grata. If you want to help Magda the best thing you can do is to get on with your life and leave her alone.”

  The following day, I received a communication from the Embassy of the German Democratic Republic in London, refusing my visa application. It was stamped with the words: ‘Decision Definitive’.

  It seemed Bull-Halifax was right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Whoever is in the next cell lets you know where you are by knocking on the wall. One knock means A, two knocks mean B, three C, and so on. You are in the Stasi remand prison in Berlin. You shudder and wrap your arms around yourself. Like everyone else, you’ve heard stories about this place that is a grey blank on the Berlin street plan.

  You knock back: thank you. Then you curl up on the plank bed with the blanket tucked tightly round you, as close to the wall and your new friend as you can get.

  A couple of minutes later, the guard pulls the bolt back on your cell door, letting it go with a clang. He orders you to change position. Prisoners must sleep on their backs with their arms outside the blankets.

  You lie on your back and stare into the overhead light bulb, letting it hurt your eyes. Impossible to sleep like this. But you must sleep. You’re exhausted from the long drive here in the fish van. Tomorrow or sometime very soon there will be more questions. The guards who strip-searched you when you arrived, took the passport-sized photographs. You’ll be asked about them.

  You’re so tired. Your eyes close. Then in the corridor another bolt clangs and you jerk awake.

  Your interrogator is a man of about forty with one sticky-out ear and buck teeth. His accent tells you he is from the Valley of the Clueless – that part of Saxony where it is not possible to receive West TV.

  He paces about the small, windowless room, while you sit in the blue jogging suit and slippers that were issued to you on your arrival with your hands under your thighs. He doesn’t ask you about Hungary. They know everything about Hungary. The colonel made that clear. How you don’t know. Maybe Jana is cleverer than you thought. It’s because of Hungary that you’re here. Fleeing the Republic. A very serious matter.

  The colonel quoted Comrade General Secretary Honecker: Those who let themselves be recruited, objectively serve West German reaction and militarism, whether they know it or not.

  But the interrogator doesn’t ask about that. Instead, he asks you about the westerner, addressing you by your cell number.

  “We know he sold his passport, 128,” he says. “It is up to you to tell us whom he sold it to.”

  “I don’t know,” you say. “I didn’t even know that he’d sold it.”

  He slams his fist down on the table and glares at you. “You do know, 128. Tell me.”

  After the interrogation, a guard takes you back to your cell through the traffic light system in operation in the corridors. You try to walk tall, but it’s impossible not to shuffle in the oversized prison slippers, and each time a red light flashes and the buzzer sounds, the guard screams “Eyes down!” and orders you to wait. That’s one of the worst parts. Standing in the corridor, looking down, as though you’re ashamed of yourself, waiting for the guard, who is about your own age, to yell: “Walk!”

  One day, a colleague bursts into the interrogation room to invite your interrogator to the pub.

  “Comrade Captain Pankowitcz,” he says, “won’t you join us for a beer later at the Adler?”

  It’s a tactic to torment you. But it’s backfired. Now you know your tormentor’s name. You think about this during the long, monotonous hours in the cell. You repeat his name to yourself. Pankowitcz, Pankowitcz. And your own name. You are Magda. You are Magdalena. You are not a number.

  Repeating the names keeps other thoughts out of your head. How do they know the things they know? Where is Marek? Has he been arrested too? Pankowitcz tells you he’s gone. That he’s in the West. But that can’t be. He wouldn’t go without you. And they know every detail about Hungary so they’d have stopped him.

  The next interrogation is not conducted by Pankowitcz, but by a little round man of about fifty with a high-pitched voice. He offers you a cigarette and says, “Let’s just have a friendly chat. We’re not monsters, you know, my dear. Now, tell me, what did your friend Herr McPherson do with his passport?”

  You can’t tell him, and the smile freezes on his face. “I suppose you think you’re very beautiful, 128. Well, you’re not so beautiful. And every day you spend in here you’ll lose a little bit of your beauty. It won’t come back. I’ve seen it before. Pretty soon you’ll be as ugly as me,” he laughs. “But beauty is so much more important in a woman than in a man. Don’t you agree?”

  After that, they leave you alone for five days. It’s so lonely in the cold, damp cell that you’re pleased to see Pankowitcz when next they take you to him. This time, he keeps you up all night. He wants you to sign a confession, saying that you organised the sale of the westerner’s passport.

  You don’t sign. Although you are dropping with fatigue, you don’t sign. Pankowitcz is angry. He accompanies you back to your cell.

  “The sentence will be much more lenient if you sign the confession.”

  “I know your name,” you say. “It’s Pankowitcz.”

  He slaps you then on the face and storms out, clanging the door shut behind him.

  Two days later, a young guard collects you from your cell. He takes you down corridors you’ve never seen before. His voice is quiet, and his touch on your elbow is light. You risk a question. “Where are we going?”

  He chews his mouth. “Family visit,” he mumbles.

  Family visit! Your heart leaps. Your skin tingles. You’re going to see your mother! For all her faults you cannot wait to see her. Will you be allowed to hug her? Will she have something for you? Cigarettes or soap? A message from Marek or Kerstin?

  The guard stops at a door marked ‘Visitors’ Room’. The room is freshly painted and has a clean linoleum floor. A second guard stands under a portrait of Honecker that hangs in a black frame on the back wall. At the window, oatmeal-coloured curtains flutter in the breeze. As always, they’re drawn. In the middle of the room is a cheap wood veneer table with a vase of plastic flowers on it. Sitting at the table, wedged into a padded brown chair, is a portly man in his sixties. For a moment, you cannot think who he can be. Then you realise: it’s your father. He stands up, and you see him flinch as he takes in your slippers and the way you have to hold up your oversized jogging trousers.

  “Hello, Magda,” he says.

  “What are you doing here?” you blurt.

  “I wanted to see my daughter.”

  “Where’s Mama?”

  “I told her to come next time.”

  He sits down. I told her to come next time. You imagine your mother meekly accepting this instruction. You slump into the chair opposite him.

  “Sit up straight! Hands on the table!” snaps the guard under Honecker’s picture.

  “How are you?” your father asks. “You are being looked after correctly.” It’s a statement, not a question. Despite all the disappointments and demotions he’s endured, his faith in the socialist fatherland is undimmed. “You look well,” he says and smiles.

  “Rubbish,” you say.

  His eyes flash. “I hope I don’t need to tell you how difficult this has made things for me and your family. You might think of others.”

  You stare at him. When did you last see him? Months ago. He’s put on weight. The bags under his eyes are star
ting to slide down his cheeks. The skin on his neck is loose. Suddenly, he’s an old man.

  “I’m sorry,” you say, surprising yourself.

  He glares at you then lowers his head. When he looks up again his eyes are shining. A single tear meanders down his left cheek. You reach out a hand to him. He takes it and holds it in his. It’s the closest you’ve been in years.

  “You must co-operate, Magda,” he says. If you co-operate with our authorities, I believe this matter can be cleared up with reasonable haste. You will not of course be able to go back to university, but it might be possible to find another … opening. All you need to do is to tell them who bought the British man’s passport. That’s it. I’ve spoken to several people, very important people in the Party, and they say –”

  “But I don’t know who bought it.”

  He sighs. “Listen to me, Magda. You’ll have to make your peace with our state sometime. This is your home. You belong here. You have your whole life in front of you. Do you want to spend it fighting useless battles or do you want to make something of your life? Maybe everything isn’t perfect in our GDR, but do you suppose it’s any better over there?”

  You stare past him. There was a time when you believed in your country as much as he does. It would be so pleasant to slip back into that. To watch the red flags fluttering on May Day and feel your heart swell with pride. To belt out rousing choruses and believe them. To snuggle down among the collective certainties of international socialism. But it’s impossible.

  You stand up, clutching the waistband of your jogging trousers. “Thank you for coming. Will you ask Mama to come next time?”

  The following week, you’re moved to Gera for the trial. The judge is an elderly man, one of the ‘People’s Judges’ trained and appointed after the war to replace former Nazis. His expression when he addresses you is that of a disappointed grandfather.

  “Our socialist fatherland has done so much for you,” he says. “We have educated and nurtured you, and you have thrown it all back in our face.”