The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  “As I was saying, the German investors prefer bonds.” He looked round the table, smiling at his own joke. There was a ripple of relieved laughter.

  “Investment in equities by the German investors currently accounts for only …”

  I slumped back down into my chair.

  “Are you all right?” whispered the girl journalist.

  Suddenly, I felt like crying. What the fuck was I doing? “No,” I said, “I don’t think I am.”

  The next day I was called in to see Arnold Black, Senior Vice President, Investment Management, Europe, Middle East and Asia. I knew what was coming. It was amazing I’d lasted as long as I had at Liebermann Brothers. Even before I stopped being careful about drinking at work, there were days when I was too hung over to think straight. There had been sickies. Unguarded remarks. I wasn’t fooling anyone any more. My scores in the peer review the previous year had been shocking. In the ‘citizenship’ category – basically a measure of how into the whole idea of Liebermann Brothers you were – I’d scored just 20%. It was an all-time low. I’d survived for three reasons. First, when I was on form, I was really good at my job. Secondly, Gerard Kelly had protected me. I hated to admit it but I knew it was true. By then he was an important man at Liebermann Brothers with a window office and a pretty, young Cambridge graduate for his PA. The third reason was Cordelia Schuhmacher, the well-padded brunette who acted as Arnold Black’s PA. Once, a couple of years previously when I’d been working late, I’d walked into Arnold’s office to leave some papers to be greeted by the sight of Arnold with his trousers round his ankles. His bare arse was pistoning up and down above Cordelia, who was sprawled across his antique desk, her face a picture of dawning shock, her lolling right breast half-obscuring a tasteful black and white photograph of Arnold’s wife Samantha and his two young sons. Arnold turned. His face was beetroot. His eyes widened and he made a violent shooing gesture.

  I closed the door quietly behind me, shaking my head. Shagging his secretary: what a cliché. Cordelia wasn’t even that attractive. The next day Arnold invited me to lunch at Zucchinis, an expensive Italian restaurant near St Paul’s Cathedral. Being a US firm, Liebermann Brothers didn’t endorse drinking at lunchtime, but that day Arnold ordered a bottle of Saint Emilion to wash down our steaks and brandy with the coffee. No direct mention was made of the events of the previous evening, but I was given to understand, ever so subtly, that if I were to keep absolutely schtum, Arnold would always be happy to do whatever he could to advance my cause at Liebermann Brothers.

  Arnold looked distinctly uncomfortable, then, when I arrived in his office. He cleared his throat and met my eyes only fleetingly. I saw him glance at the photograph of Samantha and the boys. If I was going to play that card, now was the moment. But what was I going to do? Tell Samantha? Then I’d be fired and Samantha would be sad.

  Arnold laid his cards on the table pretty swiftly. We could go through all the standard human resources procedures, in which case I should consider our conversation to be an initial verbal warning. Or we could expedite things, in which case he could offer me a substantial pay-off in return for me signing a confidentiality agreement, relinquishing any future claims against the company and agreeing not to take up an equivalent position with a competitor for six months.

  “Gardening leave,” Arnold said brightly, and we both laughed as if we believed I could get a position with a competitor, as if we didn’t both know that I was a drunk and my career was over.

  “Right,” I said. “When do you want me to go?”

  Arnold pressed his fingertips together. “I always think it’s best not to drag these things out, don’t you? Much better for all concerned to move swiftly.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Strike while the iron’s hot and all that.”

  Arnold nodded and laughed, a stagy sound entirely devoid of warmth. Then he fixed me with a sudden, cold stare. “How does right now sound?”

  I swallowed hard. “Right now?”

  He pressed his fingertips together again and said no more.

  “Okay,” I said. “I guess I’ll just, eh, go and clear my desk.”

  Arnold reached behind him and produced a glossy paper bag emblazoned with the Liebermann Brothers logo encircled by holly, one of a consignment we’d had made up the previous Christmas for client gifts. “I took the liberty of asking Cordelia to do that for you. Gerard has kindly deactivated your computer password. If you’d like to hand over your electronic pass and sign these papers, we’ll be all set.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  A brief funeral ceremony is to be conducted at the graveside by a humanist celebrant. “We don’t want a priest,” your father said when he told you about the arrangements on the phone. “We have never been religious.”

  It’s true. Your family has never been religious. It’s a political family. And you are not religious, but you somehow do want a priest: white robes fluttering in the wind, arms raised high as he says, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

  Your father is sombre in a black overcoat, and your mother is dressed in an old navy blue suit you haven’t seen her wear in years. She walks behind your father, arm-in-arm with Angelika, a young nurse from the old people’s home who was fond of Jürgen. You know they arrived separately, but for a brief moment they look as though they are together, united in grief.

  Aunt Vladka is waiting at the cemetery gate. She hugs you and Gert in turn, and her scent of cigarettes and hairspray catapults you back to those Saturday afternoons you used to spend learning Czech in her little apartment full of colourful cushions and candles in glass bottles. Jürgen often used to collect you at the end of the afternoon, and Aunt Vladka would sometimes treat you both to an ice cream at a local milk bar.

  “This is Olaf,” you tell her, turning to the tall, slim man at your side. “Jürgen’s training partner.”

  She clasps his hand. “Thank you for coming.”

  When the hearse arrives, you see that your father has spared no expense. He’s burying his son in a heavy hardwood casket with brass handles. He still has money. Under the terms of the treaty of reunification the pensions of former government officials have been preserved. His is generous, and he still receives the extra allowance accorded to him in the GDR as a Fighter Against Fascism.

  The celebrant is introduced to you as Joachim Witzlack. He wears a shiny dark blue suit and tinted glasses, and his hair is plastered to his head with hair oil. He has the grey complexion of a chain smoker, and it doesn’t take much of an effort of imagination to picture him with a microphone hidden in his lapel and a recording device in his pocket. The old members of the state security service pop up in all kinds of places, but humanist celebrant is a new one on you.

  You clutch Gert’s hand as the coffin is lowered into the ground and try to block out Herr Witzlack’s rasping monotone. Your mother sobs and lurches forward, supported by Angelika, to throw a rose into the grave. Olaf throws in an old photograph of him and Jürgen in front of the sports academy in their GDR tracksuits. What was that term the old regime had for its sportsmen and women? Ambassadors in tracksuits. And those who defected were traitors in tracksuits. Your father picks up a handful of earth, throws it on to the coffin and bows. You do the same, and that’s it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the ceremony is over,” Herr Witzlack says. You wonder what he did before. You can just see him sitting at one of the long interrogation tables in the Stasi remand prison, smoking cigarettes and quizzing prisoners about their sex lives. “Herr Reinsch would now like to invite you for lunch.”

  The meal is at an inn on what is still called Karl Marx Street. Since reunification, the street names have been changing all the time in the new states of the Federal Republic. You sometimes wonder who decides which names can stay and which must go. Dimitroff Street, named after the Bulgarian communist leader, has been renamed Danziger Street, and Ho Chi Minh Street is now Weißenseer Way. But Rosa-Luxemburg Platz remains the same, as does Paul Robeson Street. Perhaps
it is only those who held political office whose names must be expunged from the street map.

  In the restaurant, your mother sits at one end of the table with Angelika, and your father sits at the other with Herr Witzlack. Despite all the time that has passed since their divorce, your parents barely speak. You suspect that somewhere deep down inside, your father still loves your mother but can’t admit it, even to himself. And while your mother might find it in her heart to forgive him for exposing her affair with the second violinist, she will never get over the loss of her musical career.

  You order bratwurst with puréed potatoes and cucumber salad and a vodka to steady your nerves. It’s good, but your mouth is dry and you can only pick at it.

  “You look well,” Aunt Vladka says and squeezes your hand across the table.

  “So do you.” It’s true. She’s chic in a long purple coat and strawberry coloured scarf. You know she struggles financially. She probably got these clothes at a flea market or as a hand-me-down from a friend. Like so many decent people, she has lost out in the new system.

  “Can I get you anything, Frau Reinsch?” Gert asks your mother. “Salt? Pepper?”

  She shakes her head and asks you if Kwan will be all right. “He’s with Gert’s sister. He’ll be fine.”

  “Another beer,” you hear Herr Witzlack call to the waiter. “I hope you were happy with the service, Ewald,” he says to your father. “It was kind of you to give me the job. Things aren’t what they used to be. I sometimes think the world’s gone mad. Good men who worked hard for their country are being persecuted. That’s the only word for it. Still. Some old colleagues like us still stick together, don’t we, Ewald?”

  “It was a very nice service,” your father says.

  You realise then that your father has employed this ex-Stasi man to bury your brother because he’s down on his luck. Maybe he’s even the subject of a prosecution. He reminds you powerfully of the colonel who interviewed you at the Stasi HQ in Leipzig when you were first arrested. Suddenly, the memories from that terrible day when Olaf came to see you about your brother come flooding back and you can stand this quiet lunch no longer.

  “Papa,” you say, “as we have Olaf here today and we haven’t seen him in such a long time, I wonder if I can I ask you a question?”

  Herr Witzlack coughs and lights a cigarette. “Uh-huh,” he says. “Here we go.”

  Your father looks up. He’s caught your tone, and his face hardens beneath the soft, fleshy contours imposed by age.

  “Ask away,” he says.

  “Why did you cover up for Manfred?”

  “Ha!” He laughs, but his laugh is hollow. “My dear, this is all very much in the past. And I hardly think it’s the right topic of conversation for this occasion.”

  He doesn’t say “Manfred who?” or “What do you mean?” though you haven’t spoken of Manfred in years.

  “Why not? We can talk about these things now. Times have changed. I want to know, Papa. Why did you cover up for him?”

  “I did not cover up for him, as you put it. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And this really isn’t the moment.”

  “Magda,” your mother says in a small, tired voice that infuriates you because you remember it so well from childhood. “Your father is right. Now is not the best time to discuss these things.”

  Your father is right. How many times did you hear that when you were growing up? Even after the divorce, she often supported his decisions with regard to you and Jürgen.

  “You’re just as bad,” you say. “You didn’t do anything either. I’m not saying you knew they were giving Jürgen steroids before the accident,” you say to your father. “But afterwards. When Olaf told you what had happened. You covered it up. Why?”

  The table is silent. No one has ever talked about what happened in this way. No one has ever uttered the word ‘steroids.’ Not even you.

  “My dear,” your father says, “sometimes life deals us a tough hand. The best thing we can do then is to accept our situation. The worst thing we can do is to look for someone else to blame. We don’t want to become like the Americans and start looking for someone to sue every time we experience a misfortune.”

  He laughs, and Herr Witzlack joins in. “Indeed no,” he says. “We wouldn’t want to get like that.”

  “A misfortune? Is that what you call it?”

  “There’s no evidence it was anything else.”

  You stare at him in disbelief. “Yes there is. Olaf told you Manfred was doping the athletes. He’d been doing it for years. Then he upped Jürgen’s dose, and that’s when he had his so-called ‘accident’.”

  ‘Doping.’ That’s another word that has never been spoken among the family.

  “But he couldn’t prove it.”

  Olaf coughs. “I could prove it, Herr Reinsch. I had the confidential medication records. I removed them from the training centre at considerable risk to myself. As I recall, you didn’t want to see them.”

  “I’ll thank you to mind your own business, young man.” Your father dabs at his mouth with his napkin and glares round the table. “What is this? Some kind of plot?”

  “I didn’t know that Olaf had obtained the medication records,” says Aunt Vladka. Why didn’t you look at them, Ewald?”

  “I’ll thank you to mind your own business too,” your father snaps. “As I recall your main contribution at a time of family tragedy was to smuggle my daughter out of the country entirely against her best interests.” He juts out his chin and addresses the table. “The medication records had been obtained illegally.”

  “Jürgen was being doped illegally,” you say.

  “You don’t know that’s true,” your father says.

  There are tears in your mother’s eyes, and she pats Angelika’s arm sorrowfully. “Why does everyone keep rehashing the past?” she says. “Can’t they see how painful it is for me? I was his mother.”

  “Hush, Elena,” Aunt Vladka mutters. “This is not about you.”

  “It was true,” you say. “You know it was.”

  “I don’t know it. It might have been true and it might not.”

  “So if it wasn’t true, what happened to Jürgen, in your opinion?”

  “A person can become ill for many reasons.”

  You stare at him. “But, Papa, I think it’s all very clear. There have been newspaper reports, television programmes. Our athletes were given steroids manufactured by Jenapharm and told they were vitamins. Their coaches deceived them. Coaches like Manfred.”

  “It is not clear at all,” your father says. “Perhaps some of our athletes were given steroids. I don’t know about that. But there’s no evidence this happened to Jürgen. First point. And, even if it did, there’s no evidence that this is what caused his accident. Second point. Just because something is reported in the newspapers doesn’t mean it’s true. The western media loves to run down our Republic. For your information, West German athletes were given steroids too. It happened everywhere.”

  “That’s true, Herr Reinsch,” Olaf says, “but they knew they were taking them. They had a choice.”

  Your father waves a dismissive hand. “It was illegal.”

  You look at him. Our Republic. You remember being in the stand at the Gymnastics and Sports Festival in Leipzig the year before your brother’s accident, listening to a successful female athlete addressing the crowd: “People ask what the secret of our sporting success is. There is no secret. It’s all because of actually existing socialism. The future is on our side: on the side of socialism.” The crowd cheered, and you cheered with them. Back then, you scoffed at the things you’d heard people in the West said about the East German athletes. About doping. You thought they were jealous of your country’s athletic prowess. But it was all true.

  “Papa, there have been court cases. Coaches have been given prison sentences.”

  “Not Manfred.”

  “No,” Olaf mutters. “Manfred got away with it. He had friends in hi
gh places.”

  “There have been any number of court cases since 1990 in this area and in other areas too,” your father says. “It’s called victor’s justice. That’s how it is in the wonderful new Germany. Personally, I think we’ve paid a very heavy price to have bananas in the shops and shiny new cars on every street corner. I look around me and I see young people with no jobs and no hope. I see homeless people. Did you ever see a homeless person in our Republic? Were you afraid to go out at night?”

  He’s jutting his chin out again. It’s odd. You agree with much of what he says. It’s true that things are not so wonderful in the new Germany. The West Germans are arrogant. They think they know it all. People like you have become strangers in their own country. Everything from the past has been swept away, whether it was good or bad, without anyone asking if that’s what people want. The old regime blamed everything on the West Germans. The trail of blood leads to Bonn! In the new Germany, the East Germans are the ugly ones with their thick accents, poor English and badly cut clothes – the butt of jokes and an endless source of resentment because of the cost of reunification. All the dreams from 1989 of building a better kind of GDR, creating a new kind of socialism, are long forgotten.

  “We don’t want to be a Kohl plantation,” people shouted after the Wall came down. But that’s exactly what your country became – and you do still think of it as your country. The slogans you chanted at the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig sound hollow today: WE ARE THE PEOPLE. Now you think: WE WERE THE PEOPLE. For a few weeks. Not longer.

  “Think about our women,” your father continues. “Before there was a Kindergarten place for every child. Every woman had the opportunity to work. Even if a woman didn’t have a husband, she could look after her children.”

  You look at your plate, where the half-eaten bratwurst and potato purée lie uneaten and congealing. When you were pregnant with Kwan your father said you were behaving as if you still lived in the GDR.

  “The child has no father. How will you pay your way?” When it became clear you were going to keep the baby, your father’s advice was to marry Dong-Sun, Kwan’s father. “You can’t bring up a child on your own in this new Germany.”