The Draining Lake de-6

by Arnaldur Indridason

  “Did you live alone out there on the farm?”

  “Get out, I said!”

  “Did you have a housekeeper?”

  “We were two brothers. Joi’s dead. Now leave me alone.”

  “Joi?” Erlendur did not recall any mention of anyone other than Haraldur in the police reports. “Who was he?” he asked.

  “My brother,” Haraldur said. “He died twenty years ago. Now get out. For God’s sake, bugger off out of here and leave me alone!”

  17

  He opened the box of letters and removed them one by one, read some of the envelopes and put them to one side, opened others and slowly read them through. He had not looked at the letters for years. They had come from Iceland, from his parents and sister and comrades in the party’s youth movement who wanted to know about life in Leipzig. He remembered the letters he wrote in reply describing the city, the reconstruction and the morale there, and how it had all been in positive terms. He wrote about the collective spirit of the proletariat and socialist solidarity, all that dead, cliche?ridden rhetoric. He wrote nothing about the doubts that were beginning to stir within him. He never wrote about Hannes.

  He delved deeper into the pile. There was a letter from Rut and beneath it the message from Hannes.

  And there, at the bottom of the pile, were the letters from Ilona’s parents.

  He hardly thought about anything other than Ilona during the first weeks and months that they were together. Having little money, he lived frugally and tried to please her with small presents. One day, when his birthday was approaching, he received a package from Iceland, including a pocket edition of Jonas Hallgrimsson’s poems. He gave the volume to her and told her that it was by the poet who had written the most beautiful words in the Icelandic language. She said she looked forward to learning Icelandic from him so that she could read them. She said she had nothing to give him in return. He smiled and shook his head. He had not told her it was his birthday.

  “I just like having you,” he said.

  “O-ho,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Naughty boy!”

  She put down the book, pushed him back onto the bed he was sitting on, and straddled him. She gave him a long, deep kiss. It turned out to be the most pleasurable birthday of his life.

  That winter he became closer friends with Emil and they spent a lot of time together. He liked Emil, who became more hardline the longer they stayed in Leipzig and the better he knew the system. Emil was unruffled by the other Icelanders” criticism of personal spying and surveillance, the shortage of consumer goods, compulsory attendance at FDJ meetings and the like. Emil scoffed at all that. Given the ultimate goal, such short-term considerations were trivial. He and Emil got on well together and backed each other up.

  “But why don’t they produce more goods that people need?” Karl asked once when they were sitting in the new cafeteria discussing Ulbricht’s government. “People have such an obvious point of comparison in West Germany which is swamped with consumer goods and everything anyone could desire. Why should East Germany put such a huge emphasis on industrial development when there are food shortages? The only thing they have plenty of is lignite, which isn’t even proper coal.”

  “The planned economy will deliver in the end,” Emil said. “Reconstruction has hardly started and they don’t have the same stream of dollars from the US. It all takes time. What matters is that the Socialist Unity Party is on the right track.”

  Tomas and Ilona were not the only couple in their circle in Leipzig. Karl and Hrafnhildur both met Germans who fitted in well with their group. Karl was increasingly seen with a petite, brown-eyed student from Leipzig; her name was Ulrika. Her ill-tempered mother disapproved of the match and Karl’s descriptions of their awkward dealings sent everyone into hysterics. He said they had discussed living together, even getting married. They were compatible, both cheerful and easygoing types, and she talked about going to Iceland, even living there. Hrafnhildur started going out with a shy and rather nondescript chemistry student from a little village outside Leipzig, who sometimes supplied moonshine for their parties.

  It was February. He saw Ilona every day. They no longer discussed politics, but everything else was smooth and they had plenty to talk about. He told her about the land of boiled sheep heads and she told him about her family. She had two elder brothers, which did not make things easier for her. Both her parents were doctors. She was studying literature and German. One of her favourite poets was Friedrich Holderlin. She read a lot and asked him about Icelandic literature. Books were a common interest.

  Lothar spent more and more time with the Icelanders. He amused them with his mechanical, formal Icelandic and incessant questions about everything to do with Iceland. Tomas got along well with Lothar. They were both hardline communists and could discuss politics without arguing. Lothar practised his Icelandic on him and Tomas spoke German back. Lothar was from Berlin, which he said was a wonderful place. He had lost his father in the war but his mother still lived there. Lothar urged him to visit the city with him sometime — it was not far by train. In other respects the German was not very forthcoming about himself, which Tomas put down to the hardship that he had suffered as a boy during the war. He asked all the more about Iceland and seemed to have an unquenchable interest in the country. Wanted to know about the university there, political conflict, political and business leaders, how people lived, the US base at Keflavik. Tomas explained that Iceland had profited enormously from the war, Reykjavik had mushroomed and the country had been transformed almost overnight from a poor farming community to a modern bourgeois society.

  Sometimes he spoke to Hannes at the university. Normally they ran into each other at the library or in the cafeteria in the main building. They became good friends in spite of everything, in spite of Hannes’s pessimism. He tried to talk Hannes round, but in vain. Hannes had lost interest. His only thoughts were about finishing his studies and going home.

  One day he sat down beside Hannes in the cafeteria. It was snowing outside. He had been sent a warm overcoat from Iceland at Christmas. He had mentioned in one of his letters how cold it was in Leipzig. Hannes made a point of asking about the overcoat and he could detect a hint of jealousy in his voice.

  What he did not know was that this would be the last time they would speak together in Leipzig.

  “How’s Ilona?” Hannes asked.

  “How do you know Ilona?” he replied.

  “I don’t know her,” Hannes said, looking around the cafeteria as if to make sure that no one could hear them. “I just know that she’s from Hungary. And she’s your girlfriend. Isn’t she? Aren’t you going out?”

  He sipped his turgid coffee without replying. There was a strange tone to Hannes’s voice. Tougher and more obstinate than usual.

  “Does she ever talk to you about what’s going on in Hungary?” Hannes asked.

  “Sometimes. We try not to talk much about…”

  “You know what’s going on there?” Hannes interrupted. “The Soviets will use military force. I’m surprised they haven’t already. They can’t avoid it. If they allow what’s happening in Hungary to escalate, the rest of Eastern Europe will follow and there’ll be a full-scale revolt against Soviet authority. Doesn’t she ever talk about that?”

  “We talk about Hungary,” he said. “We just don’t agree on it.”

  “No, of course, you know more about what’s going on there than she, the Hungarian, does.”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “So what are you saying?” Hannes said. “Have you ever wondered seriously about that? When the red glow has faded from your eyes?”

  “What happened to you, Hannes? Why are you so angry? What happened after you came here? You were the Great Hope back in Iceland.”

  “The Great Hope,” Hannes snorted. “I’m probably not that any more,” he said.

  They fell silent.

  “I just saw through all this crap,” Hannes
said after a while in a low voice. “The whole fucking lie. We’ve been spoon-fed the workers” paradise, equality and brotherhood until we sing the Internationale like the needle’s stuck. One big hallelujah chorus without a word of criticism. Back home we go to campaign meetings. Here there’s nothing but eulogies. Where do you see debate? Long live the party and nothing else! Have you spoken to people who live here? Do you know what they’re thinking? Have you talked to a single ordinary person in this city? Did they want Walter Ulbricht and the Communist Party? Do they want a single party and a centralised economy? Did they want to ban freedom of speech and freedom of the press and real political parties? Did they want to be shot on the streets in the 1953 uprising? Back in Iceland, at least we can argue with our opponents and write articles in the newspapers. That’s banned here. There’s just one line, finito. Then, when people are herded up to vote for the only party that’s allowed to operate in the country, they call it elections! The locals think it’s a total farce. They know this is no democracy!”

  Hannes paused. He was seething.

  “People don’t dare say what they think because everything here is under surveillance. The whole fucking society. Everything you say and do can rebound on you and you’re called in, arrested, expelled. Talk to people. The phones are bugged. They spy on the citizens!”

  They sat in silence.

  He knew that Hannes and Ilona had a point. And he thought it was better for the party to come clean and admit that free elections and free discussion were for the time being impossible. They would come later, when the goal had been achieved: a socialist economy. They had sometimes made fun of the Germans for agreeing to every proposal at meetings and then saying the exact opposite in private. People were afraid to be straightforward, hardly dared to advance an independent view for fear that it would be interpreted as antisocialist and they would be punished.

  “They’re dangerous men, Tomas,” Hannes said after a long silence. “They’re not playing games.”

  “Why are you always talking about freedom of opinion?” he said angrily. “You and Ilona. Look at the witch hunt against communists in America. You can see how they drive people out of the country, out of their jobs. And what about the surveillance society there? Did you read about the cowards who informed on their comrades to the House Un-American Activities Committee? The communist party’s outlawed there. Only one opinion’s permitted there, too — the opinion of the capitalist cartels, the imperialists, the warmongers. They reject everything else. Everything.”

  He stood up.

  “You’re here at the invitation of the proletariat of this country,” he said angrily. “It pays for your education and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for talking like that. Ashamed of yourself! And you ought to fuck off back home!”

  He stormed out of the cafeteria.

  “Tomas,” Hannes called after him, but he did not answer.

  He strode down the corridor away from the cafeteria and bumped into Lothar, who asked what the hurry was. Glancing back, he said it was nothing. They left the building together. Lothar offered to buy him a beer and he accepted. When they sat down in Baum next to Thomaskirche he told Lothar about the argument and how Hannes, for some reason, had turned completely against socialism and denigrated it. He told Lothar that he could not tolerate Hannes’s hypocrisy in arguing against the socialist system but reaping its benefits by studying there.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said to Lothar. “I don’t understand how he can abuse his position like that. I could never do that,” he said. “Never.”

  That evening he met Ilona and told her about the argument. He mentioned that Hannes sometimes gave the impression that he knew her, but she shook her head. She had never heard his name and never spoken to him.

  “Do you agree with him?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Yes,” she said after a long pause. “I agree with him. And not just me. There are many, many others. People of my age in Budapest. Young people here in Leipzig.”

  “Why don’t they speak out?”

  “We’re doing that in Budapest,” she said. “But we face huge opposition. It’s awesome. And there’s fear. Fear everywhere about what could happen.”

  “The army?”

  “Hungary is one of the Soviet Union’s trophies from the war. They won’t give it up without a fight. If we manage to break free from them, you couldn’t say what would happen in the rest of Eastern Europe. That’s the big question. The chain reaction.”

  Two days later, without warning, Hannes was expelled from the university and ordered to leave the country.

  He heard that a police guard had been stationed outside Hannes’s digs and that he had been escorted to the airport by two members of the security police. As he understood it, none of the courses that Hannes had taken would be recognised by any other university. It was as if Hannes had never been a student. He had been erased.

  He could not believe his ears when Emil burst in and related the news. Emil did not know much. He had met Karl and Hrafnhildur, who told him about the police guard and how everyone was saying that Hannes had been taken to the airport. Emil had to repeat it all before it sank in. Their compatriot was being treated as if he had committed some appalling offence. Like a common criminal. That evening the dormitory buzzed with the news. No one knew for sure what had happened.

  The following day, three days after their argument in the cafeteria, he received a message from Hannes. Hannes’s room-mate delivered it. It was in a sealed envelope with only his name on the front. Tomas. He opened the envelope and sat on his bed with the note. It did not take long to read.

  You asked me what had happened in Leipzig. What had happened to me. It’s simple. They kept asking me to spy on my friends, to tell them what they said about socialism, about East Germany, about Ulbricht, what radio stations you listened to. Not just you, but everyone I knew. I refused to be their informer. I said I would not spy on my friends. They thought I could be persuaded. Otherwise, they said, I would be expelled from the university. I refused and they let me be. Until now.

  Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?

  Hannes

  He read the message over and again and still could not believe what it said. A shiver ran down his spine and his head spun.

  Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?

  Hannes blamed him for his expulsion. Hannes believed that he had gone to the university authorities and reported his opinions, his opposition to the system. If he had left him alone, it would never have happened. He stared at the letter. It was a misunderstanding. What did Hannes mean? He had not spoken to the university authorities, only to Ilona and Lothar, and in the evening he had mentioned his surprise at Hannes’s views to Emil, Karl and Hrafnhildur in the kitchen. That was nothing new. They agreed with him. They felt that the way Hannes had changed was at best excessive, at worst despicable.

  It could only have been a coincidence that Hannes was expelled after their argument, and a misunderstanding on Hannes’s part to link it to their meeting. Surely he could not think that it was Tomas’s fault he was not allowed to finish his course. He hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t told anyone except his friends. Wasn’t the man being paranoid? Could he seriously believe this?

  Emil was in the room with him, and he showed him the note. Emil snorted. He thoroughly disliked Hannes and everything he stood for, and did not conceal it.

  “He’s nuts,” Emil said. “Take no notice of it.”

  “But why does he say that?”

  “Tomas,” Emil said. “Forget it. He’s trying to blame his own mistakes on someone else. He should have been out of here long ago.”

  Tomas leapt to his feet, grabbed his coat, put it on rushing down the corridor, ran all the way to Ilona’s digs and banged on the door. Her landlady answered and showed him in to Ilona. She was putting on a cap and already had her jacket and shoes on. She was going out. Clearly surprised to see him, she realised that he was very agitated.

  “W
hat’s wrong?” she asked, moving towards him.

  He closed the door.

  “Hannes thinks I had something to do with him getting expelled and deported. Like I gave something away!”

  “What are you saying?”

  “He blames me for his expulsion!”

  “Who did you talk to?” Ilona asked. “After you met Hannes?”

  “Just you and the others. Ilona, what did you mean the other day when you were talking about young people in Leipzig? The ones who agreed with Hannes? Who are they? How do you know them?”

  “You didn’t talk to anyone else? Are you sure?”

  “No, only Lothar. What do you know about young people in Leipzig, Ilona?”

  “Did you tell Lothar what Hannes had said?”

  “Yes. What do you mean? He knows all about Hannes.”

  Ilona stared at him thoughtfully.

  “Please tell me what’s going on,” he asked her.

  “We don’t know exactly who Lothar is,” Ilona said. “Do you think anyone followed you here?”

  “Followed me? What do you mean? Who doesn’t know who Lothar is?”

  Ilona stared at him with a more serious expression than he had ever seen before, a look almost of terror. He had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that his conscience was gnawing him about Hannes, who thought he was to blame for all that had happened. But he had done nothing. Nothing at all.

  “You know the system. It’s dangerous to say too much.”

  “Too much! I’m not a child, I know about the surveillance.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “I didn’t say anything, except to my friends. That’s not illegal. They’re my friends. What’s going on, Ilona?”

  “Are you sure no one followed you?”

  “No one followed me,” he said. “What do you mean? Why should anyone follow me? What are you talking about?” Then he thought about it: “I don’t know whether anyone followed me. I wasn’t watching for that. Why should I be followed? Who would be following me?”