The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  I looked these details up to tell Sally. She’d never been to Germany and knew nothing about it. I had to draw her a map showing where the border had been and another map showing the Wall that had encircled West Berlin and the corridor road out.

  The writing exercise was long over, but we were still dwelling on My Story. Sometimes Sally twitched, remembered she was meant to be talking to me about my alcohol consumption and changed the subject. But we always came back to it, and I was happy with that, because Sally was listening to me with genuine interest.

  She was shocked when I told her about crossing the border. She wanted to know how come the old couple hadn’t been able to visit the woman’s sister before. I explained about the travel ban, which meant no one who was economically active could travel to the West without special permission.

  “But that’s terrible!” she shrieked. People who’ve grown up with central heating, easy credit and aubergines in every supermarket don’t understand that there was once a time when there were power cuts across Britain, plane tickets were beyond most people’s reach and Prague wasn’t a stag-party destination.

  “Well, I suppose that was the whole reason behind the Wall,” I said. “People were leaving the East in their droves. The state was at risk of collapse.”

  “Well, it should have collapsed then.”

  “But they were losing all their young people. Skilled workers were being lured away by capitalist bribes. Or that’s how the authorities saw it.”

  “They were imprisoning their own people,” Sally said. “That’s just wrong.”

  “They could still travel to other socialist countries. There probably wasn’t much difference between the average Brit going to Spain for a fortnight in the summer and the average East German going to, say, Bulgaria.”

  “Well, I think it’s just ridiculous,” she said, shutting the subject down. She was agitated, her cheeks flushed. “Did you have a drink last week?” she asked brightly.

  “No.”

  “Good! Excellent!” She nodded encouragingly but she wasn’t listening.

  *

  I first met Magda at the train station. I wasn’t meant to meet her at all. I had four pairs of jeans for her but I was supposed to deliver them to Marek.

  “Too dangerous,” John Bull-Halifax said. “She’s training to be an interpreter, so she’s not allowed to have contact with westerners.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  “Maybe. But that’s the way it is. I’m warning you: stay away.”

  “You’re warning me?”

  “She’s had problems. Her brother had an accident. She went off the rails a bit after that, chucked in her studies. Her father’s a big noise in the government. He got her back into university, but she really has to toe the line now. It might seem weird to you, but it’s standard practice for interpreters to be forbidden contact with westerners.”

  “Is that right?” I said. “Sure you’re not just trying to keep her to yourself?”

  We were at Bull-Halifax’s flat in Edinburgh. He’d invited me round for a kind of pre-trip briefing. I had in my hand a framed black and white photograph of Magda that I’d picked up from the mantelpiece in his living room. It was a professional shot taken in three-quarters profile, unsmiling in the Komsomol style. High cheekbones. Shapely mouth. Wide slanting eyes gazing into the middle distance. A beauty.

  “Quite sure. We’re just friends. She speaks good Russian. That’s how I know her. I met her on a cultural exchange in Moscow. That was before her brother’s accident. We’ve always kept in touch.”

  “But she’s not allowed contact with westerners.”

  He gave me one of his film star smiles. “Fellow traveller, mate. And I understand the boundaries.”

  “So, how come you have her photo?”

  I’d been out with John a few times since the research place was agreed, and if I’d learnt one thing about him it was this: people who said he had nothing to do with women were talking crap. Girls were drawn to him like flies to shit, and he lapped up the attention.

  “She gave it to me. Memento of the trip.”

  “Why would she give you a photo of herself as a memento of a trip to Moscow? Wouldn’t a postcard of Red Square have been more like it?”

  “Look, Bob, do you want to do this or not? If you’d rather not take the jeans I can find another way. It’s no problem.”

  “It’s fine. I’ll take them.”

  I put the photo back on the mantelpiece next to a portrait of Bull-Halifax’s mother when she was young. She was beautiful too. This was his world. Everyone was glamorous. Nothing was ever a problem. He didn’t need you. There was always another way. It was a far cry from the faded Polaroids of grimacing relatives that constituted the McPherson family album.

  “Great,” he said. “But remember what I said: no contact with westerners. It’s really important.”

  I left his flat with the jeans, feeling, as I often did with Bull-Halifax, that I’d somehow been tricked. Then, the day before I was due to leave for Leipzig, he phoned me at my parents’ house. Change of plan. Please could I wait for Magda in the Mitropa canteen in the train station at 22:00 on the second Saturday after I arrived?

  “Will you recognise her?” he said.

  “Eh, yeah,” I said, thinking: how could I forget? “But what about the whole ‘no contact with westerners’ business?”

  “I know. It’s a bit weird. Not sure what’s going on, to be honest.”

  *

  I arrived at the station early and passed the time staring at the exotic destinations on the departure boards: Prague, Bucharest, Warsaw, Sofia. There had been no time to look around the night I arrived in Leipzig. Hencke had bustled me straight out of the station and into the back of his waiting orange Wartburg.

  I saw at once why Magda had chosen the Mitropa for the handover. It was chaotic and noisy and stank of fags, fried food and spilt beer. Most of the customers looked like they’d been there all night drinking beer and had no intention of ever taking a train. It was the perfect place to feel anonymous. I found a table near the back and ordered a coffee, which tasted like mud.

  I recognised Magda as soon as she pushed through the swing doors. She was wearing a long black velvet coat and a little purple hat and she had a large canvas bag slung over her shoulder. I wasn’t the only person who turned to look. She was even more beautiful than in her photograph (and her photograph had been quite beautiful enough). She scanned the room, caught my eye and weaved through the tables towards me. “Bob?” she asked.

  I jumped up and extended my hand. “Yes.”

  She reached up and kissed me on the cheek. Being a Lanarkshire boy, I was a little taken aback by this public display of affection. It was all I could do to stop myself from touching my cheek in awe.

  “Thank you very much for coming,” she said. “I’m glad I spotted you straight away.”

  She sat down and shrugged off her coat. It was the middle of October and the weather had abruptly turned cold, but she was wearing a sleeveless green dress – a lovely sleeveless green dress that showed off her shapely arms. She took her hat off and ran a hand through her dark, springy hair.

  “Would you like a beer?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yes please.”

  I signalled to the waiter, who grunted in reply. “I have the parcel,” I mouthed.

  “Wonderful,” she beamed. “Thank you very much. I hope it wasn’t any trouble. You need Deutschmarks to buy Levi’s here and for that you need relatives in the West and unfortunately I don’t have any.”

  “It was no trouble,” I said, thinking I’d go to quite a bit of trouble for you.

  The waiter arrived and thumped our beers down. “One Mark twenty,” he growled, and I searched for the right change.

  Magda rolled her eyes after him. “So, how do you like our GDR?” she asked.

  “I haven’t really been here long enough to say. So far, it’s been … interesting.”

  She laughed. “
You’re a diplomat.” She raised her glass.” Here’s to diplomacy.” We clinked glasses. “Have you met Hencke?” she asked. “He usually takes charge of students from capitalist countries.”

  “He collected me from the station,” I said, trying and failing to recognise my homeland of Scotland in the term ‘capitalist country’.

  “Isn’t he a creep?”

  She was easy to talk to. She asked a lot of questions and listened to my replies, her head cocked to one side. Were there really three million unemployed in Great Britain? Had I ever been to Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery? What did I think of Mikhail Gorbachev? Then she said, “Would you like to come to a party?”

  “I’d love to, but –”

  “But what?”

  “Well, John Bull-Halifax said – ”

  “No western contacts?” She laughed, and there was something thrillingly dismissive in her tone.

  “Well, yes,” I said. Could it be that she thought John Bull-Halifax was a bit of plonker?

  “This is a private party. Just some old friends of mine. I think everything will be fine.” She stood up and put her coat on. I handed her the parcel, and she slipped it in her bag. “Shall we go?” she said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  You take the tram from the train station to the Südvorstadt area of town where the party is. It’s raining, and the westerner suggests taking a taxi.

  “I’ll pay,” he says.

  “Taxis here go where they want, not where you want,” you laugh, guiding him over to the tram stop. The only way a taxi driver will take you to the Südvorstadt is if the westerner bribes him with Deutschmarks, and you don’t want to suggest that.

  You jump into the last car of the tram and steer the westerner to the back window. Standing side-by-side, you watch the train station recede into the wet night.

  “Leipzig train station is the largest train terminus in Europe,” you tell him.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” Despite it all, you want him to like it here, to be a little bit impressed. You know what westerners are like. How they laugh at the World Clock on the Alexanderplatz in Berlin that spins round showing the time in all the places of the world that GDR citizens cannot visit. How they mock the so-called workers’ palaces built in the 1950s on the great boulevards in Friedrichshain. It pains you, because you know how much effort and commitment went into clearing the rubble after the war to make room for those homes. Your father gave over one hundred hours to the National Rebuilding Campaign and has a pin and gold certificate to prove it. The workers’ palaces may be stuffed full of apparatchiks now but they were built with hope.

  The tram rounds the corner on to the ring road, and water sprays up from the tracks, tinged red from the tram’s tail lights.

  “It’s going to be cold again tomorrow,” you say, and your breath condenses on the air. “My aunt said so.”

  “Brr,” he says with an ostentatious shiver. “I can’t believe how cold it is here. You’ll be all right in that coat though.” He reaches over and strokes your sleeve – the first time he’s touched you.

  You pull the collar up round your throat. “It’s fur-lined.” You bend the sleeve back to show him. “From Russia. It was my mother’s. My father brought it back from Moscow for her as an engagement present.”

  “Did he live there?”

  “Not at that time. He lived there during the war.” You smile at him. “Then he came back to build a new and better Germany. He’s older than my mother. By the time they got together in the 60s he was travelling regularly to Moscow on government business. Hence the coat.”

  “Does he still go to Moscow a lot?”

  “No. He has a different position these days.”

  “I’d love to go there,” he says. “How did you find it when you were there on the cultural exchange?”

  You stare at him, startled for a moment that he knows this. Then you remember: John Bull-Halifax. Westerners have no sense of discretion. Should you tell him the truth about Moscow or lie? You decide on the truth. “I hated it.”

  “Oh.” His face falls. “Why?”

  “It was so run-down, and the food was terrible. The standard of living was much worse than here.”

  The tram pulls up the incline to Karl Marx Platz, which older people still call by its former name of Augustusplatz, and judders to a halt. Concert goers are streaming out of the concert hall, programmes in hand.

  “Look at them,” you giggle. “Don’t they look bourgeois?”

  He smiles. “I suppose so.”

  “There was once a beautiful church on this square. Over there.” You point to the floodlit bronze relief of Marx that takes up an entire wall of the university building on the far side of the square. “It was called the University Church. The authorities blew it up. It was damaged in the war, but it could have been repaired. There was a big protest, but it was no use. They still blew it up. Bang!” You raise your voice, suddenly wanting people to hear. The westerner is causing the frustrations of the past weeks to well up inside you.

  People at the front of the car turn to stare, and the westerner looks embarrassed. “Sorry,” you smile, fumbling in your bag for cigarettes. “Want one? It’ll warm you up.”

  You light it for him, and he takes a deep drag, spluttering on the smoke.

  “How do you like our shitty cigarettes?”

  “They’re okay,” he croaks.

  “No, they’re not.” You look down the tram at the sea of expressionless faces, and they infuriate you. Why do these people allow themselves to be terrorised? Why do they keep turning out for May Day demonstrations and sham elections? Why do they tolerate sub-standard cigarettes? Why don’t they rise up?

  “They’re shit!” you yell, and you’re no longer talking about the cigarettes.

  The westerner pulls you towards him. “Hey, take it easy,” he says.

  You look into his eyes. Green with hazel flecks. Kind. Concerned. “I tried Camel cigarettes once,” you say, leaning into him. “I liked those.”

  He touches your cheek with the index finger of one hand. “Did you? I’ll remember that.”

  You pull away from him. “This is our stop.”

  “So, what’s the party in aid of?” the westerner asks as you walk towards an underground club called The Sharp Corner where they play banned music.

  “It’s my friend Torsten’s thirtieth birthday.”

  It’s over a year since you last saw Torsten. You had to cut yourself off from that crowd when you started playing your part. Some people may be surprised to see you. They may even be angry with you. They might think your role was real. But Torsten invited you to the party. That shows something.

  At The Sharp Corner, you mutter the password through a grille in the door.

  “Sweet Magdalena!” a man’s voice cries. The doorman is Gert, one of Marek’s neighbours in Berlin. He yanks open the door, and his big mangled face breaks into a grin as he envelops you in a bear hug.

  “It’s been ages,” he says when he releases you. “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you too.”

  And it is. This posse of dissident writers, artists and environmental activists became your family after your brother’s accident. With them you found a sense of belonging and common purpose you thought you’d lost forever when you left the Party.

  You follow Gert into the vestibule, which is warmed by a gas heater, and introduce the westerner.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Gert says. “Marek is inside. He’s waiting for you.”

  “Is he? I’ll look out for him.” Gert raises a questioning eyebrow in the direction of the westerner. “We’ll chat later,” you say. But this is a lie. You don’t want to talk to Gert about the westerner. The new plan you and Marek have devised and the role the westerner will play in it must remain under wraps.

  “Let’s find Torsten.” You take the westerner’s hand and lead him through a green velvet curtain into the dark club room, which is thumping t
o the strains of a new punk band from Dresden called Decadence.

  Torsten is standing by the back wall, smoking and chatting to Kerstin, whose black hair is freshly cut in a fashionable bob.

  “This is Bob,” you tell her. “He’s from Great Britain.”

  “Is he now?” she says and curtsies. “Enchantée.”

  You watch the westerner take in her low-cut top, trademark Kohl-ringed eyes and full lips, painted Soviet red. Is this how he expected things to be in the East?

  You give Torsten his birthday present. It’s a framed print of the photograph Frau Dannewitz admired at Shakespeare Street.

  “Thank you,” he says. “You’ve got such a good eye, Magda. When are you going to take some more photographs for the magazine? We miss your contributions.”

  Torsten is the editor of an underground magazine called Not Only But Also. “Soon,” you say. “Very soon.”

  “You know I’m opening a new gallery, don’t you? I’d love to put on an exhibition of your work.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes, it got to be too much having exhibitions at home.” Torsten has been running an underground art gallery from his apartment for the past three years. “We found an old disused warehouse over by the cemetery on Lippendorfer Street. Bit like this place. Maybe they’ll move in and stop us. I don’t know. But we’re going to give it a go.”

  “That’s great,” you say but you’re no longer concentrating, because behind you Marek is shouting at the westerner over the music.

  “Well, well, well,” he booms, “what have we here?” And you feel the westerner bridle.

  “I’d better rescue my friend,” you tell Torsten, who gives your arm an understanding squeeze.

  “Don’t forget to send in some photographs,” he says. “The next issue is out in January.”