The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  But I didn’t forget. Even when Annabel moved in with me in Maida Vale, and we became what people call ‘a lovely young couple’ (lovely apart from the shadow of my drinking), and everyone assumed we’d get married, I never stopped wondering where Magda was and what had happened to her.

  The memory of the letter I’d received from Kertsin stung, but deep down I knew there was more to it than the words on the page. I thought, many times, about getting back in touch with John Bull-Halifax. But I never did.

  I didn’t tell anyone at Liebermann Brothers about my time in Leipzig, though I could have done. I could have turned it all into a great big joke: regaled my drinking chums with stories of my ejection from the GDR at gunpoint, Kevin and his string of socialist lovelies, Jana’s amateurish attempts at espionage. They’d have been falling off their stools in the Bunch of Grapes, choking on their Californian Chardonnay in Balls Brothers’ Wine Bar. Bobbie, you’re such a fucking laugh!

  But I didn’t want to talk about it with my new colleagues. It was too precious for that. Instead I carried what had happened inside me like a knife twisting in my guts. Sometimes I had nightmares about it. I saw Marek being shot in the back, lying lifeless on the death strip. Or Magda being punched in the guts by Sander, as I had been.

  “Don’t dwell on it,” Chris said. “It’s in the past. There’s nothing you can do.”

  He and John Bull-Halifax were the only people who knew what had really happened in Leipzig. I’d told Annabel the odd snippet but not the whole story. Annabel was basically a very nice, middle-class girl from Godalming, who wanted to get married and have kids and didn’t really know where East Germany was. And, yes, okay, I knew the story wouldn’t make me look very good in her eyes.

  When I was drunk, it was different. Then the knife in my guts would stop twisting, and I’d imagine that Magda was fine. I’d see her striding across the Naschmarkt in her green velvet miniskirt or cycling back to Shakespeare Street late at night. I even imagined I might see her again one day.

  Sometimes I think that’s why I drank. For those blissful moments when I believed she was fine.

  But when I sobered up what came back wasn’t just a thumping headache and a greasy stomach but the bitter taste of regret – the dreadful realisation that I’d screwed up and there was no way back. My courage had failed when it really mattered.

  And so I did nothing, although there were things I could have done. I didn’t get back in touch with John Bull-Halifax. I didn’t try to write to Magda at Shakespeare Street. I didn’t contact Amnesty International. Instead I brooded on it all – quietly and privately – and sought oblivion.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  You sit with your brother for over an hour in the old people’s home in Pankow, holding his hand.

  “I’ve been away,” you say. “That’s why I didn’t come to see you. I’m sorry.”

  He stares straight ahead. Saliva dribbles down the side of his mouth. As his case is now officially hopeless, he had to be moved from the rehabilitation centre in Brandenburg. The only space available was in this old people’s home. You wipe the saliva away, and a new droplet starts to form.

  “Leave it,” your mother says. “There’s no point.” You glare at her and dab your brother’s mouth. A fresh droplet forms. “See?” she says.

  “Hush, Elena,” says Aunt Vladka, squeezing your hand. “Can’t you see how hard this is for her?”

  “He’s much worse,” you tell your father when you flop into the passenger seat of his waiting Wartburg saloon. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He’s not worse. You’re imagining it.”

  “How do you know if you don’t visit him?”

  He shoots you a look. “I speak to the doctors.” He puts his sunglasses on. It’s just gone four o’clock, and the December sun is low in the sky, slanting through the windscreen. “Fasten your seatbelt,” he says and starts the engine.

  “Stop. I think I’ll walk.”

  “But – ”

  “I’ll be fine.” You get out and slam the door.

  Dark is falling as you trudge along Müller Street, and it’s bitterly cold. You tuck your scarf into your collar. A few flakes of snow drift down – not enough for it to lie. You walk carefully, watching your step, looking neither left nor right. You can do this. You know you can. Keep walking, you tell yourself. Stay calm.

  Nothing is more frightening to a former prisoner than freedom. The previous week, you went for a walk and had to turn back. It was too soon. People bore down on you in the street like a herd of wildebeest, and you retreated, whimpering, into a doorway. Men brushed past, uttering dark, hostile words. You half-expected them to pick up stones and throw them at you. You forced yourself to leave the doorway and sprinted home. People stared as you flew past. When you got to your father’s villa you were shaking. He came out of his study and put his arm round your shoulders. He led you through to the living room, where he settled you on the sofa with a blanket over you.

  “Shall I stay with you a while?” he asked when he brought you a cup of hot chocolate..

  You shook your head. “I’ll be fine.”

  You sat for a long time in your father’s living room, decorated (against your mother’s wishes) in the hunting lodge style popular with his friends in the upper echelons of the Party. A room with so many memories, most of them bad. You stared at the stag’s head above the fireplace – a memento from a shooting trip with Ulbricht – and wondered what was to become of you. What is the point of freedom if you can’t walk down the street?

  You keep walking east along Müller Street, heading in the direction of your father’s house, looking neither left nor right, forcing one foot in front of the other. If you were to turn back and walk south you would eventually come to Schönhauser Allee. From there it isn’t far to Marek’s apartment on Pflaster Street. That’s where you were headed last week when you panicked and sprinted home. You need to go to Pflaster Street because you need to see Marek. He doesn’t yet know that you’ve been released. No one does apart from your parents and Aunt Vladka.

  Suddenly, you stop. It’s dark now, and the snow is getting heavier. What are you afraid of? You remember the saliva dribbling from your brother’s mouth. You have to be strong. Someone has to be strong. You turn and head back towards Schönhauser Allee. You walk quickly, scared you’ll lose your nerve, covering your face with your scarf. You don’t want anyone to spot you. The further south you go, the more familiar the streets become. You know so many people who live here. There’s Café North. You sprint across the road to avoid it, almost colliding with a tram.

  Your heart thumps as you push through the heavy brown-painted doors into the main hallway at Pflaster Street. Marek’s apartment is on the third floor of the front house. You recognise every chip and scrape on the apartment door. The card you made for him with ‘Dembowski’ printed on it in Gothic script is still pinned to the architrave.

  You knock on the door.

  Silence.

  “Marek!” you shout. “Marek, it’s me. It’s Magda. I’m out. I’m free.”

  No reply. You knock again. And again. You keep on banging on his door. “Marek!” you scream.

  Upstairs a door opens. A man appears on the stairs. You recognise that big, mangled face. It’s Marek’s neighbour Gert. The last time you saw him was at The Sharp Corner in Leipzig.

  “Magda!” He runs down the stairs two at a time and takes you in his arms.

  “Where’s Marek?” you ask. “Has he gone out? Do you think he’ll be back soon?”

  Gert strokes your hair. “He went away, Magda. It was quite a while ago now. Seems like everyone’s leaving, doesn’t it? Soon there’ll be no one left in our little Republic.”

  You gaze up at him. “Where did he go?”

  Gert shrugs. “People say he’s in the West, but I don’t know for sure. He disappeared overnight. Pouf!” He snaps his fingers. “Just like that.”

  You lean back against the apartment door. “He is in
the West,” you say. “The Stasi told me.”

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The package arrived one Monday morning in August. I should have been at work, writing reports on high-yield corporate bonds or some such nonsense. But I wasn’t. I was sitting on the sofa at home watching TV and having a couple of drinks. I’d told Gerry Kelly I had a meeting first thing.

  For one precious week, I had the flat in Maida Vale to myself. Annabel was in New York for an old school friend’s hen party. (When would it be her turn?) I wanted to take advantage of the unaccustomed freedom by extending the weekend a little. Then the office would be more bearable when I eventually got there.

  Except I never made it to the office because the package threw me off track. Food poisoning, I told Gerry. “That’s the second time in two weeks,” he said. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  I recognised the handwriting on the address label straight away. Big, slanting script written in black fountain pen. Bit pretentious. Reeked of money and privilege, just like the writer, whatever his politics might be. I’d received quite a few letters in that handwriting when I was in Leipzig. John Bull-Halifax used to write to me once a month.

  Dear Bob, I trust you are well … And so on. He was a diligent chap. It was a side to him not many people saw. He seemed to prefer everyone to think that he’d become the youngest ever lecturer in Soviet Studies at a British university by flashing his film star smile.

  I stared at the package. It was postmarked London, NW5. I had a dim memory that Bull-Halifax’s parents lived in Hampstead. If I wasn’t mistaken, his beautiful mother was a psychotherapist. I hadn’t heard from John since he phoned me at my parents’ house in Calderhill. I think we both felt it would be better if we kept away from each another after that. The last news I’d had of him was years back when Chris was still doing his PhD at St Andrews. He told me that Bull-Halifax had taken up a lectureship at Edinburgh University.

  “Good for him,” I said. “Plenty of posh girls in the corridors there too.”

  I grabbed the parcel and ripped it open. Inside was a book entitled Leipzig – City of Heroes. It was about the Monday demonstrations that took place there in 1989, precipitating the fall of the Berlin Wall. John had marked one of the pages with a clipping torn from a newspaper. I turned to it.

  There was a full-page black and white photograph taken at a night-time demonstration. Thousands of people packed into the square in front of the Nikolai Church, each one holding a candle, and strung across the centre of the crowd a home-made banner that read: WIR SIND DAS VOLK, meaning WE ARE THE PEOPLE. It had been taken with a telephoto lens, but the faces in the crowd were clear to see. Magda was standing near the front of the crowd holding one end of the banner.

  In that moment, I saw her again so clearly. Her perfect pale skin and almond-shaped eyes. Her gorgeous slender body. I smelt the musk of her sweat and felt the touch of her skin: cool, creamy and smooth. I’d never had it with anyone like I’d had it with her.

  I put the book down on the coffee table. I’d never believed that things would change in the GDR. Like so many people, I thought the system was set in stone. When change did come, I didn’t like it.

  “It won’t come to anything,” I told Annabel as we watched the TV coverage.

  I found it hard to watch the news from Germany that year. It brought it all back in a sickening rush. It was as if the police had finally unearthed a body I’d buried in the garden fourteen years previously.

  Annabel couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more interested. We had a lot of fights that year. In fact, we nearly split up. How could I explain what I was feeling? The Wall was open. I could go to East Germany any time I wanted. But what was the point? Marek was still dead, and I was still to blame.

  I poured myself another whisky. Well, Magda had obviously survived. That was good. She looked well. Beautiful as ever. Hopefully, she’d found her way in the new Germany.

  I picked up the envelope and shook it to see if there was a note. There was. It was written on a University College, London compliments slip:

  Dear Bob,

  I hope this finds you well. I thought you might like to know that both our East German friends are alive and well.

  Perhaps you know already? In case not, please take a look at the enclosed book and newspaper cutting. If you want to discuss it further, don’t hesitate to give me a call here at UCL.

  Kind regards,

  John

  Both our East German friends? I grabbed the newspaper cutting and smoothed it out on the coffee table. The article was about a Polish-language film festival that had taken place the previous month in New York. And there was a photograph of the organiser, his black hair now more chin length than shoulder length: Dr Marek S. Dembowski, Associate Professor at Columbia University.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  It’s a warm Saturday afternoon in early September. You’re brewing a pot of coffee on the stove and listening to the radio. Prints of the photographs you took the previous week at the Hamburger Bahnhof art gallery are laid out on the kitchen table. Photographing exhibits for museums and galleries has been a lifeline for you, even if it does steal time from your own work. You haven’t looked back since Kerstin got you a first commission at the Pergamon Museum just before the Wall came down.

  Your son, Kwan, is sitting at the far end of the kitchen table, drawing a picture of an aeroplane. He’s just back from his Saturday morning visit to his father and paternal grandmother at the apartment they share in Friedrichshain. Just as the coffee pot starts to whistle, the ring of the telephone in the hall makes you jump. The telephone’s been there for over two years now but you still haven’t got used to its harsh ring. Sometimes you wish the authorities hadn’t poured so much energy into sorting out the utilities in the eastern part of Berlin. You don’t much like having a telephone, and the long wait for a connection here used to help to keep rents down and put a brake on the deluge of West German lawyers and businessmen moving to Prenzlauer Berg.

  You go into the hall and pick up the receiver. “Reinsch,” you say. As soon as you hear your father’s voice you know it’s bad news.

  “It’s amazing he lasted this long,” your father says when he’s told you the news. “That’s what the doctors say. They did a wonderful job. We should send something to Dr Langmann. You remember him. He’s one of the ones from before.”

  “He lasted this long because he was so strong,” you reply, infuriated by his cool tone. “He was always so incredibly strong physically. Don’t you remember? He was one of the finest athletes of his generation, until – ”

  “Of course, I remember,” your father interrupts. “But he also had a great deal of help from the doctors after his accident. Especially before. Now, of course, in the wonderful market economy it’s all a little different.”

  Especially before. You hold the receiver away from your head and stare at the wall.

  “I was wondering,” your father says. “Would you mind telling Elena?” These days, he always calls his ex-wife Elena. “Her place is closer to you than to me.”

  “I don’t mind telling her,” you say. “But let’s not pretend it’s because her apartment is closer to me.”

  “Who was that, Mama?” Kwan asks, when, in a daze, you wander back through to the kitchen where he’s still drawing an aeroplane.

  “Grandpa,” you say, sitting down opposite him.

  “Did he get me my kite?”

  “Your kite?”

  “He said he would get me a kite, remember?”

  Now he says it, you do remember. You reach across and touch your son’s hair: so black and soft.

  “You might have to wait a little while for your kite,” you say. “I’m afraid Grandpa had some very bad news for us.”

  Kwan picks up a red crayon and starts adding tail lights to the aeroplane. “Is it about the kite?” he asks.

  “No, it’s about Uncle Jürgen.” Your voice catches, and you touch his hair again. This
time he pulls away. “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  Kwan carries on drawing and doesn’t look up.

  “Kwan? Did you hear me?” You reach across and still his drawing hand. “Look at me. Uncle Jürgen is dead. He died this morning.”

  “Dead,” he repeats, as if experimenting with saying it. Then finally he looks up. “Are you sad?” he asks.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Poor Mama. Did you cry?”

  “Not yet. But I expect I will.”

  He picks up his crayon and finishes colouring in the tail lights, pressing down very hard on the paper. “Do you think you’ll cry a lot?”

  “Probably, yes.”

  He nods and then starts to cry himself. Not the kind of tears he normally cries that are over almost before they’ve begun. A quiet, dignified trickle. “He had a sad life,” he says, sniffing and wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

  “That’s true. Though it wasn’t all sad.”

  You try to remember Jürgen as he was before: sprinting down the track, every sinew straining, the javelin perfectly poised in his right hand. But it’s so long ago now that the memory is fading.

  You dab the tears from Kwan’s eyes, and find yourself uttering the same platitudes your father said on the phone to you. It’s for the best. He didn’t suffer.

  “We have to go out now,” you say. “We have to go up to Pankow to tell Granny about Uncle Jürgen.”

  “I don’t want to. I want to finish my drawing. Look, it’s nearly done.”

  From the radio comes the sound of Madonna singing Beautiful Stranger. You march over and turn it off.

  “I don’t want to either. But we have to.”

  On the way to your mother’s apartment, you pop into the café across the road to tell Gert the news.

  His big mangled face crumples, and he comes round from behind the bar to hug you. “Magda, I’m so sorry,” he says.

  You press against him. “Thank you.”