The Leipzig Affair

by Fiona Rintoul

  I woke again just before six with the spare pillow clutched to my chest. For a moment, I imagined it was a woman, warm and fragrant and kind. I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep, and so I got up, took a fruit juice from the minibar and pulled back the curtains. I looked out on to the city waking up. The street lights made fuzzy pink and orange dots in the pre-dawn. Breakfast started at seven. My train to Leipzig didn’t leave until after ten. I had time to kill. I got the wooden box from Prague out of my suitcase and laid the contents out on the bed. I looked at the photograph of Magda and Marek that Sally had admired. So Marek was in New York. But where was Magda? What had happened to her?

  Perhaps I was about to find out. By lunchtime I’d be back in Leipzig, where I had an appointment with a certain Frau Martin at the Museum and Records Office in the former Stasi HQ. John Bull-Halifax had organised it for me, pleading that I was a special case and should not have to wait the normal time to see my Stasi files.

  It was Phil who had persuaded me to get back in touch with Bull-Halifax.

  “He might be able to help you find out more,” he said. “I know you were angry that you’d been deceived when you found out that Marek was alive and well. But you must have been relieved too. Now you don’t have to keep beating yourself up about that, wouldn’t it be good to know that things worked out for Magda too?”

  “I think he’s probably told me everything he knows,” I said.

  “Even if he has, wouldn’t it be good to talk it over with someone who understands?”

  I emailed Bull-Halifax at UCL and got a reply straight away. We agreed to meet for lunch the following week at a gastro pub on Farringdon Road called The Falcon.

  “Bob!” he called as he strode towards me across the pub’s fashionably distressed floorboards, flashing his big film star smile. The NHS glasses had been replaced by designer specs and his red-gold curls were shorn, but he hadn’t changed much. “Fancy a beer?” he said.

  “I’ll stick to mineral water.”

  He smiled across at me, puzzled, I think, for a moment, then said, “Okay. I’ll get the menus.”

  “I’m so glad you got in touch,” he said, when we were munching our way through pan-fried Toulouse sausages on a bed of Puy lentils. “You’ve been on my conscience for months.”

  He told me he’d hummed and hawed about whether to send me the newspaper cutting, unsure if it would make things better or worse. “When I didn’t hear from you, I thought maybe I shouldn’t have sent it.”

  “No,” I said. “Overall, I think it made things better. Best on the whole not to go around believing you’re responsible for someone’s death. But I had to … well … sort myself out a bit before I got in touch.”

  “You were never responsible for his death,” he said. “I said that even at the time. It was the system.”

  “I felt I was.”

  “I know you did. That was the worst thing about the Stasi. They really fucked with people’s heads. Made them believe things that weren’t true, destroyed them from the inside out. They’re acknowledged now as masters of a technique known as Zersetzung. It means decomposition. They broke people down by destroying their self-confidence and their relationships.”

  “But it wasn’t the Stasi who sent me the letter. It was Magda’s friend Kerstin, presumably at Magda’s behest.”

  “I don’t believe that,” he said. “Magda wouldn’t have done that.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she wanted rid of me.”

  “Even if she did, she wouldn’t have done that. I reckon the Stasi staged the whole thing. Either that or she really believed that Marek was dead.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  He took a slug of his beer with the glorious nonchalance of someone who doesn’t care whether they have a drink or not. “There’s something I have to tell you,” he said. “I did see her once before the Wall came down. It was back in 1988. I thought about getting in touch with you but as I didn’t learn anything useful, I never did. I went over to the GDR to talk to Professor Sahr about the Student Exchange Programme. He told me Magda was still living in Leipzig, and I managed to get in touch with her. I took her to the Auerbachs Keller for a meal. I asked her about Marek. If it was true that he was dead. I had started to suspect that it might not be because there was never anything about it in the West German press. Not a whisper. Anyway, she said that it was true.”

  I stared at him. “God,” I said. “You saw her. How did she look? Was she all right?”

  “She’d changed. She was rather reserved. I think something had happened to her, but she wouldn’t crack a light. She was no longer at the university. She was living with Kerstin in that old apartment they had. She seemed to be spending most of her time taking photographs.”

  “I’d love to know what happened to her,” I said. “And it would be good to think that you’re right about the letter. But I suppose I’ll never know.”

  “Well,” he said. “There is a way you could find out. You must have heard about all the East Germans who’ve been requesting their Stasi files. You could do the same.”

  He told me then about Frau Martin. I realised that he’d been waiting for me to get in touch ever since he sent me the package. He’d planned it all, just as he’d planned our chance meeting on the stairs of the modern languages building in St Andrews.

  “Well, yes,” he said, when I questioned him. “I am working on a book in this subject area. But it’s your decision. That’s why I didn’t follow up with you. I don’t want to force you. But it might give you some peace of mind. Are you busy at the moment?”

  I shook my head and took a sip of my sparkling mineral water. “Not really. I’m kind of between jobs.”

  “Well,” he said. “I’ll be happy to fix up a meeting if you want.”

  I put the photo back in the wooden box from Prague. Soon I would find out more.

  I showered and went down to the restaurant for breakfast. An old Japanese couple was sitting at a table near the door. The other tables were occupied by solitary businessmen. There was an oblong buffet laden with cold meats, cheeses, breads, cereals, yoghurt and fruit. I picked up some toast and a coffee and took a seat at an empty table by the window.

  The old Japanese couple got up to leave, bowing as they passed me. They shuffled towards the lifts, wavering on their old feet. I was wondering why they weren’t with a tour group when a younger Japanese woman appeared with coats and hats for them. Their daughter perhaps. I hoped she was their daughter and that she was looking after them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  These days, Torsten isn’t just a Leipzig gallerist. He has a new gallery in the Mitte area of Berlin too. You meet him in a nearby café where he’s well known and well liked. “Hey, Torsten,” people shout, as he pushes through the door bundled up in an overcoat, and tips his signature Fedora at you.

  “My idea is to cover as much territory as possible,” you tell him when he’s ordered coffees for you both. “I want to show two worlds – or two ways of seeing the same world. I want to use my images to show one side, and the Stasi’s images to show the other. I suppose part of what I want to do is show what we’ve lost as well as what we’ve gained.”

  Torsten sips his coffee. He’s a bear of a man these days. Married to Lucie. Two kids. A conventional life. But still ready to take risks.

  “You know I’d love to work with you again, Magda. The exhibitions of yours we put on after you came out of prison were some of the best we ever had at Lippendorfer Street. As an artist, I trust you implicitly. I just have one concern. Isn’t it going to be too painful to go back over all this stuff?”

  “That’s what I’ve always thought. But now I think I’m ready to confront it again. Did I tell you my brother died?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. It was expected but it’s none the less devastating for that. But it’s also made me think. I’ve been living quietly for too long, snapping pictures of museum exhibits. I wonder if that isn’t wha
t certain people wanted. It’s time to speak up about what happened to me. I’ve already pulled together a couple of triptychs if you’d like to see them.”

  “I’d love to.” He drained his coffee and put his hand on yours. “Look, Magda, I know you and I know your work. I’ve always wanted to exhibit your work again. You know that. If you can tell me when you’ll have it ready, I’ll book it in. Then we can make a time for me to come round and see what you’ve done so far.”

  Torsten comes round to Pflaster Street one Friday evening when Kwan is at his father’s house. The triptychs are laid out in the workroom and a bottle of wine is open in the kitchen.

  The first triptych is called Ode to Joy. You’ve built it around three central elements: the photograph you took of Marek for Sibylle, a Stasi surveillance photograph of you and Marek walking down Karl Liebknecht Street together in the spring sunshine, and one of the thousands of reports written about you by IMS Babylonia. This one gives the date and time of the trains you and Marek were to take from Leipzig to Budapest and from Budapest to Vienna, the name of Uncle Ivan’s contact in Budapest, the names of the Austrian couple and the number of the locker that Uncle Ivan had taken at Budapest train station.

  “Do you ever hear from Marek?” Torsten asks.

  You shake your head. “We haven’t been in touch in years. There’s not much to say. I didn’t mind that he left without me. I understood that. I didn’t even mind that he did nothing to help me while I was prison. Maybe there was nothing he could do. But I minded that he didn’t keep in touch with me after I got out of prison. That he didn’t tell me about his new life.”

  “About Vincent?” he asks.

  You shrug. “Vincent and the rest. He didn’t even tell me he’d moved. He didn’t tell me anything, because he didn’t have to. He knew I was shut away over here. Remember when I tried to call him that time from your gallery on the 3rd of November in 89? I wanted to tell him that I was going to the big demonstration on Alexanderplatz the next day. Things were changing so fast, I thought maybe he could come over on a day visa and join us at the demonstration. I even thought he might come back to East Germany. Help us to build a new kind of country. The kind of country the demonstrators were calling for. What did Stefan Heym say on Alexanderplatz on the 4th of November? Socialism – not the Stalinist kind, the real kind – is unthinkable without democracy. I thought he’d want to be part of that.

  “I tried the number so many times. I kept getting a message saying it was unobtainable. I thought I must have dialled incorrectly because I’d never dialled a number in West Berlin before. But the number was out of date. He was already in New York with Vincent.”

  Torsten squeezes your shoulder. “He was always a complicated person.”

  “I know. I didn’t mind that. I didn’t even mind that it was over between us. We had our time together. I always knew that there were two sides to him and that he might one day choose the side that wasn’t me. I minded that he hadn’t been honest with me. ‘Our love is special,’ he used to say. But in the end he lied to me like any cheating middle-class husband might.”

  Torsten laughs. “In that spirit, I can only say you’re better off without him.” He turns to the second triptych. “What’s this one called?”

  “Ode to Freedom.”

  The subsidiary elements of the second triptych are a Stasi surveillance photograph of you and IMS Babylonia at the hut by the lake south of Leipzig, a menu from a café in Wedding and a Polaroid photograph of you and IMS Babylonia taken by the owner of the café in Wedding on 9 November when you finally crossed the border together at Bornholmer Street.

  You remember how she hugged you when you stepped over the white line, which you had read demarcated the actual border. “We’re in the West, Magda!” she squealed with delight. You stumbled into the first café you saw and the owner poured two glasses of Sekt.

  “Here’s to you, young ladies,” he said, clinking glasses with you and kissing you both on the cheek.

  How might you have felt then if you’d known what was to come? People talk now about reunification as though it were a victory. They listen to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with tears in their eyes. But the truth is that for people like you, the people who fought for democratic socialism in East Germany, it was a defeat.

  You gaze at the portrait that is the central element of the second triptych. It was taken at the apartment on Shakespeare Street. Her hair hangs in a glossy black bob and her beautiful brown eyes are lined with kohl. IMS Babylonia holds a burning cigarette in her right hand and she is looking down at her other hand, which rests on the table.

  For years, you couldn’t look at this photograph. You kept it locked away in a drawer. But now you can see the beauty in it again.

  “It’s a strong piece,” Torsten says. “I love it.”

  You smile and take hold of his hand. “Thank you. Thank you for trusting me. I have an idea for an even stronger one.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Frau Martin from the Federal Authority for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic in Leipzig was a pleasant, well-meaning woman – the sort of woman I’d no doubt one day wish I’d married: solid and sensible but not unattractive. She brought me the files, got me a cup of coffee and left me to it.

  From my files I learnt that Jana, who rejoiced in the poetic code name of “Rosalinde”, had not only followed my relationship with “Coralie” (clearly Magda) like a soap opera, she had written down every single word I’d ever said in class verbatim. It seemed she didn’t think much of my grasp of politics and history:

  “One of his principal criticisms of the socialist system in the GDR concerns the “overpowering influence of the USSR” and the “lie” of the Soviet liberation of Germany from the Nazi dictatorship in 1945. In a historical context, he returns repeatedly to the topic of the supposed rape of German citizens after the Great Patriotic War and when pressed on this topic (absence of any evidence in the archives, generous assistance provided to German citizens by the Soviet Union in the 1945-1949 period) shows himself to be completely under the influence of the threat-lies and totalitarianism doctrine propagated by the western imperialist powers.”

  And I learnt that John Bull-Halifax was right. Neither Magda nor her friend Kerstin had anything to do with the letter I received about Marek. It had been written and sent, under instructions from the Stasi, by an IM codenamed “Cowboy”. It was clear who “Rosalinde” and “Coralie” were from the context. The same was not true of “Cowboy”.

  Frau Martin had told me that agents could sometimes, though not always, be identified through the Stasi’s filing system. I went to her office and asked her to look up “Cowboy” for me.

  “It may take a while,” she said. “Sometimes the cross-referencing is quite complex. Would you like to wait or shall I phone you later at your hotel?”

  “I’ll wait for a bit. I still have material to read.”

  When Frau Martin returned half an hour later, I was staring at a report I’d just read in disbelief. I had just learnt that my passport had indeed been sold, though obviously not by me. The report was written by Sander. He was considerably vexed. The sale of the passport represented a serious breach of security – and of discipline. It had been sold by one of his own IMs: “Cowboy”.

  “Are you all right?” Frau Martin asked.

  I gazed up at her kind face. “I think so. There’s been good news and there’s been bad news.”

  She smiled. “In this case, I found the name quickly. This agent was very active.”

  She handed me the index card for “Cowboy”. It read: Bockmann, Paul Dieter, and there was a photograph that would already have been out of date in 1985 of a young man wearing a bolo tie with a bucking bronco engraved on the clasp. I stared at it. Give me a train ticket out of here, man? I’d grab it like a shot. Choo-choo!

  “Wow,” I said at last. “I didn’t know his first name was Paul.”

  Frau Martin looked
concerned. “I hope – ” she began.

  I shrugged. “He was … a friend of mine. I thought so anyway. I just found out that he sold my passport. I got thrown out of the country because of that. I lost my girlfriend. I – ” I shook my head and looked at the table, unable to go on.

  Suddenly, I remembered the gleam in Dieter’s eyes when I told him about Magda disappearing. How eager he was for me to go to Shakespeare Street. He knew that Kevin was in Rostock with Gaby. That must have been when he took the passport.

  Frau Martin smiled sadly. “People often get this kind of news. Does it say who he sold the passport to?”

  “It’s just another code name.” I stood up. Suddenly, I’d had enough of the whole business. This trip was supposed to provide some kind of catharsis. Instead, it was opening up fresh wounds.

  “Would you like me to check the filing system again?”

  “No. I should get going. It could’ve been anyone.” I stretched out my hand to her. “Thank you for your help.”

  She held my hand a moment longer than necessary. “Have you seen our museum?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Would you allow me to show you round?”

  I hesitated. I just wanted to get out of there, but she was smiling expectantly. “Thank you,” I said. “That would be nice.”

  She led me out of the records office and into what had been the main entrance to the Stasi headquarters. A white cloth banner put up by the citizens’ committee after it stormed the HQ in 1989 still hung there: This building has been secured by the People’s Police on the instructions of the government and the Citizens’ Committee.