The Draining Lake (4 page)

Sigurdur Óli read the letter, the last testimony of a young man who had walked out of his parents' house in 1970 and had never come back.

The parents were now both aged 78 and in fine fettle. They had two other sons, both younger, now in their fifties. They knew that their eldest son had committed suicide. They did not know how he went about it, nor where his remains were. Sigurdur Óli asked them about Kleifarvatn, the radio transmitter and the hole in the skull, but they had no idea what he was talking about. Their son had never quarrelled with anyone and had no enemies; that was out of the question.

'It's an absurd idea that he was murdered,' the mother said with a glance at her husband, still anxious after so many years about the fate of their son.

'You can tell from the letter,' the husband said. 'It's obvious what he had in mind.'

Sigurdur Óli reread the letter.

dear mum and dad forgive me but
i
can't do anything else it's unbearable and
i
can't think of living any longer
i
can't and
i
won't and
i
can't

The letter was signed
Jakob
.

'It was that girl's fault,' the wife said.

'We don't know anything about that,' her husband said.

'She started going out with his friend,' she said. 'Our boy couldn't take it.'

'Do you think it's him, it's our boy?' the husband asked. They were sitting on the sofa, facing Sigurdur Óli and waiting for answers to the questions that had haunted them ever since their son went missing. They knew that he could not answer the toughest question, the one they had grappled with during all those years, concerning parental actions and responsibilities, but he could tell them whether or not he had been found. On the news they had only said that a male skeleton had been found in Kleifarvatn. Nothing about a radio transmitter and a smashed skull. They did not understand what Sigurdur Óli meant when he started probing about. They had only one question: Was it him?

'I don't think that's likely,' Sigurdur Óli said. He looked back and forth at them. The incomprehensible disappearance and death of a loved one had left its mark on their lives. The case had never been closed. Their son had still not come home and that was the way it had been all those years. They did not know where he was or what had happened to him, and this uncertainty spawned discomfort and gloom.

'We think he went into the sea,' the wife said. 'He was a good swimmer. I've always thought that he swam out to sea until he knew he had gone too far out or until the cold took him.'

'The police told us at the time that because the body couldn't be found, he'd most probably thrown himself in the sea,' the husband said.

'Because of that girl,' the wife said.

'We can't blame her for it,' the husband said.

Sigurdur Óli could tell that they had slipped into an old routine. He stood up to take his leave.

'Sometimes I get so angry with him,' the wife said, and Sigurdur Óli did not know whether she was referring to her husband or her son.

Valgerdur was waiting for Erlendur at the restaurant. She was wearing the same full-length leather coat that she had worn on their first date. They had met by chance and in a moment of madness he'd invited her out for dinner. He had not known then if she was married but had discovered later that she was, with two grown-up sons who had moved out and a marriage that was failing.

At their next meeting she admitted that she had intended to use Erlendur to get even with her husband.

Valgerdur contacted Erlendur again soon afterwards and they had met several times since. Once she had gone back to his flat. He'd tried to tidy up as best he could, throwing away old newspapers, arranging books on the shelves. He rarely had visitors and was reluctant to let Valgerdur call on him. She insisted, saying that she wanted to see how he lived. Eva Lind had called his apartment a hole that he crawled into to hide.

'Look at all those books,' Valgerdur said, standing in his living room. 'Have you read them all?'

'Most of them,' Erlendur said. 'Do you want some coffee? I bought some Danish pastries.'

She went over to the bookcase and ran her finger along the spines, browsed through a few titles and took one book off the shelf.

'Are these about ordeals and dangerous highland voyages?' she asked.

She had been quick to notice that Erlendur took a particular interest in missing persons and that he read whole series of accounts of people who had got lost and disappeared in the wilds of Iceland. He had told her what he had told no one else apart from Eva Lind, that his brother had died at the age of eight up in the highlands in eastern Iceland at the beginning of winter, when Erlendur was ten. There were three of them, the two boys and their father. Erlendur and his father found their way home safely, but his brother froze to death and his body was never found.

'You told me once that there was an account of you and your brother in one of these books,' Valgerdur said.

'Yes,' Erlendur said.

'Would you mind showing it to me?'

'I will,' Erlendur said, hesitantly. 'Later. Not now. I'll show you it later.'

Valgerdur stood up when he entered the restaurant and they greeted each other with their customary handshake. Erlendur was unsure what kind of a relationship this was but he liked it. Even after meeting regularly for almost half a year they had not slept together. At least their relationship was not a sexual one. They sat and talked about various aspects of their lives.

'Why haven't you left him?' he asked when they had eaten and drunk coffee and liqueur and talked about Eva Lind and Sindri and her sons and work. She repeatedly asked him about the skeleton in Kleifarvatn but there was little that he could tell her. Only that the police were talking to people whose loved ones had gone missing during a specific period around 1970.

Just before Christmas, Valgerdur had found out that her husband had been having an affair for the past two years. She already knew about an earlier incident which was not as 'serious', as he put it. She told him that she was going to leave him. He broke off the affair at once and nothing had happened since then.

'Valgerdur . . . ?' Erlendur began.

'You saw Eva Lind at her rehab, then,' she said hurriedly, as if sensing what would come next.

'Yes, I saw her.'

'Did she remember anything about being arrested?'

'No, I don't think she remembers being arrested. We didn't discuss it.'

'Poor girl.'

'Are you going to carry on with him?' Erlendur asked.

Valgerdur sipped her liqueur.

'It's so difficult,' she said.

'Is it?'

'I'm not prepared to put an end to it,' she said, looking into Erlendur's eyes. 'But I don't want to let go of you, either.'

When Erlendur went home that evening, Sindri Snaer was lying on the sofa, smoking and watching television. He nodded to his father and kept watching the programme. As far as Erlendur could see it was a cartoon. He had given his son a key to the flat and could expect him at any time, even though he had not agreed to let him stay.

'Would you mind switching that off?' he said as he took off his coat.

'I couldn't find the remote,' he said. 'Isn't this telly prehistoric?'

'It's only twenty years old or so,' Erlendur said. 'I don't use it much.'

'Eva phoned me today,' Sindri said, stubbing out his cigarette. 'Was it some friend of yours who arrested her?'

'Sigurdur Óli. She hit him. With a hammer. Tried to knock him out, but caught him on the shoulder instead. He wanted to charge her with assault and resisting arrest.'

'So you made a deal that she'd go into rehab instead.'

'She's never wanted therapy. Sigurdur Óli dropped the charges for my sake and she went into rehab.'

A dealer called Eddi had been involved in a drugs case and Sigurdur Óli and two other detectives had tracked him down to a den just up from Hlemmur bus station, close to the police station on Hverfisgata. Someone who knew Eddi had phoned the police. The only resistance they'd met had been from Eva Lind. She was completely out of her mind. Eddi lay half-naked on the sofa and did not stir. Another girl, younger than Eva Lind, lay naked beside him. When she saw the police Eva went berserk. She knew who Sigurdur Óli was. Knew that he worked with her father. She snatched up a hammer that was lying on the floor and tried to knock him out. Although she missed, she fractured his collarbone. Racked with pain, Sigurdur Óli fell to the floor. As she'd wound up for a second shot, the other officers had pounced and had floored her.

Sigurdur Óli did not talk about the incident but Erlendur heard from the other officers that he had hesitated when he saw Eva Lind going for him. She was Erlendur's daughter and he did not want to hurt her. That was how she had been able to deliver the blow.

'I thought she'd clean up her act when she had that miscarriage,' Erlendur said. 'But she's twice as difficult. It's as if nothing matters to her any more.'

'I'd like to go and see her,' Sindri said. 'But they don't allow visitors.'

'I'll have a word with them.'

The telephone rang and Erlendur picked it up.

'Erlendur?' said a weak voice on the other end. Erlendur recognised it at once.

'Marion?'

'What was it you found at Kleifarvatn?' Marion Briem asked.

'Bones,' Erlendur said. 'Nothing that need concern you.'

'Oh, really,' said Marion, who had retired but found it difficult not to get involved in any especially interesting cases that Erlendur might be investigating.

There was a long silence on the line.

'Did you want anything in particular?' Erlendur asked.

'You ought to check out Kleifarvatn better,' Marion said. 'But don't let me disturb you. Wouldn't dream of it. I don't want to disturb an old colleague who's got plenty on his plate already.'

'What about Kleifarvatn?' Erlendur asked. 'What are you talking about?'

'No. Goodbye,' Marion said, and hung up on Erlendur.

Sometimes, when he thought back, he could smell the headquarters on Dittrichring, the smothering stench of dirty carpet, sweat and fear. He also remembered the acrid stink of the coal smog that blanketed the city, even blocking out the sun.

Leipzig was not at all as he had imagined. He had swotted up before leaving Iceland and knew that it was located on the confluence of the Elster, Parthe and Pleisse rivers, and was an old centre of the German publishing and book trades. Bach was buried there and it was home to the famous
Auerbachkeller
, the beer cellar on which Goethe modelled a scene in
Faust
. The composer Jón Leifs studied music in Leipzig and lived there for years. In his mind's eye he had seen an ancient cultural German city. What he found was a sorry, gloomy post-war place. The Allies had occupied Leipzig but later handed it over to the Soviets, and the bullet holes could still be seen in the walls of buildings and half-collapsed houses, the ruins left by war.

The train arrived in Leipzig in the middle of the night. He was able to store his suitcase at the railway station and he walked the streets until the city began to awaken. There was an electricity shortage and the city centre was dark but he felt good at having arrived and he enjoyed the adventure of being alone so far from his native haunts. He walked up to Nikolaikirche and when he reached Thomaskirche he sat down on a bench. He recalled the account of the writer Halldór Laxness and poet Jóhann Jónsson walking together through the city so many years before. Dawn was breaking and he imagined them looking up at Thomaskirche just as he was, admiring the sight before continuing their stroll.

A girl selling flowers walked past him and offered him a bouquet, but he had no money to spare and gave her an apologetic smile.

He was looking forward to everything that lay ahead. Standing on his own two feet and being the master of his own fate. Although he had no idea what awaited him, he intended to face it with an open mind. He knew that he would not feel homesick because he had set off on an adventure that would shape his life permanently. And while he realised that his course would be demanding, he was not afraid of applying himself. He had a passionate interest in engineering and knew that he would meet new people and make new friends. He was impatient to get down to studying.

He walked around the ruins and the streets in the light drizzle and a faint smile crossed his face when he thought again of the two writer friends walking the same streets long before.

At daybreak he fetched his suitcase, went to the university and found the registration office without any trouble. He was shown to a student residence not far from the main building. The dormitory was an elegant old villa that had been taken over by the university. He would be sharing a room with two other students. One was Emil, his classmate from school. The other was Czechoslovakian, he was told. Neither of them was in the room when he arrived. It was a three-storey house with a shared bathroom and kitchen on the middle floor. Old wallpaper was peeling from the walls, the timber floors were dirty and a musty smell permeated the building. In his room were three futons and an old desk. A bare light bulb hung down from the ceiling, whose old plaster had flaked off to reveal rotting timber panelling. There were two windows in the room, one of which was boarded up because the glass was broken.

Drowsy students were emerging from their rooms. A queue had already formed outside the bathroom. Some went outdoors to urinate. In the kitchen a large pot had been filled with water and was being heated on an ancient cooker. There was an old-fashioned stove beside it. He looked around for his friend, but could not see him. And as he was looking at the group in the kitchen, he suddenly realised that it was a mixed residence.

One of the young women came over to him and said something in German. Although he had studied German at school, he did not understand her. In halting German, he asked her to speak more slowly.

'Are you looking for someone?' she asked.

'I'm looking for Emil,' he said. 'He's from Iceland.'

'Are you from Iceland too?'

'Yes. What about you? Where are you from?'

'Dresden,' the girl said. 'I'm Maria.'

'My name's Tómas,' he said and they shook hands.

'Tómas?' she repeated. 'There are a few Icelanders at the university. They often visit Emil. Sometimes we have to throw them out because they sing all night. Your German's not so bad.'

'Thanks. Schoolboy German. Do you know about Emil?'

'He's on rat duty,' she said. 'Down in the basement. It's swarming with rats here. Do you want a cup of tea? They're setting up a canteen on the top floor, but until then we have to cater for ourselves.'

'Rat duty?!'

'They come out at night. That's the best time to catch them.'

'Are there a lot?'

'If we kill ten, twenty take their place. But it's better now than it was during the war.'

Instinctively he looked around the floor as if expecting to see the creatures darting between people's feet. If anything repulsed him it was rats.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and when he turned round he saw his friend standing behind him, smiling. Holding them by their tails, he lifted up two gigantic rats. He had a spade in his other hand.

'A spade's the best thing to kill them with,' Emil said.

He was quick to adjust to his surroundings: the smell of rising damp, the appalling smell from the bathroom on the middle floor, a stink that spread through the whole building, the rotten futons, the creaking chairs and the primitive cooking facilities. He simply put them out of his mind and knew that the post-war reconstruction would be a lengthy process.

The university was excellent despite its frugal facilities. The teaching staff were highly qualified, the students were enthusiastic and he did well on his course. He got to know the engineering students who were either from Leipzig or other German cities, or from neighbouring countries, especially from Eastern Europe. Like him, several were on grants from the East German government. In fact, the students at the Karl Marx University seemed to be from all over the world. He soon met Vietnamese and Chinese students, who tended to keep themselves to themselves. There were Nigerians too, and in the room next door to his in the old villa lived a pleasant Indian by the name of Deependra.

The small group of Icelanders in the city stuck very closely together. Karl came from a little fishing village and was studying journalism. His faculty, nicknamed the Red Cloister, was said to admit only party hardliners. Rut was from Akureyri. She had chaired the youth movement there and now studied literature, specialising in Russian. Hrafnhildur was studying German language and literature, while Emil, from western Iceland, was an economics undergraduate. One way or another most of them had been picked out by the Socialist Party of Iceland for study grants in East Germany. They would meet up in the evenings and play cards or listen to Deependra's jazz records, or go to the local bar and sing Icelandic songs. The university ran an active film club and they watched
Battleship Potemkin
and discussed film as a vehicle for propaganda. They talked politics with other students. Attendance was compulsory at the meetings and talks held by the students' organisation
Freie Deutsche Jugend
– abbreviated as FDJ – the only society allowed to operate at the university. Everyone wanted to forge a new and better world.

All apart from one. Hannes had been in Leipzig the longest of all the Icelanders and avoided the others. Two months passed before Tómas first met him. He knew about Hannes from Reykjavík: the party had big plans for him. The chairman had mentioned his name at an editorial meeting and referred to him as material for the future. Like Tómas, Hannes had worked as a journalist on the party paper and he heard stories about him from the reporters. Tómas had seen Hannes speaking at meetings in Reykjavík and was impressed by his zeal, his phrases about how warmongering cowboys could buy out democracy in Iceland, how Icelandic politicians were puppets in the hands of American imperialists. 'Democracy in this country is not worth a shit for as long as the American army spreads its filth over Icelandic soil!' he had shouted to thunderous applause. In his first years in East Germany, Hannes had written a regular column called
Letter from the East
, describing the wonders of the communist system, until the articles had ceased to appear. The other Icelanders in the city had little to say about Hannes. He had gradually distanced himself from them and had gone his own way. Occasionally they discussed this but shrugged as if it were none of their business.

One day he came across Hannes in the university library. Evening had fallen, there were few people at the desks and Hannes had his head buried in his books. It was cold and blustery outside. Sometimes it was so cold in the library that people's breath steamed when they talked. Hannes was wearing a long overcoat and a cap with ear muffs. The library had suffered badly in the air raids and only part of it was in use.

'Aren't you, Hannes?' he asked in a friendly tone. 'We've never met.'

Hannes looked up from his books.

'I'm Tómas.' He held out his hand.

Hannes stared at him and the outstretched hand, then buried his head back in his books.

'Leave me alone,' he said.

Tómas was surprised. He had not expected such a reception from his compatriot, least of all from this man, who enjoyed great respect and had impressed him so deeply.

'Sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean to disturb you. Of course, you're studying.'

Instead of answering, Hannes went on jotting notes from the open books on the table in front of him. He wrote quickly in pencil and was wearing fingerless gloves to keep his hands warm.

'I was just wondering if we could have a coffee sometime,' Tómas went on. 'Or a beer.'

Hannes did not reply. Tómas stood over him, waiting for some kind of response, but when none came he slowly backed off from the table and turned away. He was halfway behind a rack of books when Hannes looked up from his tomes and at last answered him.

'Did you say Tómas?'

'Yes, we've never met but I've heard . . .'

'I know who you are,' Hannes said. 'I was like you once. What do you want from me?'

'Nothing,' he said. 'Just to say hello. I was sitting over on that side and I've been watching you. I only wanted to say hello. I went to a meeting once where you—'

'What do you think of Leipzig?' Hannes interrupted.

'Brass-monkey weather and bad food but the university's good and the first thing I'm going to do when I get back to Iceland is to campaign for legalising beer.'

Hannes smiled.

'That's true, the beer's the best thing about this place.'

'Maybe we could have a jar together sometime,' Tómas said.

'Maybe,' Hannes said, and delved back into his books. Their conversation was over.

'What do you mean, you were like me once?' Tómas asked hesitantly. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Nothing,' Hannes said, looking up and scrutinising him. He hesitated.

'Take no notice of me,' he said. 'It'll do you no good.'

Confused, he walked out of the library and into the piercing winter wind. On the way to the dormitory he met Emil and Rut. They had been to collect a package posted from Iceland for her. It was a food parcel and they were gloating over it. He did not mention his encounter with Hannes because he did not understand what he had meant.

'Lothar was looking for you,' Emil said. 'I told him you were at the library.'

'I didn't see him,' he said. 'Do you know what he wanted?'

'No idea,' Emil said.

Lothar was his liaison, his
Betreuer
. Every foreigner at the university had a liaison who was available for help. Lothar had befriended the Icelanders at the dormitory. He offered to take them around the city and show them the sights. He assisted them at the university and sometimes paid the bill when they went to
Auerbachkeller
. He wanted to go to Iceland, he said, to study Icelandic, and he spoke the language well, could even sing the latest hit songs. He said he was interested in the old Icelandic sagas, had read
Njal's Saga
and wanted to translate it.

'Here's the building,' Rut said all of a sudden, and stopped. 'That's the office. There are prison cells inside.'

They looked up at the building. It was a gloomy stone edifice of four storeys. Plywood boarding had been nailed over all the ground-floor windows. He saw the name of the street: Dittrichring. Number 24.

'Prison cells? What is this place?' he asked.

'The security police are in there,' Emil said in a low voice, as if someone might hear him.

'Stasi,' Rut said.

He looked up along the building again. The pallid street lights cast a murky shadow onto its stone walls and windows, and a slight shiver ran through him. He felt clearly that he never wanted to enter that place but had no way of knowing then how little his own wishes counted for.

He sighed and looked out to sea where a little sailboat was cruising by.

Decades later, when the Soviet Union and communism had fallen, he had returned to the headquarters and noticed at once the old nauseating smell. It produced the same effect on him as when the rat had got trapped behind the dormitory stove and they had unwittingly roasted it over and again, until the stench in the old villa became unbearable.