The Draining Lake (8 page)

The couple walked along the pavement, the man slightly ahead of the woman. It was a glorious spring evening. Rays of sunshine fell on the surface of the sea and in the distance showers of rain tumbled down. It was as if the couple were impervious to the evening's beauty. They strode forward, the man seemingly agitated. He talked incessantly. His wife followed silently, trying not to be left behind.

He watched them pass his window, looked at the evening sun and thought back to when he was young and the world was beginning to become so infinitely complex and unmanageable.

When the tragedy began.

He completed his first year at the university with flying colours and went back to Iceland in the summer. During the vacation he worked for the party newspaper, writing articles about the reconstruction of Leipzig. At meetings he described being a student there and discussed Iceland's historical and cultural links with the city. He met leading party members. They had big plans for him. He looked forward to going back. He felt he had a role to play, perhaps a greater one than others. It was said that he was highly promising.

That autumn he returned to East Germany; his second Christmas at the residence was approaching. The Icelanders looked forward to it because some would be sent food parcels from home: traditional Icelandic Christmas delicacies such as smoked lamb, salted fish, dried fish, confectionery, even books too. Karl had already received his parcel and when he began boiling a huge leg of lamb from Húnavatnssýsla where his uncle was a farmer the aroma filled the old villa. In the box there was also a bottle of Icelandic schnapps, which Emil requisitioned.

Only Rut could afford to go home to Iceland for Christmas. She was also the only one who felt seriously homesick after she returned from summer vacation, and when she left for the Christmas break some said she might not be back. The old villa was emptier than usual because most of the German students had gone home, as had some of the Eastern Europeans who were permitted to travel and were entitled to cheap rail transport.

So it was only a small group that gathered in the kitchen around the leg of smoked lamb and the bottle of schnapps that Emil had placed in the middle of the table. Two Swedish students had supplied potatoes, others brought red cabbage and Karl had somehow managed to produce a decent white sauce for the meat. Lothar Weiser, the liaison who had especially befriended the Icelanders, dropped by and was invited to join the feast. They all liked Lothar. He was talkative and entertaining. He seemed profoundly interested in politics and sometimes probed them for their views on the university, Leipzig, the German Democratic Republic, First Secretary Walter Ulbricht and his planned economy. He wondered whether they thought Ulbricht was too closely aligned to the Soviet government, and asked repeatedly about the events in Hungary and the American capitalists' attempts to drive a wedge into its friendship with the Soviet Union through their radio broadcasts and endless anticommunist propaganda. In particular he felt that young people were too gullible towards the propaganda and blind to the real intentions of the Western capitalist governments.

'Can't we just have a bit of fun?' Karl said when Lothar began talking about Ulbricht, and downed a shot of spirit. Grimacing terribly, he said that he had never liked Icelandic schnapps.

'Ja, ja, natürlich,' Lothar laughed. 'Enough of politics.'

He spoke Icelandic, which he said he had learned in Germany, and they thought he must be a linguistic genius because he spoke the language almost as well as they did, without ever having visited the country. When they asked how he had gained such a command of it he said he had listened to recordings and radio broadcasts. Nothing amused them more than when he sang old lullabies.

'Approaching rain,' was another phrase that he repeated endlessly, from the Icelandic weather forecasts.

In the box there were two letters to Karl which delivered the main news from Iceland since the autumn, along with some newspaper cuttings. They talked about the news from home and someone remarked that Hannes was absent as usual.

'Ja, Hannes,' Lothar said, with a smirk.

'I told him about this,' Emil said, downing a glass.

'Why is he so mysterious?' Hrafnhildur asked.

'Ah yes, mysterious,' Lothar said.

'It's so strange,' Emil said. 'He never turns up to the FDJ meetings or their lectures. I've never seen him doing volunteer work. Is he too good to work in the ruins? Aren't we good enough for him? Does he think he's better than us? Tómas, you've talked to him.'

'I think Hannes just wants to finish his course,' he said, with a shrug. 'He's just got this year left.'

'Everyone always spoke of him as a future star of the party,' Karl said. 'He was always described as leadership material. He doesn't look very promising here. I think I've only seen him twice this winter and he hardly said a word to me.'

'You barely see him,' Lothar said. 'He's rather glum,' he added, shaking his head, then sipped the schnapps and pulled the same sort of face that Karl had.

Down on the ground floor they heard the front door open, followed by quick footsteps up the stairs. Two males and a female appeared at the gloomy far end of the corridor. They were students, passing acquaintances of Karl's.

'We heard you were having an Icelandic Christmas party,' the girl said when they entered the kitchen and saw the spread. There was plenty of lamb left and the others made room for them at the table. One of the men produced two bottles of vodka, to riotous applause. They introduced themselves: the men were from Czechoslovakia and the girl was Hungarian.

She sat beside him and he felt himself go weak. He tried not to stare at her after she emerged from the darkness of the corridor, but when he saw her there for the first time a wave of feelings rushed through him that he would never have thought himself capable of and found difficult to understand. Something strange happened and he was suddenly overwhelmed by a peculiar joy and euphoria, mixed with shyness. No girl had ever had such an effect on him.

'Are you from Iceland too?' She turned to him and asked her question in good German.

'Yes, I'm from Iceland,' he stammered, also in German, which he could speak well by now. He dragged his gaze away from her when it dawned on him that he had been staring at her ever since she'd sat down beside him.

'What monstrosity is that?' she asked, pointing to a boiled sheep's head on the table, still uneaten.

'A sheep's head, sawn in half and charred,' he said, and saw her wince.

'What sort of people do that?' she asked.

'Icelanders,' he said. 'Actually it's very good,' he added rather hesitantly. 'The tongue and the cheeks . . .' He stopped when he realised that it did not sound particularly appetising.

'So, you eat the eyes and lips too?' she asked, not trying to conceal her disgust.

'The lips? Yes, those too. And the eyes.'

'You can't have had much food if you had to resort to that,' she said.

'We were a very poor nation,' he said, nodding.

'I'm Ilona,' she said, holding out her hand. They exchanged greetings and he told her that his name was Tómas.

One of her companions called out to her. He had a plate full of smoked lamb and potatoes and urged her to try it, telling her that it was delicious. She stood up, found a plate and cut a slice of the meat.

'We never get enough meat,' she said as she sat down beside him again.

'Umm, wonderful,' she said with her mouth full of smoked lamb.

'Better than sheep's eyes,' he said.

They went on celebrating into the early hours. More students heard about the party and the house filled up. An old gramophone was taken out and someone put some Sinatra records on. Late in the night the different nationalities took turns singing songs about their countries. Karl and Emil, both definitely feeling the effects of the consignment from Iceland, began by singing a melancholy ode by Jónas Hallgrímsson. Then the Hungarians took over, followed by the Czechs, the Swedes and the Germans, and a student from Senegal who pined for the hot African nights. Hrafnhildur insisted on hearing the most beautiful words in all their mother tongues, and after some confusion it was agreed that one representative from each country would stand and recite the most beautiful passage in it. The Icelanders were unanimous. Hrafnhildur rose and declaimed the finest piece of Icelandic poetry ever written:

The star of love
over Steeple Rock
is cloaked in clouds of night
. It laughed, once, from heaven
on the lad grieving
deep in the dark valley
.

Her delivery was shot through with emotion and even though only a few of them understood it, the group was stunned into momentary silence, until a mighty round of applause broke out and Hrafnhildur took a deep bow.

He was still sitting with Ilona at the kitchen table; she looked at him inquisitively. He told her about the character in the poem that had been recited, who was reflecting on a long journey through the Icelandic wilderness with a young girl for whom he yearned. He knew that they could never be lovers and with those morose thoughts he returned alone to his valley, weighed down by sorrow. Above him twinkled the star of love that had once lit his way but had now disappeared behind a cloud, and he thought to himself that their love, although unfulfilled, would last for ever.

She watched him while he was talking and whether it was his story of the sorrowful young lover, or the way he told it, or just the Icelandic schnapps, she suddenly kissed him right on the lips, so tenderly that he felt like a little child again.

Rut did not return from her Christmas vacation. She sent a letter to each of her friends in Leipzig, and in his she mentioned the facilities and various other complaints, and he understood that she had had enough. Or perhaps she was just too homesick. In the dormitory kitchen, the Icelanders talked it over. Karl said he missed her and Emil nodded. Hrafnhildur said she was soft.

The next time he met Hannes he asked why he had not wanted to join them at the residence. This was after a lecture on structural stress which had taken a strange turn. Hannes had attended it too. Twenty minutes after the lecture began, the door had opened and in walked three students who said they were from the FDJ and would like to say a few words. With them was a young man he had sometimes seen at the library and had assumed was a student of German literature. The student looked down at the floor. The leader of the group, who introduced himself as the secretary of the FDJ, began speaking about student solidarity and reminded them of the four aims of the university's work: to teach them Marxist theory, make them socially active, have them work in the service of society within a programme organised by young communists, and establish a class of intellectuals who would later become professionals in their respective fields.

He turned to the student with them and described how he had admitted listening to western radio broadcasts and then had promised to mend his ways. The student looked up, took one step forward, confessed his crime and said he would not tune in to western programmes again. Said they were corrupted by imperialism and capitalist profiteering, and urged everyone in the hall to listen only to Eastern European radio in future.

The secretary thanked him, then asked the students to join him in a pledge that no one in the room would listen to western radio. After everyone had repeated the oath, the secretary turned to the teacher and apologised for disturbing him, and the group left the room.

Hannes, sitting two rows in front, turned round and looked at him with an expression that combined deep sadness with anger.

When the lecture was over Hannes beat a hasty retreat, so he ran after him, grabbed him and asked quite brashly if everything was all right.

'All right?' Hannes repeated. 'Do you think what happened in there just now was all right? Did you see that poor bloke?'

'Just now,' he said, 'no, I . . . but, of course . . . we need—'

'Leave me alone,' Hannes interrupted. 'Just leave me alone.'

'Why didn't you come round for Christmas dinner? The others think you're rather full of yourself,' he said.

'That's bollocks,' Hannes said, quickening his pace as if wanting to shake him off.

'What's wrong?' he asked. 'Why are you acting like this? What's happened? What have we done to you?'

Hannes stopped in the corridor.

'Nothing. You haven't done anything to me,' he said. 'I just want to be left alone. I'll graduate in the spring and then it's over. That's it. I'll go back to Iceland and it's over. This farce. Didn't you see it? Didn't you see how they treated that bloke? Is that what you want in Iceland?'

Then he strutted away.

'Tómas,' he heard a voice calling from behind him. He turned round and saw Ilona waving. He smiled at her. They were planning to meet up after the lecture. She had been to the dormitory to ask for him the day after the feast. From then on they met regularly. On this day they went for a long walk around the city and sat down outside Thomaskirche. He told her stories about the two Icelandic writer friends who had once stayed in Leipzig and had sat where they were sitting now. One died of tuberculosis. The other became the greatest writer his nation had ever produced.

'You're always so sad when you talk about those Icelanders of yours,' she said with a smile.

'I just think it's a brilliant story. Them walking the same streets as me in this city. Two Icelandic poets.'

By the church, he had noticed that she was uneasy and seemed on her guard. She glanced around as if looking for someone.

'Are you all right?' he asked.

'There's a man . . .'

She stopped.

'What man?'

'That man over there,' Ilona said. 'Don't look, don't turn your head, I saw him yesterday too. I just can't remember where.'

'Who is he? Do you know him?'

'I'd never seen him before, but now I've seen him twice in two days.'

'Is he from the university?'

'No, I don't think so. He's older.'

'Do you think he's watching you?'