‘The view, you know.’ He pushed his plate aside and got up. ‘You know, a river, when you can see it all the time, on a river there’s always something going on.’ I got up as well and stood next to him, and we looked out at the buildings, a long way off, that the river must have been behind somewhere. He did us two roll-ups and passed me one. ‘You gonna look at it?’
‘The river?’ I gave him a light and he nodded.
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘Gonna get your leave after all, eh?’
‘Looks like it. But you never know with them.’
‘You gonna go on a trip?’
‘It’s only a weekend.’
‘I mean a real trip.’ He looked at me and I saw a thin trail of smoke coming out of one of his nostrils, now just a slit.
‘Nah, they always find you anyway. A trip …’ I laughed, and he smiled too and flicked his roll-up out between the bars.
‘So … so d’you wanna go anywhere, got any plans?’
‘This and that,’ I said, ‘Leipzig, the usual, you know.’
‘Our city,’ he said. I stubbed my rollie out in the snow on the windowsill. He rolled two more, lit them up and passed me one.
‘Wanna visit your sister, eh?’
‘Nah, better not. She’s just got married.’
‘Kid?’
‘Yeah. Still a littl’un.’
‘When my daughter …’ He flicked his half-smoked roll-up out the window and closed it. I picked up the ashtray from the table and lay down on my bed. ‘You know your leave …’ The Boxer turned round to me for a moment, then he leant his forehead against the window pane. I smoked and looked at his back. It was a pretty broad back; maybe he’d been a cruiserweight, maybe even one class higher, in his golden days, when he’d nearly made it to the Olympics. I dragged on my rollie until I felt the heat on my lips. ‘When you’re out on leave …’ the Boxer said, muffled against the glass and moving his head back and forth. I pressed the butt into the ashtray, the key banged in the lock, the Boxer turned to face the door, I jumped up, the ashtray fell on the floor, I nudged it under the bed with my foot. The warden was standing in the door, seven a.m., time for work.
‘When you’re out on leave,’ said the Boxer in the middle of the night, when he woke up, ‘You listening …?’ I didn’t answer, I didn’t breathe, but he kept on talking because he knew I was awake. ‘… And when you’re in the city, in Leipzig … you know, son …’ I hated it when he called me ‘son’. I’d celebrated my thirtieth with him last summer. He’d got hold of some samogon and home brew from the Russians, and then he’d spent all night talking about his daughter until he fell asleep. ‘Got such dark hair, nearly black, not from her mother, no. Had it down over her shoulders, back then, you know … And take a good look what she looks like now, you listening son, take such a good look that … How tall she is and that, her eyes, her eyes as well …’ He came down the ladder, I saw him dark in front of my bed. I sat up and leant against the wall. ‘Course,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you all about her eyes, if that’s all you want.’
‘Something else,’ he said, and I heard him walking across the dark cell to the table and sitting down. His lighter clicked, and then I saw the burning tip of his cigarette moving to and fro as he spoke. ‘There’s these two poofters owe me something. Won’t be any trouble. Got a little shop. Beer, schnapps, herring rolls. I’ll let them know you’re coming. It’s not much. Take it and give it to her. S’a surprise. She’s on a training scheme, not much coming in. I trust you. And tell her … tell her …’
‘I’ll tell her, Boxer.’ I leant against the wall, pulled the blanket up and over my head and breathed through the material.
The Boxer was standing at the window. But when I looked up at him and raised my hand briefly, I wasn’t so sure any more, so far away, and the twisted wire between us on top of the wall. I looked at the big clock on the tower, ten to eleven, same as always. I noticed it was snowing, and wiped the snow off my hair. Then I walked slowly away from the gate, turned around again, saw the woman behind the glass of the porter’s lodge, old and white-haired — been here since Adolf, we used to say. I walked past the little shop, closed now, saw the original jailbird products in the window: guaranteed organic potatoes, wooden figures, baskets, my baskets; I’d got to be a great basket-weaver during my time. I stood still by the commemorative plaque in the little car park a few yards away from the shop. ‘In memory of the victims of the fascist dictatorship in Fort Zinna.’ Someone had laid flowers in the snow. There was another commemorative stone a bit further along, because the Russkis had been here too. When I first arrived I’d walked to and fro between the stones until it got dark and I went up to the gate. I put my bag down and looked past the jail to the fields. I lit up and squatted down. I pressed my hand into the snow and felt it melting between my fingers and kept looking at the white fields and dragging on my roll-up, until I noticed the snow had put it out. I wiped my wet hand across my face and got up. I threw the roll-up away and walked towards the bus stop. I passed the low building where the day-release boys lived. Two of them were standing outside and nodded at me. I raised my hand briefly, fingers slightly apart — that was how we used to put them on windows, doors, walls. When I turned round again a few yards later they were still watching me go, hands in their pockets. ‘Drinks World,’ ‘Sports Corner,’ ‘Torgau welcomes careful drivers’. The bus drove so fast I felt sick, but I knew it would get slower the further we drove. Someone once told me he’d had to puke the first time he got on a bus after five years.
I felt people looking at my bag and staring at me and leant my head on the window. When we drove past the brewery I wanted to get out, but I stayed put. The bus stopped at a crossroads and I saw the sign ‘Riesa 182 km’ next to me. There was a big juvenile facility there, out in Zeithain, in the middle of nowhere, but I was a few years too old for them now. ‘How much time you done now, son?’ asked the Boxer.
‘It’s been a few years now,’ I said, ‘all together.’
‘Can’t grumble either,’ said the Boxer. We were playing chess and I offered him a pawn. He ate it up, and a few moves later his king got what was coming to him. It was only boxing he’d been top-class at. I’d learned to play chess more than ten years ago in Zeithain. ‘Traudi’s Inn’. I got out. The station was one stop away, but the trains to Leipzig ran all day, and I went in to see Traudi. The door swung to behind me, and I opened it again and looked out. The bus was driving down the road and I saw a couple of heads moving behind the big rear window. ‘Hey, it’s getting cold,’ someone said, and I flinched, dropped my bag and turned around. Just an old bloke at one of the tables, holding tight to a beer bottle with both hands and looking down at the tabletop, pretty far gone. I picked up my bag and went up to the bar. Some scrawny guy was fiddling with the beer pumps, but when I sat down on one of the bar stools I saw that the scrawny guy had a truckload of lipstick on and must have been a woman. As if she wanted to prove it, she stuck out her chest and smiled. She had a name-tag on her apron, it said, ‘Traudi Schmidt at your service’.
They talked about Big Traudi inside, ‘Got this great place, you gotta go there when you get out, Big Traudi’s got the best beer in town, you better believe it,’ but perhaps Big Traudi had been on a diet over the years. ‘All right,’ I said.