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.
“Tomas,” 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?”
“No, it’s nothing. Come on.”
Instead of living on campus, Ilona rented a room in the city, and they went there. He tried to be sure whether the man from Thomaskirche was tracking them, but could not see him anywhere.
The room was in a little flat belonging to a widow who worked in a printshop. Ilona said she was very kindly and allowed her to waltz around the flat as she pleased. The woman had lost her husband and two sons in the war. He saw photographs of them on the walls. The two sons wore German army uniforms.
In Ilona’s room were stacks of books and German and Hungarian newspapers and magazines, a dilapidated portable typewriter on the desk and a futon. While she went into the kitchen he browsed through her books and struck a few keys on the typewriter. On the wall above the futon were photographs of people he presumed were her relatives.
Ilona returned with two cups of tea and kicked the door to with her heel. She set the cups down carefully beside the typewriter. The tea was piping hot.
“It’ll be just right by the time we’ve finished,” she said.
Then she walked over to him and gave him a long, deep kiss. Overcoming his surprise, he hugged her and kissed her passionately until they fell onto the futon and she began hitching up his sweater and undoing his belt. He was very inexperienced. He had had sex before, the first time after the school’s farewell dance and once after that at the party paper’s annual get-together, but those had been fairly clumsy efforts. He was not particularly skilled, but she seemed to be and he gladly let her take control.
She was right. When he slumped down beside her and she smothered a long groan the tea was just the right temperature.
Two days later in the Auerbachkeller they talked politics and argued for the first and only time. She began by describing how the Russian revolution had spawned a dictatorship, and that dictatorships were always dangerous no matter what form they took.
He did not want to argue with her although he knew perfectly well that she was wrong.
“It was thanks to Stalin’s programme of industrialisation that the Nazis were defeated,” he said.