“He also made a pact with Hitler,” she said. “Dictatorship fosters fear and servility. We’re bearing the brunt of that in Hungary now. We’re not a free nation. They’ve systematically established a communist state under Soviet control. No one asked us, the nation, what we wanted. We want to govern our own affairs but can’t. Young people are thrown in prison. Some disappear. It’s said that they’re sent to the Soviet Union. You have an American army in your country. How would you feel if it ran everything by its military might?”
He shook his head.
“Look at the elections here,” she said. “They call them free, but there’s only one real party standing. What’s free about that? If you think differently you’re thrown in prison. What’s that? Is that socialism? What else are people supposed to vote for in these free elections? Has everyone forgotten the uprising here the year before last that the Soviets crushed by shooting civilians on the streets, people who wanted change!”
“Ilona…”
“And interactive surveillance,” Ilona continued, seriously agitated. “They say it’s to help us. We’re supposed to spy on our friends and family and inform on antisocialist attitudes. If you know that one of your fellow students listens to western radio you’re supposed to report him, and he’s dragged from one lecture to the next to confess his crime. Children are encouraged to inform on their parents.”
“The party needs time to adapt,” he said.
When the novelty of being in Leipzig had worn off and reality confronted them, the Icelanders had discussed the situation. He had reached a firm conclusion on the surveillance society, about what was called “interactive surveillance’, whereby every citizen kept an eye on everyone else. Also on the dictatorship of the communist party, prohibition of freedom of speech and the press, and compulsory attendance at meetings and marches. He felt that instead of being secretive about the methods it employed, the party should admit that certain methods were needed during this phase of the transformation to a socialist state. They were justifiable if they were only temporary. In the course of time such methods would cease to be necessary. People would realise that socialism was the most appropriate system.
“People are scared,” Ilona said.
He shook his head and they started arguing. He had not heard much about events in Hungary and she was hurt when he doubted her word. He tried to employ arguments from the party meetings in Reykjavik, from the party leadership and youth movement and from the works of Marx and Engels, all to no avail. She just looked at him and said over and again: “You mustn’t close your eyes to this.”
“You let western imperialist propaganda turn you against the Soviet Union,” he said. “They want to break the solidarity of the communist countries because they fear them.”
“That’s wrong,” she said.
They fell silent. They had finished their glasses of beer. He was angry with her. He had never heard or seen anyone describe the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries in such terms, apart from the conservative press in Iceland. He knew about the strength of the western powers” propaganda machine, which worked well in Iceland, and he admitted that it was one reason for needing to restrict freedom of speech and press freedom too in Eastern Europe. This he could understand while socialist states were being constructed in the aftermath of the war. He did not regard it as repression.
“Let’s not argue,” she said.
“No,” he said, putting some money on the table. “Let’s get going.”
On the way out, Ilona tugged lightly at his arm and he looked at her. She was trying to communicate something by her expression. Then she nodded furtively towards the bar.
“There he is,” she said.
He looked over and saw the man Ilona had said she thought was pursuing her. Dressed in an overcoat, he sipped his beer and acted as if they were not there. It was the same man from outside Thomaskirche.
“I’ll have a word with him,” he said.
“No,” Ilona said. “Don’t. Let’s go.”
A few days later he saw Hannes sitting at his table in the library, and sat down beside him. Hannes went on writing in pencil in his exercise book without looking up.
“Is she winding you up?” Hannes asked, still writing in the book.
“Who?”
“Ilona.”
“Do you know Ilona?”
“I know who she is,” Hannes said, and looked up. He was wearing a thick scarf and fingerless gloves.
“Do you know about us?” he asked.
“Everything gets around,” Hannes said. “Ilona’s from Hungary so she’s not as green as us.”
“As green as us?”
“Forget it,” Hannes said, burying his head back in his exercise book.
He reached across the table and snatched the book away. Hannes looked up in surprise and tried to grab the book back, but it was out of his reach.
“What’s going on?” he said. “Why are you behaving like this?”
Hannes looked at the book that Tomas was holding, then stared at him.
“I don’t want to get involved in what’s going on here, I just want to go home and forget it,” he said. “It’s completely absurd. I hadn’t been here as long as you when I got sick of it.”
“But you’re still here.”
“It’s a good university. And it took me a while to understand all the lies and lose my patience with them.”
“What is it that I can’t see?” he asked, fearing the answer. “What have you discovered? What am I missing?”
Hannes stared him in the eye, looked around the library and then at the book that Tomas was still holding, then back into his eyes.
“Just carry on,” he said. “Stick to your convictions. Don’t go off the tracks. Believe me, you won’t gain anything by it. If you’re comfortable with it, then it’s all right. Don’t delve any deeper. You can’t imagine what you might find.”
Hannes held out his hand for his exercise book.
“Believe me,” he said. “Forget it.”
“And Ilona?” he said.
“Forget her too,” Hannes said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Why do you talk in riddles?”
“Leave me alone,” Hannes said. “Just leave me alone.”
Three days later he was in a forest outside the city. He and Emil had enrolled in the Gesellschaft fur Sport und Technik. It advertised itself as an all-round sports club that offered horse riding, rally driving and much more. Students were encouraged to take part in club activities, just like the volunteer work organised by the FDJ. It involved a week’s harvesting in the autumn, one day a term or in the vacations clearing air-raid rubble, factory work, coal production or the like. Attendance was voluntary, but anyone who did not enrol was liable to be punished.
He was pondering this arrangement while standing in the forest with Emil and his other comrades, a week’s camp in front of them which, as it turned out, largely involved military training.
Such was life in Leipzig. Very little was exactly what it seemed. Foreign students were under surveillance and took care not to say anything in public that might offend their hosts. They were taught socialist values at compulsory meetings and voluntary work was voluntary in name only.
As time went by they grew accustomed to all this and referred to it as “the charade’. He believed the present situation would be temporary. Others were not so optimistic. He laughed to himself when he found out that the sports and technology club was merely a thinly veiled military unit. Emil was not so amused. He saw nothing funny in it and, unlike the others, never called it “the charade’. Nothing about Leipzig struck him as funny. They were lying stretched out in their tent on their first night with their new companions. All evening Emil had talked with fervour about a socialist state in Iceland.