They sat in silence.
He knew that Hannes and Ilona had a point. And he thought it was better for the party to come clean and admit that free elections and free discussion were for the time being impossible. They would come later, when the goal had been achieved: a socialist economy. They had sometimes made fun of the Germans for agreeing to every proposal at meetings and then saying the exact opposite in private. People were afraid to be straightforward, hardly dared to advance an independent view for fear that it would be interpreted as antisocialist and they would be punished.
“They’re dangerous men, Tomas,” Hannes said after a long silence. “They’re not playing games.”
“Why are you always talking about freedom of opinion?” he said angrily. “You and Ilona. Look at the witch hunt against communists in America. You can see how they drive people out of the country, out of their jobs. And what about the surveillance society there? Did you read about the cowards who informed on their comrades to the House Un-American Activities Committee? The communist party’s outlawed there. Only one opinion’s permitted there, too — the opinion of the capitalist cartels, the imperialists, the warmongers. They reject everything else. Everything.”
He stood up.
“You’re here at the invitation of the proletariat of this country,” he said angrily. “It pays for your education and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for talking like that. Ashamed of yourself! And you ought to fuck off back home!”
He stormed out of the cafeteria.
“Tomas,” Hannes called after him, but he did not answer.
He strode down the corridor away from the cafeteria and bumped into Lothar, who asked what the hurry was. Glancing back, he said it was nothing. They left the building together. Lothar offered to buy him a beer and he accepted. When they sat down in Baum next to Thomaskirche he told Lothar about the argument and how Hannes, for some reason, had turned completely against socialism and denigrated it. He told Lothar that he could not tolerate Hannes’s hypocrisy in arguing against the socialist system but reaping its benefits by studying there.
“I don’t understand it,” he said to Lothar. “I don’t understand how he can abuse his position like that. I could never do that,” he said. “Never.”
That evening he met Ilona and told her about the argument. He mentioned that Hannes sometimes gave the impression that he knew her, but she shook her head. She had never heard his name and never spoken to him.
“Do you agree with him?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yes,” she said after a long pause. “I agree with him. And not just me. There are many, many others. People of my age in Budapest. Young people here in Leipzig.”
“Why don’t they speak out?”
“We’re doing that in Budapest,” she said. “But we face huge opposition. It’s awesome. And there’s fear. Fear everywhere about what could happen.”
“The army?”
“Hungary is one of the Soviet Union’s trophies from the war. They won’t give it up without a fight. If we manage to break free from them, you couldn’t say what would happen in the rest of Eastern Europe. That’s the big question. The chain reaction.”
Two days later, without warning, Hannes was expelled from the university and ordered to leave the country.
He heard that a police guard had been stationed outside Hannes’s digs and that he had been escorted to the airport by two members of the security police. As he understood it, none of the courses that Hannes had taken would be recognised by any other university. It was as if Hannes had never been a student. He had been erased.
He could not believe his ears when Emil burst in and related the news. Emil did not know much. He had met Karl and Hrafnhildur, who told him about the police guard and how everyone was saying that Hannes had been taken to the airport. Emil had to repeat it all before it sank in. Their compatriot was being treated as if he had committed some appalling offence. Like a common criminal. That evening the dormitory buzzed with the news. No one knew for sure what had happened.
The following day, three days after their argument in the cafeteria, he received a message from Hannes. Hannes’s room-mate delivered it. It was in a sealed envelope with only his name on the front. Tomas. He opened the envelope and sat on his bed with the note. It did not take long to read.
You asked me what had happened in Leipzig. What had happened to me. It’s simple. They kept asking me to spy on my friends, to tell them what they said about socialism, about East Germany, about Ulbricht, what radio stations you listened to. Not just you, but everyone I knew. I refused to be their informer. I said I would not spy on my friends. They thought I could be persuaded. Otherwise, they said, I would be expelled from the university. I refused and they let me be. Until now.
Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?
He read the message over and again and still could not believe what it said. A shiver ran down his spine and his head spun.
Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?
Hannes blamed him for his expulsion. Hannes believed that he had gone to the university authorities and reported his opinions, his opposition to the system. If he had left him alone, it would never have happened. He stared at the letter. It was a misunderstanding. What did Hannes mean? He had not spoken to the university authorities, only to Ilona and Lothar, and in the evening he had mentioned his surprise at Hannes’s views to Emil, Karl and Hrafnhildur in the kitchen. That was nothing new. They agreed with him. They felt that the way Hannes had changed was at best excessive, at worst despicable.
It could only have been a coincidence that Hannes was expelled after their argument, and a misunderstanding on Hannes’s part to link it to their meeting. Surely he could not think that it was Tomas’s fault he was not allowed to finish his course. He hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t told anyone except his friends. Wasn’t the man being paranoid? Could he seriously believe this?
Emil was in the room with him, and he showed him the note. Emil snorted. He thoroughly disliked Hannes and everything he stood for, and did not conceal it.
“He’s nuts,” Emil said. “Take no notice of it.”
“But why does he say that?”
“Tomas,” Emil said. “Forget it. He’s trying to blame his own mistakes on someone else. He should have been out of here long ago.”
Tomas leapt to his feet, grabbed his coat, put it on rushing down the corridor, ran all the way to Ilona’s digs and banged on the door. Her landlady answered and showed him in to Ilona. She was putting on a cap and already had her jacket and shoes on. She was going out. Clearly surprised to see him, she realised that he was very agitated.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, moving towards him.
He closed the door.
“Hannes thinks I had something to do with him getting expelled and deported. Like I gave something away!”
“What are you saying?”
“He blames me for his expulsion!”
“Who did you talk to?” Ilona asked. “After you met Hannes?”
“Just you and the others. Ilona, what did you mean the other day when you were talking about young people in Leipzig? The ones who agreed with Hannes? Who are they? How do you know them?”
“You didn’t talk to anyone else? Are you sure?”
“No, only Lothar. What do you know about young people in Leipzig, Ilona?”