“They said you hung around with us in order to escape to Iceland.”
“Of course they say that, Tomas. What else would they say? Stop being so stupid.”
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything, so we have to act carefully,” he said, knowing she was right. Everything they said was a lie. Everything. “You’re in great danger,” he said. “They let me know that. We mustn’t do anything stupid.”
They looked at each other in desperation.
“What have we got ourselves into?” he sighed.
“I don’t know,” she said, hugging him and calming down slightly. “They don’t want another Hungary. That “s what we’ve got ourselves into.”
Three days later, Ilona went missing.
Karl was with her when they came and arrested her. He went running to Tomas on the campus and gasped out the news. Karl had gone to collect a book she was going to lend him. Suddenly the police appeared in the doorway. He was slammed against the wall. They turned the room upside down. Ilona was led away.
Karl was only halfway through his account when Tomas ran off. They had been so cautious. Ilona had passed on a message to her companions and they had made arrangements to leave Leipzig. She wanted to go back to Hungary to stay with her family; he was going back to Iceland and would meet her in Budapest. His studies no longer mattered. Only Ilona mattered.
When he reached their house, his lungs were bursting. The door was open and he ran inside and into their room. Everything was in disarray, books and magazines and bedclothes on the floor, the desk overturned, the bed on its side. They had spared nothing. Some objects were broken. He stepped on the typewriter that lay on the floor.
He ran straight to the Stasi headquarters. Only when he was there did he realise that he did not know the name of the man with the moustache; the people at reception did not understand what he meant. He asked to go down the corridor and find him for himself, but the receptionist just shook his head. He barged against the door to the corridor, but it was locked. He shouted for Lothar. The receptionist had come from behind his desk and called for assistance. Three men appeared and dragged him away from the door. At that moment it opened and the man with the moustache entered.
“What did you do with her?!” he roared. “Let me see her!” He shouted down the corridor: “Ilona! Ilona!”
The man with the moustache slammed the door behind him and barked orders at the others, who seized him and led him outside. He pounded on the front door and cried out to Ilona, but to no avail. He was out of his mind with anxiety. They had arrested Ilona and he was convinced they were keeping her in that building. He had to see her, had to help her, get her released. He would do anything.
He remembered noticing Lothar on campus that morning and left in haste. A tram had stopped by the campus and he jumped aboard. He leaped out by the university while the tram was still moving and found Lothar sitting alone at a table in the cafeteria. There were few people inside. He sat down facing Lothar, panting and wheezing, his face red from running, worry and fear.
“Is everything all right?” Lothar said.
“I’ll do anything for you if you let her go,” he said immediately.
Lothar took a long look at him, observing his sufferings almost philosophically.
“Who?” he said.
“Ilona — you know who I’m talking about. I’ll do anything if you let her go.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Lothar said.
“You arrested Ilona this lunchtime.”
“We?” Lothar said. “Who’s “we”?”
“The security police,” he said. “Ilona was arrested this morning. Karl was with her when they came. Won’t you talk to them? Won’t you tell them I’ll do whatever it takes for them to release her?”
“I don’t think you matter any more,” Lothar said.
“Can you help me?” he said. “Can you intervene?”
“If she’s been arrested, there’s nothing I can do. It’s too late. Unfortunately.”
“What can I do?” he said, almost bursting into tears. “Tell me what I can do.”
Lothar took a long look at him.
“Go back to Poechestrasse,” he said in the end. “Go home and hope for the best.”
“What kind of a person are you?” he said, feeling the anger coursing through him. “What kind of bastard are you? What makes you act like… like a monster? What is it? Where does this incredible urge to dominate come from, this arrogance? This inhumanity!”
Lothar looked around at the few souls sitting in the cafeteria. Then he smiled.
“People who play with fire get burned, but they’re always surprised when they are. Always fucking innocent and surprised when it happens.”
Lothar stood up and bent over him.
“Go home,” he said. “Hope for the best. I’ll talk to them but I can’t promise anything.”
Then Lothar walked away, taking slow steps, calmly, as if none of this was any concern of his. He stayed in the cafeteria and buried his face in his hands. He thought about Ilona and tried to persuade himself that they had only called her in for interrogation and she would soon be released. Maybe they were intimidating her, as they had done to him a few days before. They exploited fear. Fed off it. Maybe she was already back home. He stood up and left the cafeteria.
When he left the university building he found everything strangely unaltered wherever he looked. People were acting as if nothing had happened. They hurried along the pavements or stood talking. His world had collapsed, yet everything seemed unchanged. As if everything were still in order. He would return to their room and wait for her. Maybe she was already back home. Maybe she would be back later. She had to come. What were they detaining her for? For meeting people and talking to them?
He was at his wits” end when he rushed off home. It was such a short time since they’d been lying snuggled up against each other and she had told him that what she had suspected for some time had been confirmed. She whispered in his ear. It had probably happened at the end of the summer.
He lay paralysed, staring up at the ceiling, uncertain how to take the news. Then he hugged her and said he wanted to live with her for his whole life.
“Both of us,” she whispered.
“Yes, both of you,” he said, and laid his head on her stomach.
He was brought back to his senses by the pain in his hand. Often when he thought back to what had happened in East Germany he would clench his fists until his hands ached. He relaxed his muscles, wondering as usual whether he could have prevented it all. Whether he could have done something else. Something that would have changed the course of events. He never reached a conclusion.
He stood up stiffly from his chair and walked to the door down to the basement. Opening it, he switched on the light and carefully descended the stone steps. They were worn after decades of use and could be slippery. He entered the roomy basement and turned on the lights. Various oddments had accumulated there over the years. If he could avoid it, he never threw anything away. It was not untidy, however, because he kept it all in order — everything had its place.
Along one wall stood a workbench. Sometimes he made carvings. Produced small objects from wood and painted them. That was his only hobby. Taking a square block of wood and creating from it something living and beautiful. He kept some of the animals upstairs in his flat. The ones he was most satisfied with. The smaller he succeeded in making them, the more rewarding they were to carve. He had even carved an Icelandic sheepdog with a curly tail and cocked ears, scarcely larger than a thumbnail.
He reached under the workbench and opened the box he kept there. He felt the butt, then removed the pistol from its place. The metal was cold to the touch. Sometimes his memories would draw him down to the basement to fondle the weapon or just to reassure himself that it was where it belonged.