Snowleg (39 page)

“I almost told you yesterday how much you look like Wilhelm,” she said. “But seeing you again, it is rather remarkable. I'm sure you'll agree.”

He stared at the face until he no longer saw it. “Similar colouring,” he said politely.
Men in their forties, that's when things happen.
“What happened to Wilhelm?”

“A girl at the tourist office – although he didn't tell me. It was something I discovered much later. Sometimes not even your children tell you their secrets. He said they'd just kissed in his car in the parking lot. But why else would his marriage have broken down so soon after? For a kiss? Not in my experience, Herr Doktor Peter. You don't leave your wife for a kiss.” She gave him a look. “Any more than you go seeking someone you met once in a theatre. Not unless your heart is as soft as watermelon.”

“You're right. What I told you yesterday, it wasn't the whole story.”

“Is that so? No, wait. Before you go on, I'm going to set the alarm.”

She had hardly stepped back into the room when he confessed. “I did know her, Frau Lube. In fact, I had met her two days before. I had a girlfriend in Hamburg, but I'd fallen in love with Snowleg.”

She examined him sympathetically as if he were a beggar in the S-Bahn whom she might pity, but not trust.

“She wanted to leave the country and I was going to help her.”

With a little frown, she picked up the ointment and then her cup and led the way onto the terrace. Peter was determined to restrain himself, but he had to ask. “Frau Lube, what happened to her?”

“Look. The sun's come out for you.” In her unhurried eyes a warning to proceed slowly. He hadn't told his whole story. Why should she? He took 200 Marks from his wallet and tucked the notes on the low table, under a plastic bag with many coloured wools tumbling out.

“No,” she said. “You keep that. You've been robbed.”

“Give it to your charity, please.”

She left the notes where they were. “It will go to the church.”

He tried another tack. “Last night,” as they sat down, “I bumped into one of the festival girls. It turns out her cousin is married to Snowleg's brother.”

“Who is that?”

“Renate.”

“Oh, yes? Renate was often at the Astoria. And did she help you?”

“I have to say that our encounter left a sour taste.”

“I suppose she tried to sell you her tarty clothes?” She opened the cap and began to rub in the cream.

“She did.”

“That shameless woman came here, to my door. I took one look. ‘Not for me, dear.' Well, I mean to say, it was obvious she hadn't anything for my kind. She told me about her new life. Her new name. Can you imagine? Changing your Christian name! To what, I can't remember.”

“Christiane.”

“That's it! She really wanted me to use it. So embarrassing.”

He put down his cup on the table. “She says Snowleg worked for the Stasi.”

Frau Lube pulled a face. “Well, she'd know about that.”

“What do you think?”

“You could tell me anything about those days, I'd believe it.”

“If you'd asked me yesterday, I'd have said No, impossible.”

She turned to him. “And today?”

“Tell me, where did she go that night? Did she have trouble?”

“Of course she had trouble. This was the system. But in the end she was all right.”

“In the end? What does that mean?”

“She might have had some problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“The kind of problems that happen after you burst into a Minister's banquet and a guest of honour rejects you,” she said smoothly, leaning forward, rubbing in the cream. “There'd have been no Stasi for her if you'd been more of an English gentleman, Herr Doktor.” She sat back and gave him a good-natured smile. “You know what I thought yesterday, after you left? How you reacted in a way typical for an East German of 20 years ago – while she behaved like someone from the West.”

Again, the question escaped before he could stop it: “Where is she now?”

“How could I know? I'm not her keeper.”

“But you know something about Snowleg – more than you've been telling me.”

“To know and to tell are two different gifts. You should understand that. You of all people, Herr Doktor.”

“Frau Lube, please,” he said huskily.

“Herr Doktor Peter,” she replied with exaggerated patience, “you ask me how it was, but to go back through one's life is not so simple as crossing a city.” She squeezed out more cream, sniffed it and rubbed it into the other ankle. “Besides, we have met once – and on that occasion you were not, as you admit, entirely candid. Yes, you bring me money and fine chocolates and ointment. But maybe this ointment of yours won't work. Maybe it will be just like your promise to help this girl. Or maybe it will be miraculous. We shall see.”

She stretched out. Exposing her sore legs to the sun. Enjoying herself. For many years she had eaten chocolates in the belief that they would cure her eczema.

Peter picked at his watch-strap. He was used to listening to patients for their sakes, but not to having to listen for his own sake. Frau Lube's pace was agonising and there seemed no way to speed it up.

“Is there anyone else I could talk to?”

“Oh, I doubt many of them noticed Snjólaug. Most of us were professional non-observers.”

“You have a good memory.”

“I was just freer than most.”

“In what way free, Frau Lube?”

“My husband died young.” By which Frau Lube implied that widowhood had left her lonely, but it had carried certain privileges that were not available to her married or single friends. And she had her secret partner in God. “Let's say there was less at stake for me to remember things.”

“Then, help me –” His gesture had snapped the stitches on the buckle and the watch face was dangling from its black leather strap. He hunted in his lap for the buckle and slipped the watch and useless strap into his pocket. “It's just that I have no idea how I can find her . . .” He heard the crack in his voice and was aware of her looking at him as though she had glimpsed someone else through it. And having been resistant to his suave overtures, his Belgian liqueurs and his fancy lotions, she succumbed to this raw note.

“OK, Herr Doktor Peter, ask me something,” she said. “It's a long time ago. I don't promise that I have the answers. But ask your questions because I still don't know what it is you want to hear.”

“Was she Stasi?”

She thrust her hand into the plastic bag and pulled at a ball of pink thread. “I've heard the stories. I don't know how true they are.”

“That night,” he pressed on, “after the Stasi took her from the Astoria – what happened to her?”

“Herr Doktor Peter, let me tell you what I saw and you make up your mind.”

She was knitting a quilt for a church raffle as she talked. “The night you're speaking of. Whatever this girl did, we in Leipzig were not accustomed to it. Leipzig is a small place, everyone will have told you. I heard many rumours. All I can tell you is what she told me.”

No pause for breath, like Gus bolting his food, he said: “Did she talk about me?”

“Of course she talked about you, Herr Doktor Peter! You were the cause of all this trouble. But I am not prepared to say one more word until you answer me this. Did Renate mention Morneweg?”

“Morneweg?”

“It was the name he used. He only came at Fair times.”

“Who was he?”

“Oh, he's not interesting in himself, but he's important for your story. He listened to what was going on in the rooms and we were meant to report to him.”

“Go on.”

She touched her leg. “Morneweg. Morneweg. How to explain Morneweg? To look at, an anonymous old man. Pot belly, hair on his fingers, like one of those men you see in business pages. But in fairness, pleasant to me. Sometimes too pleasant, Herr Docktor Peter. He hears I'm a widow and this becomes embarrassing. He was always coming up and putting his clammy hand on my waist and asking how was I? He even sent a photograph of himself and me taken in the Galerie! It got to a point when I had to say to him – over coffee just like this – ‘Herr Morneweg, this is not how it should be.'”

“Morneweg was the doorman's boss?”

“He was the Leipzig ringmaster! Very senior. No-one knew how much so until the end. He had a small cubby-hole downstairs and for three or four days at Fair time you'd see him writing notes with his headphones on. Eyes shut like this. Just listening to his tape machine.

“Now why does he do it? In his position? The fact is, he doesn't trust anyone to hear what he hears. He makes it his business to know all the voices. Businessmen. Ambassadors. Even the sound of me praying, Herr Doktor!

“One day I'm in the pantry and who is standing behind the plates, watching me intently? He'd heard this strange noise on his machine and he's come to investigate.” She chuckled. “I see the disturbance in his eye and I can smell him. The girls used to complain that he smelled like something he'd shot on one of those hunts he liked so much. Like something dead.

“I warn him that I don't like his look: ‘Don't underestimate the power of prayer, Herr Morneweg.'

“Later, I go by his cubby-hole and he stops me.” She made a throat-cutting gesture with her needle. “I'm expecting a reprimand. But he wants to know if I have children. I tell him about Wilhelm. Turns out he has a son the same age. This surprises me because Morneweg – well, even in those days he must have been over seventy. He shows me a photo of his son and I suggest that the boys get together. He says that's impossible. Suddenly I'm angry. Does he think his son too good for my Wilhelm? Then out it comes. His wife has taken their child to the West. Morneweg is so busy listening to Leipzig that he hadn't heard the warnings in his own house.

“Anyway, everyone knows Morneweg is the informer-in-chief. Everyone has to sit around playing cards with him, smelling his rank smell. And what can you do? Nobody in the hotel is pleased to see him, but it's like a ship at sea. You can't move out.” She put down her cup and tugged out another ball of wool. “You're sure Renate didn't tell you any of this?”

“No.”

“Well, that surprises me. Because it was Renate, as I understand, who was responsible for getting Morneweg so worked up about your Snjólaug. Now, I don't know what Renate tells him, but Morneweg has fixed ideas about what kind of a girl it is who bursts into a room with a West German diplomat present. He sends her to be interrogated.”

“But she was released, wasn't she?”

Frau Lube went on knitting. She might have been sitting at an execution. “To speak the truth, I forget all about her. And then one Saturday, about three or four months later, I see your girl again. She's crossing Kochstraße with someone – a man.

“I was pleased to see her. So I stop and say, ‘Remember me?' She's not startled at all. ‘Of course I do.' And this is the strange thing, Herr Doktor Peter. I'm certain her name isn't Snjólaug. I am certain she's called something else, but I can't remember what.

“She introduced me to her fiancé and it's no good, I can't remember his name either, but I see her effect on him. She wasn't beautiful, and yet she could be.” Frau Lube crossed and uncrossed her ankles, luxuriating in the sunlight.

“And that was the last time you saw her?”

“Did I say that?”

“Frau Lube!” cried Peter, just like his mother, a horse stamping its foot.

“As it happens,” she said quietly, “I did see her one more time. Ten or eleven years ago, not long after the Change. I'm walking along Nordstraße when all of a sudden someone stops and touches my arm: ‘Remember me?'

“‘Of course I do.' We have a good laugh over that. We're right outside the Bei Mutti and like a wicked girl she asks me in for a beer. She's left home after an argument with her husband and she's all upset, but happy too – and suddenly so am I! Anyway, we have a beer and I'm sure she tells me other things, I can't recall, but I show her photos of Wilhelm. You see, he's had his accident a few weeks before. He was a good-looking boy, but after the crash his eyes became dead. He hadn't had his ear done, although he could cover it with his hair. Well, I tell you, she was sweet. She insisted the day would come when he'd forget he ever had a scar. At first I didn't believe her, but she kept promising. She sounded so sure of herself, I wanted to know why – and then she tugged down her shirt. I knew what it was straight away. This one was light, not purplish at all.

“Forgive me for going on about this, but it was a link she understood. The fact is, she had taken an interest in my son. She was curious about him, what was he like as a child, did I have more photos? I showed her others, from when we lived in Rosentalgasse, and she went on staring at Wilhelm's face and her own face had such a tender expression, I can picture it now. As if my son was someone she loved as much as I did! I'm not saying that I didn't get along with my daughter-in-law, but it did cross my mind that if Wilhelm had met your Snjólaug at the right time maybe he wouldn't have had to go to Australia.

“Anyway, we drank another beer and she told me a little about what happened when the Stasi took her. It wasn't pretty. It never is. And reliving those difficult times made us sad. Two single women, ordering another drink.”

“What about her husband? I thought you said she was married.”