Snowleg (41 page)

He looked up sharply. “Frau Lube doubts that Snowleg was Stasi.”

“Oh, fuck Frau Lube. What does she know? She's just a timeserver. A housekeeper. With a military rank, I wouldn't be surprised.” She stared back with a haughty expression. “You think I don't know Snjólaug? Maybe she was Stasi before that night, maybe after it. But she
was
Stasi – I would even be tempted to say she worked in Section 9 recruiting unofficial employees to defend the integrity of the state.” She levelled her eyes at him, loaded with antipathy. “They had people like that, to target Westerners – especially at Fair time. Finding ways to exploit the meetings, the friendships formed. Hidden cameras, microphones, I'm sure you can imagine . . .” In the crude blue of her eyes something almost sparkled. “You ask me, Snjólaug was sent to hook you.”

“Why do you say this?” a streak of flame in his voice. “What other evidence do you have?”

She fell silent and rubbed the chapped ear between her fingers. Then: “OK, did she take you to her Schreber garden?”

“Yes.” He folded his arms.

“Well, then. The place was bugged – and she knew it was. Bugged her own brother, I wouldn't be surprised.”

“How do you know?”

“What colour's this?”

The dress grinned at him.

“Green,” he said.

“Just green?” tapping his leg with her toe, playing with him.

“Forest mist?”

“Exactly.” And again: “Exactly. Certain things you know for a fact, Herr Doktor.” She raised her glass. “Could I get one more of that?”

He poured the whisky. “Frau Lube says you spoke to Morneweg about her. What did you say?”

Again she dipped her finger, licked it. “She's wrong. I didn't speak to Morneweg.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“Sure you want to hear this, sugar?”

“Yes.”

She gave a meaningful sigh. “It was one of Morneweg's people, someone I knew well.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, since you ask, it wasn't long after she gave the doorman whatever it was she gave him – you know, that persuaded him to take her into the hotel. I have to say it surprised me so much that I walked back to the entrance and when Anton came out I used Morneweg's name like I should have done all along, and of course this time he let me in. You see, even though I was beginning to think she was Stasi, it didn't matter. Uwe still would have expected me to pass on information like this. I needed to be sure it was something he knew about.”

“Was it?”

“Oh, yes, I could tell by his excitement. You see, as soon as I got into the Astoria I telephoned him from the reception. He listened to what I had to say, how I'd heard her whisper that she was coming with you in your dressing-up box, and immediately he said, as if it was all planned: ‘It's important Anton lets her in.' When I told him that Anton already had let her in, he said: ‘Leave this to me. In fact, leave the Astoria altogether. I'll speak to Morneweg.' And he must have spoken to him because, as I say, a few minutes later I saw Uwe and Morneweg getting into the Wartburg with her.”

Peter refilled his glass. It rattled him, what she was saying. There was so much he wanted to ask, but he noticed how Renate started to become surly if questioned directly. She had to make it slow, difficult. Come back and spring it on him.

“All right,” he said with distaste. “Let's suppose she was Stasi.”

“It's what she was, sugar.”

“Frau Lube told me she got married not long afterwards.”

“So I believe.”

“She implied that Snowleg – even if she was Stasi before – had fallen out with them.”

“That's right.”

“Do you have any idea what the Stasi did to her?”

“Of course.”

Peter watched her bring out a pack of cigarettes from a shiny black bag. He was getting somewhere.

She offered him a cigarette and he declined. “I thought all doctors smoked,” she said.

“I was on sixty a day.”

“All or nothing, eh? How did you give up?”

“I went to a hypnotist.”

Suddenly Renate chuckled. She knocked back the whisky and lit her cigarette and stared merrily at him. “They put it about she had gonorrhoea.”

“It's the summer of 1983.

“I'm sitting one evening at the Bodega – about three months after you ditch us. There's a tug at my arm and it's your Snjólaug and she's in a hell of a state.

“She unfolds this letter from the Ministry of Health. It refers to some epidemic law from the 1950s and she is specifically named. It orders her to take her medical card and go at noon next day to the venereologist for a skin check and do this every other day for 14 days. There's a list of everything she must not do. No travel. No alcohol. No sex. And she's warned about the danger of infertility if she's not treated immediately.

“‘It's probably nothing,' I told her, and asked if she had any reason to be concerned. She said there was one man. But she hasn't had sex with him for three months. They've known each other for ever. To him, she's God's gift. Thing is, she honestly doesn't know if she's got gonorrhoea. I like the way she asks
me
. I tell her a man would be screaming the roof down every time he pissed. Obviously, this man is not screaming at her. ‘Sure there's not someone else, sugar?' I ask. At which she goes all silent. Turns out, five days before she fucked her childhood sweetheart she fucked an English medical student.” Renate smiled. “That's you, sugar. In fact, I go so far as to suggest that perhaps it's you who has named her. She won't have any of that. Oh, no. It's the Stasi.

“‘Do you really think so?' I say acidly. You see, what I'm beginning to suspect is that she's setting me up. They do that sometimes. Pretend to be so naive that in sheer exasperation you tell them more than you dream of telling anyone, even your own daughter. ‘And why do you think that is?'

“She was full of mistrust, she told me. Didn't realise she was being watched. Basically, Bambi's finally woken up and found Stasi paw prints all over her pretty little life.

“You see, what's upsetting her as much as the VD notice is that she can't find her medical card. She has to present it to the doctor. It was there in her drawer and now it's not. She suspects me in some way. And maybe she had reason to. But I never stole her fucking card.”

“Then what reason?” said Peter with a nip of anger.

She blew out a trail of smoke and gave him a long look through it. “Her brother, probably. Snjólaug's boss paid me to fuck him.”

“Morneweg?”

“That was one of his names,” and ground out her cigarette.

“Even though Bruno was married to your cousin?”

“So what? He'd applied to go to the West, hadn't he? It was well known. Anyone who wanted to go West was put under full –”

“Let me get this straight. Morneweg bugged you and Bruno?”

“And if he liked what he heard, he paid.”

“Where was this?”

“Sometimes in the garden, sometimes the Astoria.” She laughed involuntarily as though someone was tickling her feet. “Strange. I went upstairs with so many men, all sorts and conditions of men. But at the Astoria the only face I ever saw in my head was Morneweg's. Eyes looking at me like this,” and she made an expression. “Lips like a trout. This smell he had . . . I'd pass him in his cubicle – headphones on, hands over his ears and a damp patch under his arms. Sometimes when I was with someone I wanted to scream at the light or the wardrobe or wherever it was he'd put his microphone: ‘What do you do with all the fucking you hear?'”

She ran a hand over her face, touching her make-up. “But you had to tread softly with that one. You could never talk about him out of his hearing – he'd walk through the wall. When he wasn't sitting in his cubicle he was quite close to Mr Party. I don't know how close, but it was Morneweg who decided that so-and-so would be arrested or get gonorrhoea. That's why everyone kept out of his way. Me too, except I'm an impulsive person. I sometimes do foolish things. Like the afternoon I'm walking past his cubicle and see no-one sitting inside and the place like a coffin, tapes up to the ceiling. When I see the tape machine, I'm curious to know how I sound. Quickly, I squeeze inside, put on the headphone, press play. And what do you think I hear?”

She wiped her eye. “The tape is of a young boy talking. I couldn't believe my ears. I don't know what I was expecting, but not that.

“Now, just think of it. Mr Party's right-hand man listening to a boy go ‘Papa, papa!' My feelings about Morneweg changed in that moment. It was around this time I heard how his wife had gone to pieces and left him, taking his son to the West. It was Frau Lube who told me that.”

She shook her head. “This sounds curious, but it's true. The one key to his tongue was Frau Lube. He had this bizarre thing for her. Happy as a harness bell, he was, whenever he saw her in the kitchen. Always looking for little ways of making himself known. ‘Renate, would you give this cup back to Frau Lube – and by the way tell her the coffee was excellent?' And when you reported the message to Frau Lube she'd give you this petrified look as if she'd been overheard saying whatever it was she used to mutter on her knees in the crockery cupboard. Poor creep. All those listening devices and he never found out that the woman couldn't abide him. A Christian she might have been, but she couldn't be left in the same room as him! And it wasn't just her, I tell you.

“Well, fuck all that. One summer evening – this is, oh, about eight months before Snjólaug comes to me with her letter – I'm at the Bodega and out of the blue it's Morneweg. He's pressed for time, because he orders me a Grauer Mönch but not one for himself. He's heard I have a good memory, he says. Then gives me a square of paper. He'd like it if I gently enquired about this person. Get some dirt on him, his family, friends. I look at the name and I say, ‘I know this man! He's married to my cousin.'

“‘That is correct.'

“‘I'm sorry, Herr Morneweg, I don't know much about snooping. On the other hand I know something about fucking. I'll sleep with him and you can listen all you like, but don't ask me to write down a word because I won't.' Well, Morneweg wants me to sleep with Bruno so bad that he's prepared to offer 100 Marks. It's only a few times and I tell you it's not very pleasant either. As you probably found out, it's freezing in that Schreber garden. Not a drop of cream – I had to take off my make-up with butter.”

“Please. I don't know if I want to know so much.”

“What? Do you want me to stop?”

“No.”

“I'm not doing this for free. Once you get me started . . .”

“Go on, go on.”

She rose to open the window. “Is it me or is hot in here?”

“You won't be able to do that. It's stuck.”

She opened it and sat down.

“How –”

She plucked her strap higher, shrugged.

He tilted the bottle. “More?”

“I'm doing very well. Although,” she said, indicating the box on the table, “I wouldn't mind some of your cake. All this talking, it's made me famished.”

“It's not a cake,” he said. “And it belongs to someone else.”

“That's a pity. I could eat a nice piece of cheesecake.”

He refilled his glass. Breathed in the fresh air. The air stirring up a question he had put to one side. “So you were Stasi too?”

“Yoo-hoo birds, yoo-hoo bees. Just a working girl trying to make a living. You asked me for details. I'll cross my legs now if you want me to.”

“I'm just floored by all the double dealing. Morneweg – where is he today?”

“No idea, and that's the truth. In government, most likely. Hidden behind a moustache like everyone else. They were wise to him, but no-one was game to print it. Bump into him in town and he'd be on his way to church, smooth as this silk.”

Softly, she raked her fingers over her cleavage and looked at him provocatively. Her dress gleamed unnaturally.
Renate believes that whoever sleeps with you last has you.

“So what happened to Snowleg?”

“OK, back to Snjólaug. I assure her that I didn't name her or steal her medical card. I explain that she needs to bark up another tree, but she refuses to listen. Suddenly the letter represents for her the whole system. There's a terrible scene. She goes cuckoo – and rips up the letter in front of me.

“She's sick of explanations. There are no explanations, only betrayals. And she storms out of the Bodega and that's the last time I see her.”

He toyed with the earring she had left on the table. “Where is she now?”

In the care with which she chose her words she might have been picking bones from a fish. “I heard she was living in the country somewhere.”

Reluctantly, he moved closer. But he had trespassed into her space. She drew away and having been familiar she became extremely prim. She picked up her earring and secured it, her eyes staying on him as she positioned it back to the centre of her ear lobe. Then her expression changed. Very tenderly she reached across and he, mistaking the gesture, recoiled.

“No, no, no, you don't have to worry. It's just that your ear lobes – let me touch them. They're so slender.”

He followed the line of her arm and stared at the round nose. The plucked eyebrows. The buffeted skin. Her face had a look like a page after water splashed on it has dried. And yet, like a habit, she mesmerised him, this woman who couldn't take foreigners seriously. For whom Leipzig held no secrets.