Snowleg (45 page)

Morneweg picks up the key from the desk. “You gave this to the doorman. Why?”

She turns her eyes from the jars. “I wanted to see Peter again.” The light from the window emphasises the bumps of a necklace under the pullover.

“This key, where's it to?”

She shifts in her chair and Uwe catches her scent of dried sweat mingled with a French perfume.

“His room.”

“In Leipzig?”

“In Hamburg.”

“Morneweg thought that because she had given the key to the doorman, she might be willing to do other things for us. We had few unofficial employees who were female. The boss was always looking for more. This may seem odd to you, but she was suited to the role. Ambitious, adventurous – and with a sense of justice. We didn't like them to volunteer. We preferred to find them ourselves. And if they had a black spot in their lives, so much the better. And that's what you were, a black spot.”

Morneweg opens the folder. “The idea is not to punish someone who makes an honest mistake. But I don't need to remind you of the penalty for degrading the state.” To return to a point made earlier, he feels it unusual that Citizen Berking refused to take No for an answer. Why did she insist on going into the hotel when she had been told not to? “I'd like you to tell us.”

“I'd like to have a shower,” edgily. “There are lots of things I'd like.”

“Fräulein Marla, you are not so naive as you seem. You have been living in Leipzig – what is it, 23 years? – and you must know what the habits are in this country. I ask you again, why?”

“I'm a young woman.” It was nothing more than bravado, something decided on the spur of the moment. She had always wanted to see inside the Astoria. When this Englishman invited her, she thought it would be fun to go. “Look, we'd had a great talk. Going into the Astoria, I felt it was a normal thing to do. Is it forbidden?”

“No, it's not forbidden for invited guests. But this foreigner said he didn't know you. When asked if he knew you, he said No.”

She chews the inside of her cheek. “That I can't explain. Because what I'm telling you is the truth. He did invite me.”

“Well, there's something else to this story,” Morneweg said.

“Like what? Like what?”

“Hadn't he promised to take you with him to Hamburg?” his voice toughening.

“No! He never did. That was a joke.”

“Why did you follow him inside?”

“I'm not embarrassed by my emotions!”

Morneweg walks round his desk and leans over her. “Citizen Berking, whether you like it or not, your action connects you with this Westerner and the ideas he represents. You say you were fascinated by him. That he invited you. But this man from the West, this medical student, he said he didn't even know you.” He is wearing sandals and gives a soft kick to her foot. “Now, why would he do that?”

“Don't,” she whispers, her thoughts unspooling.

“Why?”

He kicks again, but not hard enough to cause the tears. She lifts a swollen eye. “What's my crime? What on earth is my crime? I've done nothing wrong!”

“I'd like to believe you, but this is not an isolated incident.”

“What do you mean?” rubbing her eyes.

“Are you aware,” with the careful watchfulness of a hunter approaching a thicket full of pheasants, “that the father of this Englishman was from the GDR?”

“He told me.”

“Did he also tell you that his father was sentenced for trying to leave the GDR?”

“He did. But he never met his father. He doesn't even know if he's still alive.”

Morneweg holds up a photograph. “Do you know this man?”

“Of course!”

“Who is he?”

“It's my brother.”

“This morning, your brother left for West Germany on a UN visa.”

“So? Article Ten, in the '49 constitution, isn't it? Everyone has the right to leave.”

He returns to his desk and stares at her, solemn. “Tell me again, where did you meet?”

She sighs. Crosses her legs. Stares out of the window. Her expression declaring how bored she is with his questions, with repeating herself. “It was a chance meeting.” She had met him at the theatre. “That's all there is to it. He invited me and I thought he was nice.”

“Nice, nice,” says Morneweg, his right shoulder hunched up. Under the desk two white socks wriggle in their sandals.

“I did. I wanted to go to his party.”

“That's not true.”

She looks him in the eye. “What are you talking about?”

Morneweg reaches for the book. He lifts it for her to see. The novel she stole from the Book Fair.

“Is this yours?”

“Yes.”

He starts reading. The room is silent. Just the spools grubbing and rooting.

After a page, he looks up. “This book is illegal. You know that.”

“Is there a list?”

“Is there a what?”

“Is there a list of books that are illegal?”

“No, there's no list.”

“Then, why is this illegal?”

“It's not written according to socialist aesthetic criteria,” he says stiffly.

“Then, I want to know the name of authors who are forbidden so I can avoid them.”

He continues reading. She watches his eyes flick back and forth. He turns the last page and he might have come across the news of someone's death. Slowly, he reads out, “Peter Hithersay, 54 Feldstraße, Hamburg.”

He closes the novel and pushes a photograph across the desk to her. She sees herself in black and white at Bruno's farewell party. Talking to Bruno.

“You have already appeared with him here.”

“So? Can't I talk to my own brother?”

He pushes her another photograph. “You have also appeared here.”

She sits in a café, obscured by an art deco lamp. A blurred figure stands over her. Looking down her throat.

“He told her every word she had said. He could tell her your whole sentences. How else do you think we learned about your father? That's why we knew you called her Snjólaug. Well, she didn't know what to think. Was it the waiter? Was it a microphone? Maybe it really was you!”

“And here.”

Peter. Dancing. Holding her.

“And here.”

Sitting beside Peter on the steps of her grandmother's Schreber garden. Her breasts loose inside a white shirt too big for her.

“You're like ants,” she hisses. “You're everywhere.”

Morneweg removes the spools without rewinding and inserts another tape. “So. You never met him until that night?” He looks up. Presses START.

“
Do you think it's possible for swans to carry our weight?
”

At the sound of Peter's voice, her face drains. Her hands come together over her nose and mouth. She closes her eyes and leans forward until her head rests on the edge of the desk as if in prayer.

Morneweg stops the tape. She's sobbing silently. “Fräulein Marla, you are illegal. You have illegal contacts. What shall we do with you? At the very least, we could charge you with communication with a foreigner. But maybe I can play you something else? This was recorded a few moments later . . .” He reaches towards his machine.

“NO!” A string of mucus sways from her nose. She tries to wipe it away, but it sticks to her hands and spreads.

His finger hovers above the tape recorder as if suddenly the machine disgusts him. As if there's no lie he hasn't heard it record, no blandishment, no cruelty. As if there's nothing he doesn't know about sexual weakness and carnal appetite. The pitchy humiliations. The false promises. The boredom. “Of course, there's no reason you can't see him again if you want,” speaking so tenderly he might have been taking her into a great confidence that he would give only to a relative. “You can still be a psychiatrist. You can still enjoy a happy life here.”

She looks at him, not understanding.

“Maybe you're not meant to be a hero,” he says in a sympathetic voice.

“Just like we were taught in Golm, he leaned on her, hinted at the advantages to be gained. A telephone for her grandmother, a job at Karl-Marx-University, a promise of books and clothes. He wanted her to feel that she had special knowledge we might be interested in, but it quickly became clear what he was asking her to do and she refused. She could never keep a secret. She had a lot of friends who said things she knew they wouldn't mean. She wasn't the informer type.”

Morneweg's voice hardens as he reads out paragraph 219 of the criminal code: “Anyone who has contact with organisations, institutions, or persons who have as their goal any activity that is against the laws of the GDR will be condemned to a sentence of imprisonment of up to five years.” He looks up. “Naumburg. Five years. Think of it.”

She stares back at him with contempt, not hiding her tears now. “He's no spy. He wants to be a doctor. His father was from the GDR.”

“Sentenced for derogating the state,” he reminds her. “You realise, we can charge you with the same crime?”

“Go ahead.” She breathes in the air in great gulps. “Go ahead. But I want a lawyer.” She's tired. She's uncomfortable. On the desk one of the telephones starts ringing. She's angry. She picks it up.

Morneweg's eyebrows embrace in horror. He twists in his chair as if he has a stitch, and reaches across the broad desk to seize the receiver from her hand. “Hello?” glowering at her. “Hello?”

She leaps to her feet. Blindly, she looks at him. “Have you never fallen for someone?” shouting now. “Don't you know how it feels?”

Morneweg calls for Uwe to take her away. The call is important. He shields his hand over his eyes, lowering his voice. “Yes, Herr Hirzel . . .”

Her fist crashes on the desk. He tries to say something, but she slaps the telephone – cutting the connection.

“What people don't realise,” Uwe tells Peter, “is that if you refused to work for the Stasi it rarely led to negative consequences. Of course, Morneweg wanted to get a new informer. But if he couldn't intimidate or embarrass her, there was little he could do.”

She spends two more nights in the cell and is brought up to learn her fate. Morneweg is in his redoubt at the Astoria: he has left it to Uwe to inform her.

“I have spoken with the judge. The decision has been made to release you.” He opens a drawer and takes out a typewritten letter. “Please read this and sign it.”

The letter declares that she will never say a word about their discussions.

She shakes her head. “No, I never sign.”

“It's your duty. You must sign.”

“No, I don't understand it. I don't know what kind of consequences it will have.”

He snatches back the letter. “If you don't sign then it's your duty to remain silent about what has been said.”

From somewhere she musters a smile. “I'm not going to sign.”

Uwe looks at her and he has the impression that he is back in the hut in the Schreber garden. A cerise silk shirt stitched with dragons, a man's scarf and a silverfish crushed on the worn matting. He lowers his eyes to the book on his desk and says neutrally, “You may go.” He presses the intercom on his desk. “Kresse, please escort Fräulein Marla outside.”

The door opens. She gets up to leave.

“Wait.” Uwe is holding the novel she stole. That she had asked Peter to take with him. As she had asked him, a little while afterwards, to take her. The muscles soften around his eyes. “Keep it.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

A
T THE SQUEAKING BELLOW
, Uwe stiffened and looked at Peter as if the noise coming from the giraffe was directed at them. Obliged to speak louder, he suggested a meal. “Look, maybe it's too late for lunch, but watching the animals eat has made me hungry,” and gathered up the envelope. He wasn't yet ready, it seemed, to hand over the contents.

A blackboard in a street not far from the zoo advertised a set lunch for 20 Marks. Inside the restaurant, a broad-shouldered man with the face of a bulldog watched CNN from the corner of a brown vinyl sofa.

“Can we eat?” Uwe asked, looking around at the deserted tables.

“Shhh.” The face scowled at him without respect. Once, thought Peter, Uwe would have had this man in his paws. Now it was over, he couldn't frighten anyone any more.

The man barked out a woman's name and rotated his eyes to the screen. A plane had crashed in the Peruvian jungle.

“I can pay for myself,” Uwe said, laying the envelope on the table between them. “I'm sorry I can't take you out. I could have done. Times were good, but now they are not.” He eased himself into his seat. “Oh, before I forget,” and from his pocket produced one of those plywood keyholders that Milo made in his carpentry class. “Remember this?”

Peter took it. “A key to where?”

“Isn't it yours?”

“Mine?”

“That's what she said it was. We even had a copy made so that our people in Hamburg could search your apartment.”

“I don't remember losing a key,” frowning.

“Well, it didn't fit. But that was why the doorman let her into the Astoria.”

Peter turned it over, and in clear detail like a photographic negative he saw Snowleg standing outside the Astoria. Holding up the key. Looking into the doorman's face with eyes full of meaning.

“
The plane came down in a remote part of the Amazon near Iquitos.
”

He knew what it was. He had picked it off the floor in the church hall. After she had hurled it at Bruno.