The Leipzig Affair

Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

You’re lying on your back on Hencke’s bed counting the polystyrene squares on his bedroom ceiling, wondering if he’ll notice if you pick your nose. Hencke’s bald freckled head is between your legs and he is licking you, jabbing at you with his tongue. It’s your own fault. You told him you liked it.

“Oh, Heinzi,” you said. “I like that.”

You’ve been coming here for more than six months now. It’s always the same. Two bottles of beer on the coffee table when you arrive and a glass for you. You have a drink together. You sit on the beige plastic armchair and he sits on the beige plastic sofa. It’s part of his thing. It’s a social call. You like him.

The first time you came you thought maybe it was a social call. He talked for a long time. About the difficulties of learning English with its irregular spelling and pronunciation. “Tja,” he said, shaking his head, “very tricky.” He talked about the telephone that had recently been installed in his apartment. “If you ever wish to receive or make a telephone call, you are very welcome to do so here in my little apartment.” And about your family.

“State Secretary Comrade Reinsch,” he said, according your father the title he never achieved, rolling the words round in his mouth like boiled sweets. “Hmm. Yes. How is he?”

“Fine,” you muttered, keeping your tone even.

“And Frau Reinsch?”

He knows all about your parents. Your mother’s affair and your father’s revenge. The cello that was once your mother’s saviour and now languishes in a dusty cupboard in her tiny apartment in Pankow.

You squeezed out the word: “Better.”

“Ah,” he said. “I’m so glad. Such a lovely woman. I mean, she was so lovely.” A sly gleam came into his eye when he said that. “Of course, she suffered so much when Jürgen – ” He spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.

You turned away and swallowed hard. Impossible to talk to Hencke about what happened to your brother Jürgen.

“Have you ever been to West Berlin?” you asked, knowing how much Hencke loves to talk about the legendary time a few years back when he visited the capitalist enclave. (It’s a lie. He told you before that he’d never been to the West. Or maybe that was the lie.)

“I did visit West Berlin once, yes. Of course, it seems very bright and colourful when you arrive at Berlin Zoo, but one quickly notices certain problems.”

He rattled on like this for a while, then he said, “A schnapps perhaps, little mouse?” and you knew what was coming next.

It takes all your self-control to remain supine on his brown nylon sheets and not knee him in the face. It’ll be worth it, you tell yourself, it’ll be worth it in the end. This is your insurance policy, your way of making sure that your plan works. Later, you’ll laugh about Hencke with Kerstin. She’ll poke fun at his jam-jar spectacles, his little pot belly and the West jeans he wears low on his hips. Then it won’t seem so terrible.

Hencke pulls himself up the bed. His eyes are bleary with lust as he fumbles for his c**k.

The first time it happened you were almost pleased. That’s it, you thought. I’m home and dry. I’ll definitely get a place now. But it gets harder each time. And recently it’s stopped just being s*x. He wants to hold your hand when you sit beside him on the sofa. “You do love your Heinzi a little bit, don’t you?” he says, chucking you under the chin.

Now he’s heaving up and down on top of you. His face is beetroot, and his bald head is covered in fat beads of sweat. You have a terrible thought: what if he has a heart attack and dies before he can sign the form that will allow you to travel to Leeds University in England and never come back?

You must have made a sound because Hencke is saying, “What’s the matter?”

Before you can answer, he rams his tongue into your mouth. You think of the words on a flyer you have tacked to the wall at Shakespeare Street. It’s for a nightclub in Munich, a city you’ve never visited. Marek gave it to you. He knew you’d like it because it’s from over there. He got it from an American called Vincent he met in a club in Berlin. On the flyer is a photo of a crazy guy with wild staring eyes and below the photo are the words:

Mittwoch, 22H – 4H

Lindwurmstraße 18, 80337 München

DJs G.R.O.S.S & PHONETIC

PRETTY f*****g FAR FROM OKAY!

The ‘C’ in f*****g is a hammer and sickle. The ‘K’ is a star.

That’s what screwing Hencke is like. It’s pretty f*****g far from okay. But not as far from okay as spending the rest of your life in a country that has already destroyed so much that was dear to you.