Leipzig (Part Two) by Dave Rigby

(For Part One, see 25 May 2015)

The narrow street was crowded with tourists ambling slowly in the sun, licking ice creams, chatting and gazing in shop windows. Harz found it difficult to keep track of the white-haired man. At one point he lost him and realised he must have turned off somewhere. He backtracked, broke into a run, dodged around slow-moving pedestrians and caught sight of his man disappearing up a narrow alleyway. The cobbles were uneven and Harz had to take care with his footing. He slowed and tried to steady his breathing.

He wondered why he was chasing this man. He had no idea what he would do if he finally managed to confront him. The alley twisted and turned, the surface changing from cobbles to concrete and even to carpet for one section outside a wine shop.

The sun was dazzling when he emerged from the shade of the alley onto the main street, just in time to see the man jumping onto a tram. Harz followed, the doors slamming behind him. He slotted a euro into the ticket machine and slid into a vacant seat. The old woman next to him started talking immediately, rambling on about her husband’s illness, his recent operation, how she couldn’t leave him on his own, how things had been so much better in the old days. Her shopping bags fell over onto Harz’s knee, but she didn’t seem to notice. They travelled south out of the city, along a street where the pavements and half the road were dug up, pipes and spoil heaps everywhere. Every second building on the street seemed to be a bar or a club and Harz wondered how there could be enough customers in the city to support them all.

The tram turned left onto a suburban street, with new housing developments on either side. A road-side florist provided a brief splash of colour. When the old man started to move, Harz glanced out of the window. He recognised one of the few remaining older buildings. It was close to where his father had worked.

As the tram swept away from them, the man walked surprisingly briskly along a small tree-lined lane, past allotments and a small playground. The trees hid the gasworks until the last moment. Harz was taken aback by the sudden appearance of the circular brick structure and was once again that small boy, holding his mother’s hand, waiting outside for his father to finish work. But the building looked different. There were signs and banners and a new entrance. It was no longer a gas holder but an exhibition centre. Harz followed the man into the building. He found it hard to take in how it had been transformed. He managed to work out what was missing. It was the smell that used to catch the back of his throat as a boy.

 “Hey! Freidrich!” Harz didn’t know how he’d suddenly been able to recall the name. The man hesitated, turned and looked towards Harz. After staring at him for a short while, he walked off towards the café. Harz followed, took a seat at one of the tables and waited. To his surprise, Freidrich brought his tray across to the table, sat in the adjacent seat and spoke to him. 

“It’s Harz isn’t it?” Harz was taken aback. He’d planned an interrogation in his head and now he was the one being asked a question. He nodded. “You were arrested by the Stasi weren’t you?” Freidrich spoke confidently.

“And you were the one who told them all about me!” Harz’s voice was faltering. He was going on his gut feeling. Freidrich had lived a few doors away and rumour had it that he was one of the unpaid informants. Harz was sweating and he held his hands together to stop them from shaking. What was he hoping to achieve after all these years? He wasn’t after some clichéd idea of ‘closure’. It came as a shock when he realised he almost felt sorry for the man, the kind of man who could turn in his neighbour.

“I was the one who got you out,” Freidrich said quietly. “I told them about your father, a good man, not a troublemaker. I told them how you’d been misled, how you’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. They listened to me. They knew they could rely on my information.”

Harz had no idea whether the man was telling the truth. Maybe he’d dreamed up the story or maybe it had really happened like that. Freidrich held up his hand and walked away from the table, his coffee untouched. Harz watched him leave the building, the glass doors closing silently behind him. 

Harz heard his father’s voice telling him to go home.