dropped by with his grandchildren on a Sunday drive in the countryside, but that in other respects he was left to himself and preferred it that way. They asked about his circumstances and how long he had lived in Selfoss; he said he had moved there about twenty years before. He had been an engineer with a large firm engaged on hydropower projects, but had lost interest in the subject, moved from Reykjavik and settled in Selfoss, where he liked living.
When he brought the coffee into the living room Erlendur asked him about Leipzig. Hannes tried to explain what it was like to be a student there in the mid-1950s and before he knew it he was telling them about the shortages, voluntary work, clearing of ruins, the Day of the Republic parades, Ulbricht, compulsory attendance at lectures on socialism, the Icelandic students” views on socialism, anti-party activities, the Freie Deutsche Jugend, Soviet power, the planned economy, collectives and the interactive surveillance which ensured that no one could get away with causing trouble and weeded out all criticism. He told them about the friendships that were formed among the Icelandic students, the ideals they discussed, and about socialism as a genuine alternative to capitalism.
“I don’t think it’s dead,” Hannes said, as if reaching some kind of conclusion. “I think it’s very much alive, but in a different way from what we may have imagined. It’s socialism that makes it bearable for us to live under capitalism.”
“You’re still a socialist?” Erlendur said.
“I always have been,” Hannes said. “Socialism bears no relation to the blatant inhumanity that Stalin turned it into or the ridiculous dictatorships that developed across Eastern Europe.”
“But didn’t everyone join in singing the praises of that deception?” Erlendur said.
“I don’t know,” Hannes said. “I didn’t after I saw how socialism was put into practice in East Germany. Actually I was deported for not being submissive enough. For not wanting to go the whole hog in the spy network they ran and so poetically described as interactive. They thought it was acceptable for children to spy on their parents and report them if they deviated from the party line. That has nothing to do with socialism. It’s the fear of losing power. Which of course they did in the end.”
“What do you mean, go the whole hog?” Erlendur asked.
“They wanted me to spy on my companions, the Icelanders. I refused. Other things I saw and heard there made me rebel. I didn’t go to the compulsory lectures. I criticised the system. Not openly, of course, because you never criticised anything out loud, just discussed the flaws in the system with small groups of people you trusted. There were dissident cells in the city, young people who met secretly. I got to know them. Is it Lothar you found in Kleifarvatn?”
“No,” Erlendur said. “Or rather, we don’t know.”
“Who were “they”?” Elinborg asked. “You said “they” asked you to spy on your companions.”
“Lothar Weiser, for one.”
“Why him?” Elinborg asked. “Do you know?”
“He was nominally a student but didn’t seem serious about it and went about his own business as he pleased. He spoke fluent Icelandic and we believed he was there explicitly on the orders of the party or student organisation, which was the same thing. Clearly, one of his functions was to keep an eye on the students and try to enlist their cooperation.”
“What kind of cooperation?” Elinborg asked.
“It took all kinds of forms,” Hannes said. “If you knew someone listened to western radio, you were supposed to let an official from the FDJ know. If anyone said he couldn’t be bothered to clear the ruins or do other voluntary work, you were meant to inform on him. Then there were more serious offences such as allowing yourself to air anti-socialist views. Not attending the Day of the Republic parade was also seen as a sign of opposition rather than simple laziness. Likewise if you skived those pointless FDJ lectures on socialist values. Everything was under close control and Lothar was one of the players. We were urged to report on others. Really you weren’t showing the right spirit if you didn’t inform.”
“Could Lothar have asked other Icelanders to give him information?” Erlendur asked. “Could he have asked other people to spy on their companions?”
“There’s no question about it. I’m sure he did,” Hannes said. “I imagine he tried that on every one of them.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“Was there any particular reward for being cooperative or was it purely idealistic?” Elinborg asked. “Spying on your neighbours?”
“There were systems to reward those who wanted to impress. Sometimes a bad student who was loyal to the party line and politically sound would get a bigger grant than a brilliant student who had much higher grades but was not politically active. The system worked like that. When an undesirable student was expelled, like I was in the end, it was important for the other students to show what they thought by siding with the party apparatchiks. Students could gain kudos by denouncing the offender to show loyalty to the general line, as it was called. The Freie Deutsche Jugend was in charge of discipline. It was the only student organisation that was allowed and it had a lot of power. Not belonging to it was frowned upon. As was not attending their talks.”
“You said there were dissident cells,” Erlendur said.
“I don’t even know if you could call them dissident cells,” Hannes said. “Mainly they were young people who got together and listened to western radio stations and talked about Bill Haley and West Berlin, where many of them had been, or even religion, which the officials didn’t think highly of. Then there were other proper dissident groups that wanted to fight for reforms to the political structure, real democracy, freedom of speech and the press. They were crushed.”
“You said Lothar Weiser “for one” had asked you to spy. Do you mean there were others like him?” Erlendur asked.
“Yes, of course,” Hannes said. “Society was strictly controlled, both the university and the public at large. And people feared surveillance. Orthodox communists took part in it wholeheartedly, the sceptics tried to avoid it and come to terms with living under it, but I think most people found it at odds with everything socialism stands for.”
“Did you know any Icelandic student who may have worked for Lothar?”
“Why do you want to know that?” Hannes asked.
“We need to know whether he was in contact with any Icelanders when he was here as a trade attache in the 1960s,” Erlendur said. “It’s a perfectly normal check. We’re not trying to spy on people, just gathering information because of the skeleton we found.”
Hannes looked at them.
“I don’t know of any Icelander who paid any attention to that system, except Emil maybe,” he said. “I think he was acting under cover. I told Tomas that once when he asked me the same question. Much later, in fact. He came to see me and asked exactly the same question.”
“Tomas?” Erlendur said. He remembered the name from the list of students in East Germany. “Do you keep in touch with Leipzig alumni?”
“No, I don’t have much contact with them and never have,” Hannes said. “But Tomas and I had one thing in common: we were both expelled. Like me, he came back home before he finished his course. He was ordered to leave. He looked me up when he got back to Iceland and told me about his girlfriend, a Hungarian girl called Ilona. I knew her vaguely. She wasn’t the type to toe the party line, to put it mildly. Her background was rather different. The climate was more liberal in Hungary then. Young people were starting to say what they thought about the Soviet hegemony that covered the whole of Eastern Europe.”
“Why did he tell you about her?” Elinborg asked.
“He was a broken man when he came to see me,” Hannes said. “A shadow of his former self. I remembered him when he was happy and confident and full of socialist ideals. He fought for them. Came from a solid working-class family.”
“Why was he a broken man?”
“Because she disappeared,” Hannes said. “Ilona was arrested in Leipzig and never seen again. He was totally destroyed by it. He told me Ilona was pregnant when she went missing. Told me with tears in his eyes.”
