Snowleg Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Dedication

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Snowleg

  Prologue

  Part I: England, 1977–9

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part II: Germany, 1983

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part III: England, Hamburg, Berlin1986–96

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part IV: Berlin, 1996

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Part V: Berlin, England, 1996–2002

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Part VI: Leipzig, March 2002

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fourteen-One

  Chapter Fourteen-Two

  Chapter Fourteen-Three

  Part VII: Milsen, 2002

  Chapter Fourteen-Four

  Chapter Fourteen-Five

  Chapter Fourteen-Six

  Chapter Fourteen-Seven

  Chapter Fourteen-Eight

  Chapter Fourteen-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781407073699

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Vintage 2005

  4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3

  Copyright © Nicholas Shakespeare 2004

  Nicholas Shakespeare has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not byway of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published in Great Britain in 2004 by

  The Harvill Press

  Vintage

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

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  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  www.randomhouse.co.uk/vintage

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0 09 946609 0

  Papers used by Random House are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Limited, Reading, Berkshire

  About the Author

  Nicholas Shakespeare is the author of The Vision of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham and Betty Trask awards; The High Flyer, for which he was nominated as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists, and The Dancer Upstairs, selected by the American Libraries Association as the best novel of 1997 and adapted for the film of the same title directed by John Malkovich. He is also the author of an acclaimed biography of Bruce Chatwin.

  ALSO BY NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE

  The Men Who Would Be King

  Londoners

  The Vision of Elena Silves

  The High Flyer

  The Dancer Upstairs

  Bruce Chatwin

  To Niko and Brit

  My memory of your face

  Prevents my seeing you

  RUMI

  On that night without sequel

  You realised you were a coward

  BORGES, Snorri Sturluson

  CONTENTS

  Prologue – Leipzig, March 1983

  Part I – England, 1977–9

  Part II – Germany, 1983

  Part III – England, Hamburg, Berlin, 1986–96

  Part IV – Berlin, 1996

  Part V – Berlin, England, 1996–2002

  Part VI – Leipzig, March 2002

  Part VII – Milsen, 2002

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THIS IS A WORK of fiction and not one of the characters is a real person. Many of the events described did take place. I am grateful to Katja Lange-Müller, Johanna Bartl, Bernhard Robben, Katharina Narbutovic, Bettina Schröder, Elmar Gehlen, Reinhard Jirgl, Ulrike Poppe, Sabine Moegelin, Gesine Udewald, Hans-Jürgen Hilfrich, Stefan Richter, Edda Fensch, Frank Berberich, Corinna Ziegler, Rachael Rose, Ulli Janetzki, Michael Hofmann, Matthew Kidd, Simon Cole, Tim Blackburn, Richard Lowe, Daniel Johnson, Jo-Ann Johnson, Patrick Hanly, Patricia Linders, Sharon Mar, Gillon Aitken, Clare Alexander; and most of all to Christopher MacLehose and Gillian Johnson. I am glad to pay tribute to The Other Germans: Report from an East German town (Pantheon, New York, 1970), by Hans Axel Holm. My thanks too to the Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin and to the Künstlerhaus Schloß Wiepersdorf, where parts of this novel were written.

  PROLOGUE

  Leipzig, March 1983

  THE SCREECHING OF A blackbird, flying through the icy branches above the hut, tore the peace.

  Early Sunday morning and the snowflakes tumbling again over the deserted gardens. In the middle of this grey city, the snow brightened everything. The narrow allotments were flannelled with it, the pruned pear trees glittered with it, the garden ornaments looked holy with it. Only the gnome on its back seemed out of place, the flakes drifting into its wide-open mouth and the wire poking from its feet.

  Two men, one leading an Alsatian, tramped in haste towards the hut. They were dressed the same, in kidney-coloured jackets and “Present 20” trousers. The cold had reddened their ears and noses. The dog-handler was about twenty-five, ginger-haired, with insolent, protruding eyes. His younger companion was a foot taller, more educated-looking, and held up a bespoke case made of
black plastic.

  They didn’t speak, picked their way with care. A wildcat frost had hardened Saturday’s snow and the puddles had refrozen with points on them that pricked into the men’s bootsoles. Even the sure-footed Alsatian found walking treacherous, and slithered over the frosted furrows with its nose low and the day in its eyes sparkling cold and bright from the iced-over pools.

  The man with the case noticed the footprints first. “Kresse, look,” pointing to the bottom of the wooden gate.

  The dog-handler stared in fury at the two sets of tracks, while his hound, distracted, criss-crossed the path, wanting to go the other way.

  Again the blackbird. In the silence that followed Uwe heard Kresse humming to himself. Kresse always hummed, he noticed, at moments when he himself would have sworn like a sailor. Anyone approaching might have supposed Kresse happy until they saw those eyes. They seemed to share the property of one of Uwe’s chemicals at the Runde Ecke. An acid that burned on contact.

  “Come on, boss!” With a gesture of impatience, Kresse drew his pistol from his holster and unlatched the gate, and together they followed the footprints coming towards them all the way to the hut.

  It had a lime-green door. The gnome that had guarded it lay upturned on the path. Something about the ornament attracted the Alsatian, which started whining at full stretch of the lead, but Kresse, ignoring it, nodded curtly to the gnome as to a superior, and kicked open the door. He erupted inside with the frustrated energy of a man who had badly wanted to arrest two young people lying in bed.

  A silverfish streaked across the matting and under an open fridge.

  Kresse opened his mouth, revealing a gap at the side of his teeth. “Shit,” and dropped the pistol to his side. “They’ve gone, boss.”

  Thank goodness, poor bastards, Uwe thought. Standing in the dark behind the angry wrecker, he breathed in. The hut was musky from passion and squirrels, but his nostrils picked out other scents. Damp firewood. Burnt dust from a heater. Incense from a cone.

  His glance darted about the room, his eyes adjusting, and he saw under the low window an unmade bed. Whoever had spent the night here had departed in a hurry. A Formica table and three white garden chairs. Uwe clacked open his case on the table and drew from their tight velvet lair two glass jars of the sort used for storing honey. He unscrewed the lids.

  Something moved across the floor and Kresse stamped on it. He advanced on the bed like a miner towards the rubble his explosion has detonated. His pace was too slow for his dog. The Alsatian lunged from his grasp and made a dash for the thin mattress. It leaped around, barking, then gave a confused yelp and pawed at the sheets, leaving muddy marks, and Uwe knew that it was smelling one scent and then another and that the scents were competing.

  “Get that dog off!” Uwe said sharply, and once the Alsatian had been ordered to the floor, he knelt beside the bed. His gloved hands separated blanket from sheet and soon found what they were looking for. He walked to the table and rubbed his fingers until the hairs dropped into their respective jars. The girl’s pubic hair was dark.

  Another stamp shook the hut. Kresse dragging the Alsatian from the bed had caught his boot on something. On the worn matting, a woman’s cerise silk shirt.

  Uwe moved swiftly to retrieve it – old-fashioned and fragile, oriental dragons stitched into the fabric. He spread the shirt on the table and with a pair of tweezers laid a strip of yellow felt, about 4 inches square, on the armpit. He covered the felt with a sheet of foil and onto the foil he pressed one of the lead weights that he carried in his case.

  Meanwhile, Kresse had spotted, over the back of a chair, a blue woollen scarf. He thrust the animal’s muzzle towards it and watched for a sign that the trails were not confused, that the Alsatian would detect a single scent. The Alsatian sat down, confirming the trace.

  “Good boy.” Kresse turned. He looked wild and unreasonable. “His?”

  Uwe lifted the scarf, noting the British label, and nodded.

  “Reckon they’ll come back tonight, boss?” There was a speck of dried blood on the undertip of his nose.

  “Maybe you can still find them, Kresse,” Uwe said in an even voice. “Maybe they haven’t gone far.”

  Kresse walked his dog to the broken door and looked out. The light reflected on his bulging eyes. They smiled tightly at the footprints that fled from the hut, beginning to fill with snow.

  “There’s a good boy, go find,” snapping off the leash.

  The Alsatian bounded away.

  Uwe checked his watch: 9.17 a.m. Because of the intense cold it would take two hours for the felt to absorb the body scents. He went down the steps to deal with the gnome.

  Afterwards, he plugged in the heater and turned on a tap. No water – and he remembered that the Schreber gardens didn’t open for another week. He scraped back a chair and was on the point of sitting down when he saw, spine up on the seat, an English book. The cover showed a flock of swans and, suspended between them, the figure of a boy. One glance and he knew the book was illegal. He picked it up and tucked it into his case.

  He was glad the couple had escaped. Yes, he had hoped to find them inside the hut, but now he was relieved. His eye fell on a smear on the matting and, like a crushed thing that he wanted to rescue, a thought squirmed up. To what end am I doing this? He didn’t ordinarily care to open the door to this sort of reflection. His was a science, a pursuit of the silverfish in order to understand how it scuttled – not to trample on it. He hated to think of his work ending up in the hands of a mammoth like Kresse.

  At 11.17 he lifted off the lead weights, tweezered the felt strips into the jars, screwed shut the lids and wrote down details on a label: date, location, name. He licked the second label and the raw taste of adhesive on his tongue reminded him of Morneweg’s storeroom, floor to ceiling honey jars, in every one a body scent trapped at a specific moment. A damp and sandy track, Uwe knew from his experiments, held the smell for twelve hours; an overgrown path away from the sun for 24 hours; but a sample in one of these jars – he still didn’t know how many weeks, months, even years, it retained a person’s body-scent. Certainly until such time as the order was made to pluck down a name, unscrew the lid and offer the contents to Kresse’s Alsatian, in the special villa which the animal enjoyed to itself, saying in a caressing tone: “Good boy, go find.”

  He crushed the thought, and peeling the label from his tongue he pressed it to the glass.

  PART I

  England, 1977–9

  CHAPTER ONE

  SHE LED THE WAY along the bridle path, through a field of black-spotted stones and blackberry bushes that glistened with rain. Peter’s favourite walk.

  They climbed in silence. Near the summit they came to a steep chalk verge dotted with yellow and red bee-orchids – “one of the few places in England where they grow”, according to his father. Once, taking a specimen to draw, his father had found embedded in the chalk a twisted scrap of aluminium, the relic, he maintained, of the Heinkel that had blazed into the ridge in the last months of the war. He kept it on a shelf in his studio, a precious metal flower.

  At the lookout on the ridge – which Peter for ever after dubbed “Revelation Hill” – his mother paused.

  The Friday before, Peter sat in Mugging Hall waiting to hear his name.

  “Liptrot?”

  “Sum.”

  “Leadley?”

  “Sum.”

  “Hithersay?”

  “Sum.” His presence confirmed, he drew the tangerine curtain of his “toyes”, the wooden stall – a jumble of horsebox, Arab tent and cupboard – that encompassed his private world away from home. He was meant to be writing an essay on Henry VIII’s secession from Rome in preparation for History A level. Instead, he listened, on headphones, to Morrison Hotel, while his eyes drank in the freckled young woman with a thin fox’s face pinned to his wall. The first woman to catch his fancy.

  Peter had boarded at Southgate House since the age of twelve. It had taken him
until this, his fourth year, not to feel alienated by its customs and chronically homesick. His school – St Cross College, outside Winchester – had its own confusing language in which something desirable, such as the image on his wall, was known as “cud”. Parents were “pitch-up”, and when walking between his House and classroom it was compulsory to wear a “strat”, a straw boater bought at phenomenal expense from Gieves & Hawkes in Winchester that served as a barometer, according to its state of disintegration and width of hatband, of a boy’s seniority. Then there was the “tub-room”, with its high-backed Edwardian tin baths of a sort Peter had never seen outside the school except at a plasterer’s in Salisbury. At St Cross you measured your progress towards manhood also by your ability to lift – and tip out – the weight of your dirty bathwater. When he was twelve, Peter had needed both hands. Now, at almost sixteen, he could empty his tub with one finger.

  On those first Sunday afternoons, to escape the torpor that descended on his House and sharpened the smells of instant coffee and rancid milk and locker-room mud and the thick grey whiff of masturbation, Peter would wander beside the Itchen with no sense of connection. Four years on, this fretfulness had diminished. He had grown to admire the flint and brick buildings which he could see from the riverbanks, the beauty of worn stone and ritual, the emerald playing-fields which extended into water meadows that Keats had written a poem about. On these days he felt at one with St Cross, involved.

  Only later did Peter appreciate the depth and saturation of the school’s Englishness. When he did at last consider it, he realised there were hardly any boys from outside the southern half of England, let alone from overseas. One exception was Tweed, a Greek boy in his House whose parents were so desperate to join the English Establishment that they had changed his name from Nikoliades. Apart from Tweed, a wealthy mathematician with weirdly blond hair and a loud voice, Peter had encountered few foreigners.

  His own parents weren’t well-off. His father’s distress at the sight of a bill made Peter overly conscious of the fact that had he not won a scholarship they couldn’t have afforded the fees. Certainly they weren’t able to afford the same kind of school for Rosalind, who, not being “academically minded” as they put it, attended the local comprehensive together with her friend Camilla Rickards.