Read Snowleg for Free Online

either side and in the gaps between the trees the copper-coloured rooftops of a small town. They reached a fork and the man said: “Go this way. It will take two hours.”
    He walked at his special lilting pace for two hours along a narrow path overgrown with ferns. After another hour he worried he had taken a wrong turning or was walking too slowly. The sun set and he panicked. In the night there were Russian soldiers on patrol with orders to shoot. He walked on in the dark and 40 minutes later arrived at the edge of a town. He saw a billboard advertising Juno cigarettes and knew that if the wording on the cigarette packet read “Juno – long and round”, then he had left the GDR, and if the words read “Juno – thick and round”, then he had not. He walked impatiently towards the billboard.
    â€œI was so full of hope and happiness. I thought, now it’s Go. I was free, I told myself.”
    He read the words “Juno – thick and round” and exclaimed something out loud. He never knew what, but a woman was passing who heard him. Within a short time he was stopped and taken to a small room next to the police station and charged with slander against the state. It was the time of Ulbricht’s paranoia. The mildest objection was a pretext for imprisonment.
    â€œThe accused delivered the remark in such a manner as to mock the noble aims of the revolution,” declared the prosecuting judge. When his name was discovered on a list of members belonging to the banned Social Democratic Party his sentence was increased to five years.
    That was 18 months ago. He had been a prisoner ever since.
    â€œIt seems anyone who lives here has to fool themselves in everything they do.” She picked up the orange he had stitched back together with blue cotton. Pressed it to her nose. Smelled it.
    He scratched his cheek with the back of his thumb. He hadn’t shaved and his thumb made a rasping sound. “Come here.”
    She put down the orange and walked towards him, stopping a foot from his chair. He looked into her eyes and without taking his eyes from her face he lightly sawed his hand between her legs. He removed his hand. Looked at it. Began to lift it to his nose. “I’d better leave.”
    She moved behind him and touched his neck. He did nothing for a while, feeling the pressure of her fingers. Then his hand reached slowly up and clasped hers and their fingers intertwined.
    He stayed that night and in the morning they came for him.
    She was standing in the front room without her shoes on. “La-la-la,” she hummed. “La-la-la.”
    He looked at her, then back at her book.
    â€œLa-la-la.”
    He tried not to look up this time. She saw him blush.
    â€œLa-la-la.” She was singing now.
    He looked up. Half smiled. Shook his head to himself.
    â€œLa-la-la.”
    â€œWhat are you thinking about?”
    The door burst open. Out on the street the boy with stuck-out ears was laughing.

CHAPTER THREE
    Q UICKLY, NOT LOOKING AT Peter, his mother finished. “They bundled me out of the country. I stayed with friends in London – I couldn’t face going back to Lancashire. When I found out I was pregnant with you, I wrote to say I wouldn’t be coming home. You were born the following summer. I met Daddy at a firework party in Notting Hill. We were married by Christmas.”
    Three pigeons flapped from the verge. Peter watched them fly off, feeling a chill in the back of his arms and in his kidneys.
    â€œYou’ll get to my age,” she said, rotating the watch like an amulet, “and you’ll learn there are things you cannot speak about right away. They need to be salted and packed in ice.”
    Still she avoided his eyes. “The awful thing is, I’ve never been able to discover what did happen to your father. If the West Germans paid for his freedom or if he’s still in prison or if he died. Believe me, I tried. I