The Draining Lake - By Arnaldur Indridason Page 0,15

drizzle and a faint smile crossed his face when he thought again of the two writer friends walking the same streets long before.

At daybreak he fetched his suitcase, went to the university and found the registration office without any trouble. He was shown to a student residence not far from the main building. The dormitory was an elegant old villa that had been taken over by the university. He would be sharing a room with two other students. One was Emil, his classmate from school. The other was Czechoslovakian, he was told. Neither of them was in the room when he arrived. It was a three-storey house with a shared bathroom and kitchen on the middle floor. Old wallpaper was peeling from the walls, the timber floors were dirty and a musty smell permeated the building. In his room were three futons and an old desk. A bare light bulb hung down from the ceiling, whose old plaster had flaked off to reveal rotting timber panelling. There were two windows in the room, one of which was boarded up because the glass was broken.

Drowsy students were emerging from their rooms. A queue had already formed outside the bathroom. Some went outdoors to urinate. In the kitchen a large pot had been filled with water and was being heated on an ancient cooker. There was an old-fashioned stove beside it. He looked around for his friend, but could not see him. And as he was looking at the group in the kitchen, he suddenly realised that it was a mixed residence.

One of the young women came over to him and said something in German. Although he had studied German at school, he did not understand her. In halting German, he asked her to speak more slowly.

'Are you looking for someone?' she asked.

'I'm looking for Emil,' he said. 'He's from Iceland.'

'Are you from Iceland too?'

'Yes. What about you? Where are you from?'

'Dresden,' the girl said. 'I'm Maria.'

'My name's Tómas,' he said and they shook hands.

'Tómas?' she repeated. 'There are a few Icelanders at the university. They often visit Emil. Sometimes we have to throw them out because they sing all night. Your German's not so bad.'

'Thanks. Schoolboy German. Do you know about Emil?'

'He's on rat duty,' she said. 'Down in the basement. It's swarming with rats here. Do you want a cup of tea? They're setting up a canteen on the top floor, but until then we have to cater for ourselves.'

'Rat duty?!'

'They come out at night. That's the best time to catch them.'

'Are there a lot?'

'If we kill ten, twenty take their place. But it's better now than it was during the war.'

Instinctively he looked around the floor as if expecting to see the creatures darting between people's feet. If anything repulsed him it was rats.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and when he turned round he saw his friend standing behind him, smiling. Holding them by their tails, he lifted up two gigantic rats. He had a spade in his other hand.

'A spade's the best thing to kill them with,' Emil said.

He was quick to adjust to his surroundings: the smell of rising damp, the appalling smell from the bathroom on the middle floor, a stink that spread through the whole building, the rotten futons, the creaking chairs and the primitive cooking facilities. He simply put them out of his mind and knew that the post-war reconstruction would be a lengthy process.

The university was excellent despite its frugal facilities. The teaching staff were highly qualified, the students were enthusiastic and he did well on his course. He got to know the engineering students who were either from Leipzig or other German cities, or from neighbouring countries, especially from Eastern Europe. Like him, several were on grants from the East German government. In fact, the students at the Karl Marx University seemed to be from all over the world. He soon met Vietnamese and Chinese students, who tended to keep themselves to themselves. There were Nigerians too, and in the room next door to his in the old villa lived a pleasant Indian by the name of Deependra.

The small group of Icelanders in the city stuck very closely together. Karl came from a little fishing village and was studying journalism. His faculty, nicknamed the Red Cloister, was said to admit only party hardliners. Rut was from Akureyri. She had chaired the youth movement there and now studied literature, specialising in Russian. Hrafnhildur was studying German language and literature, while Emil,