Evony
It’s his apartment. I should have known this from the way he helped himself to whisky and sat so comfortably on the sofa, but it’s not until he’s giving me the your bathroom is here, my housekeeper comes at seven speech that the penny drops. I’m silent throughout, watching his mouth move but barely registering the words. Finally, he shuts me in a bedroom and leaves me alone.
I turn slowly, looking at the bed with its whitework comforter, the large, antique wardrobe, the dressing table with its vanity mirror standing opposite the window. There’s a print of Dresden above the bed that shows how the beautiful old city looked before it was fire-bombed in the war.
I stare at the picture for a long time, not seeing it, waiting for something to happen. To be shouted at, shot at, marched into another car. But nothing happens. Finally it dawns on me that no one’s coming for me, and I’m meant to sleep in this room tonight.
The first thing I do is to check to see if the door has a lock. It doesn’t. There isn’t a chair to put under the door handle, either. Neither of these facts surprise me, that there’s no way to lock Volker out. I should feel alarmed, I suppose, but I’m strangely numb. All the edges of the furniture are too sharp in my vision and the lights are too bright, so I switch them off. Because it’s late I suppose I should go to bed, so I strip down to my vest, laying my clothes over the stool by the vanity, and get between the sheets. Someone is moving about elsewhere in the apartment, but then everything goes silent.
I lie awake a long time, looking at the pattern the moonlight makes on the ceiling as it shines through the net curtains. Dad captured, or maybe dead. Ana dead. Everyone else captured or dead. What’s going to happen to me in the morning? And, worst of all, what does Volker want from me? He’s as terrifying up close as I always thought he would be, with cold, unreadable eyes and a cruel smile. My eyes fly to the door handle and I strain to hear the sound of a creaking floorboard that might betray his step outside, but all is silent. I dread the dawn and try to stay awake to keep it at bay, but exhaustion overcomes me, and I sleep.
When I open them again the room is filled with light and there’s a woman standing by the stool, holding up each of my garments in turn and tutting over them. Who is she, and where…?
The events of the previous night flood back. I’m in Volker’s apartment. I sit up with a whimper and the woman turns and looks at me. She’s in her late fifties, has short, curly brown hair threaded with gray and is wearing a bright yellow apron over her blue dress. A housekeeper?
“Guten Morgen. I’m Frau Fischer.” And she scoops up all my clothes and heads for the door.
I fly out of bed after her, taking the sheet with me in an attempt to cover myself. “Nein, wait! I don’t have any other clothes.”
She turns to me in surprise. “No other clothes? Didn’t you pack anything when you left…when you came from…” She trails off and I realize she has no idea who I am and what has happened to me. I imagine Volker just told her there was a woman in the spare room and left it at that.
I shake my head, and she puts the clothes back down.
“Oh. Well. Wash up and dress, then. Herr Oberstleutnant wants you at the breakfast table at seven-forty-five.” And she leaves the room.
Panic flits through me. What time is it now? I have to get to the factory before eight. But then, where is the factory from here? I could be miles and miles away on the other side of East Berlin. In fact, I think I must be because there’s nothing as nice as this apartment anywhere near where I live. It’s got high ceilings and old plaster and I guess it’s a turn-of-the-century building. There aren’t many beautiful old houses left in Berlin since the war but the Party and Stasi have seen to it that they have the pick of them.
Feeling anxious about the factory I do as Frau Fischer says and put on my skirt and blouse from the previous day. Maybe I won’t be able to go to work as Volker said I was a prisoner here, but then I snort. An East German not work? Impossible.
When I open the bedroom door I hear voices at the end of the hall, and see Volker standing in the kitchen drinking coffee and talking to Frau Fischer. The sight of him, tall and arresting in his uniform, makes my stomach knot. I don’t head straight there but turn right and go through to the lounge and put on my shoes and stockings. They’re dry now, though my shoes are stiff and mottled from the melted snow.
I hesitate by the front door, wetting my lips. Freedom is right there. The door appears to be latched but might not be dead bolted. Frau Fischer and Volker are talking in the kitchen; I make out their voices but not the words. They can’t see me from here.
If you try to escape, you will be found, and you will be killed.
But will I? Volker’s just a man. He hasn’t got supernatural or omniscient powers. I might make it if I run, and running for freedom is better than staying here and waiting to see what he has in store for me. At any moment he might take me to prison, or hurt me. I lift my hands to try the lock—but as if Volker is omniscient he suddenly calls out, “Evony?” and I jump back from the door.
Heart thundering in my ears I approach the kitchen and hover in the doorway, trying to smooth the guilty look from my face. Volker looks up from his folded copy of the Neues Deutschland and smiles, all politeness, as if I am an honored guest. “Ah, Morgen, Evony. Did you sleep well?”
I duck my head rather than talk to him, and let Frau Fischer guide me to the breakfast table. Then I remember the factory and look wildly around for a clock. There’s one above the sink and it reads ten minutes to eight. “I have to go to work, I’ll be late!”
“Nein,” Volker interjects. “I have sent a messenger to the factory to tell them you no longer work there.”
I stare at him. Anyone who refuses to work can be sent to prison. He surely knows this better than anyone. “But I have to work. Those are the rules.”
Frau Fischer approaches him with the pot of coffee and he holds his cup and saucer out to her. “Danke. Indeed, Evony. Do you not remember what I told you last night?”
You do not leave this apartment unless it is with me. When I nod, he says, “So, it is clear. You are coming to work for me.”
Work for Volker? Work for the secret police at Stasi Headquarters? No. Every fiber, every nerve, screams in protest. I might feel ambivalent about the State but I hate the Stasi. They exist only to oppress and terrify us, not protect us as they claim. They sneak, spy, torture and imprison. They pit neighbor against neighbor and make us suspicious of our own friends and workmates. They are scum, every last one of them—and particularly him.
Volker is watching me intently and I realize I have let my emotions play out for him once again. My disgust is written all over my face. He takes a sip of coffee, and when he speaks again his voice is silky and dangerous. “Did you have any questions about that, Evony?”
Frau Fischer, as if sensing the tension in the room, makes me sit and places the butter dish, rolls and a myriad of spreads and cold meats in front of me, saying, “You’ll like Headquarters. Such a smart building and very modern, not even two years old. The wood panel walls are just lovely.”
Volker and I watch each other, ignoring the housekeeper as she bustles around us. I know I have no choice in the matter but I need this small act of rebellion, making him wait for me to acquiesce. It might not be much but it’s all I have.
Finally, with exaggerated politeness, I say, “No questions, Herr Oberstleutnant.” Then I look up at Frau Fischer and smile. “Thank you, this looks delicious.” It doesn’t, as I have no appetite, but I can feel the desire for us all to get along radiating off her in waves. She probably doesn’t like the Oberstleutnant any more than I do. I’ll take any ally I can right now, even one who seems bent on making this terrible man happy.
“Marmelade d’oranges,” I mutter, reading the French label on a jar. I don’t think I’ve seen marmalade in the shops for about six years, and the people aren’t allowed produce from the West. I reach instead for the familiar brand of East German strawberry jam. He can keep his fancy imported spreads, the raging hypocrite.
Volker goes back to reading the newspaper while he finishes his coffee, and doesn’t touch any food. It’s uncomfortable having someone standing over you as if waiting for a train while you try to your eat breakfast, but I do my best to ignore him. I suspect he’s looming on purpose. Or he just has terrible morning habits.
At eight-o-five he slaps his newspaper down and clears his throat, and Frau Fischer whisks away my plate and the roll I’m still eating.
“I guess I’m done,” I say under my breath, and follow Volker to the front door. His lips thin as he picks up my old coat, as if he’s handling a piece of questionable fish, but he shakes it out and helps me into it. Such a gentlemanly monster.
The big black car is waiting downstairs for us. It’s a Mercedes-Benz, an import from West Germany. You see them now and again around East Berlin and they always belong to someone in the Party or the Stasi. The little two-stroke engine Trabants, “the people’s car”, aren’t good enough for them. The Trabis are horribly slow and are always breaking down so they’re not good for anyone, really. But as my father, the mechanic, cheerfully says, they keep him busy.
Dad. I stop dead on the pavement and for a moment I can’t breathe. Volker gives a short exhalation of impatience behind me. I force myself not to think about Dad or where he might be and I get into the waiting car.
We glide through quiet residential streets and then onto the main roads, and I realize we’re in Pankow, a well-to-do district in the north of the city where most of the Stasi and Party live. It’s a clear, frosty morning and I stare out the window at the houses we pass. East Berlin. I wasn’t meant to wake up in East Berlin this morning. I was meant to be in a refugee camp in the West, cheerfully telling a West German that I want to claim asylum and live in the free world. Instead I’m a prisoner of der Mitternachtsjäger, on my way to Stasi Headquarters. He can’t make me spy for him, can he? I’ve heard that the Stasi have all sorts of tricks to make people inform on their friends and co-workers. But who can he manipulate me with now?
The car takes us right to the front door of the Ministry of State Security building. The driver opens the door for me and I step out, looking up at the eight-floor concrete and glass edifice before me, filled with people like Volker. It’s a very new building, completed just over a year ago. Lovely, Frau Fischer called it. My chest feels tight. It’s horrific. My father loves history and he told me once about the Tower of London, built by the Norman invaders to oppress the English in their hearts and minds as well as by brute force. The Normans had their castles; the Party has Stasi Headquarters and the Wall.
Volker places a large hand on my shoulder, startling me out of my thoughts. When I look up at him he’s smiling his cruel smile. “You are not frightened are you, Liebling? There is no need. You are not a lamb who walks into the lion’s lair to face the lion. You walk in at his side.”
He places his peaked cap over his gold hair. I suppose if he was a young officer during the war he must be in his early forties now, but there’s no hint of gray in his hair and his face is smooth and handsome. He reminds me of a lion in his prime. A lion with blue-gray eyes that are gleaming bright in the morning light as he looks with pleasure upon the Ministry for State Security.
There’s a large, carved insignia on prominent display in the lobby, a white shield with a rifle and fixed bayonet flying the flag of the German Democratic Republic, the GDR. Around the edge of the shield is written ministerium für staatssicherheit, and the Stasi’s motto, Shield and Sword of the Party.
We take the elevator to the sixth floor and enter a long corridor. There are offices on each side, and then the space opens up into a small reception area. Volker heads toward a pair of desks standing opposite each other in front of a closed door. A pretty young woman is sitting at one desk, typing, and when she sees Volker she jumps to her feet and smiles.
“Guten Morgen, Herr Oberstleutnant.” Her smile reveals a row of even, pearly teeth.
“Morgen. Fräulein Hoffman, this is Fräulein Dittmar, Frau Hahn’s replacement.” Volker passes her his coat and cap.
My eyes snap to Volker. Dittmar? But he knows my name is Daumler. Was that a mistake, or has he decided that I’m to be someone else entirely? Volker meets my eyes, his hard gaze telling me to keep my mouth shut. It wasn’t a mistake.
Fräulein Hoffman turns to me, and her smile falters. Her eyes travel down over my father’s bulky coat, my pilled stockings and ruined shoes. I notice that her dress looks very new and smart and is made of light green wool with an A-line skirt that finishes several inches above her knees. Her legs are clad in nylons and her hair is long and golden, up in a half-ponytail and tied with a white bow. She’s a very neat, pretty girl, and I can’t help but feel self-conscious about my frayed, bedraggled appearance. New clothes are hard to come by in East Berlin and everything I wear only gets filthy in the factory.
Fräulein Hoffman quickly fixes her smile back in place and greets me kindly, but I can tell she’s thinking, You? Really?
Volker looks between us, seeming to come to the same conclusion that his secretary has: I don’t look like I belong here. He digs in his jacket pocket and takes out a leather wallet. Addressing his secretary, he says, “I want you to take Fräulein Dittmar to wherever it is you girls go for…” He gestures vaguely at Fräulein Hoffman’s dress and shoes. “She has found herself without her things.”
Found myself, as if all this is an accident. The Stasi are probably at our apartment right now, packing our meagre possessions away and taking them to be burned or resold. Traitors forfeit the right to their own property. But did Volker just say what I thought he said—that I’m to go out alone with this girl? My heart leaps. I could lose her in an instant.
“Yes, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the young woman chirrups, taking the wad of Ostmarks he hands to her. “You have an appointment at four pm but I’ll see we’re back before then.”
To my surprise, Volker gives her an amused smile. “Four? Does it take so long to do a little shopping?”
Fräulein Hoffman’s laugh is musical, almost flirtatious, and she flips her long hair over her shoulder. How can she stand to look at him like that? If she secretly hates him she’s doing a very good job of hiding it. “If you want it done properly it will. You did say she needs everything.”
Perhaps she doesn’t hate him. Perhaps she… But I can’t think any further in that direction as it turns my stomach. If he’s got her, why me?
“Hmm. Very well. Hans can drive you, and I’ll call down to the front desk for an escort. And Fräulein Hoffman? I want the receipts, and the change.” He wags an admonishing finger at her, but his smile is teasing.
She opens the door to Volker’s office and hangs up his hat and coat on a hook just inside the door. Returning to us, she bats her eyelashes at him and smiles sweetly. “Of course, Herr Oberstleutnant.”
Volker bestows his smile on me, but I don’t return it. I’m not a child to be indulged and I don’t want to be sent off with this silly young woman to go shopping. Does he think I’ll be grateful if he buys me a new dress? My hand itches to slap the smile from his face and I want to scream at him, Where is my father? I didn’t miss what he said about the escort. He means a guard with a gun. So much for my plans to give Fräulein Hoffman the slip.
Ignoring my baleful look, Volker says, “Enjoy yourself, my factory girl.” And he disappears into his office and closes the door.
Fräulein Hoffman tucks the marks into a white handbag and gives me a broad smile. “This is fun, isn’t it? Much better than the morning of correspondence I thought I had ahead of me.”
She collects her coat from a hat stand cluttered with garments and umbrellas and we head downstairs. The various sections of the office are pointed out to me and she reels off names and departments faster than I can take them in. “Don’t worry if you don’t remember all this,” she says, seeing my bewildered face. “It takes some time to settle in at HQ but I promise everyone’s very friendly.”
I grimace. Friendly, Stasi HQ?
When the elevator opens on the ground floor I see Volker’s black car waiting outside the glass doors and a uniformed guard beside it. He’s young and dark with too-large ears, and as we cross the foyer toward him he watches me like I’m a grenade that might not have its pin. There’s a pistol holstered at his waist. For all Volker’s indulgent smiles it seems he’s taking no risks when it comes to keeping me prisoner.
My companion gives the guard a curious look but doesn’t say anything, and we all get in the car. “Michelstrasse in Prenzlauer Berg please, Hans,” she says to the driver. And to me, “I’m Lenore. I’ve worked at HQ for just over a year now.”
“Evony.”
She waits for me to go on, to tell her something about myself, but I don’t. Her smile fades. A moment later she looks out the window, uncertain. I don’t mean to be unfriendly but nothing feels normal today and I don’t think I can pretend it is. The guard is sitting in the front passenger seat but I feel the constant pressure of his eyes on me in the rear-view mirror. Volker has probably impressed on him it’s more than his life is worth if I get away.
The car stops outside a private residence and not a store, which I find odd, but I get out because Lenore does. She’s talking again, pretending that the moment of awkwardness didn’t happen, and I wonder if this is her coping mechanism for dealing with the Stasi and people like Volker: to pretend everything’s lovely. She can’t actually think it’s lovely, can she?
“…because the shops have barely anything, let alone clothes that look nice on. Herr Oberstleutnant likes us to be well presented at all times and of course it can’t hurt if the other officers are friendly to us, too.” She gives me a knowing smile and I wonder if Lenore is a flirt. But after all there are two men with us now, the driver and the guard, and her eyes have skimmed without interest over them. Maybe her smiles are only for the officers.
We go up to the second floor of the apartment building and Lenore knocks on a door. A woman appears, clothed in the most remarkable assortment of colorful garments, a tape measure round her neck and a pincushion fastened to her wrist. She greets Lenore like an old friend—or a good customer?—smiles at me, frowns at the guard, and ushers us all inside. It’s about the size of Volker’s apartment but every passage and room is stacked with bolts of cloth.
She’s a dressmaker, I realize. That’s what Lenore was saying: you can’t find good clothes like the smart green dress she’s wearing in the stores, but you can have them made. I look around at the silks, wools, velvets and organzas, wondering where they all came from. Not made in the GDR, surely. Maybe in Moscow, but my guess is that most are from France and Italy as the USSR seems to prefer manufacturing synthetic fabrics as they’re easier to mass produce. Stroking a bolt of pale yellow silk I consider how much I’m learning and seeing today. This is a very different East Berlin to the one I lived in. I wish I could tell Ana there is a secret dressmaker in Prenzlauer Berg and that the wives, girlfriends and secretaries of the Party and Stasi men must all shop here.
The dressmaker swats my hand away from the pristine fabric. “Filthy nails,” she scolds. I hide my hand behind my back, my face burning because my nails are filthy, and broken, too.
Lenore speaks briskly. “We need a new work wardrobe for Evony, Frau Schneider. She’s just started at HQ this morning and she only has, well…” Both women look me over, Lenore apologetically and Frau Hoffman critically. With a twist of her mouth the woman bids all of us except the guard follow her down the corridor.
“But I’m to—” the guard begins.
Frau Schneider gives a nasty laugh. “I don’t think so, my boy. Wait outside the room if you must, but you’re not coming in.” She takes us into what was once the living room but has now been turned into a sort of reception area with a large sofa, a green and mustard yellow rug on the floor and stacks of magazines.
“Strip, down to your underwear.” Frau Schneider yanks the measuring tape from around her neck. Seemingly unsurprised by this, Lenore sinks down onto the sofa and starts leafing through a magazine. I look uncertainly between them, not sure why I’m being asked to undress.
“Don’t stand there looking gormless, we’re all women here. Unless you have scales underneath your clothes?” When I still don’t move she shakes the tape measure at me. “I need to measure you.”
I do as I’m told and soon I’m standing in the middle of the room in my bra, briefs, garter belt and knitted stockings while Frau Schneider barks orders at me. “Arms out. Arms down. Stand up straight, girl.”
“You’ve nice legs,” Lenore says to me over the top of her magazine, her head on one side. “Herr Oberstleutnant is fond of nice legs.”
“Short-waisted, though,” the dressmaker mutters, her fingers pressing the tape over my behind as she measures the length of my back. Then she stops what she’s doing and looks at me closely: my face, my breasts, my hips. “Working for Oberstleutnant Volker, are you? Just work clothes? No evening gowns, négligées?”
The dreadful old bat. I’m not his girlfriend or a tart. Does he send a lot of women here? Through clenched teeth, I say, “Just work clothes, danke.”
Frau Schneider shoots an annoyed look at Lenore. “When is that man going to send some proper business my way? Or does it go to another dressmaker? Is it Frau Werner?”
“Well, he’s spoilt for choice, I assure you. Don’t worry, as soon as he picks someone I’ll make sure she comes to you.”
“He’s not…Andersrum, is he?”
Lenore shakes her head. “Legs, remember? I’ve seen him looking.” She sniffs. “Not at mine, though. I think he likes brunettes.”
I follow this exchange, completely bewildered. Andersrum. Different, other. Frau Schneider seems to be annoyed because Volker never sends girlfriends to her for dresses, and she wonders if this means he’s homosexual.
Please be wrong, Lenore, I silently beg. Please let Volker be gay. But then, why would he want me in his apartment and look at me in that hungry way if he didn’t like women? I watch the dressmaker work, feeling bereft, as I know she’s trying to turn me into something Volker wants to look at.
“Dark hair and brown eyes,” the woman says, looking up from the measurements she’s marked on a chart. “Cream would suit you. Mauve. Some tawny browns. Black.”
Lenore shakes her head. “Herr Oberstleutnant doesn’t like his secretaries in black.”
“Black, please. I want black,” I immediately say. Everything in black, preferably. I’m not going to sit around looking like a pretty doll for his benefit. Perpetual mourning would suit me better.
Lenore shoots me a look of disapproval and to my annoyance Frau Hoffman makes a note on the paper. “No black. So. Three dresses, three skirts, four blouses and a good coat. All winter weight and the blouses with long sleeves. How does that sound for a start?” She doesn’t say this to me, but to Lenore.
“Can you do two berets and two scarves, as well? Light and dark. Oh, and make the skirts short, won’t you?”
I jump in here. “No. Knee length, please.”
“Evony,” Lenore says, exasperated, holding up the magazine she’s reading and showing me a color picture of two models in very small skirts. It’s definitely a Western magazine. “Minis are in.”
In what? All I know is that Volker likes dark girls and their legs so I’d opt for a nun’s habit if I thought I could get away with it. “Knee length,” I insist to Frau Schneider, but I don’t think she’s paying attention to me.
The dressmaker waves at my clothes lying on the arm of the sofa. “You can get dressed now and then I’ll show you some designs.”
I reach for my blouse, suddenly feeling very tired. The stress of last night is catching up with me. “Look, you don’t need to. Just make them as you see fit. Simple and plain—and long.”
She stares at me, her eyebrows creeping up her forehead. “If you’re sure, but… Colors? Prints for the blouses, or plain?”
I’m fast running out of energy not to scream about how much I don’t care. “It’s fine. Whatever you think best. Where’s the bathroom, please?”
Frau Schneider points out the door and to the right, shaking her head slightly as if she still can’t comprehend me not wanting to pore over designs.
“Do you have anything Evony can wear now? I’d like to take her back to the office this afternoon looking…” Lenore trails off, seeming to search for a diplomatic way of saying that I look awful as I am. “Fresher.”
“I can probably dig something out that a customer didn’t come back for…”
I head out and find the bathroom, lock the door, and sink down onto the closed lavatory. I feel like I’m in one of those dreams where you talk and talk and no one listens to what you’re saying, except all the words are in my head and I have no one to whom I can scream them. I feel my gorge rising and struggle to breathe—
Calm down. You need to keep your wits about you if you’re going to spot the right opportunity. Where’s the guard? Does this apartment have a back door? I take a few steadying breaths, get up and open the bathroom door slowly.
And feel a thud of disappointment. The guard is right there, waiting for me. All right, now is not my opportunity. But soon. It will come soon, I have to believe it will. I will get lucky and Volker will be unlucky. He can’t keep me captive forever.
Head held high I push past the guard and go back to the living room. Frau Hoffman has several skirts and blouses for me to try on, and a lilac silk shirt and camel A-line skirt fit best. Lenore holds out her hands for the garments. “Take them off again and let’s go and get the other things you’ll need. There are some shops near here. I’ve paid Frau Schneider for the order.”
“Can’t I just wear these now?” I’m tired of pulling clothes on and off.
“No, later. We’ll go back to my apartment and get you fixed up properly. Herr Oberstleutnant won’t know you.” Lenore gives me a broad smile.
Not know me. That would be nice. But I do as I’m asked.
Frau Schneider puts the skirt and blouse into a bag, along with another blouse of white silk, and gives it to me. “May as well take that one, too, as the fit wasn’t so bad. I’ll have what I can delivered to Herr Oberstleutnant’s apartment in two days’ time, and the rest within the week.”
Lenore bids her goodbye and we head back down to the car, but we don’t get in as she says we can walk. The sun is shining feebly, though it’s still bitterly cold. Lenore huddles in her cream wool coat with its fur collar. The guard trails a few paces behind us and I feel his gaze prickle the back of my neck.
Seeming determined to get me talking, Lenore asks. “So tell me, how well do you know Herr Oberstleutnant?”
“I don’t.”
She frowns, puzzled. “At all? How did you meet?”
I don’t know what to say and I look away, but this only seems to pique Lenore’s interest. She could be an informant or may report anything I say back to Volker. Would this be such a bad thing, though? I’d dearly like to tell him to his face what I think of him, but by proxy will do. “I don’t like him. He frightens me, and he’s making me stay with him in his apartment.”
Lenore’s eyes widen in surprise. “Making you?” Seeing her astonishment I feel tears fill my eyes. It’s just how Ana would look if I confessed the same thing to her and it makes me miss her so much.
“Oh, you poor thing, don’t cry. Here.” Lenore digs a handkerchief out of her handbag and gives it to me. While I wipe my face and try to compose myself, she talks on, briskly. “These are strange times we’re living through what with the Wall and the shortages and the border closing. But the Party has our best interests at heart and we have to make the best of things, don’t you think?”
No, I don’t think, but I don’t want to say so to her and with the guard listening in.
“You’re lucky that he’s interested in you. Oberstleutnant Volker is…a difficult man.” Lenore gives me a quick, wry smile, as if he’s a poorly trained but loveable hound. “But he’s very handsome, too. Most of the secretaries at HQ have tried to catch his eye but he keeps to himself most of the time. If you can grow to like him and make him fall in love with you, he might marry you.”
The suggestion makes me want to be sick. I know Lenore is trying to be helpful and I am grateful for that, but like Frau Fischer Lenore seems only to want to please Volker. And he’s difficult? He’s a cold-blooded killer.
The fact that Lenore doesn’t ask why Volker is keeping me in his apartment doesn’t surprise me. We don’t know each other and the world we live in doesn’t invite easy confidences. Prying isn’t just considered rude, it’s suspicious, and plainly she thinks I’ve landed on my feet so what could I gain by questioning things?
I refold the handkerchief and hand it back to her. “Thank you for being kind to me. I know you don’t have to be.”
“Oh, don’t be silly! I’ve been dying for Herr Oberstleutnant to get another secretary so I’d have some company again, and you’re miles better than old Frau Hahn who had the job before you. She retired a few weeks ago. Dry old bat. Smoked horrid f6s all day and made me do all the work.”
Despite everything, I manage a watery laugh. “I’m afraid I won’t be much better. I only know how to solder radios.”
She links her arm through mine, as if determined that we shall now be the best of friends. “Yes, but I will have fun teaching you and I know you’ll put some energy into the job. And you needn’t smoke f6s. A few smiles at Herr Oberstleutnant or another officer and you can get Kents or Marlboros.”
I’d sooner die than smile at Volker or any other Stasi officer. “Oh, I shan’t bother. I don’t smoke.”
“Even better—you can trade with them. Do you know that three boxes of Kents will fetch a pair of silk stockings, or a little bottle of French perfume? A tiny bottle, but it lasts for ages.”
I listen as Lenore explains the unofficial bartering that goes on around Stasi HQ. Though the items are different, the system is familiar. We would trade for things in the factory and our apartment building, like exchanging apples for string. Silk stockings didn’t come into it.
She takes me into one small, understocked store after another, the indifferent wares laid out on dusty shelves. Everything has a picked-over look and we have to rummage to find anything decent. Lenore asks me what I already have. “Lipstick? Nylons? Underwear?” I shake my head at each query and she grows more and more incredulous. I can feel her wanting to ask me how this could be, but in the end she seems to decide it’s better not to know. “Well, we’ll just have to get you everything.”
I let her choose the stockings, lipstick, powder and nightclothes for me. She tells me which shoes to try on, and she decides on two pairs of pumps with two-inch heels, one brown and one black. Only the black ones are leather, and Lenore had to go through a mountain of boxes to find them. I can tell she’s pleased with herself as her cheeks are pink with accomplishment.
There’s a pair of white patent leather heels that she looks at for a very long time, but then puts back, her expression pained. I notice they’re her size, not mine. “Don’t you want those?”
She shakes her head, lips tight, and I guess the reason she put them back isn’t that she doesn’t want them, but that she can’t afford them. Despite her adoration of Volker, I like Lenore. I think Ana would have liked her too. I pick the white shoes up along with my black and brown shoes and head toward the register. “We’ll pretend they’re for me.”
“No, Evony, don’t—” She tries to take them back but I don’t let her. The look in her eyes is so grateful that I might have just snatched her firstborn from the path of a speeding car. “Danke. It’s like finding hen’s teeth, shoes like that in East Berlin. If I waited until my next paycheck they would have been sold for sure. I’ll pay you back.”
Doing this for Lenore is the only good thing about today, and I shake my head. I saw the stack of bills he gave her and it’s more than enough to cover all this. “No, you won’t. It’s not my money.”
We move onto buying bras, briefs and garter belts, and here Lenore insists that I take some interest. I tell her I want the plainest ones that will fit me: no lace, no satin, and no pretty colors. In this the store is against her as it stocks almost exclusively ugly tan garments.
Putting down a black satin garter belt, she sighs. “Fine. But you’re getting cream, not the tan. I’m holding the money, remember?” Lenore gathers up the underthings that I’ve chosen, along with a basketful of lotions, soaps and other bathroom supplies, and goes to pay.
Carrying string bags full of shopping we head back to the car, the now thoroughly bored guard trailing in our wake.
“It’s only midday so we’ll go back to my apartment, have some lunch, and get you fixed up in your new things.” Lenore smiles, but my heart plummets. I loathe the prospect of being presented to Volker for inspection. I’m not a willing participant in any of this and I don’t want him getting the impression that I am.
Lenore’s apartment is just a short drive away and she shares it with another secretary who works in a different government building. The apartment is small and plain but they’ve made it cheerful by putting up fashion photographs from Western magazines and draping bright cloths over the furniture.
“Go and shower, and I’ll get some lunch ready. Use whatever you find in the bathroom. Soap, shampoo, help yourself. There are towels under the sink.”
I didn’t have time to wash properly this morning and I linger under the spray, washing my hair, enjoying the solitude and gentle fragrance of the unfamiliar products. Bartered for on the black market system, I presume. Examining the conditioner I wonder how many boxes of Kent cigarettes it cost.
Emerging after twenty minutes swathed in towels I find Lenore has laid out the new skirt, blouse and undergarments for me on her bed. The clothes are stitched neatly and the fabric is pristine and soft. I’ve never owned anything like them before and I’m sure they’ll get dirty or torn. But then I don’t work in a factory anymore, I work in a clean, hushed office with nothing more dangerous than a pair of high heels to navigate.
And Volker. What will he see when he looks at me in these clothes? Someone he’s conquered and made into what he wants of them? Or will he see the truth in my eyes—that I might look the part he wants me to play but I’m an unwilling, resentful participant. How long until he tires of my bad attitude and he sends me to Hohenschönhausen? Will I have to start pretending that I like being his secretary and his captive? How will I manage such a thing?
Going into the kitchen Lenore exclaims over my appearance, telling me how improved I am. She’s made sandwiches from tinned tuna fish and rye bread and I sit down and attack them, suddenly starving. I feel comfortable here. It’s a friendly, inviting apartment, and I wish I could remain here forever.
But I push that thought away. I won’t be staying here, because I’m going to find a way to escape.
After we’ve eaten Lenore puts what she calls the finishing touches on my appearance: cutting and filing my nails into neat ovals, dusting my nose and cheeks with powder, painting my lips with a shade of pale rose lipstick and curling and darkening my lashes. I sit quietly throughout, listening to her talk about her brother, who is a border guard, and a sister who’s married to a baker.
“Your hair is beautiful,” she says, feeling the texture of my curls, which are nearly dry now. “What do you usually do with it?”
I glance up at her, amused. “Do with it? I tie a scarf over it so it doesn’t get dusty, and then wash it when it does.”
She laughs. “Well, we can do better than that.” After brushing it through she starts to twist it and pin it up, and arranges a few curls to fall by my ears. “There. Take a look at yourself in the big mirror in my room.”
I go through, unsteady in my new shoes. They’re making my injured knee hurt and the bright purple bruise is visible through the sheer tan nylons. Lenore saw it, but averted her gaze and didn’t say anything.
Taking a deep breath I raise my eyes to the mirror, and I don’t know myself. The girl I was is being steadily erased and there’s an imposter in her place. She’s painted and neat in form-fitting clothes and has soft, impractical hair. The skirt finishes mid-thigh, showing a long length of my legs. He’ll probably like this. Tears burning my eyes, I gather up my clothes, the last remnants of my old life, and hug them to my chest. I miss Ana. I miss Dad. I even miss the factory.
You’ll find a way out of this, I tell myself, blinking quickly. I can’t let the mascara run or Lenore will know I’ve been crying. Dad didn’t pull you from the rubble of a bombed-out house just for you to give up now.