Evony
When I wake in the morning I know where I am before I open my eyes but I want to pretend I’m still at home. It’s difficult because the bed feels different. Spongier, and bigger. The light’s different, too. At home my bedroom faced south and there’d be bright morning light shining around the curtains to wake me up. This bedroom must face north or west as the light is soft.
I feel different, too. Weary and gritty-eyed. But I make-believe that my dad’s hanging out the window with an f6, smoking it quickly before I get out of bed because he knows I’ll make him go downstairs to smoke once I’m up. He’s got a map of East Germany unfolded on the table, and we’ll plan our first daytrip of the year, maybe to Naturpark Barnim north of Berlin. We don’t own a car but my dad will borrow one from the automotive shop and we’ll take Ulrich and Ana with us. Ana and I will sit in the back and sing songs we learned in the Free German Youth, making my dad moan his displeasure. As soon as we’re outside the city limits we’ll beg Ulrich to tune the radio to a Western station, and he will, and we’ll all sing along at the tops of our voices to Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley, muddling through the English words as best we can.
Dad will park the car on the edge of the forest and we’ll walk miles and miles through the trees and across the fields, and Ana and I will say that isn’t this far enough? But there’ll be another field to cross, and another hill to climb, because Dad will look over his shoulder, pretend he can still see the Brandenburg Gate and holler, “No, we’re not far enough away yet!”
Finally we’ll stop and spread the picnic rug out and all flop down, exhausted. I’ll be the first to declare that I’m hungry and I’ll dig through the basket and pass out tinned beef sandwiches, apple juice and bottles of beer for Ulrich and Dad.
Ulrich will lay on his back and call out the animals he can see in the clouds or start a game of I spy. Dad will drink two beers and loudly list all the things he hates about the regime and the USSR that he’s been keeping bottled up in the city. “Did you know Stalin allowed five million Ukrainians to starve in the thirties while he continued to export grain? Maybe even ten million. Forced deportations. Fourteen million people sent to the Gulag labor-camps. And this is who we have to thank for our glorious GDR. Prost!” And he’ll thrust his beer bottle into the air and roar with laughter. And we’ll laugh too, not because what he’s saying is funny but because it feels so wickedly defiant.
I open my eyes and the dream evaporates. Ana’s gone, Ulrich’s gone, Dad’s gone. There’s only the smooth white plaster of this strange bedroom ceiling and tears fill my eyes. I miss them so much it’s a physical pain. I hope Dad and Ulrich are together, wherever they are. I’ve considered asking Volker if they’re in prison but I’m afraid he won’t answer me and I’m afraid that he will. So I cling to the hope that they’re somewhere in East Germany and we’ll find each other soon.
The days are as tense and unpleasant for me as the first one was. Volker always seems to be somewhere nearby, listening, watching, though thankfully he doesn’t try to touch me again. Guilt and self-loathing dog me wherever I go. I’ll be in the middle of a task Lenore has given me, like filing or typing, when a wave of it hits me and I struggle to breathe. Why did I react the way that I did when he kissed me? It must be because I’ve never been kissed before. I was caught off guard. It wasn’t that I liked it or I find him attractive.
When Lenore and I are alone in the filing room I ask her if she’s heard the rumor about Volker having a lover in the West. Her eyes grow so wide I think they’re going to pop out of her head. “Are you mad? Herr Oberstleutnant would never betray the Party like that. He’s loyal to them above all other things.” She’s so indignant at the suggestion that Volker could be doing anything illegal that she doesn’t talk to me for two hours and I become quite annoyed with her.
Lenore’s devotion to Volker, I soon realize, isn’t put on to ingratiate herself with him. She really does think he’s wonderful. He’s affectionate toward her in an elder brother sort of way, teasing her and making her smile when he’s in a good mood. He doesn’t attempt to tease me, though he brings us little presents now and then like Western magazines and Swiss chocolate. Whatever one gets the other gets, too, as if he’s careful of not creating friction between his two secretaries, though his fingers seem to brush mine in a way they don’t Lenore’s. Whatever he gives me I put into a drawer as soon as his back is turned and slam it shut.
I want to dislike Lenore for being naïve about Volker but just when I think I have her figured out, she surprises me. One long, wet afternoon neither of us seem to have the energy to be good little secretaries and my fingers ache from so much shoddy typing. Volker is out somewhere, probably putting the fear of God into the populace. Lenore brings her chair over to my desk, ostensibly to teach me shorthand, but we end up flicking through magazines and eating the chocolate Volker has given us. I try not to, but it really is very good chocolate, creamy and sweet and melts on your tongue. Heaven in a little silver foil packet. The sugar makes us giggly and we end up trading jokes. Lenore tells me a political gag that I never thought could pass her lips.
“A group of East German ministers are sent on a diplomatic mission to Austria where they are introduced to all sorts of important people. Finally, they meet the head of the Austrian Navy. One minister bursts out laughing. “But you have no coastline!” The Austrian is very offended. ‘How rude. We were very polite when the GDR’s Minister for Trade was introduced.’”
It’s a very Lenore sort of joke because she does get so annoyed with the shortages, but I’m still scandalized she would tell it. Scandalized and delighted. I start to snort with laughter when I notice that Volker has returned and has stopped dead a few feet away from us. He’s overhead every word and there’s a hard, unfriendly look in his eyes. Lenore makes a little gasping sound when she notices him and her fingers grab mine beneath the desk.
Volker sits on the edge of her desk, facing us, his legs crossed at the ankles. I feel my spine straighten, ready to defend her, words of protest on my tongue. It was my idea, I made her tell me. I told five jokes just like that you didn’t hear. She didn’t mean anything by it.
“Why do Stasi officers make such good taxi drivers?”
My mouth falls open. Volker looks back and forth between us, then leans forward, conspiratorial, and lifts his dark brows once, twice. “Because we know where you live.” He tips back his head and roars with laughter, then goes into his office and closes the door.
Lenore looks at me, white-faced and bewildered, then buries her face in my shoulder, her body shaking with helpless giggles. I can’t quite believe what just happened.
Another day Volker comes in from a meeting with his coat slung over his arm and he stops in front of my desk. “Liebling,” he murmurs, so quietly only I can hear. He usually calls me Fräulein Dittmar when there are people around. When I’m alone with him in his office he calls me Evony. I’m rarely in his office, though, as I can’t take dictation without knowing shorthand and I ensure I’m making very slow progress at it.
When I look up, Volker draws a short-stemmed red rose from a fold of his coat and holds it out to me. A red rose, in January. He must know someone with a greenhouse. “Take it,” he says, a small smile on his lips, but I shake my head. He’ll get angry now, and his eyes will turn black because I’ve refused him. The magazines and chocolates I took at once, if gracelessly, but a rose? I can’t take a rose from him.
He only smiles, his eyes a tender blue. “It’s for you, take it.”
As with the softness of his kiss, it’s his gentleness that undoes me. Chewing the corner of my lip, I take the bloom, and as he lets go of the stem his forefinger strokes the length of mine, sending shivers up my arm. “Danke,” he says, just as quietly. He turns to Lenore and in a normal tone of voice says, “And of course there’s one for you.”
Lenore’s exclamations of thanks are loud and effusive but he waves her off and goes into his office, closing the door. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she says, smiling down at her flower. “I’ve not seen roses like these in years. Herr Oberstleutnant is so good to us.”
It is a beautiful flower. The petals are vivid red, like blood, and are as soft as the insides of cats’ ears. I look to the window at the far end of the corridor, of which I can see just a sliver. All is leaden and grim beyond the glass. I hold more beauty in my hands than there is in the whole city.
Lenore finds two small vases for our roses and places mine beside my typewriter. My eyes can’t help but be drawn to it for the rest of the day.
In the evenings after dinner I try to hide in my room, but from the third day Volker insisted I sit with him in the living room. I’m to read or do anything else I want, but I must remain on the sofa opposite him. I don’t know why, as he ignores me for hours on end, reading over reports which I think must be Stasi intelligence. Occasionally he lifts the telephone at his elbow and makes a call, presumably to one of his colleagues, questioning them about production figures at a factory or the number of new recruits among the border guards. I listen carefully, pretending to read a history of Rome or the Americas, but I don’t learn anything useful. Probably the really interesting work that he does happens behind closed doors where I can’t listen in. It baffles me why he concerns himself with things that seem far beneath him and incredibly tedious. But I begin to realize that Volker is a thorough and methodical man. Thanks to Lenore, I know that the Stasi doesn’t just amass informants and raid the houses of traitors. They do a whole host of things. Gather intel on the West, for instance. Intercept mail and communications, thwart sabotage, investigate suspected dissidents. They guard the Wall and protect government buildings and Party members. They’re responsible for documenting travelers, providing diplomats, liaising with the Soviets, running prisons. Their reach is breath-taking. I had no idea.
Which one of these was our undoing? I wonder. The Stasi knew we planned to flee through the bakery. How?
While covertly studying Volker in the evenings I work out that he’s looking for coincidences or inconsistencies, small things that probably don’t mean anything, but might. When he spots something he picks up the phone and arranges for someone to look into it. Despite my dislike of him I have to respect his dedication to his work, though I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that der Mitternachtsjäger is good at his job.
Every now and then his eyes wander from the typed pages and I catch him watching me, his expression thoughtful. Sometimes he looks at my ankles, crossed together as I read. Sometime it’s my neck as I flex it from one side to another, stiff from sitting still too long. My insides clench with alarm when I see him looking at me, wondering if he’s about to get up and move toward me, but he doesn’t. They’re admiring looks. Softly appreciative. I think it must be the way a man looks at a woman when he wants to touch her, but I don’t know how I know that. It unnerves me, and I find myself wishing that if he did have to look at me he would be a lecher, a groper, so I could tell him how disgusting he is.
At night I’m sometimes woken by the click of the latch on the front door and I know he’s going out hunting. He always leaves just before midnight and when he’s gone I get up and watch him through the living room window as his uniformed figure retreats down the garden path to his car. The front door is deadlocked and there’s always a guard standing by the gate. I’ve seen from the kitchen window that there’s another in the alleyway out back. Volker is careful.
When he goes out on these forays he takes his car and drives it himself, but beyond that I have no idea where he goes or what he does. Sometimes I’m still awake when he comes back at two or three or four am. Other nights I fall back asleep and find him standing and reading the paper in the kitchen at half-past seven. He never yawns or appears weary or acknowledges to me that he went out. I covertly study his face, wondering if der Mitternachtsjäger had a successful night or not, but he gives nothing away.
On Sunday morning, after I’ve been his captive for nine days, I go out to the kitchen very early. It’s so early that Frau Fischer hasn’t come yet and I don’t expect Volker to be up, and he doesn’t seem to be as the apartment is quiet. There are small things moving down in the garden, blackbirds and thrushes whirring through the bare branches. I want a cup of coffee, and I stand yawning by the stove waiting for the kettle to whistle and watch a red squirrel take a few pattering steps over the frozen ground.
Nine days. There haven’t been any opportunities to escape as almost every day is the same: I go to Stasi HQ with Volker and then I return with him. If he leaves me alone then there are always soldiers nearby to make sure his prisoner doesn’t get away. But something will happen and I’ll get my chance, I’m sure of it. Volker will let his guard down or he’ll take me somewhere where I can get away from him. Or one of my friends will find me, one of the people who was in the bakery that night who got away. I can’t have been the only one to run back out onto the streets of East Berlin. It was chaos down in the bakery. I was captured because I was unlucky enough to have drawn der Mitternachtsjäger’s attention but that means others could have evaded him. We’ll pass on the street and our eyes will lock, and they’ll know I need help.
I remember Dad and how jumpy he was the night of our intended escape. Maybe it was because of Frau Schäfer being taken, or maybe he had some premonition that it was all going to go wrong. Animals are said to seek shelter hours before a thunderstorm hits through some sixth sense, so maybe that happens to people, too. Or maybe he was just rightly terrified because we were about to attempt something dangerous.
Prison, dead, East or West? I wonder, my mind revolving over where Dad might be. Four possibilities, and Volker knows the answer. He can’t be in the West as he’d never leave me behind in a country he hates, and I will not countenance him being imprisoned or dead. I pray that he’s in the East, biding his time until we can escape together. But I don’t know. I can’t know. So until I ask the possibilities are all true, and none are true.
Once I’ve made my coffee I stand where I am, sipping it, my hands clasped about the mug and enjoying a rare moment of solitude.
Except I’m not alone. A movement out of the corner of my eye makes me turn and I see Volker in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching me. He’s in his shirtsleeves, his hands deep in his trouser pockets. I don’t know why but I find him even more unnerving when he’s not in uniform. The nights when he takes his jacket off, throwing it over the sofa and rolling his sleeves back I find it hard to concentrate on my book. My eyes keep drifting up from the page to look at his forearms, which are strong and roped with veins. His skin has a faint golden cast to it even in the depths of winter and his hands are large and square. His bearing is confident. The people I’ve known all my life don’t look like Volker. I prefer him in uniform because it reminds me of what he is: a Stasi officer, not a man.
He steps forward, his eyes on my hair. I normally keep it pinned up but this morning I haven’t bothered yet and it’s hanging in long curls. He lifts his hand and brushes the back of a finger down one strand and I feel it as keenly as if he were caressing my face. It’s so intimate, so private in the post-dawn hush. We might be anyone. We might be lovers. I feel an awful compulsion to angle my cheek toward the warmth of his hand. But he’s Volker, not my lover, and not someone I should be letting my guard down around let alone wanting him to touch me. I jerk away like he’s burned me.
And he looks hurt. Breathing my anger in and out through my nose, all the words I don’t dare say to him blare in my head. You don’t get to be hurt that I don’t want you to touch me. You stole me, you’re keeping me prisoner. I’m the one who reproaches you.
Smoothing out the taut expression on his face, Volker looks back at my hair. “You should wear it down sometimes, Liebling.” He leans past me and grasps the coffee pot, and I hurry out of the room.
Anger boils through me for the rest of the day and I can’t take to anything. I almost wish it wasn’t Sunday and I was at Stasi HQ so I could lose myself in work. Why I should be so unreasonably furious about what happened in the kitchen I don’t know, until I realize that I’ve gradually begun thinking of Volker not as a Stasi officer, and not as der Mitternachtsjäger, but as a person. I don’t want him to become a person to me. I don’t want to admire the verve with which he works or enjoy the low rumble of his voice as he talks on the telephone, twisting a fountain pen in his long fingers. He’s a cruel, cold-blooded killer who—
And then I remember. How could I have forgotten? He’s a Nazi on top of everything else. I held the picture in my own hands: Oberstleutnant Reinhardt Volker of the Staatssicherheit was once Hauptmann Reinhardt Volker of the Wehrmacht. Someone in the factory got a hold of the photo and we passed it around furtively, this evidence that the man we most feared was once a hated Nazi. Some people, especially the men of my father’s age and older who’d been conscripted, were circumspect, saying that not everyone who fought for Germany was a Nazi. They were in the minority, though. He was an officer, most said. He wasn’t like us. Those that had power then have power now. The bastards in charge have merely changed their uniforms.
By evening I’m thoroughly enraged, with both him and myself, and I decide that this bizarre attraction I have to him stops now. I should have made more of an effort to get to know the boys at school and the young men at the factory instead of holding out for a ridiculous fantasy. Then I could have experienced what normal attraction was like. This close proximity to Volker is making me crazy.
After a silent dinner, we sit on the sofas as usual and he works, but I can’t keep my eyes on my book. They flick up every few minutes to glare at him and my heel bounces on the rug.
Finally, Volker looks at my feet and puts his papers aside. Folding his hands together, he asks, “Is there something you wish to say, Evony?”
Oh, you bet there is. I can’t hold it in any longer and the words come out like bullets. “What did you do during the war?”
He raises his eyebrow in surprise. “The war? I was in the Wehrmacht, an officer in the Afrikakorps. Why?”
“Were you a Nazi?”
Something flickers in Volker’s eyes, almost as if he’s flinched. “No. I was in the armed forces, not the Waffen-SS.”
I’ve heard this distinction before but I don’t know enough about the two divisions to understand what that means. I do know that the SS were more brutal and terrifying than the regular army. They ran the secret services and the concentration camps and were closer to Hitler. But Hitler and his subordinates commanded the Wehrmacht, too.
“Where were you born?” We were taught in school that there were never any fascists in East Germany, that they all came from the West. I don’t know whether this is true or not but it’s all I have to go on.
“Dresden. Evony, why all the questions?”
Dresden is in East Germany and he could be telling the truth. After all there is a picture of Dresden in my bedroom and an antique, gold-rimmed Dresden porcelain dinner set displayed in a glass cabinet not six feet from where I’m sitting. I examined it late one night when he was out hunting, looking for more clues as to who this man is.
Instead of answering his question I ask another of my own. I don’t know where this newfound bravado has come from but I’m determined to use it before it dries up. “Did all the fascists come from the West or is that just what the Party wants us to believe?”
Volker laughs, a genuine, amused laugh. “They still teach you that? Germany was divided down arbitrary lines after the war. East Germany is geographically close to the USSR so this eastern sector now answers to the USSR. Of course some Nazis were born and bred in what is now East Germany.”
Is that the extent of his loyalty to the Soviets and communism, the fact that he found himself in a part of Germany closer to the USSR? If he can base his loyalty on something as flimsy as geography then I can very well believe he was once a fascist. “So you were a Nazi.”
His face hardens. I know I should stop talking but I’m tired of all this hypocrisy and pretense. I jump to my feet, no longer able to control my emotions. “Why can’t you just admit it? You exchanged one regime for another, one uniform for the next. If China invaded tomorrow you would probably be wearing their uniform by sunset. You love power more than you love what is good and right, and you always have.”
Volker stands too, looming over me, his eyes dark and flashing. I seem to have gravely offended him. “Call me a Nazi again, Liebling, and I will make you regret it.”
He’s standing very close, too close, and even with his jaw set in anger he’s handsome. “You’ve already taken everything from me. You’re a Nazi. So go on, hit me, send me to prison, do your worst. Do you think I care?”
But he only shakes his head slowly, frowning like he’s puzzled. “I don’t think you really believe that. So why are you…?” Then his face clears and a smile dawns on his lips. “Ah, I see what you are doing. You were hoping I was a Nazi, weren’t you? Is it easier for you to think of me as a monster?”
His sudden change of attitude catches me off guard. I prefer him to be angry so I can be defiant. I don’t know what to do when he smiles at me. “You are a monster. You’re keeping me here against my will.”
“I’m keeping you safe. Do you know where you’d be if any other Stasi officer had caught you? In Hohenschönhausen. They’re not all as merciful as I am.” He hooks an arm around my waist and draws me closer to him. I feel the heat coming off his body and my hands come up to press against his chest. I stare up into his face, too shocked to react or pull away. When he speaks his voice rumbles against my fingers.
“I’m not a monster, Evony. I’m very nice if you get to know me better. Would you like to get to know me better?”
I open my mouth to protest that it’s the last thing I want, but he kisses me. His arms wrap around me and his lips are soft but insistent. It’s just like that first night in his apartment, my head screaming that this is wrong but my body not listening. So this is what it’s like to be kissed. Every place he’s touching me, his lips on my mouth, his hands on my back, feels over-sensitized.
“No, I wouldn’t,” I say breathlessly when he pulls away to look down at me.
“I know when you’re lying to me, Liebling.”
His mouth descends on mine again, harder this time, and his hands smooth down to my behind, squeezing lightly. Being touched there makes my mouth open in surprise and his tongue slides against mine, questing, probing. My body responds to his without conscious thought and I’m kissing him back, wrapping my arms around his neck and rising on my toes, wanting to get closer to him, needing more of him. It’s not gentlemanly what he’s doing with his hands, kneading my flesh and beginning to ruck up my skirt, but I don’t want him to be a gentleman. My tongue flicks his top lip and he makes a sound in the back of his throat, a little growl, and it sends a ripple of fire through me. I made him do that. Him, Volker—
Volker.
It’s as if a basin of cold water has been dumped over my head. I tear myself away from him and swipe the back of my hand across my mouth. I’ve been kissing Volker. That’s disgusting. What’s worse is I enjoyed every second of it and there’s a fierce pulsing between my legs. “Why did you do that? I don’t like you. I hate you.”
He reaches for me, but I step quickly away. His eyes are gleaming like a prowling animal’s. “Ja, you hate me. But you don’t dislike me, do you, Liebling?”
I don’t know why the distinction is important. Hate, dislike, I just want him not to make me feel the way that he just did. “There are plenty of other women in East Berlin who would be happy for your attentions. Why me? Don’t you care that I hate you so intensely?”
“Not really, no.” And as if to prove his point he kisses me again, wrapping one arm around me and squeezing one of my breasts with his other hand, rubbing the hard nipple and making me whimper against his mouth. My body is on fire and he’s the only thing I want to be touching me. My clothes feel tight and restrictive; his shirt feels too rough against my hands and I know that if it was just skin against skin it would be so, so much better. He breaks the kiss and looks down at my flustered face. “You don’t dislike me, do you?”
The heat from his body is scorching me. I’m fully aware of who he is and yet I can’t seem to pull away. He begins unfastening the buttons at the front of my blouse and I’m struck by the dangerous reality of the situation. I need to stop this now before I totally lose control. Volker is a killer. Volker murdered your friend and probably put your father in prison. He doesn’t need to be a Nazi—isn’t that enough for you?
A sob rises in my throat and finally the spell is broken. I pull myself out of his arms and run. When I reach my bedroom I throw myself down on the bed and pound a pillow with my fist over and over again until my hand aches.
What have I done?