Tante Eva Page 9

  She stood now, singing even louder. Out of her coat she pulled a beer mug. Eva hadn’t noticed her taking it. Anger dropped on her, the blackness. Now she could never go back there, to that tavern. Elena began walking along the length of the car, pulling a leg behind her, as if it were hurt holding the mug out as if asking for change, and singing, “. . . Tannengrün und Ährengold, Deutsche Arbeit, ernst und ehrlich.”

  After a few minutes, Elena sat down next to her mother.

  “Why do you need to embarrass me like that? Why?”

  “Because it’s so easy, Mutti. And it’s fun. You need to relax.”

  “Well, don’t get out of the train with me. Okay? I don’t think it’s fun, or funny. Stealing a mug. Now we can’t go back there.”

  “We couldn’t go back there anyway, Mutti, because it’s ein Beschiss! And at least I got a mug out of it. It’s nice, eh?” She held it up. “Look! I even got some change, too!”

  Inside the mug were a few marks. Elena began laughing as she took the coins out.

  “This is my stop. Goodbye, Elena.”

  “Tschüss, Mutti!”

  Chapter 19

  In her apartment, Eva took off her clothes and took a warm shower, then changed into her blue robe. She rubbed a heavy cream on her face—it felt dry. She was very tired, so she took two of her morning pills and made some coffee. It had been an exhausting day. Maggie was here, and so grown-up in many ways. Her figure, her confidence. And a lover with her. And Elena was acting like a child. But that was just for Eva’s benefit. She wasn’t going to worry about that. Elena would be a good hostess to her niece. What did Eva know? They were the young people. When Maggie had been here last time, Elena and she had gone out to taverns and clubs together, looked at art together. They had enjoyed each other, and Eva wanted to think they would again.

  She put on the Nina Simone record that Maggie had given her, and listened to a song about a man in a plain gold ring. The ring showed the world that the man belonged to someone else, not to her, not to the singer.

  When Maggie had been in Berlin before, after they had gone out to dinner one night in East Berlin, they walked through Marx-Engels-Platz. It had been dark, the whole square. Now it was well lit, like everywhere, as it had always been in the West. All that energy, all that electricity, to light up the night. For what? In the East, they didn’t need lights to feel safe; it just was safe. Yet Maggie had seemed scared by the darkness. Eva had been embarrassed. She knew. They all knew, all Ostberliners, how different it was from the West. How it was more stark, less colorful. But Eva knew even more so—she traveled to the West freely. A large group of soldiers marched by in the dark, loudly stomping their boots, and startled Maggie. “What’s that? What’s going on?”

  “They’re just Russian soldiers,” said Eva.

  “What are they doing here? Is there some problem?”

  “Oh, no. There’s no problem. They’re just here. They are here to help keep the peace. They do a good job. You know, we have no crime here. I am never afraid here, like you are in the West, of walking around at night.”

  “I’m afraid of them,” said Maggie. “The soldiers.”

  Eva fingered the package she had for Hans. He still had not come. And she would be lying to herself if she didn’t think that he might have something nice for her. Mostly, she wanted to see him.

  The package had been sitting out on her table. She carefully put it in her wardrobe. Then she took out the book Elena had given her for Christmas. Her daughter and her strange ideas about art. The pictures were ugly. Hugo wouldn’t have approved. Hugo had taken gorgeous pictures. All of Goldin’s pictures were in color—often with vivid, almost fluorescent shades of green and orange. Hugo shot only in black and white. Many of her pictures were of men dressed as women. Why would Elena give her such a book? Was she trying to tell Eva something? That she was gay, perhaps? Everyone was suffering in these pictures. Everyone. Suffering in their decadent lifestyle, suffering from their excess and freedom. Eva read a bit from the beginning. “My work is closest to the snapshot,” wrote Goldin. Well, thought Eva, Hugo’s photographs were the opposite of that. She flipped through the book some more. It wasn’t that they weren’t arresting, these pictures. They often were. But they never seemed anything but sad and often garish. Perhaps Elena was trying to defy her father, even though he was dead. Rebel against him, against what he stood for. Eva shut the book.

  The pictures made her think of Tom. Elena was right—he did seem overly pale. And what was he doing with her niece? He was significantly older, not that she had any right to be bothered by this, considering her Hugo. She shouldn’t judge him so quickly. He had just arrived. First impressions were often strong, though.

  His vegetarianism Eva found quite interesting. She had heard of this from Elena, about people not eating meat because of the pain and suffering it caused the animals. Because it was morally wrong.

  When the Wall came down, she was able to buy meats that she could never get in the East. Pork, beef, chicken, duck, goose. It wasn’t that there wasn’t meat in the East, but it was hard to come by and then it was often very bad quality. Sometimes, after waiting a week to wait in line to get meat, she’d cook it to find it inedible. When she started seeing Hans, he would take her to restaurants that weren’t open to the general public. There they would eat goulash or steaks. Tender, good meats. It was a treat. Mostly, it seemed, she lived off of bread and hard cheese. She had never thought about the animals, only about herself. About her desire for the meat.

  She read that in Cuba, every family was given one chicken a month. Before Castro, she wondered how often the families of Cuba ate chicken. Never? Elena would say, “Mutti, before Castro, things were better in Cuba.” But Eva didn’t think Elena was right. Was Tom a more moral person for not eating meat? Was he morally superior to a poor Cuban family who shared their one chicken a month? Eva was not so sure.

  At the end of the war, food had been scarce in Leoben. With their father gone and their mother getting sick and not knowing what was wrong with her, before her diagnosis and swift death, and the country in such a crisis, they almost never ate meat. Indeed, they didn’t get enough of anything. For a while, they had rabbits. Liezel would cry when she had to take a rabbit to the butcher. But she greedily ate the meat afterward. It’s true, even the death of a rabbit is a sad thing. They had tried to go to their uncle Lois’s farm and get some eggs and maybe a chicken. Particularly for Liezel. She wasn’t doing well at that time. Eva and Willi were okay, subsiding on broth and bread. Mushrooms picked from the mountainside. They were bigger already, stronger. They were older, they had strength. Liezel didn’t.

  Lois’s farm that winter was not what it had been in the past. Eva remembers her mother begging. Begging him. She had wanted him to take Liezel, to let her stay there. Her mother had argued that Liezel could do some work for him, housework and farmwork, even if she was only six—and in return, just to feed her, give her milk from the cows.

  Back in Leoben, the neighbors were the ones who saved Liezel from severe malnutrition. There came a time when, every night, Liezel would go to a different neighbor’s house for dinner. How had her mother managed that? She was so sick then, close to the end, close to being bedridden with lupus, and then suddenly, even though it was a long illness, still, death came so suddenly. She suspected that it wasn’t her mother’s idea, sending Liezel around to the neighbors for meals. That it was the old woman downstairs, Frau Heller’s doing. Or perhaps it had been the Schneiders, across the street from them. No matter, it saved Liezel’s life.

  After the war, things were going to get better. They all knew that. Their father would come home, fear and deprivation would go away. But then their father was a prisoner in France. By the time their father did return, his wife was severely ill.

  She died, and he remarried. Maria.

  Willi had filled her in on what happened after she moved
to Vienna. Willi came to the East, once, to visit. He stayed for the day—he had business in West Berlin. It was in the late 1970s, maybe. It was long after Liezel had moved to America. Elena was at school and Hugo was dead. He sat across from her in their modest, frankly quite worn living room. She still had the house then. It was before they moved her out. Her brother, a big-boned, successful businessman, smelling strongly of Brut cologne and expensive tobacco. He brought her some delicacies—smoked fish, a bottle of cream, soft, pungent cheeses, good Austrian red wine. They ate and talked, ate and talked.

  “He didn’t love her, you know.”

  “Maria? Why marry someone you don’t love?” Eva said, bile rising in her. “What can come of that?”

  “So that Liezel and I would have a mother. So that someone would look after us.”

  “I was your mother. I looked after you.” Eva felt the blackness then, the blackness that seemed now to roll into her the way night lake water rolls over a person. Her heart pounded. Decade after decade could go by and her life so busy and troubled—how could she ever think of her past? Of that long ago, when she truly had no power? How could it still hurt?

  “Yeah, but Vati thought you would get married and leave. You were so beautiful. He didn’t trust you’d stay.” He stroked his sister’s hair. She had already started dying it. She was heavier then, too. She was a grown woman, letting her brother comfort her as if she was that young girl again, taking care of a household. Being the woman of the house.

  “I would never have left.” Eva knew it was true.

  “Vati didn’t know that.” Willi looked down at his hands, where he played with some matches. “She beat us, worse than Vati did. She beat Liezel the worst. She hated Liezel. I don’t know why. I was old enough, eventually, to run around and do my own thing. I was a boy. But Liezel, she had to be quiet and help in the house. If she left one speck of dirt on a plate after doing the dishes, Maria would hit her. Hit her with the switch, hit her with a spoon, and sometimes with her fists. Liezel was a walking bruise. Her nose was broken. Her arm was in a sling once. I think she was trying to run away from a beating and Maria grabbed her so hard that her elbow dislocated.”

  “And Vati? Where was Vati during this? He loved Liezel. He would never have let her do that. Never.” Eva refused to believe these stories. Images raced in her brain, but she shook her head to rid herself of them.

  “He wasn’t around, Eva. That was the whole point. He couldn’t be bothered. You know, I’ve made my peace with Maria. She was too young. I forgive her. And he didn’t love her. Did you know he told her that, too, regularly? ‘Ich liebe dich nichts,’ he’d say to her. How can you not feel for a woman who endured that? She had as few choices, if not fewer, than we did. She even visits me once a year or so, in Vienna. And I go out to Leoben. Not often, but I do. To say hi. She fed me dinner for years and years. I feel I owe it to her.”

  “You don’t owe that woman anything. How can you make peace with her? She was a monster.”

  “We all were monsters then.”

  “We were children. Or you were children, I should say.”

  “So was she, Eva. She was a child. Not yet twenty. Think about it.”

  Chapter 20

  The next morning, early, there was a knock on the door. Eva got up, bleary, she’d stayed up late, thinking, listening to music. It seemed almost impossible to get her robe on, but she managed. It was Krista.

  “I have a letter for you.”

  “You still have my mail key?” Eva panicked. She needed her coffee. Her pills. She couldn’t think.

  “No, but I happened to be downstairs when the mailman came and so I told him I’d bring your letter up to you.”

  Eva couldn’t think yet. She walked back into her room, without saying anything. Krista followed, sitting at the table. Eva poured herself a water from the sink and took her pills. Just knowing they were in her made her feel a bit better. She put water on the stove for coffee. “I can’t think yet. I’m just waking up.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s eleven already, and I thought . . .”

  “You know I often sleep later,” Eva interrupted. She was not pleased. She took the envelope from Krista and looked it over, to see if it had been opened. It was from Liezel. Then she looked properly at Krista. Her face wore an expression of contrition. Perhaps even of pleading. She was young and small and fragile-seeming in that moment. But Eva looked harder at her and the image of her mean and drunk, being tossed around by nasty men came clear to her. Both victim and perpetrator. It happened. Then she gathered herself. This was her neighbor. She wasn’t going to make an enemy of her just now. “Willst du einen Kaffee?”

  “Sehr gerne.”

  “Wie geht’s deiner Mutter?”

  “Ganz okay. Nicht grossartig, aber okay.”

  Eva looked at her sternly. “Milch und Zucker?”

  “Bitte.”

  For a moment, they sipped their coffees in silence. Then Eva stood up and put on her new Nina Simone record. Anything to distract from the awkwardness.

  “Did you put this by my door? Someone put it by my door. I am grateful, as I wasn’t here to receive it.” Eva didn’t mention it had been opened.

  “Nein, das war nicht ich.” The girl lied.

  “I’m sorry, I forgot you don’t like this music. I can take it off.”

  “No, that’s not true. I mean, it’s not my favorite. But don’t take it off.” Krista looked into her coffee cup. “Is Maggie here?”

  “Yes. She’s staying with Elena in Kreuzberg. But she will come visit me. I hope you’ll be here and can see her.”

  “That would be great!” Krista’s face lit up, and she nervously wiped a strand of greasy hair from her forehead. “I have so many things I want to talk to her about, about America. Maybe I could visit her someday.”

  Eva was startled, but tried to hide it. “Well, Krista. It’s now easy to travel to America.”

  “Not for me. Not for people like me.”

  “That’s not true. If you want a job there, that’s different, that’s harder, but to visit is not hard.”

  “I want a job there,” the girl said grimly. “I want to move.”

  “I see.” This was news.

  “I have lived here with my mother my whole life.”

  “I see,” Eva repeated. She was stumbling a bit now. How could Krista ask this of her, of her family, after that day? “Well, Maggie is here now. She plans to stay here for quite some time. So maybe now isn’t time to talk of visiting her in America.”

  “She loves you and I help take care of you,” Krista said, her steel eyes fixed hard on Eva. “She might help me find out how to move there, to help me, like I help you, like Elena is helping her.”

  “Perhaps, but people from the West are different than us,” Eva said, coldly. “I love my niece, but she is a Westerner.”

  Eva picked up the letter again. “Thank you for bringing me my mail. It’s from my sister. From Maggie’s mother.” Eva didn’t want to read it in front of her. She wanted her to leave now, so she could read it. She went and took the needle off the record. She couldn’t focus on the music. She couldn’t read the letter. And now Krista talking of visiting her niece, of moving to America?

  “I could read it to you,” Krista offered. How her temperament changed. First the coldness, now a pleading.

  “It’s better I practice reading English myself, but danke,” Eva said.

  “About the other day, about Christmas . . .” Krista said, looking away.

  “I won’t say anything to your mother.”

  “I don’t care so much about that. But I want you to know, I don’t spend a lot of time there. With those men.”

  Eva looked at Krista. She could smell her dirty purple sweater. She wasn’t a happy girl. Who knew what the truth was. “They don’t seem like very nice people.”

 
Krista stood and carried her coffee cup to the sink. “Thanks for the coffee. Knock on my door when Maggie is here. Or better, tell me beforehand when she is coming, if you could,” she asked, betraying her desire, her vulnerability. “I want to make sure I’m here for her visit.”

  “Sicher, Krista. Kein Problem,” she promised the girl as she closed the door behind her.

  Eva poured more coffee, settled herself at her little table, and took out the letter.

  Dear Eva,

  I know it has been so long since you’ve heard from me. How are you? I hear that you are well from Maggie, but I would love to hear from you yourself. How is Berlin in this time of change? Exciting? Scary? Maybe a bit of both. You must enjoy that it is easier to see Elena?

  Things are well here. Fred is working on a book and teaching piano. He is in relatively good health. They have some wonderful medications now. He hasn’t been in the hospital in years, really. I’m wondering when we spoke last, by telephone, and fear it may have been a very long time ago. Perhaps when Maggie was in Berlin in ’86? It’s shocking that I don’t even know. I fear I’m losing my memory already! But what can we do except bear the pain of getting older, becoming less competent in so many ways? Maybe you don’t struggle with these issues. I sure do.

  I am still teaching German at the Catholic school in our area. I actually am now also the head of the foreign-language department. It’s been challenging, as management is not my greatest strength. But I am getting better at it as I go along. And I appreciate the challenge. It’s important to keep challenging ourselves, no?

  The years pass so quickly now. Perhaps you feel the same way. One thing I worry about in getting older is becoming less and less flexible, more set in my ways. I know there are things to enjoy about being at the end of our life cycle here on Earth—perhaps to look forward to a union with our Maker? Perhaps a rest from all the insanity and trouble life is? But I can’t help but cling to certain aspects of youth and life—to some excitement and pleasure, to discovering new things. I am reading a lot and going to art museums, like a college girl.