by Brianna Hale
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 b
e 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, girl
friends 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?”
