The House of One Thousand Eyes

by Michelle Barker

  She put on coveralls and boots and a pair of gardening gloves and trudged down to the courtyard. At that hour, the yard was still cool and dark. Once winter set in, the sun would never get high enough to brighten it. You could stand in the middle and it would be building, building, building, rain—and then snow. September had already been wet enough that the plywood path was beginning to sink. The courtyard had that fusty mushroom smell that would only get worse once the autumn rain really started.

  Auntie had marked out the place for the trench with sticks and string. Peter was there, pacing: three steps north, three steps south. When he spotted Lena, he paced his way over to her. “Where did you go last night? Did your aunt wake up? Did you get in trouble?”

  He handed her a shovel. Lena glanced at his fingernails. Auntie would never have let Lena leave the apartment with such long fingernails; she’d use the fabric scissors if she had to. Hadn’t Peter’s mother noticed?

  “I went out,” Lena said.

  “Out where?”

  Lena put her head down and stuck the shovel into the mud. “Where are we supposed to put all the dirt?”

  “Into the wheelbarrow,” Peter said. “Out where?” He leaned on his shovel, waiting for an answer.

  “I needed some air.” It was hard to be mean to Peter. For one thing, he was scabby and he had a father who ordered him around and thought he was a big disappointment, and that made Lena sad. But also, Lena didn’t have any true friends besides Erich, and he didn’t count because he was her uncle. There was a girl in her photography class, but she didn’t know where Lena worked yet. As soon as she found out, it would be Party this and productivity that, a friendship like a train station where everything was predictable and on time.

  Peter and Danika were neighbor friends, which was like having cousins. You didn’t choose them; you ended up with them. But as things went, Peter and Danika were good neighbor friends. Except lately Peter had been acting strangely: standing too close, looking at her for too long—making cow eyes, Danika called it.

  Lena deposited a shovelful of mud into the wheelbarrow. “Sometimes I need to—get some air.” Her arms were already tired. “You know.”

  Peter gave a sad smile that made Lena forget his fingernails. “I do. There’s never enough air in our apartment. Father uses it all.”

  Lena was startled by his candor. Peter had no reason to trust her. She could easily mention his disrespect to Auntie, who would feel obliged as the Guardian of a Difficult Child to report such insubordination to his father. And then what? Lena had a feeling Military Papa was the sort of father who took off his belt, while Frau Military Papa hid in the other room with the radio on.

  Peter seemed like he was waiting for Lena to say something. Her neck prickled. How can you tell him where you went? How do you know you can trust him?

  She didn’t know. So she said, “Hi, Danika,” because there she was, making her dainty way across the plywood path.

  “Here comes the little fashion model,” Peter muttered. “How’s she going to dig dressed like that?”

  Danika looked very chic in her knitwear, and she wore shoes with a heel. Though she was apprenticed to a dressmaker, she dreamed of being a model, despite her short legs and square chin. Whenever Lena came over, Danika would pull out stacks of Pramo and Sibylle magazines and talk for hours about clothes and makeup.

  “Are you going to be our supervisor?” Peter asked her.

  “Shut up. My mother made me come. Damned if I know why.”

  “Maybe because you live here like the rest of us,” Peter said, “and walking across this swamp every day will ruin your Western shoes.” He ran a hand through his short hair and took a step closer to Lena.

  He was doing it again—making himself and Lena into a team. Teams made Lena nervous, even though Auntie said that was antisocial and not good for morale.

  “You’re on Comrade Mielke’s team, aren’t you?” Auntie had said once when Lena had expressed her opinion about teamwork.

  “What do you mean?” Lena had thought Auntie was talking about Comrade Mielke’s football team, the BFC Dynamo. It was considered the Stasi team. The BFC Dynamo won most of their games, because who wanted to be the player to score the winning goal against the secret police?

  “You work for him,” Auntie had said.

  Lena wrinkled her nose. Because she worked at night, she rarely saw Comrade Mielke at headquarters. She wasn’t the one who had to prepare his breakfast according to the diagram. His personal secretary, Frau Drasdo, did that. Two eggs, four and a half minutes exactly, placed here. Bread on a separate plate, placed there. Napkin on the left. Knife on the right. Salt just above. Frau Drasdo couldn’t have needed the diagram after all these years, but maybe she wanted to check every morning to be sure she didn’t get it wrong. Comrade Mielke’s temper was legendary when things didn’t go according to plan.

  “I work with Jutta,” she’d said.

  “On a team,” Auntie said. “You and Jutta are a team, you see?”

  “No, we’re not. All she does is smoke and talk about being Slavic.”

  But then Auntie had gotten quiet. “You should report her.”

  That had been the end of that conversation.

  “We’re going to dig this trench together.” Peter stuck his shovel into the mud. His grunt said the mud was heavier than he’d expected, but he tried to make it into nothing by the way he tossed it into the barrow.

  “That’s it, Peter!” Hans arrived carrying a mug of coffee—probably mixed with schnapps. His salt-and-pepper hair reminded Lena of her father. But then Hans lost his balance on the plywood and stepped right into the mud with his short black boots. “Scheisse.”

  Lena put her head down and got started. One shovelful. Two. It wasn’t a job you could merely pretend to do. Auntie would know at a glance that the courtyard hadn’t been beautified. The day stretched out before her, interminable and hard, and she had to work that night. She wasn’t sure she would get through it. But then—

  The portal was right there. One step, and in her mind she was in the bookstore of the schrullig world, where the spines of books were lined up in perfect rows like teeth.

  When Erich’s first book had been published, he’d told her the book dealers had ordered ten thousand copies for their shops.

  “Where will they put them all?”

  He had laughed. “They order ten thousand to ensure they’ll receive ten.”

  Thirteen shovelfuls. Fourteen.

  In the schrullig world, if you ordered ten thousand copies of a book, you would receive ten thousand copies. What Lena liked most about the bookstore was the smell. New books smelled like shoes that hadn’t gone anywhere yet. Lena imagined standing in the center of the room and breathing it in, and in, and in. A person could keep inhaling until their lungs were so full they were ready to burst.

  “Why are you breathing funny?” Danika’s question almost made Lena drop her shovel. “What are you doing?”

  Twenty-one shovelfuls. “Nothing.”

  Books were Erich’s favorite thing in the world. Lena longed to take him to the schrullig bookstore and let him stand in the middle of the shop with her and breathe. He would fall to his knees and start to cry. That isn’t good, Mausi. When men cried, it was like the world had put its pants on backward. The silent hiccup of shoulders, the bent head. She’d seen her father do it once when he hadn’t known she was watching.

  “God, this is boring.” Danika set down the shovel and plunked herself on the bench. After digging in her pockets for a nail file—which she never left home without—she began filing her nails. She had explained to Lena that you needed to be ready at all times in case your One True Love walked past. Even if you didn’t have a One True Love yet. Especially if you didn’t. It could be anybody.

  Hans stood on his sheet of plywood as if he were the captain of a sinking ship and
lit a cigarette. “My friend suggested we write to the General Secretary. ‘Write to Erich,’ he said, ‘and tell him what’s going on in this courtyard. He’ll do something for you.’” Erich Honecker, the leader of the country—as if he had nothing better to do than read letters from disgruntled citizens.

  Twenty-five.

  In her mind, Lena left the bookstore and wandered over to the orange space helmets. She sat down and tucked her head under the bubble-shaped hair dryer, wondering what would happen next. The men never traveled anywhere when they sat under the orange domes. They just smoked and read their newspapers. But Lena would go somewhere. There were buttons on the chair arms. You had to know which ones to press.

  Thirty shovelfuls. Forty.

  Hans disappeared.

  Fifty.

  He returned with sandwiches and beer. They all sat on the crying-shame benches he’d built, though Lena wasn’t sure who should be crying. Hans seemed happy to her, if a bit crooked, not at all upset that he was drinking his life away and would not fulfill his potential.

  The sandwiches were made with salami and crusty bread. Lena hadn’t realized how hungry she was. She took bites that were too big for her mouth and then struggled to chew them without pieces sticking out.

  Danika wouldn’t eat hers because “I’m watching my figure.” She put up one finger to Lena. It was their sign: One True Love. The point being it was harder to get a One True Love if you were lumpy.

  “I think we’ve done enough digging for the day, don’t you?” Peter said to the group.

  Lena’s hopes bobbed, then sank. “Auntie won’t think so.”

  “Hang Adelheid.” Hans blew out an aggressive stream of cigarette smoke. “I’ll tell her how hard you all worked. Go out and have some fun.”

  Peter bent toward Lena in a way that meant a suggestion was coming—to go to the cinema, or play with his amateur radio.

  Danika said, “Hits for Fans is on this afternoon.” It was her favorite show on the West Berlin radio station.

  Lena mumbled something about being busy. She thrust the shovel at Peter (ignore his no-more-ice-cream face), thanked Hans for the sandwich, said goodbye to Danika, and ran upstairs.

  Boots off. Gloves. Coveralls. Erich. Jeans on, the ones that were almost Levi’s but not quite, because Levi’s were the mark of the Western devil and Auntie said the GDR version was far superior. Erich. Sweater on, because the weather was cooling down. Zehas laced up, because running shoes would come in handy in case she had to make a run for it. Erich. Go. Go!

  Stop.

  The lock on the door clicked twice. Auntie was home early from school. She walked in and took off her shoes in a painful way, as if her feet had been stuffed in as tight as possible. Her face had that pasty headache look to it. “Where are you off to?” she asked. “It’s not time for your photography class yet, is it?”

  “Nowhere,” Lena mumbled.

  “Nowhere? With your outdoor shoes on in the house? Is this what happens when I leave you in charge?”

  “No, Auntie. I was just—” What were you just? Were you just going to visit Auntie’s layabout brother on a Monday afternoon? He was in trouble. If only Lena could tell Auntie what she’d seen—in the middle of the night, halfway across the city, when you were supposed to be in bed? “I was just going to take out the trash.” She went to get the trash can. “I’m tidying up, like you asked.”

  Auntie looked like she wanted to mention the whistling pig but couldn’t think how, and then the baby next door started crying, and Auntie winced, and Lena said, “I’ll make you some peppermint tea when I get back.” And a cold compress, and a pillow for your feet, because we know where this is headed. Swollen ankles, an afternoon at home, and no way to let Erich know he was in danger.

  — 4 —

  herr dreck

  Lena often wondered what Auntie did on weeknights while she was at work. Maybe something secret and forbidden involving Western game shows, because surely even Auntie broke the rules sometimes; she had to, or she wouldn’t be human. She might not be human. Anyway, as a teacher she was expected to lead by example and watched only the Better Germany’s television shows—which meant two channels, the ones in line with Party policy.

  Certain people might have considered Auntie’s collection of porcelain dogs to be decadent and rebellious. But there was something wrong with Auntie’s dogs. Their eyes were deranged. Meissen reserved its best-quality porcelain for export, and the Better Germany only got the rejects. These dogs looked like they belonged in the mental hospital.

  The only thing Lena could be sure of was that after the Monday-evening film, Auntie watched the political propaganda show known as the Black Channel—Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler’s big eyes widening behind big glasses as he ripped apart Western television shows. Filth. Junk. Stupidity.

  Erich and his friends made fun of Muck-Raker Eddy, as they called him. “I’ll be there in a Schni,” they would say, which meant fast, because Schni was exactly how much of Schnitzler’s name you would hear before someone changed the channel. Lena was certain if she hadn’t worked on Monday nights she would have been required to sit through the Black Channel with Auntie. Auntie’s control of the television was total. No Kojak or Bonanza or The Love Boat, like at Danika’s place. It was like living in the Valley of the Clueless, the corner of the Better Germany where they couldn’t get Western signals.

  Auntie’s headache had meant no photography class for Lena. Instead, Lena had gone to the pharmacy, and prepared supper, and practiced walking around the apartment without letting her heels slam onto the floor. By the time she was getting ready for work, Auntie’s headache was cured. A polka played on the radio while Auntie sat on the sofa doing needlepoint. She liked to make pillows and wall-hangings with important messages on them. Be Happy and Sing. Learn, Learn, and Learn Again. Lena said “Goodbye” out loud and Have fun with Muck-Raker Eddy in her head, and then she left for work.

  The security compound on Normannenstrasse took up one square kilometer and was only a fifteen-minute walk from Auntie’s apartment. Lena was lucky to have this job. Sausage Auntie said the Stasi would not have sought Lena out if it hadn’t been for her late husband, Helmut (look up, look left). Lena should be grateful. Other girls her age worked in textile factories, and bleached their hair, and got pregnant. There were also the mines, for people like her uncle, who had chosen to spend his eighteen months of military service as a construction soldier—which had meant building military structures and then afterward not being able to find a job.

  “The mines were supposed to smarten me up,” Erich had told Lena, “though, shhh, I’m no smarter now than before.”

  How could Lena smarten up if she was simple? People acted like being simple was the worst thing. But everyone was simple in some way, even though they pretended they weren’t, dressing up the simple bits with big words and Western shoes. Only three things were really important, anyway: to keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, and learn to like cabbage.

  The sun was setting while Lena walked. It was difficult, moving in the direction of Stasi headquarters when her feet wanted to take her back to her uncle’s place. Be patient. Not showing up for work would be unthinkable.

  Lights had come on in many of the apartments, most of which looked the same: brown and stuffy, fake-wood-paneled and linoleum-floored, with flashes of orange. But the lives going on inside them—anything could be happening. Arguments, marriage proposals. Someone could be falling in love in one of those rooms right now.

  “Good morning,” the security guard, Ernst, called to her when she arrived at the compound gates. It was their joke: good morning at nighttime. Ernst tipped the end of his rifle toward her and she waved at him. He was tall and skinny and had the longest arms Lena had ever seen. Asparagus Tarzan, Danika would have called him. They must have made his uniform sleeves special so the cuffs would cover his wrists.


  Ernst knew her, so he didn’t ask for her identity card. She crossed the grounds to House 24, a building in the compound that dealt with things like repairs, and where she and her partner, Jutta, kept their supplies and had coffee. The small coffee room usually smelled like an ashtray; when Lena walked in, Jutta was already sitting at the card table smoking. Jutta wasn’t really a partner; she was more like a teammate, the way Auntie envisioned it—except Jutta was the captain and there was only one player on the team: Lena.

  Jutta was around the same age as Auntie, though maybe older; it was hard to tell with her bleached hair. She had one hand wrapped around a mug of KaffeeMix and an overflowing ashtray at her side. A copy of Sibylle sat beside her, opened to a picture of three fashionable women in winter coats. Lena loved the smooth magazine pages, those smooth clothes, smooth lives.

  Jutta looked up. “How was your weekend? Did you visit your uncle yesterday?”

  She never failed to ask about Lena’s days off and her visit with Uncle Erich. It was nice that she remembered. “Of course I did,” Lena said, trying hard to keep the undertow of fear from pulling her down.

  “What did you do with him? Anything special?”

  “We had ice cream. We went for a walk.” Some men came in the middle of the night and emptied his apartment. I don’t know if he knows. I don’t know where he is.

  “So? Is he working on anything new?” Jutta asked. “A big bestseller?”

  Is he? What was he writing in those notebooks? “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  Jutta looked as if she expected Lena to say more, but Lena tightened her smile and the room fell silent but for Jutta’s sips of pretend-coffee.

  “I’m not even German,” Jutta said. “Have I told you that?”

  Only about ten thousand times. “Really?” Lena hung up her sweater.

  “The SS kidnapped me right off my parents’ farm when I was a little girl, because of my blond hair and blue eyes. I had the Aryan look. I was a great beauty, you know.”