The House of One Thousand Eyes

by Michelle Barker

  How long before Erich would be allowed to contact her? He could use the telephone in prison to call Auntie’s place—if that was where he was. Surely there were visiting hours. Would he be skinny and pale? Lena could bring leftover goulash.

  “. . . came for me when I was only a little girl. I was born in Poland, you know.”

  They walked together to House 1 and entered through the main doors. Three red flags. Two black statues. One shiny black floor. Jutta got into the elevator; Lena trudged up the stairs. Once. Twice. She decided to start in the offices, rather than the hallway. Maybe Herr Dreck would get tired and go home. Maybe his wife would call.

  The graveyard shift. Why did they have to call it that? A building at night was like a cemetery—so silent and empty. Mostly the men were cautious about the documents they worked on; they tidied their desks before they went home, locking everything away, or shredding it. But every so often, like tonight, there were papers left on a desk or a side shelf. Lena didn’t look at them, so she didn’t see notes, and dates, and times. She didn’t see recommendations scribbled in the margins. She didn’t notice the words flight risk at the bottom of certain pages, which meant the people in question were suspected of wanting to escape. All those things were on the other side of the Wall in her mind, so how could she be expected to see them? She touched one of the pages with two fingers, but didn’t pick it up.

  Eventually she had to clean the hallway. She dragged her Purimix out. The door down the hall was ajar; light spilled onto the red carpet. Lena felt like taking Herr Dreck’s heavy rough hand and sticking it in the meat grinder attachment, if only she had that one.

  Afterward there will be chocolate. But she didn’t care about chocolate. There would be his reddened eyes, the stench of his breath, and the way it got huskier as she felt inside his pants. Not again, please. You are small, Mausi, and he is big. And he was a Stasi agent, a Lieutenant General, and Lena was only the cleaning girl.

  Every night she thought about asking Jutta to come down when Herr Dreck called for her. Or drawing attention to the photographs of his family. Or doing something later, when he had gone home and she was cleaning his office, like unlocking his cabinet and shredding his important documents. But thinking about that didn’t make her feel powerful. She couldn’t do it without losing her job and getting sent somewhere worse: a textile factory, where the hours were long and the lighting was bad and everyone knew the girls were moral degenerates. Or, much worse even than that—the mental hospital.

  “Fräulein, is that you?”

  This wasn’t about choices. It was the way things were.

  — 6 —

  not this type of solyanka

  The night stretched and stretched until it seemed as if the sun had changed its mind and Lena would have to stay at work for the rest of her life. Even the chirping birds seemed annoyed by how slowly the time was passing. At last the muffled sound of shoes crossing fancy red carpets told her she could go home.

  She’d spent the night deciding what to do about Erich. Even though patience was the hardest thing, she would wait one day, maybe two, and if she hadn’t heard anything—then she would do the terrible thing and ask Auntie. It would mean admitting to the secret photographs, and the sneaking off at night, but Auntie knew important people. She would be able to find things out. She would be angry at first; Lena might miss supper. But then she would help, especially if Lena made a point of listing all the important people Auntie knew, and making her feel as if she was the only one in the world who could do something.

  “I’m the only one around here who—” was one of Auntie’s favorite ways to begin a conversation.

  Lena raced over to House 18 and one, two, three, stepped through the portal into the schrullig world. There were the orange space helmets, man after man sitting in a row, legs crossed, newspaper in hand. Perhaps later they’d go hunting with the Erichs. The Erichs loved to hunt in a forest north of Berlin. Big business got done while they aimed their guns at deer. Jutta said the General Secretary insisted his Tuesday Politburo meetings end on time so he could hunt afterward, and she would know—she’d worked in Volvograd for years.

  Past the hair dryers was the bookstore. Lena walked to the middle of the store and inhaled. In, in, in.

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?” a woman said.

  “No,” Lena said. “I’m just breathing.” When she saw the expression on the woman’s face, she backed out of the store and went to the grocery. There were all those oranges, rows of tiny suns shining their light on Lena. She touched each one until a woman said, “Do you need help picking one out?”

  Again. Everything she did was strange. Lena chose an orange, bought it, and ate it. She thought of bringing one home for Hans. Imagine, an orange in September! Sometimes Lena dreamed of handing them out to Danika and Peter, to Hans and the baby next door. She’d be the hero of the housing development. But Auntie would be furious if she found out. People didn’t know about the secret grocery store. Lena had never even mentioned it to Auntie. She didn’t want to lose her job over an orange.

  She stepped out of the schrullig world, you didn’t see anything, you don’t know anything, you don’t say anything, and poof, it was gone. As she left the compound, she said good night to Ernst, and he tipped his rifle toward her, wrist bones poking out of his uniform cuffs as if his arms had grown overnight.

  She was halfway home when she felt someone behind her, like a shadow that gave off heat. She turned. It took her a second to realize—“Steffi!” But when Lena ran back to her, Steffi didn’t even break her stride. For a second Lena thought she’d made a mistake. Then came the snap snap of Steffi’s gum.

  “It’s me. Lena.” The look on her face—like Lena was pointing a gun at her. “What’s the matter?” Panic swelled inside her.

  Steffi kept walking, turning into one alley, then another. She didn’t say a word until: “Who did you talk to?” The question was so quiet Lena wasn’t sure she’d heard it. “Who did you tell?”

  “What do you mean? Tell what?”

  The brick buildings they passed were covered in graffiti: Our Soviet friends, the sloppy F for Freiheit that could send you directly to the blank space on the map if you were caught painting it. If anyone had been following them on the main street, it seemed they had lost track of them. Lena and Steffi were alone.

  Steffi grabbed her by the shoulders. Her dark eyes were a mess of old mascara and not enough sleep, and something denser that Lena thought might be fear. “What did you do? You bitch, I know this is your fault. You said something to someone. It had to be you.”

  Lena wriggled out of her grasp and backed away. She wasn’t sure if Steffi would try to hurt her. Steffi was about six inches taller than Lena, and quite a bit heavier. And there was something damaged about her this morning, like a gate hanging by one hinge.

  “I don’t understand.” Lena spoke carefully. “Where is Erich? What’s happened to him? When I went to see him—”

  “Who?”

  “What do you mean, ‘who’? Erich. My uncle. Your neighbor.”

  Steffi brought her face level to Lena’s, too close. Lena could smell the spearmint of her gum.

  “You don’t have an uncle,” Steffi said. “Do you understand?”

  What? “What’s the matter with you?”

  From somewhere behind them came the grinding of a tram. Steffi started walking so fast Lena could hardly keep up. A brown mutt with tangled fur barked and lunged at Steffi’s legs, and she kicked it and kept going.

  “Listen to me. There is no Erich anymore. They made me say I don’t know him. I’ve never known him. You don’t know him either. You better not, or they’ll take you in. Don’t go looking for him. Don’t ask anyone about him, not even that bulldog aunt of yours. You don’t have an uncle. You’ve never had one.” She walked faster.

  “Wait. I don’t understand.” Lena
broke into a jog beside her.

  “Don’t follow me. I’m going away. Don’t talk to anyone.” She crossed the street and disappeared around a corner.

  Lena held herself steady against a lamppost. What could she possibly have said to anyone about Uncle Erich? Had he been involved in something subversive? Why did Steffi think she knew anything about it?

  Something hurt inside her all over again, even though it was supposed to have gotten stronger. That was what she’d been told after the explosion, when she didn’t have parents anymore. “It’s like a bone, Lena,” the doctors said. “After a broken bone heals, it is stronger.” Then why did Lena feel so weak?

  How could someone suddenly not exist? It made Lena think of what Danika had done after her One True Love had broken her heart. She’d cut him out of all her photographs using pinking shears that made zigzag patterns, like teeth—as if she’d bitten him out of her life. “He’s dead to me,” she’d proclaimed to Lena one afternoon when they were walking to youth group.

  Lena had never had a One True Love, so she didn’t know what that felt like. But she’d had a John Travolta love, and she had a good imagination. Someone you loved, who didn’t love you back anymore: you would rather they’d been hit by a tram than know that somewhere in the world your One True Love was eating his porridge and not thinking about you.

  You must accept the reality of the loss. That was what the doctors kept saying after the explosion. Work through the pain, Lena. Find a new reality, Lena. Adjust. Move on. Their voices were so smooth, and that repetition of her name—it was comforting somehow. No wonder Steffi had run away. Lena had used entirely the wrong tone with her and had only said her name once.

  When Lena arrived home, Auntie was waiting for her. Her boiled egg sat on the table in its smiling-chicken eggcup. Pretend animals with their plastic smiles and sweet painted eyes always looked slightly insane, like Auntie’s collection of porcelain dogs. You would never want those dogs to come to life.

  “Would you believe Peter’s mother has a recipe for solyanka?” Auntie said. “I’m going to the butcher’s right after work today to place an order, see if they can’t find us something special. With any luck this apartment will smell sweet and sour by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “What?” Lena held a piece of egg in her mouth, forgetting for a moment how to swallow.

  There was a second of stiffness, then back to this make-believe Auntie with gumdrop eyes and hair made of ice cream. “Pardon me, Lena. We say pardon me. After we’ve chewed and swallowed our egg.”

  Chew. Swallow. “Pardon me?”

  “You wanted solyanka for supper, didn’t you?”

  I did. But not this type of solyanka. This solyanka meant something was wrong.

  “Finish your breakfast and go to bed. I’ll have news from the butcher when you wake up.”

  Finish your breakfast. Go to bed. Everything is fine.

  But when Lena went to bed and lifted the Erich pictures to say good night to her uncle, she was reminded all over again that everything was not fine. Behind the Erichs there was no more Erich. She reached under her mattress for one of her uncle’s books; maybe the first few pages of Castles Underground would comfort her. But the books weren’t there. Even when she raised the entire mattress—nothing. No wonder her blankets had been askew yesterday. Under the bed—nothing. In her cupboard, on the shelves next to the boy-meets-tractor books and the copy of The Catcher in the Rye Erich had bought for her birthday—nothing, and nothing.

  “A full bookcase is the best defense,” he always said.

  “Against what?” Lena had asked.

  “Everything.”

  Must not ask Auntie. Lena wasn’t supposed to have copies of Erich’s novels: Auntie thought they were inappropriate reading material, bordering on Western decadence, bad for morale. They would make Lena’s hair fall out and turn her toenails yellow.

  “Auntie?” she called.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m missing some books.”

  Auntie appeared in the doorway. “What books?”

  “Uncle’s books.” Lena sat on the edge of her bed in her gray nightdress, hands clasped in her lap, trying her hardest to look normal.

  Sausage Auntie came into the room, sat next to Lena, and took off her reading glasses. Now you’ve done it. Next would come a talk about the dangers of certain books, and why it was so very important to listen to Auntie at all times. It didn’t seem like there would be an or else, but you never could tell with Auntie. She tossed one in sometimes at the end of a conversation, like a hand grenade.

  “Lena.” Even worse, she was using Lena’s name. “You don’t have those books.”

  Lena sighed. “I know. They’re missing.”

  “There are no books.” Auntie stared at the wall across from the bed.

  “There were.” What was wrong with Auntie? It was like trying to speak to a five-year-old.

  “There weren’t.”

  “Auntie, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but the truth is, Uncle Erich gave me copies of his books and I hid them under my—”

  “There is no such person.” Now it seemed as if Auntie’s neck had stiffened. She faced straight ahead, refusing to turn toward Lena.

  “What are you talking about? My uncle. Erich. Your brother.”

  “I don’t have a brother, dear one.” At last she turned and looked right into Lena’s eyes. Auntie’s eyes were strange, watery and hard at the same time, like frozen puddles of steel. “Do you understand me? It’s important that you understand.”

  Don’t cry, not in front of her. But Lena couldn’t help it. First Steffi, now Auntie. The tears leaked out against her will. “I went to see Erich yesterday, and another man was living in his apartment. He said he’d been living there for five years.”

  She waited for Auntie to react to the unplanned, unapproved visit, but all she said was, “That’s right. Five years.” She put her glasses back on. The important things had been said.

  “But it’s not right. It’s wrong.”

  Auntie stroked Lena’s hair. “You’re simple, Lena. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You don’t understand the big things.”

  Simple, maybe. Not crazy. She wasn’t crazy, was she? “Are you going to put this in my progress report?”

  “Of course not. Go to sleep. Things always feel better after a good night’s sleep.”

  Good night. But the morning sun lit the edges of her bedroom curtains.

  Uncle Erich. But she didn’t have an uncle.

  But she did.

  You didn’t see anything. You don’t know anything. You don’t say anything. You don’t have an uncle. You’ve never had an uncle.

  After Sausage Auntie left the room, Lena lifted the photographs and said good night to her parents. They were still there—even though they weren’t. “You come from humble origins,” Auntie always said with a nod of approval, because Lena’s parents had both worked in a factory.

  She said good night to Erich number one, General Secretary, Great White Hunter, the man you could write to if you had a complaint. As long as it was the right sort of complaint, Erich used to say. See? She could still hear his voice in her head.

  “You mustn’t complain about our Soviet friends, or about the right of the GDR to exist. You mustn’t mention the Wall.” He wagged a finger. “Else they’ll take you away in a bakery van, or a fishmonger’s van.”

  Or a flower-delivery van.

  Lena felt her morning egg come up. She swallowed hard. Say good night to the other Erich. Good night, Comrade General, head of the football team that never loses, diagrammer of the breakfast table, wearer of too much hair tonic—it had made a spot on the wall where he leaned back in his desk chair in a way that would have driven Auntie wild, and Lena still hadn’t found a cleaning product that would remove it.

  And the important Erich?
What about him?

  Lena lifted the pictures of the two Erichs and touched the wall. Good night, Uncle, writer of notebooks, teller of stories. I know which pickles are your favorite. Funny Mausi, there is only one type of pickle. I know what it feels like when you hug me. I know which face will make you laugh, the one where I pull my eyes down to make Sad Clown.

  All she could think of was how cold it must be in the blank space on the map, and how Erich’s cough would get worse, and if he asked for a blanket or a hot cup of tea they wouldn’t give it to him. And the way his clothes smelled, that musky forest scent—how easily the dogs would find him if he ran.

  But that was if he’d been arrested. No one was saying that.

  It wasn’t that he’d been arrested. It wasn’t that his books had been banned.

  It was that he’d never existed in the first place.

  *

  Asylum. The word meant a safe haven. Protection. But shake it and set it down crooked and it became a place for people who weren’t quite right. The ones who didn’t have all the cups in their cupboard.

  Lena’s memory of the hospital was smudged, ghostlike, as if it wasn’t her who’d stayed there for a year but rather a cousin who’d told her about it.

  She hadn’t known about the schrullig world back then, or else she would have pretended with all her heart to be there the entire time she was in that hospital. You could survive anything if you could convince yourself that it was only your body that was suffering, not the rest of you. Not the important part.

  Down the hall from her there’d been a heroin addict. But heroin addiction was a Western illness. You didn’t mention it in the Better Germany. Instead, it was hidden behind the doors of the mental hospital where it was called instability, or an uncertain grip on reality. No one talked about when the heroin addict might get out.

  And her? With her fingernail (she’d had long fingernails back then), Lena had made a mark on the wall for each day that passed: bundles of five, like firewood. They were days that deserved to be burned. But soon she had too many bundles, and the sight of them piled up beside her bed had made her feel so sad she’d stopped keeping track.