The House of One Thousand Eyes

by Michelle Barker

  — 7 —

  maybe just cut out one picture

  Solyanka was arranged for Thursday’s supper. Lena awoke early that afternoon with the sweet-and-sour soup on her mind, which made her think of her parents, which made her think of Uncle Erich. There was no going back to sleep once the voices in her head started chattering, so she decided to visit the public library and pick up one of her uncle’s books. She left Auntie a note. The library was an outing that Auntie always sanctioned, especially if Lena brought home something for her.

  But when she got there and looked, none of Erich’s books were on the shelves. The librarian checked in all the card catalogs, and even made a telephone call—during which she faced Lena at first and then, halfway through, turned away from her and hunched over, the way people did when a conversation was so secret they tried to hide it with their entire body.

  Finally she hung up the phone, turned back around, and straightened her dress, which was made of such stiff fabric Lena wondered how she could sit down. Lena waited for her to say something. The librarian’s mouth moved as if she were chewing imaginary gum, but she didn’t speak.

  “Erich Altmann?” Lena said again. Maybe the librarian needed reminding. Sometimes even Auntie walked into the kitchen and then couldn’t remember why.

  The librarian sat down. “There is no such author.” She straightened the pens on her desk, gathered stray index cards and placed them into piles. Bits and pieces—scissors, small notes, anything to keep her hands busy. When Lena tried to ask another question about where the books might be, she said, “I suggest you choose something else.”

  Fine. It sometimes happened that the library didn’t have things. Books got lost. The good ones got stolen, because once you had your hands on a good book it was hard to give it back. “Someone stole your books from the library, Uncle,” Lena whispered. He would love to hear that. He’d told her once it was the highest compliment for an author, but perhaps it was considered a terrible failure on the part of the librarian—she couldn’t control her books and thank goodness she wasn’t a zookeeper. Therefore, best for the librarian not to admit it. Best to say the books had never been there in the first place.

  Lena selected a collective-farm saga for herself and a book for Auntie on the social realism movement. By the time she walked into the apartment, it smelled sweet—and sour. The solyanka bubbled on the stove, and Auntie was humming, and there was a fresh loaf of bread on the table, and two large bowls, and polka music on the radio.

  “Don’t rush off to the courtyard,” she said. “I told Hans you were resting this afternoon.”

  Lena stared at Auntie, and said nothing. At suppertime she dipped pieces of bread crust into the hot solyanka. It wasn’t as good as Mama’s—she wouldn’t let it be—but almost.

  Lena went to work, endured Herr Dreck’s hairy hands, and Jutta’s stories about Volvograd and not being German, did I ever tell you that? She dusted, and swept, and polished up the eyes of House 1 until finally it was time to step through the portal at House 18.

  Yes, you are granted entry, Comrade Lena Altmann. One. Two. Three.

  This time Lena didn’t stand in the middle of the bookstore and breathe. She went directly to the shelves. This bookstore had the best selection of books in the city, but there was not a single book in there by Erich Altmann. She approached the woman at the counter, who was watching her as if she were one of those insects that ate paper. A silverfish. They’d been in House 1 once. Lena and Jutta had used a special powder to get rid of them.

  “I’m surprised you don’t have Castles Underground,” Lena said. “It’s very good.”

  The bookstore clerk had never heard of it.

  “But I’ve been in here before,” Lena said. “I’ve seen the book. Right there.” She pointed to the space next to Hannah Arendt, which was now taken up by a series of books by Stefan Andres. “Erich Altmann, my uncle. Surely you’ve heard of him,” she said, breaking both the Don’t ask anyone about him rule and the You don’t have an uncle rule. They weren’t real rules, only bad advice. Usually a person could disregard bad advice without getting into trouble.

  The clerk handed her the first volume of Trotsky’s The History of the Russian Revolution.

  Lena didn’t take it. “I already read that in school.” When there was school.

  “You might want to read it again.” The clerk placed the book on the counter with a curt thump.

  “I don’t need to.” The proletariat and the peasantry. The Bolsheviks and Lenin. The February Insurrection and the April Days. Just thinking about them made her sleepy.

  *

  “What did you mean about not really knowing anyone?” Lena asked Jutta that Friday night when she arrived in the ashtray room.

  Jutta took a cigarette out of the package and tapped its end on the table several times. She always did this. Lena had no idea why.

  “I never said that.” She lit her cigarette and sent a long gray stream of smoke into the air.

  “Yes, you did, when you were talking about being Polish. I think you meant that people keep secrets. Didn’t you?”

  “Not me,” Jutta said. “I tell you everything.”

  “You couldn’t. I don’t tell you everything.”

  There were things Lena hadn’t told anyone except Erich. Her plans for her life. How much she missed her parents. How she wished their deaths hadn’t been an accident so she could blame someone, blame them hard, with every part of her body: her ragged fingernails, her spit, her spleen.

  “I’ve always wanted One True Love,” Lena said quietly. “And I have a voice in my head called Mausi, which is sort of me, but sort of not—both sides of me at once, so that I can have a real conversation with myself. Arguments, even. And I never wanted to be a janitor. I hope that doesn’t insult you. Auntie says it’s a very good job. What I really wanted—”

  Jutta stamped out her half-smoked cigarette and put it back into the package. Even tucked away, it would make everything stink. She stood up abruptly, catching Lena off guard. Jutta was never the first to leave the table. She rushed to the cupboard, gathered her cleaning things, and said, “Put on your coveralls, child. We’re going to be late.”

  Lena glanced at her watch. Maybe it had stopped, because it was telling her they were early. Nevertheless, she got ready and they went outside, Jutta walking close to her. For someone who’d been in such a hurry to get ready, she had now decided to dawdle.

  “Don’t tell me your secrets,” she said. “That’s not a good idea.”

  “But then you can know me.” There was a half-moon in the sky, which always made Lena think of a winking man—joke’s on you.

  “I don’t want to know you. If I know you, that means they can ask me more questions about you. I don’t want to have anything to tell them.”

  “More questions?” Lena stared at her with wide eyes.

  “You misheard. I didn’t say more.”

  She didn’t say more.

  They reached House 1 and split up at the elevators. Jutta rode. Lena walked. She had said more. More questions.

  No, she didn’t. Why would anyone want to know about Lena? She was no one. She cleaned the eyes of House 1 so they could watch other people, not her.

  The man in the Lada, reading the newspaper. When she’d come out of Erich’s apartment that day. The apartment that now had a cat in it, and Friedrich So-and-So on the mailbox, and the real Friedrich So-and-So in his ugly stained undershirt. That man in the car had looked right at her.

  She didn’t say more.

  Up went the Wall in Lena’s head. It was tall, four meters of concrete like the real Wall, and topped by a sewer pipe so that it was impossible to gain any purchase on it if a person ever thought of climbing to the other side. And that was the far Wall, not the one on this side, the Hinterlandmauer, which was small and ordinary—like you—and neither Wall took
any account of what was in the middle.

  The middle part was the real thing. It was the part you couldn’t see until you got there. Everything important happened in the middle. The signaling fence that set off a silent alarm. The watchtowers. The guns. The dogs. The bed of nails hidden in sand to pierce your feet. Barbed wire. Trip wire. The lights—as bright as daylight. The sirens.

  The small, ordinary Wall was only a trick. It made you think you could get away with things. And then, when you had climbed it and gotten yourself stuck in the middle part, and realized you couldn’t get away with anything, it was too late. Border guards had orders to shoot on sight.

  She didn’t say more. And if you say she did, you are climbing the small, ordinary Wall, and you will get stuck in the middle, and no one gets away. Not from there.

  “Fräulein? Is that you?”

  *

  The Wall: it was all in how you thought of it. It hadn’t been built to stop citizens from leaving the Better Germany; it was there to keep the capitalists and class enemies from getting in. It was a form of protection. It wasn’t even called a Wall, not in front of the authorities. It was the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart.

  Life on this side of the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart was easy. Repeat after me, Mausi. I wonder what it would be like to have an uncle. What do you mean by hidden notebooks? I’ve never been to Prenzlauer Berg. Friedrich So-and-So? Never heard of him.

  Lena felt as if she were hanging from a branch by her fingers. One breeze, one crooked thought, one shard of memory—and she would fall.

  But you don’t have crooked thoughts. That was why her hair was so straight.

  She worked. She said good night to Ernst with the long arms and went home. She ate her egg, put on the dishwater nightdress, and repeated all the straightened-out thoughts she now had about not having an uncle, not having had his books, not having had the pictures behind pictures. It was like being a member of a new club. When she’d turned seven and joined the Young Pioneers, she’d had to practice saying the things the Pioneers believed in until she could reach for them without thinking, like bedroom furniture in the dark.

  She almost went to sleep. But then she began to think about pockets.

  Pockets were good places to keep secrets, as long as the pockets stayed out of the laundry. She’d put something into her sweater pocket not long ago—folded, forgotten, a picture from that Western magazine Der Spiegel. The forbidden one that had been in the apartment that now belonged to Friedrich So-and-So, where Lena had never been because it was in Prenzlauer Berg and you’ve never been to Prenzlauer Berg, though one day you’d like to go.

  She hoisted one leg over the small Wall. It was easy to climb, if you wanted to.

  “That’s Marilyn Monroe,” he’d said. “An American actress.”

  He? He who?

  She had opened the magazine. No, you didn’t. Yes, she did. There went the other leg over the Wall. Be careful. There will be capitalists, and men with layabout hair.

  “She’s very glamorous.” That blond curly hair, those large breasts and beautiful dresses, the red lipstick Lena was not allowed to wear.

  “She’s also dead,” Erich had said. Not Erich. “Suicide—a drug overdose.” Don’t say suicide. Suicide was something that only happened in the West.

  Lena took her sweater from the cupboard. The people who had erased her uncle had made everything disappear. Now you’ve done it. You said erased. You said uncle. Every trace of him was gone: his books in the libraries and bookstores, the photographs she’d hidden, every little thing he might have given her.

  She fished inside the pocket, felt the smooth folded page. If you take that picture out . . . She remembered the thought she’d had as if it were a chestnut in its prickly burr. She held it so tight it hurt. How could someone who looked like Marilyn Monroe, someone who was famous and lived in America, decide to kill herself? Western decadence. The class enemy. Too much of too much, like being buried in candy, which would be fun, but only for the first few bites—and then buried was buried, you still needed to breathe.

  But the dresses, that lipstick. Seeing Marilyn Monroe had produced a tug-of-war inside Lena. Too much of too much. Not enough of anything.

  Lena’s chest felt knotted as she held the smooth magazine page. She didn’t have to unfold it. She could throw it in the garbage without looking at it. She could take it outside and set fire to it. She could leave it alone.

  She pulled it out, unfolded it.

  “Maybe just cut out one picture.”

  He’d given her scissors. They hadn’t worked. Scheiss Osten. Lena had folded the edges of the picture and licked them so they would rip cleanly. Then Steffi had shown up, and Lena had torn the picture by accident. There was sticky tape on it now.

  “You mustn’t show that to your aunt,” he’d said.

  In the commotion of Erich’s disappearance, Lena had forgotten about it. But now Marilyn Monroe stared up at her with the kind of smile you practiced in front of a mirror, the kind Lena had practiced when there’d been school, when a smile had mattered. Her fingers tightened around the picture until she forced herself to relax them or she would ruin it.

  “What’s that?” The bedroom door had opened without warning. There stood Sausage Auntie, encased in the doorway. “I thought you were in bed. I was coming to say good night.”

  “It’s nothing.” Put it away. But where? Just down. Lay it down as if you don’t care about it. On the night table? Just down. “It’s a picture from a magazine.” But the red lipstick, the blond hair, the white dress—Marilyn Monroe knew how to glow in the dark.

  “Even from here I can see it’s unsuitable. Where on earth did you get it?”

  If she finds out it came from me, she won’t let you—“Erich gave it to me.”

  Three steps, big ones. Auntie had a good stride when she wanted to get somewhere. She ripped the picture out of Lena’s hands, ripped it until it was in shreds.

  “No one gave you anything.” She cupped the shreds in her hands as if they were snow that was about to melt, then stomped out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her with her foot.

  But Lena wasn’t crazy. Erich had given it to her, from a magazine he wasn’t supposed to have had. Erich. Her uncle. You do have one.

  “Then why do you keep saying I don’t, Mausi?” she whispered. If Auntie heard her talking to herself, she would put it in her progress report under the heading of No Progress Whatsoever, and there would be appointments, and we know where appointments lead.

  She put her sweater back into the cupboard and climbed under the covers. She was still settling into bed when Auntie burst back into the room wearing her time-to-have-a-chat face. “You understand that they’ve been here.”

  Lena sat up. They. She understood. They meant notepads and questions and Do you mind if we look around? Everyone minded, but no one ever said so. Lena had had enough of that. “How many of them were here? What else did they take? Did one of them have a newspaper?” And that man with the bushy beard she’d seen at Erich’s window, had he been here too? How could Auntie have stood aside while strangers poked around in their private things?

  Are you really asking that? Standing aside was what you did. You stayed out of the way, made yourself small, hoped they would forget about you altogether.

  Auntie stood in the middle of the room. “Whatever is going on, it’s a matter for State Security, not for a seventeen-year-old girl. You go to work, and to youth group meetings. You collect recyclables and have the right opinions. You do not ask questions; otherwise you’ll get in trouble and—sit up straight so I know you’re paying attention!”

  Lena sat straighter. Auntie seemed ready to deliver the lesson of the day in her stiff teacher dress.

  “Otherwise you’ll get in trouble and so will I, do you see? There will be repercussions for me too. My Party membership. My friends.”
Look up, look left. “They’re talking about making you a member, you know, when you turn eighteen. We must start thinking about your application, and what you might do during the probation period to prove yourself. We must start thinking about your future.”

  Her future: Was that what it would be like?

  “When I come home this afternoon, I hope to find a new girl in this bedroom.”

  “You will, Auntie. I promise.”

  Auntie left the room and Lena lay down again. A new girl? Well, then she would have to pretend, especially if she wanted to track down her uncle.

  She was supposed to be going to sleep, but for the first time since her parents had died, she felt awake. Or something inside her did. It was like a spark, a sudden certainty that sleepwalking through life was not the same as living.

  She was awake, and she was determined to stay awake.

  — 8 —

  write to erich

  It wasn’t until the following Wednesday that Lena could finally get away for the errand that her newly awakened self had determined was necessary. She used the air raid siren as her alarm. The siren went off every Wednesday at one p.m., a thirty-second test that was impossible to sleep through. Usually it was an annoyance because Lena would struggle to fall back asleep afterward, but today it suited her purpose.

  As she made her way to the state registry office in the town hall, she passed a whole row of buildings that had been painted to Volvo level. The registry office smelled yellow and dusty. The women who worked there were also yellow and dusty, and grim-faced to the people waiting in line—“Next?” “Yes?”—as if they were playing the game Lena and Erich used to play when they tried to use the fewest words possible to get what they wanted. Erich had done it with a policeman once and had nearly gotten arrested.

  “I’d like to see Erich Altmann’s birth record,” Lena announced at the counter. “Date of birth: October 14, 1941.” You haven’t erased his birthdate too, have you? But she wouldn’t say that, or the one thousand eyes would start watching her more closely. Maybe they already were.