Jutta said more questions. She didn’t. She did.
The woman who was supposed to be helping Lena took down a big brown book, licked the tip of one finger, and flipped through its pages. A long look, and then, “I’m sorry.” She put the book back on its shelf and sat at her desk. “We don’t have a record of anyone by that name. Are you certain of the spelling?”
“Yes. Please have another look. He was born here, in Berlin.”
She stood up as if she’d become the oldest woman in the world: For God’s sake, you’re making me check again? As she returned to the shelf, she made a joke to one of her friends, something they must have talked about at lunchtime. The two women laughed. Lena tried to smile, even though she had no idea what they were talking about, and the joke made her feel as if the woman wasn’t looking very hard for Erich’s birth record.
She remembered the state registry joke Erich used to tell her: “A man enters the registry office and says, ‘I’d like to change my name. My whole life I’ve endured the name Erich Shitbucket and I can’t stand it any longer.’ The clerk says, ‘I understand. Who could live with the name Erich?’”
Lena watched the woman’s fingers flip through the brown book again, wondering what would happen if she told the Shitbucket joke.
“There’s nothing.” The woman shut the heavy book with a thud. “Like I said.”
Nothing? What did that mean? Had they crossed off his name? Taped over it with someone else’s? “Maybe you haven’t checked carefully enough,” Lena said. Being awake was making her too bold. You don’t speak like that to women in dusty registry offices, or they will un-help you.
And here went the woman, un-helping Lena with a glare and calling for the next one in line. Normally Lena would have accepted the situation and gone home, but today she stood her ground. “It’s important.” She pleaded with her eyes. “Maybe I could look.” But the woman was already may-I-helping the man behind Lena, who had placed his elbows on the counter to claim all the available space, edging Lena into a no-man’s-land where there were no line-ups or women behind counters, just worn and warped flooring.
Behind her, a clock ticked. The warm office made her feel sweaty and panicky. She had to get home before Auntie arrived back from work. But she couldn’t give up.
“Please,” she called to the woman, who was now in a deep conversation with the man with the great wingspan. “I know my uncle was born.”
The man turned to her. “She said the records aren’t here. Maybe he was born somewhere else and someone didn’t tell you the truth, huh?”
The woman behind the counter smiled at him. They were forming a team, becoming friends. Lena stuck her hands into the pocket that now didn’t contain Marilyn Monroe and scuffed her way out of the office. She was getting that closed-into-an-elevator sensation where her head got too noisy and her skin went clammy. In the hallway she plunked herself onto a wooden chair and bent toward the floor to keep from fainting.
Must get home before Auntie. Auntie would be upset by Lena’s unexplained (and unsanctioned) absence. She would ask questions. But Auntie was part of the problem. Whatever was going on, she was in on it. Erich was her brother. How could she say he didn’t exist? Who had told her to say that?
You are small, Mausi, and they are all big. As she walked to the U-Bahn station she’d never felt smaller in her life.
When she entered the apartment, Auntie’s coat already hung on its hook, smelling of chalk and classrooms and all the right answers. Her sensible black teacher’s shoes were lined up on the mat, laces tucked in. Lena glanced at her watch. Auntie must have come home from work early. Probably it was another headache, which was about to become Lena’s fault.
Sure enough, here came Auntie out of the kitchen. She stared at Lena for several long seconds, as if to emphasize that Lena standing in the hallway was very wrong, very wrong indeed.
“I leave you in bed. I come home and the bed’s empty. Where have you been? You’re going to be late for youth group.”
Lena tried to come up with something that would be good for Auntie’s morale. “I wanted to go swimming.”
She slipped off her shoes. Her stomach was protesting the earlier-than-usual wake-up that afternoon. When she tried to edge past Auntie into the kitchen, Auntie reached for her and brought a handful of hair to her nose. “I don’t smell chlorine.”
“The pool was still closed for repairs.” Lena entered the kitchen, pulled a piece of crispbread out of the box, and took a bite.
“Well. Danika and Peter will be waiting for you.”
“I’ll stay home and help you with your headache. I don’t feel like going to youth group.” Yes, you do. You’re a new girl, remember? There will be singing, and they’re making plans for a winter excursion. You’re on your way to a Party membership. That was what Auntie promised the men who came to hire you for your cleaning job.
“You swore an oath,” Auntie said. “You have to go. I’ll be fine here on my own.”
Lena stood in the center of the kitchen, dropping crumbs onto the floor. Any minute now Auntie would take up the broom with a loud huff and sweep too hard, making the crumbs fly all over the place, because that sort of sweeping was not designed to pick anything up. Lena could smell the kitchen scraps and remembered it had been her job to empty them. Normally she would have felt bad. She would not have dropped the crumbs, not on purpose. But that spark inside her, foreign and exciting, made her brave. She remembered the man in the registry office who had spread his elbows like wings, and she put her hands on her hips to see what it felt like. Dangerous, that’s what. And exhilarating. Like she could fly.
“Where is he?” Lena said. “I know you know where he is. Give me an address at least, so I can write to him.”
Auntie’s eyebrows went wavy. “Who?”
“Erich.”
“That’s General Secretary Honecker to you. Do you have a complaint?”
Wait, what? A complaint?
“If you have a complaint, you can write to our General Secretary. He reads all the letters. I know that for a fact.”
Lena had believed that when she was younger. She’d also believed Father Christmas read all his mail.
“Is it about the swimming pool?” Auntie continued. “I’ve half a mind to write to him myself about all the youth who are missing out on important physical activity because the repairs are never completed.”
“Auntie, I want to write to Uncle Erich.”
Sausage Auntie’s eyes went buggy, as if her panty hose had shrunk a full size. She switched on the radio and turned it up loud, then grabbed Lena by both shoulders. “You. Don’t. Have. An. Uncle.” Shake, shake, shake, to the beat of the Puhdys. “Do you understand?”
There was a loud knock at the door. Both Lena and Auntie froze.
“Lena, are you coming?” It was Peter.
Auntie brought her face so close to Lena’s she could see a wiry hair growing out of the mole above her lip. “Stop this foolishness, for your own good. There are things you don’t understand, and it will only lead to trouble.”
Lena backed away from her and called, “I’ll be right there. I just have to change.” She went into her bedroom, found the blue shirt with the rising-sun crest on the left sleeve, and pulled it on over her T-shirt.
Stop . . . for your own good. Anytime Auntie said something was for Lena’s own good, it was never true. It was for Auntie’s good.
I’ll write to Erich, then. I do have a complaint. Where’s my uncle? What did you do with him?
Lena pulled the door open with more force than she’d intended, startling Peter. Danika stood next to him, studying her long nails, which, today, were painted brown. The sight of her friends calmed Lena down. She shut the door behind her, relieved that there was solid wood between her and Auntie.
“Mein Gott, take that damned thing off.” Danika nodded at Lena’s
shirt.
Auntie wouldn’t hear of Lena walking to youth group without her blue Freie Deutsche Jugend shirt on, but Danika refused to be seen in public in hers, and only put it on right before they entered the meeting. Lena pulled the shirt off and stuffed it into her bag.
Peter wasn’t wearing his Free German Youth shirt either. He had something new on. It was synthetic, with a swirling purple pattern, buttoned right to his neck.
“That’s swanky,” Lena said.
“It’s only okay,” Danika said. “Feel it, it’s not Western.”
“You’re not starting that again, are you?” Peter said. Danika had a thing about Western clothes. Nothing Peter or Lena wore was ever good enough because it hadn’t come from Exquisit—even though Danika could barely afford to shop there herself. The only other way to get Western clothes was to have a relative in the West send you a parcel, but that could cause problems. Auntie’s late husband, Helmut, had a brother in the West, but Auntie had no communication with him. Otherwise she wouldn’t get her bonus at work, and they would kick her out of the Party.
“What does your father think of that shirt?” Lena suspected Military Papa and swirling purple patterns wouldn’t be sitting at the same supper table.
“He hasn’t seen it.” Peter hunched his shoulders. “He’ll say it’s homosexual. He’ll make me take it off and then I’ll have to go to extra meetings of the GST.”
The GST was the Society for Sport and Technology, though which sports and what technology Lena had never been able to figure out. At the GST, boys learned to strip machine guns, throw hand grenades, and shoot at targets.
“I’ll wear my youth group shirt home,” Peter said. “He’ll never know.”
Peter had thought ahead. This was subversion. Did it mean Lena could trust him, or was it a trick? She wanted so badly to tell someone about what had happened to her uncle. About the strange meeting with Steffi, and the missing books from libraries and bookstores, and the dusty yellow woman who couldn’t find his birth record. But if Peter felt compelled to tell his father—no, you don’t mess with a man like that.
They arrived at the center where the youth group meetings were held and went inside for roll call. “The Party, the Party is always right,” they sang. Lena gave a report on their project of beautifying the courtyard: the trenches they had dug, Auntie’s enthusiasm, and how good the whole thing was for the morale of the housing development. Jobs were assigned for planning the winter excursion. Peter talked about the bottles and cans he’d collected. Danika studied her nails.
The center also had a newsstand and a post office. They waited while Danika ran errands for her mother, and then on their way home stopped behind some trees so Peter could take off the purple shirt. Danika waggled her eyebrows at Lena while Peter was undressing. He likes you, she mouthed.
“Shut up,” Lena said. “He does not.”
Peter emerged from the bushes wearing his youth group shirt.
“I don’t understand why you bothered with the purple one,” Danika said, “if you can’t wear it all the time.”
“I wanted to see what it felt like,” he said.
Danika rolled her eyes, but Lena understood. It was like dropping crumbs of crispbread onto Auntie’s clean kitchen floor. Dropping them and not sweeping them up, and feeling that rise in the stomach of I’m doing it, so there. Even if you couldn’t do it for long, still, you’d done it, and that was something.
*
Dear Herr Honecker, Mr. General Secretary,
I’m looking for my uncle, Erich Altmann. I know that’s his name because he’s my uncle.
Wait. Do you know? What if Oma and Opa named him something different when he was born? Erich might not be his name at all, or it might be his middle name. What if he was adopted? Remember what Jutta said about not knowing where you come from.
It might not have been his name at birth, Mr. General Secretary, but you and I both know he is the author of many good books, including Castles Underground, if you happen to have read it. Although no one can read it anymore because it has vanished from every bookstore and library.
Perhaps it’s not the best idea to mention the books. Remember the men at Erich’s apartment? One carried the typewriter like it was an unexploded bomb. They took all the notebooks. They sat in front of his building reading the newspaper for hours and watching the door. Maybe writing is what got him into trouble in the first place. Maybe writing will get you into trouble too.
Dear Herr Honecker, Mr. General Secretary,
Everyone keeps telling me I don’t have an uncle, but I do. His name might be Erich Altmann. He might have been born in Berlin. We won’t talk about his writing. I think you know where he is.
Oh, Mausi, no. That’s too accusatory. You cannot get angry at the General Secretary. He’s a hunter. You will become prey.
Dear Herr Honecker, Mr. General Secretary,
I hear you are a very good hunter. Also, I like your glasses. The swimming pool in my neighborhood is always closed for repairs. Do you think you could look into that? I cannot be an effective citizen in my community if I don’t get enough physical activity.
From,
Lena Altmann
(Niece of Erich Altmann, who has disappeared off the face of the earth and please can you tell me where he is.)
She ripped up the first letters and threw them into the wastepaper box. The last one she folded and left in her night table drawer. She would have to find an envelope; with any luck there would be some for sale in the stationery shop. Then she would send it, and see if Mr. General Secretary really read all his mail.
— 9 —
the best secret ever
Lena entered the ashtray room and slumped into the brown wooden chair next to Jutta. “What did they want to know about me?” Because this was the sort of question you asked when you were awake.
Jutta glanced up from Sibylle, the same issue as before, the women in winter coats looking impossibly chic and whispering secrets to each other that must have been very amusing, judging by their euphoric expressions. Jutta’s eyes were hooded and tired. “Good evening to you too. What, did you hit your head and wake up as a savage?”
“I’m sorry. Good evening, Jutta. How are you this evening?”
Jutta blew out a stream of smoke. “Nothing changes. Some might call that boring, but I call it dependable.”
Dependable misery? Don’t open that jar of pickles. “Jutta?”
Jutta covered the winter women with her large red hands. “Here we go. What is it this time, child? And don’t let’s go where I think you’re going.”
Lena leaned toward her so she could speak softly—which was silly. The ashtray room was the size of a cupboard, and there was no one in it except the two of them. “What did they ask you? Please tell me. It’s important.”
Jutta glanced at her watch. “Time to get started.” She shoved her chair back from the table so hard it made a sharp scraping sound.
Lena didn’t move. “We still have fifteen minutes.”
But Jutta was already on her feet, bending toward Lena. “I told them you had a plank in front of your head,” she said. “That you didn’t understand anything and wouldn’t go around asking questions that shouldn’t be asked.”
“But my uncle—”
“You don’t have an uncle, you hear me?”
Wait. Every Monday night in the history of Monday nights, Jutta had asked about Lena’s weekend. Specifically, she’d asked about Lena’s visits with her uncle. Two Mondays ago, she had asked. But this past Monday, she hadn’t. Lena hadn’t thought anything of it—but now, she wondered: maybe Jutta hadn’t asked because she’d already known.
How could Lena have an uncle and not have an uncle? Things can’t be both true and not true. But they could. She remembered the time she’d asked Erich about Castles Underground. “Is it a true story?
”
“It’s a novel.” They were walking on the uneven sidewalk in his neighborhood. You had to keep your eyes down or you risked tripping. Erich was smoking, and his boots made a clip-clop sound on the concrete that Lena found comforting. “A novel means fiction,” he said. “A made-up story.”
“But you worked in the mines.” The way he’d written about the castle being underground, the constant sound of dripping water, the walls sparkling with hidden treasure—to her it had sounded just like a mine. She glanced at his left hand, the one missing its pinkie finger.
Erich had nodded. “Writers draw on the truth they know to build an imaginary world that they don’t know.”
“So all stories are true, then,” Lena said.
His smile was like a prize. “Yes, I suppose they are. Also, they’re all lies.” He’d made a voice like a crazy man and waved his arms in the air. “All lies, damnable lies!” An older couple walking toward them had veered out of Erich’s way, as if afraid of the attention he was calling to himself.
All true. All lies. Somewhere in the middle, Lena would have to find a solid place to stand. Black is white, she told herself, or it could be if you squinted hard enough. She pulled on her coveralls and gathered bucket, broom, mop, and Purimix. Jutta wouldn’t tell her anything, she could see by her face. Someone who had made up their mind to keep stumm had an unmistakable expression: closed for business, do not call again. Jutta had become so concentrated on getting ready that she didn’t even have a moment to look at Lena. And yet there was something in her not-looking that made Lena think she felt bad.
They crossed the compound and entered the foyer of House 1, with its three red flags. They passed the sculptures of serious men with serious beards, and Lena went up the stairs, once, twice.
When Herr Dreck called her into his office and told her to put down the Purimix, she told herself silently, There is no prostitution in the Better Germany, because Sausage Auntie had told her that many times. Prostitution was not a word. Despite the textile factory girls with their red lipstick and immoral ideas. Despite the chocolate wrapped in gold foil that Lena ate afterward. Despite the dismissive wave of Herr Dreck’s hand, because now he could go home to his wife and daughters, and eat his supper with a shiny knife and fork, and smoke his expensive cigar with a little (or big) glass of schnapps, and rest his hands on his Party-size stomach while Lena swept the floors and didn’t pee in the cupboard where he kept a pair of shiny shoes.
The House of One Thousand Eyes Page 9