The House of One Thousand Eyes

by Michelle Barker

  “Go ahead,” Lena said. “She won’t be surprised. She is the Guardian of a Difficult Child.” (Standing ovation, Mausi.) Then she remembered that Military Papa could send her home before she had the chance to transmit her message to Günter Schulmann, so she said “Sorry” and “Where’s Peter?” and went back and lined up her shoes.

  Peter was in his sanctuary, headphones on, hunched over buttons. He hadn’t heard anything. Lena touched his shoulder and he turned around, startled.

  “Who are you listening to?” she asked.

  He took off the headphones and hung them around his neck. When he unplugged them, the room filled with foreign words. “Peru, I think. Or Argentina. It’s Spanish, anyway.”

  He’d already set up a chair for her, as close to his as possible. Lena sat down, moving it slightly away. Without saying a word, she passed him an orange and his eyes widened. He slipped it into one of his desk drawers.

  “What would you like to listen to?” he said.

  “Can you get a specific frequency?” Lena asked in her most innocent voice.

  “Sure.” He moved the dial and static crackled through the room. Frau Military Papa bustled in and said, “Peter, Peter,” in a stage whisper, both thumbs vehemently down.

  He adjusted the volume. “What should we try?”

  “How about—oh, I don’t know—14.285?” Lena said, as if she’d pulled the number out of nowhere.

  “Wait, what?” Peter stared at her. “What’s going on?”

  Lena wished he would adjust the dial, but he sat motionless.

  “I can’t—” she began. “You’d be in trouble just for knowing.”

  “I won’t help you unless I know what you’re doing. You have to trust me.” His face was solemn.

  If he tells his father. But Peter was leaving soon—and Lena had the feeling he wouldn’t tell. She drew a deep breath and said, “I need to make contact with someone in West Berlin. It’s about my Uncle Erich.” She told him Erich was dead, that he’d paid the ultimate price for information that now might never be known. What information? No, Peter didn’t need to hear about that. “I have to meet with this man, and your radio is the only way I can get hold of him.”

  Peter gazed into the corner of his room. Whatever was hovering there must have given him a sign, because he adjusted the dial. They listened.

  “It doesn’t sound like anyone’s there,” Lena said.

  “You can’t tell. Someone could be monitoring.”

  “Can I say something?” Lena asked. “We have a code.”

  Peter’s disapproving expression made Lena think of his mother’s do-you-actually-want-tea face. “You don’t have your license. And Father—”

  Father: one word that carried the weight of a tank.

  “It’s a Party slogan,” she said. “Even if he overheard, how could he object to that?”

  “All right. Quietly,” Peter said. “Or you’ll get me in trouble.” But he didn’t seem that worried that he might get into trouble. He sat taller now, as if he had a mission.

  Lena picked up the microphone. “How do I start?”

  “Use my call,” Peter said. “It’s Y38XG.”

  “I’m just supposed to say that?”

  “Not exactly.” Peter took the mic from her and spoke quietly. “CQ, CQ, CQ, this is Yankee-three-eight-X-Ray-Golf, Yankee-three-eight-X-Ray-Golf, Yankee-three-eight-X-Ray-Golf, standing by.”

  For a long time there was only static. Lena could hardly control her impatience. “Try again.”

  Peter repeated the whole thing. More static, and then, “Yankee-three-eight-X-Ray-Golf, this is Delta-Mike-three-Lima-Tango-Foxtrot, Delta-Mike-three-Lima-Tango-Foxtrot, do you read me? Over.”

  A wide smile broke out on Peter’s face. “Loud and clear, old man. Over.”

  “He’s not actually an old man,” Lena said.

  “All men are called old on the radio. Is he the one you want to speak to?”

  Lena nodded, and Peter handed her the mic. There was a look of admiration on his face, and for once Lena didn’t feel small. Even though the game was over, and she’d lost, in that moment she felt as if she were doing something important. She held the microphone, looked at Peter, and said, “Work together, plan together, govern together.” As soon as she put the mic down, he adjusted the dial to another frequency.

  “I did it,” she whispered. “Was that all right?”

  “It was brilliant.”

  She glanced back at the partially open bedroom door, waiting for the silhouette of Military Papa to appear. It didn’t.

  “Thank you. I hope you don’t get into trouble with your father.”

  He stared straight ahead at the notes he’d tacked onto the radio. “So what if I do? I don’t care anymore. I’ll be gone in a week.”

  Me too. Sooner than a week. Monday.

  In one corner of the room Peter had piled books, a hairbrush, a small stack of folded clothes. Lena should probably start a pile of her own. Bland things—slippers, porridge, scratchy gray nightgowns.

  “I don’t want to go,” he said.

  Neither do I. “It’s only for a year and a half.” Though it would be longer if Military Papa insisted that Peter extend his service—which he would. It’s not the rest of your life.

  The rest of her life meant arranging colored noodles alongside that boy with the unfocused eyes, and enduring the girl who screamed if you touched her blanket or mentioned the color orange. The nurses would rush in with the strong man whose job it was to pin the girl’s arms to her sides and take her to the quiet room so she could have her outburst in private. Of all the colors for her to be afraid of, it had to be orange. Half the decor in the Better Germany was orange.

  It had been a long time since Lena had thought about the people she’d left behind in the hospital. She hadn’t planned to see them again. They were probably still there, their lives stuck on the same page. That was what it meant to be crazy. You got stuck—on orange, or wasps—and then the people around you started speaking as if every word was wearing socks.

  “You can write to me,” Lena said. How many lies had been told to her to make her feel better? Your parents died in an accident. We can get your uncle out. It’s all going to be fine.

  “Can I?” The way Peter’s brown eyes brightened in his narrow face, as if writing to Lena was the one thing that would make military service endurable, Lena knew the lie was necessary. Sometimes honesty was too cruel.

  There was a commotion in the other room; Military Papa was going out. That meant all life stopped so that he could get ready. When the front door finally shut, Peter turned up the volume on the radio and he and Lena listened to people talking in South Africa, and Tokyo. Soon Frau Military Papa stood in the doorway, which meant Lena had stayed long enough.

  “Thank you,” she said to Peter. Should she hug him? You might never see him again. But it was too soon to believe that, and she didn’t want to alarm him. She left his bedroom, passing the kitchen table, where Military Papa’s receipts were still sitting in perfect rows. When no one was watching, Lena brushed a hand across the table and messed them up. Probably Frau Military Papa would notice before he got home, and would straighten them herself, which was less satisfying than imagining him coming home to the mess. But still—she had done it.

  *

  There was a note in Lena’s mailbox the next morning. She was to meet Günter Schulmann in the pub in Prenzlauer Berg at two o’clock. Auntie and a friend were going out for a walk that afternoon after their Sunday roast. Lena laced up her Zehas, because you never know when you might have to be fast, and wondered if this would be her last day of freedom.

  Günter Schulmann’s face was so earnest. He should have been a scholar, or a scientist working to discover the cure for a dangerous disease. There was something foreign about him that Lena couldn’t put her finger on.
Maybe it was the cut of his clothes, or the way he smelled like chocolate—Milka chocolate, not the lentil-colored Fetzer bars she knew. When he spotted Lena walking toward him, he stood up and held the table with both hands. Lena wished she had something to offer that was worthy of his excitement. If only she hadn’t been greedy for that last bit of evidence. If she hadn’t taken the camera with her that last evening, she’d still have it. Proof: validation of Erich’s life, and an explanation for his death. Instead she had nothing.

  It must have been all over her face, because Herr Schulmann’s hopeful expression popped like a balloon and he sat back down. “What happened? You didn’t find anything?”

  Lena sat down across from him. There was a plate of meat and cheese on the table, and a small glass of beer that she didn’t want. “No: I did. I found everything. That ammunitions factory—they were planning a takeover of West Berlin. Day X: it was all organized—a three-day plan. They blew up the factory on purpose because someone was going to talk. No one was supposed to have—” She couldn’t say it. “That part actually was an accident.”

  “And Erich?” He was still perched forward, as if surely Lena had some good news.

  “He’s dead.” She’d wanted to be matter-of-fact about it, but the word caught in her throat like a bone. She took a gulp of beer after all, and another.

  Herr Schulmann put a hand on her arm. “Are you sure?”

  “I saw the preliminary death report.”

  “Then you’re not sure. It might have been a sham. It might have been—”

  “Don’t.” Hope could be something sturdy, a life raft. But false hope was a life raft with a hole in the bottom. “I am sure.” Herr Dreck’s face—you can’t fake that kind of smugness.

  “Didn’t you take photographs?” he asked.

  Lena nodded. “He—they—they’ve got the camera. So—great. I know what happened. You know what happened. But the rest of the world will never know.”

  “I’ll get you another one.”

  “Don’t you understand?” Lena’s voice rose, and Herr Schulmann gave her a look that told her to tone it down. “I’ve lost my job. They’re going to send me somewhere terrible, probably the mental hospital where I was before.”

  “Lena, they can’t do that. They need a reason to commit you.”

  “Maybe on your side of the Wall they do. Here they just need a pen.”

  Herr Schulmann looked away. He took a long sip of beer and set the glass on the table with care, so that it didn’t make any noise. No sudden movements. See? Already he’s putting hats and mittens on everything.

  “I’m getting you out of this place,” he said.

  “Forget it. They’re watching me. They’ve been watching all along. You want to get someone out? Help my friend. He was supposed to go through a tunnel with two other boys, but it turns out one of them has been telling the Stasi everything.”

  “I’ll get you both out. I know people who can make up false documents. You’ll go through Romania. I’ll organize a plan.”

  Lena laughed. “Between now and tomorrow morning? Good luck.”

  Herr Schulmann took a notepad and pencil from his briefcase. “What’s his name? Your friend. Where do I find him?”

  Lena wrote down Max’s name and the name of the theater. “They’re watching him too. I saw his file. He’s a flight risk.”

  “We’ll make new identities for both of you. All I need are photographs. My people are wizards with travel documents.”

  Do they have magic wands? Can they make Herr Dreck disappear? That was the only solution that would work for Lena. But she promised to leave a photograph in the mailbox. Let Herr Schulmann think his plan would work.

  She took a few bites of meat and cheese, drank some more of the beer, and agreed to meet one of his contacts on Tuesday—if she was still walking the streets freely by then. But when their meeting was over, she wasn’t ready to go home. What, then? She couldn’t bear to face Max and tell him about the mental hospital. No one treated you the same way once they knew you’d been locked up, even if both your parents had been killed in an explosion.

  Lena went to the park where she and Erich used to go together. She sat on one of the benches and imagined her hands getting sticky with every vanilla ice cream she’d ever eaten. Though it was cool and windy outside, she felt all the past suns warm her back, and saw all the children learning to walk, and the lovers holding hands, and the old men doddering on their canes, and the single women pulling their misbehaving dogs home. Turns out this had been the schrullig world: all the time she’d spent with her uncle on Sundays. It was quirky, outlandish, impossible. And it was gone.

  The thought that this had been taken from her made her so incredibly angry she marched over to Erich’s building, went up the stairs, and leaned on Friedrich So-and-So’s bell. “Yes?” came his irritated voice, like she’d interrupted him spilling something else on his undershirt. By the time he opened the door, she had already crept down the stairs.

  She waited half a minute, enough time for him to sit back down, then ran up and pressed the bell again.

  “Yes? Who’s there?” he called.

  It’s Sunday, she wanted to scream, and I’m supposed to be visiting my uncle, and he’s supposed to live here, and he’s supposed to be alive, and you have no right to be answering this door. But she hid on the second floor and said nothing.

  She let half a minute pass, then rang again.

  “Listen, you little shit, I’m going to call the police,” came the voice from behind the door.

  “Flower delivery, sir,” Lena said.

  “Oh. Forgive me.”

  Before the door opened, Lena took off. She needed to go home. She needed to have the talk with Auntie. But when she got home, it turned out Auntie had bought her some pretty hair barrettes from a vendor at the S-Bahn. There didn’t seem to be any way to slip I lost my job and your brother is dead into casual conversation. So she said nothing.

  — 27 —

  the truth shall set you free

  For the first Sunday night in the history of Sunday nights, Lena slept. Sleeping was easy. She didn’t have to think. She didn’t have to lie about what she was doing. There was no opportunity to wonder what would happen next. She woke up rested and ready to line up for Monday-morning ham and bring it home to Auntie, who included some in their breakfast along with a boiled egg and a cup of real coffee.

  Auntie had planted the turnips and collards in boxes on the adjustable multifunction table by the window. “You’ll be sure to water them this morning,” she said.

  Lena nodded.

  “And you will do something useful with your time today. Help in the courtyard, take out the trash. Before your photography class.”

  Nod, nod, nod—Lena’s head was a moving toy. Photography was another one of those words now.

  What would she do when the time came to go to work? Well, they hadn’t terminated her yet. If she hadn’t heard anything, she would go. And face Herr Dreck? She’d bring Jutta. Jutta would understand.

  After Auntie left for work, Lena did everything that was expected of her—all the while watching the telephone as if it were a live animal. She waited for the knock at the door. How would they do it? What would they say? Would they take her directly to the hospital, or would she have a chance to say goodbye first?

  By eleven o’clock nothing had happened.

  At midday, Lena stopped peering out the window. She chose a novel from her shelf, sat on her bed, and was completely immersed in chapter one when the buzzer rang.

  They’re here. That was her first thought. Her second was don’t answer it. Right. They would use their own key, and they’d stomp up the stairs and pound on Auntie’s door, and the baby next door would start to cry, and anyone who was home would open their doors very slowly and peer into the corridor so that later, when others came home, th
ey could say, “They came to Adelheid’s this afternoon. It was the orphan, the difficult one. They took her away.”

  Lena got up, and with stiff legs and a heart so heavy she could barely carry it she went to the intercom and said, “Yes?”

  “You’re home, thank God. It’s me. Can I come up?” It was Max.

  Lena slumped in relief. “Yes, come up.”

  She waited at the door until he knocked, and let him in, and let him envelop her with his cold arms so that she could breathe and breathe until she’d taken the scent of him into every part of her body. He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, and then his lips found hers and she forgot about every bad thing that was going to happen, and thought only of how she wanted to stay here, this close to him, for the rest of her life.

  He led her to the sitting room. She sat down. He switched on the television and turned the volume up as loud as it would go, then sat beside her. Glück Muss Man Haben was on. One Must Have Luck. If you were very lucky on the show, you could win a Trabi.

  “Your friend came to see me yesterday,” he said into her ear. “Günter Schulmann.”

  What did he tell you? But she already knew by the way he’d held her at the door and kissed her. Günter Schulmann had told him she was in trouble. Max took off his coat slowly, watching her the way a person would watch a bomb.

  “You have to come to the West with me,” Max said. Cheers erupted on the television show.

  She tried to block out the sound. “I can’t. I’ll ruin my aunt’s life.” The porcelain dogs stared at her with their creepy eyes. You’ve already ruined it, they said.

  He crossed his arms. “Then I’m not going.”

  “What are you talking about? Herr Schulmann can help you. He can get you out. You have to go.” Anyway, what if— “What if we don’t get along? On the other side.”

  Max took her hands in his. She still wasn’t used to the sensation—the size of his fingers, their strength. “We’ll be giving ourselves a chance at a better life. That’s the point. If it turns out we don’t stay together, then we don’t stay together.” He cupped her face in his hands. “But we’ll be free. Otherwise—”