Also by paula bomer
Baby and Other Stories
Nine Months
Inside Madeleine
Mystery and Mortality
Copyright © 2021 by Paula Bomer
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments,
organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity and are used
ficticiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue are drawn from the
author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Where historical figures appear in this work, they are used fictitiously,
at times with altered biographies.
Published by
Soho Press, Inc.
227 W 17th Street
New York, NY 10011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bomer, Paula, author.
Tante Eva / Paula Bomer.
ISBN 978-1-641292-221-6
eISBN 978-1-64129-223-8
PS3602.O65496 T36 2021 | DDC 813’.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053038
Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother, again. And everything is always for my sons.
I hear a lot of people saying
Socialism—well all right,
But what they’re pulling on us here
It isn’t worth a light!
I see a lot of people clenching
Buried fists in mackintoshes.
Dog-ends hang cold from their lips,
And in their hearts are ashes.
—Wolf Biermann
The [GDR] was the anti-fascist phoenix that rose from
the ashes of the Nazi inferno.
—Unknown East German
Chapter 1
It was dark even though it was only four thirty in the afternoon. That’s how it was in November. Eva walked the five blocks from the shopping district to her apartment building, an immensely tall, white building, constructed in the 1960s. In any other country it would have been a housing project, but in East Berlin at the time it was built, everyone—well, almost everyone—lived in buildings like hers. Now, her area had become a sort of slum. She walked slowly, the support hose chafing her thighs. She had varicose veins and was overweight, and the hose helped, for the most part. She passed a group of skinheads standing on the corner. “Guten Abend, Fräulein,” one said in a deep, joking voice. Laughter broke out. There were three of them this afternoon, smoking cigarettes, bottles of beer in their hands. One was clearly the ringleader, the one who had greeted her. He was mocking her; she wasn’t stupid. They were probably in their twenties, but they looked ancient—translucent skin, a glowing red emanating from underneath. She knew what that was—the drink. Often she thought, where are their mothers?
She had in mind to greet them back, but she was afraid, even though she tried to convince herself they wouldn’t hurt her. She was very Aryan. Wasn’t that what they worshipped? Blonde, blue-eyed people—the master race? Why menace her? She tried walking more quickly, something she was sure they noticed. She looked down at the sidewalk, avoiding their gaze. She sped up a bit, ashamed, ashamed of her fear. Fear and anger, how they go together, what twins they are. The smallest of the group—shorter than her, the short ones always had to prove themselves—started following her. He was to the left of her now, imitating her awkward gait. He smelled like alcohol. He brandished his bottle of beer like a weapon. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed his leather jacket, his tattered jeans, his black boots. A swastika tattoo on his neck. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen any of them, and yet she couldn’t help noticing more details each time. When one of them got a new tattoo, when they were so high they just slouched sitting with their backs against the abandoned corner building, when one had a black eye. And she knew some of their names at this point. The ringleader was Johann.
“Kann ich Ihnen helfen, Fräulein?” he asked, making a bowing motion at her.
“Nein danke,” she said. She looked at him, trying to avoid his eyes, but they caught. Something about his face made her shudder—the wide nose, the weak chin, the hanging lips. He looked like someone she once knew. Was he one of her daughter’s old classmates? What happened to people?
Finally, he was behind her.
She tried to reason with herself, to calm herself. They only hurt the Turks and the Arabs and the Africans, of whom there were so many now that the Wall was down. They weren’t crazy about some of the Slavs, either, the darker ones. When eastern Germany had been East Germany, she was never scared, not once. There was no crime. There were no skinheads, not visibly at least.
Now, well, now it was very different. It wasn’t the city she’d moved to decades ago. And even then, she moved here because of Hugo, her husband. But it was her home now. It had been for a long time. She still had her Austrian passport. Her brother lived in Vienna and had for years told her to move there. She couldn’t. For one, she couldn’t leave her lover, Hansi. Never could she leave him. She loved her siblings—her brother in Vienna, her sister in America—but she didn’t want to move. She just wanted the old GDR back. And she wanted her Hansi, too, even though he was married, even though he hid things from her. She knew he hid things from her to protect her. But sometimes she wanted to know him better, to know everything about him. If he only had more time for her. If only he would leave that woman. Marry her. When she caught herself thinking this way, she tried to reason with herself. One thought was, in time. In time, they would be together.
Her building stretched up high above her. All around were empty lots, half-torn-down buildings, and squatters and beggars and immigrants filling them. Fires broke out with some regularity. She put her bag down and fumbled with her keys. She was shaking fairly badly, finding it difficult to get the key in the lock. The elevator was broken, this she knew, and once in, she walked the ten flights very slowly. Thank goodness for the support hose. She
