She’d first eat. She had some bread from yesterday; it was stale, but it would do. She cut it into thick slices and then cut the cheese, layering it with care on the bread. She sat at the table. There was a bottle of red wine on the table, and she poured herself a large water glass full of it. She was home. As humble as it was—one rectangular room, the small table against the wall with two chairs, her bed, a wardrobe, and her record player on a low table with a handful of records stacked neatly beneath—it was hers.
She would eat in silence tonight. Maybe take an extra sleeping pill or two and then play a record. Yes. That is what she would do.
The wine was turning to vinegar, but she drank it anyway, using it to wash down her dinner. She thought about dutiful Krista, still so attached to her mother. Gabi, Frau Haufmann, was lucky in that way, although her health problems were endless, and that was certainly not lucky. Eva had been that way, like Krista, a devoted caregiver. She wasn’t like her sister, knowing from a very young age that she would leave Leoben, Austria. After their mother died, Eva took over managing the house. And it had suited her very well. Those years before her father remarried were, in some ways, the happiest of her life. Of course, she hadn’t always been the best mother figure to her siblings. She wasn’t perfect. But it gave her something—a purpose. And more than that. It filled the hours of the day. It took away her choices, and yet, oddly, she never felt so free. There was her brother, Willi, to look after and her outgoing and determined sister, Liezel. She was the oldest, Willi had been eleven and Liezel, the fireball, was only six when their mother died.
Eva had been a beautiful young woman. At fifteen, she was a young woman, not a teenager like her daughter at the same age, in a different world, in East Berlin decades later. In Leoben, she was a young woman at fifteen. She dressed in her mother’s dirndls—they fit her perfectly—and did all the grocery shopping and kept the accounts and cleaned the house and sang to Liezel, sang to her at night before kissing her goodnight. Shlaf gut.
Eva supposed that if she were to interpret her life in the contemporary fashion—as her daughter did, as even Liezel did—she’d be forced to think of herself as someone who had her childhood or adolescence cruelly taken away from her. That this was the root of all her problems. Well, she may not have been a naturally adventurous person, and she may not have been a modern woman, one who takes control of her life, but she always thought for herself. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t believe such a facile understanding of a life. She may have felt guilty at the serenity and joy she felt after her mother died. But she knew she loved her mother. She hated watching her suffer at home, then in the hospital, the lupus slowing sucking the life out of her. But once she was gone, once she was dead, Eva was given something, too. She was given a responsibility that suited her. She had been more than eager to shed her childhood. Aren’t all children desperate to grow up? And adolescence, well, what is that but a prolonged childhood? Who wants that? Childhood was a cruel, animal stage of life, a life of uncertainty, chaos, and fear. Adults were reasonable. Adulthood made sense.
She had pictures of herself from then. Black-and-white photos, only a few of them. She was healthy and red cheeked, and her hair was thick and blonde. Her eyebrows were thick, too, and dark, and her lips were wide and red, just like her cheeks. She looked nothing like the sullen, skinny teenagers she saw walking the streets of Berlin. Since the Wall came down, they’d become even worse. Even thinner and more unsmiling and cynical. Today, she’d have been thought of as heavy, Eva supposed. But then, she knew she was healthy. They mostly had plenty of food—milk, eggs, sometimes even meat, thanks to their cousin Lois and his farm outside of town. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite like that in 1944, but it was still that way in ’42. That year, they would go to visit Uncle Lois, and he was so generous with them. But by ’44, it was true, they’d outworn their welcome, and they had to stop the visits. Uncle Lois barely had enough for himself and his children by then. Eva didn’t begrudge him.
It was all so long ago, but what was Eva to do, except think about the past? She had stopped working as a nurse about four years ago, right before the Wall came down. The changes were coming, she knew, and it was all too much for her. She decided it was a sign for her to quit. She’d done her time, yes. She’d worked as a nurse for most of her adult life. Who knew what would happen to health care? East Germany hadn’t been perfect. That had always been hard for her to admit, but she could more easily now that it no longer existed. But at least it had had great health care and education. The best—and for everyone.
She finished her glass of wine and poured another large glass, standing, taking her dish to the sink. Enough of the past. She had Hansi, sort of, her boyfriend of the past ten years. He was getting along with his wife these days and wasn’t making much time for her. When he was miserable at home was when Eva was happiest, when her Hans was lonely and needed her. She tried to convince herself he would need her again. That he’d call her again. He always did come back to her
