He hadn’t been the best husband. And she wasn’t a great wife much of the time. But they had done their best. Well, much of the time they had done their best. It was chic and liberal to have lovers in their circle of friends—the writers, painters, poets, and other photographers. It had been easy for Eva, too. She was very young and perhaps she wanted something that Hugo couldn’t give her. Hugo was older than her father. It had been a tacit agreement. Sometimes, thinking back, Eva wondered if he had encouraged her to take lovers. Even insisted, in some way. And he, too, had other women. She didn’t mind him sleeping with them, but one or two of them would end up spending too much time around their house. Particularly the last one, the one right before he died. Behaving like his personal, youthful nursemaid. Eva had disliked this very much. True, she was busy taking care of their daughter, but not that busy. She took good care of him, too, fed him, kept the house neat, looked after things, the mending, the errands. And when his health started failing, her nursing skills were very helpful. She took good care of him through it all. She didn’t like that girl in her house, fussing over him, no, but that she shared his bed hadn’t bothered her so much.
She had one lover from the hospital. Another nurse, not a doctor. He was even younger than she at the time. Karl. Hans reminded her of Karl—not in appearance. No. But in temperament. He had been her cruelest lover, this young man, a boy really, maybe twenty-three years old, not that she was much older than he, but she was married and a mother. Her husband was dying. Karl would have her over to his flat. She remembered when he broke it off with her. He was very drunk. He smelled of vomit. She had come by his flat after work, a bit desperate. She knew it was ending. He had taken her from behind, in her asshole, and she’d bled and cried. Then he told her to leave. To not come back. “Kuh,” he had said. “Du bist eine dumme Kuh.” She was shocked—her body hurt, and her head felt numb from it all. She went through the next few days in a haze, quiet and subdued. But she hadn’t been surprised by his behavior, by the names he called her. She knew she had behaved desperately. Perhaps it was the only way he thought he could get rid of her. It did work. She never bothered him again.
Her Hansi had a temper. He could get angry.
There had been other lovers, too. At some point, there had been many fights with Hugo. Not that he ever yelled or called her names or was anything but gentle with her. No, he was too good for that. Too good for her, she had often thought. But his gentleness wasn’t always separate from a kind of passivity. Often she wondered if he felt anything for her. Once she had been drunk and he had a lover and she knew it and it was maybe his first and so she had been hurt. Angry. She remembered, with much shame, yelling at him. “Warum bin ich nicht genug? Ey? Was stimmt nicht mit mir? Passt dir meine Muschi nicht? Eh? Warum sagst du nichts? Wie kannst du so ruhig bleiben?” And he never said a word; he just let her go on like that. Until she threw a lamp at him. They never replaced that lamp, either. A lamp in the GDR wasn’t the easiest thing to come by. And she’d foolishly broken one. The side table remained without one thereafter, a reminder of her outrageous behavior.
It hadn’t been all bad, but one always remembered the bad times more vividly. Pain is memorable, and the daily goodness of life is not. Eva knew that. No, it hadn’t been all bad at all. So why such a nightmare? Maybe she’d go to church. That was one good thing about the Wall being down: she could easily go to real churches, not like the ones that had been in East Berlin. She didn’t go to church often, and she rarely went to the same one more than twice. She wasn’t looking for a priest or a minister. Just a building, just a space to commune with her God.
There was an Eastern Orthodox church in Kreuzberg, one she’d passed by on her visits to Elena and admired. She took the U-Bahn and got out a stop early to walk. Since Hansi’s visit, her legs hadn’t been bothering her. The walk made her feel good, energized her by getting her blood flowing. She had no heavy bags to carry and she wasn’t just standing—that never felt good; to just stand there almost always caused aching and throbbing. She walked at a nice pace, briskly, and just a few blocks really and soon she’d be kneeling. Or sitting. She preferred to kneel. The sun was out and it wasn’t warm, but it was a beautiful winter day.
Christmas was coming, a holiday they never celebrated when Hugo was alive. Since his death, she’d always done a little something on Christmas Eve, the most important night for German Christians. This Christmas, now that Hansi was back in her life and she was getting on with Elena, maybe she’d try to have a small Tannenbaum in her apartment. And put some candles on it. Yes, that would be so nice. Even if Hansi couldn’t get out to see her that night, maybe Elena would. And if nothing else, she could have Krista and her mother, if she was up to it, over for some Kuchen.
Eva pushed on thick, tall doors and they swung easily inward, revealing the dark, long room of worship. It was
