Then when the stepmother came, Liezel had it the worst. Eva was just thrown out, she didn’t have to stay and endure the wrath of Maria. Liezel did. Broken noses, even a broken arm once. Maria took over. Franz, older, less volatile, let her do everything. Including beat the children.
But when their mother was alive, it was their father who terrorized them. He terrorized them one minute, and the next minute, drunk on schnapps, he picked them up and put them on his lap, singing “Eine kleine mausi,” crawling his fingers up their arms and making them laugh. They laughed nervously, worrying that his mood would change. Sometimes it did change, quickly, like a sudden storm. But usually by the time he was drinking schnapps and lifting them up on his knee, he wasn’t going to get angry again. No, it was done by then, the rage and punishment.
Hugo was not that kind of a father. He was the opposite. He never even raised his voice with Elena. He would say to Eva, who ended up having to do the discipline, “Don’t crush her spirit, woman. She is only a child. Let the world crush her spirit later. You don’t need to do it. Let her be.”
And Eva agreed often, but not always. Elena needed some guidance. Someone had to potty train her, for instance. If it were up to Hugo, she would have shat in her diaper until she was ten. Really. He just didn’t care.
It was strange for Eva to be the disciplinarian. It wasn’t fun. She tried not to hit and yell, but did on occasion. Mostly, she indulged her only daughter. But she hadn’t been perfect. Unlike Hugo. Hugo had been perfect. In his mind, he was without fault. And in Elena’s mind, too. Her father had been perfect. Eva couldn’t help but agree with the both of them herself. Hugo was perfect. She was not. She was given to tempers, she was a bit moody. She was weak.
The final fight between Maria and Eva was a long time coming. She’d been criticizing Eva since the day she moved in. The way she did the dishes, set the table, her cooking, everything. Maria took over cooking on day two after moving in. It was that swift. Even if Eva followed the grocery list perfectly, Maria would harp at her over her shopping.
“The celery is soft! Did you pay half price for it? You better have paid half.” Then she’d count Eva’s change. Give her a stare. She’d been in control of the money from day one.
Finally, Eva, as mild-tempered as she was, lost it. She was mopping the kitchen floor—something she used to do once a week, but Maria had her doing it every day—and Maria came in.
“You’re just moving the dirty water around the floor! That’s not cleaning!” she yelled. Eva stopped and stared. For a moment she felt what she often felt. She felt sorry for Maria. Eva’s father didn’t love her. Maria was ugly—fat, the face of a man, hairy chin, unruly curls on her head the color and coarseness of straw, long breasts that fell to her waist. Of course she was mean. Eva threw the mop at her stepmother and ran, ran three blocks to her best friend Saskia’s apartment. The next day, in the middle of the night, with Willi’s help, she collected her few belongings. With Saskia’s mother’s help, within a week, she found a job in Vienna and moved.
Eva, seventeen, worked as a live-in maid for a wealthy family, a family that had gotten rich during the war. They were dreadful people, but Eva was very lucky to get the job. She had left with only half the clothes she owned. Her suitcase contained two very well-made dirndls, made by her own mother and herself, a wool nightshirt, and two pairs of stockings and two pairs of underwear. She felt greatly indebted to Saskia’s mother for getting her the job. For months, she sent her a portion of her paycheck. It hadn’t been the agreement, but it seemed the right thing to do.
Eva had been hired quickly. Her good looks, her nice manner, her healthy, big-boned body—these were all good qualities for a maid. She cleaned windows and hauled large bags of food and waxed the floors.
There was another girl who lived in the servants’ quarters and was their governess. She was from Poland—Liliana. It had been Liliana who introduced her to Hugo. Hugo lived in a residency run by the Russians for the dispossessed, the poor, the homeless. More than half of the people had been in the camps. Hugo had been in Buchenwald. A Jew, and a Communist. It was a miracle he was alive.
She knew immediately that he would be her husband. He had kind eyes, the slowest, most gentle touch. His intelligence was tactile and quiet; he was unlike anyone she’d ever met. She took care of him—he had suffered from malnutrition, overwork. He had a lung infection, and he’d lost a toe. But he had a camera. He bought one the minute he could. He was from Vienna—his entire family was dead. His apartment no longer his.
“Come with me to Berlin. The Party is strong there. We will be taken care of. The Russians freed me. They saved us. Who knows that Fascism won’t spring up again here, in Vienna? There are criminals everywhere. The family you work for? I’m sure they made their money off the backs of dead Jews.”
It chilled Eva to think that, but it didn’t surprise her. What did that make her, then, working for them? Liliana would soon go back to Poland. She was saving her money. Eva, too, had been saving, but to go where? She didn’t know. Now she knew. Now that Hugo was with her.
They were married in a civil ceremony. It was almost two years after she’d been chased out of the house in
