When they got to the station, Eva got out her U-Bahn card, but before she could finish swiping it, Elena had jumped the turnstile. Eva looked around; her face reddened. No one had noticed, but still . . . Elena had run ahead, and it took a minute for Eva to find her on the platform.
“What was that? Is it because the tavern was so expensive? Really, Elena, you don’t want to get caught. It would be such an embarrassment. I don’t need you to ride me home anyway.”
“Ah, Mutti, it’s just Spass. Calm down!” She had a look of mischief on her face. Eva could smell the brandy on her. She’s drunk, thought Eva.
The train pulled in, large and silent. They sat next to each other. Then Elena started singing a Tyrolean song, an Austrian song. “Sei gesegnet ohne Ende, Heimaterde, wunderhold! Freundlich schmücken dein Gelände . . .”
“Elena, Stopp. Setz dich! Bitte.” She hadn’t done this sort of thing in a while—make a scene.
But it wasn’t the most unusual thing for Elena to do. She cultivated her eccentricity . But she didn’t embarrass Eva like this often anymore. The few people on the train looked up and then, annoyed, looked down at their papers and books again.
She stood now, singing even louder. Out of her coat she pulled a beer mug. Eva hadn’t noticed her taking it. Anger dropped on her, the blackness. Now she could never go back there, to that tavern. Elena began walking along the length of the car, pulling a leg behind her, as if it were hurt holding the mug out as if asking for change, and singing, “. . . Tannengrün und Ährengold, Deutsche Arbeit, ernst und ehrlich.”
After a few minutes, Elena sat down next to her mother.
“Why do you need to embarrass me like that? Why?”
“Because it’s so easy, Mutti. And it’s fun. You need to relax.”
“Well, don’t get out of the train with me. Okay? I don’t think it’s fun, or funny. Stealing a mug. Now we can’t go back there.”
“We couldn’t go back there anyway, Mutti, because it’s ein Beschiss! And at least I got a mug out of it. It’s nice, eh?” She held it up. “Look! I even got some change, too!”
Inside the mug were a few marks. Elena began laughing as she took the coins out.
“This is my stop. Goodbye, Elena.”
“Tschüss, Mutti!”
Chapter 19
In her apartment, Eva took off her clothes and took a warm shower, then changed into her blue robe. She rubbed a heavy cream on her face—it felt dry. She was very tired, so she took two of her morning pills and made some coffee. It had been an exhausting day. Maggie was here, and so grown-up in many ways. Her figure, her confidence. And a lover with her. And Elena was acting like a child. But that was just for Eva’s benefit. She wasn’t going to worry about that. Elena would be a good hostess to her niece. What did Eva know? They were the young people. When Maggie had been here last time, Elena and she had gone out to taverns and clubs together, looked at art together. They had enjoyed each other, and Eva wanted to think they would again.
She put on the Nina Simone record that Maggie had given her, and listened to a song about a man in a plain gold ring. The ring showed the world that the man belonged to someone else, not to her, not to the singer.
When Maggie had been in Berlin before, after they had gone out to dinner one night in East Berlin, they walked through Marx-Engels-Platz. It had been dark, the whole square. Now it was well lit, like everywhere, as it had always been in the West. All that energy, all that electricity, to light up the night. For what? In the East, they didn’t need lights to feel safe; it just was safe. Yet Maggie had seemed scared by the darkness. Eva had been embarrassed. She knew. They all knew, all Ostberliners, how different it was from the West. How it was more stark, less colorful. But Eva knew even more so—she traveled to the West freely. A large group of soldiers marched by in the dark, loudly stomping their boots, and startled Maggie. “What’s that? What’s going on?”
“They’re just Russian soldiers,” said Eva.
“What are they doing here? Is there some problem?”
“Oh, no. There’s no problem. They’re just here. They are here to help keep the peace. They do a good job. You know, we have no crime here. I am never afraid here, like you are in the West, of walking around at night.”
“I’m afraid of them,” said Maggie. “The soldiers.”
Eva fingered the package she had for Hans. He still had not come. And she would be lying to herself if she didn’t think that he might have something nice for her. Mostly, she wanted to see him.
The package had been sitting out on her table. She carefully put it in her wardrobe. Then she took out the book Elena had given her for Christmas. Her daughter and her strange ideas about art. The pictures were ugly. Hugo wouldn’t have approved. Hugo had taken gorgeous pictures. All of Goldin’s pictures were in color—often with vivid, almost fluorescent shades of green and orange. Hugo shot only in black and white. Many of her pictures were of men dressed as women. Why would Elena give her such a book? Was she trying to tell Eva something? That she was gay, perhaps? Everyone was suffering in these pictures. Everyone. Suffering in their decadent lifestyle, suffering from their excess and freedom. Eva read a bit from the beginning. “My work is closest to the snapshot,” wrote Goldin. Well, thought Eva, Hugo’s photographs were the opposite of that. She flipped through the book some more. It wasn’t that they weren’t arresting, these pictures. They often were. But they never seemed anything but sad and often
