“And Vati? Where was Vati during this? He loved Liezel. He would never have let her do that. Never.” Eva refused to believe these stories. Images raced in her brain, but she shook her head to rid herself of them.
“He wasn’t around, Eva. That was the whole point. He couldn’t be bothered. You know, I’ve made my peace with Maria. She was too young. I forgive her. And he didn’t love her. Did you know he told her that, too, regularly? ‘Ich liebe dich nichts,’ he’d say to her. How can you not feel for a woman who endured that? She had as few choices, if not fewer, than we did. She even visits me once a year or so, in Vienna. And I go out to Leoben. Not often, but I do. To say hi. She fed me dinner for years and years. I feel I owe it to her.”
“You don’t owe that woman anything. How can you make peace with her? She was a monster.”
“We all were monsters then.”
“We were children. Or you were children, I should say.”
“So was she, Eva. She was a child. Not yet twenty. Think about it.”
Chapter 20
The next morning, early, there was a knock on the door. Eva got up, bleary, she’d stayed up late, thinking, listening to music. It seemed almost impossible to get her robe on, but she managed. It was Krista.
“I have a letter for you.”
“You still have my mail key?” Eva panicked. She needed her coffee. Her pills. She couldn’t think.
“No, but I happened to be downstairs when the mailman came and so I told him I’d bring your letter up to you.”
Eva couldn’t think yet. She walked back into her room, without saying anything. Krista followed, sitting at the table. Eva poured herself a water from the sink and took her pills. Just knowing they were in her made her feel a bit better. She put water on the stove for coffee. “I can’t think yet. I’m just waking up.”
“I’m sorry. It’s eleven already, and I thought . . .”
“You know I often sleep later,” Eva interrupted. She was not pleased. She took the envelope from Krista and looked it over, to see if it had been opened. It was from Liezel. Then she looked properly at Krista. Her face wore an expression of contrition. Perhaps even of pleading. She was young and small and fragile-seeming in that moment. But Eva looked harder at her and the image of her mean and drunk, being tossed around by nasty men came clear to her. Both victim and perpetrator. It happened. Then she gathered herself. This was her neighbor. She wasn’t going to make an enemy of her just now. “Willst du einen Kaffee?”
“Sehr gerne.”
“Wie geht’s deiner Mutter?”
“Ganz okay. Nicht grossartig, aber okay.”
Eva looked at her sternly. “Milch und Zucker?”
“Bitte.”
For a moment, they sipped their coffees in silence. Then Eva stood up and put on her new Nina Simone record. Anything to distract from the awkwardness.
“Did you put this by my door? Someone put it by my door. I am grateful, as I wasn’t here to receive it.” Eva didn’t mention it had been opened.
“Nein, das war nicht ich.” The girl lied.
“I’m sorry, I forgot you don’t like this music. I can take it off.”
“No, that’s not true. I mean, it’s not my favorite. But don’t take it off.” Krista looked into her coffee cup. “Is Maggie here?”
“Yes. She’s staying with Elena in Kreuzberg. But she will come visit me. I hope you’ll be here and can see her.”
“That would be great!” Krista’s face lit up, and she nervously wiped a strand of greasy hair from her forehead. “I have so many things I want to talk to her about, about America. Maybe I could visit her someday.”
Eva was startled, but tried to hide it. “Well, Krista. It’s now easy to travel to America.”
“Not for me. Not for people like me.”
“That’s not true. If you want a job there, that’s different, that’s harder, but to visit is not hard.”
“I want a job there,” the girl said grimly. “I want to move.”
“I see.” This was news.
“I have lived here with my mother my whole life.”
“I see,” Eva repeated. She was stumbling a bit now. How could Krista ask this of her, of her family, after that day? “Well, Maggie is here now. She plans to stay here for quite some time. So maybe now isn’t time to talk of visiting her in America.”
“She loves you and I help take care of you,” Krista said, her steel eyes fixed hard on Eva. “She might help me find out how to move there, to help me, like I help you, like Elena is helping her.”
“Perhaps, but people from the West are different than us,” Eva said, coldly. “I love my niece, but she is a Westerner.”
Eva picked up the letter again. “Thank you for bringing me my mail. It’s from my sister. From Maggie’s mother.” Eva didn’t want to read it in front of her. She wanted her to leave now, so she could read it. She went and took the needle off the record. She couldn’t focus on the music. She couldn’t read the letter. And now Krista talking of visiting her niece, of moving to America?
“I could read it to you,” Krista offered. How her temperament changed. First the coldness,
