“Danke, Schatzi,” he said as she brought him the beer and leaned over and kissed him.
“Do you live here still?” Eva asked. “It seems as if you don’t.”
“We are in the process of moving. Paula has taken the kids already to Poland. I still have business here, and I always will. I’ll be here often. Very often. But we won’t need this big house. I’ll maybe find a small flat or stay at a nice hotel. You’ll like that, Schatzi, won’t you? And I have my cabin.” He finished his beer quickly. “So many things have changed. Are changing. I’m not leaving for at least six months. Or so I think. I can’t know for sure.” He turned to her, and stroked her face, her neck.
“Don’t leave me, Hansi. Don’t leave.” She did like the idea of the hotel in the moment—its lack of permanence. Or even a flat that was just his. Strangely, she felt the idea of Paula permanently away was a threat to her. The change—the endless upheaval. But that was why he was so quiet. That was why he seemed so calm. He had this secret. He was always calmest when he had a secret from her.
“I’m not leaving for at least six months, I just told you. Maybe longer. And Paula is gone the entire time. So it will be just us.” He wrapped his huge body around hers, squeezing her tightly. She felt soft under his arms, like a cushion for him.
“You’ll come often, to visit me?”
Hans took a long drag of his cigarette and crushed it in an ashtray. He was smoking Marlboro Reds, which he never smoked. A Cadillac, now American cigarettes. He had often smoked cigarettes from the West, but German ones, either Davidoff or West. “I’ll be here on business every month. We’ll see each other when I can.”
Eva began to cry. Business was always first, like Hugo and his art. Why couldn’t he just say, “Doch, I’ll come to see you.”
“No crying, Eva.”
She stood and looked out the large windows. The windows had not aged, didn’t seem dated or fragile with the years. They were made of thick glass, with beautiful black metalwork. And they seemed recently cleaned, too. Outside, the trees were thin black lines, crossing each other endlessly, making a dense web. Snow lay on the ground, white and unharmed. “Make love to me,” she asked, quietly, and put down her beer.
Later, when the evening light had faded completely in the bedroom, Hans stood up and said, “Follow me.”
Eva wanted to stay in bed. “What?”
“I have to show you something. I want to give you something.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow? I have a Christmas gift for you, too.”
“It’s not a Christmas gift.”
He walked ahead of her, naked except for slippers, and then he took two robes out of the closet in the bedroom. “Hier. Zieh das an.”
Reluctantly, Eva put on the robe. It smelled of mildew. “Wo gehen wir?”
“Downstairs. It’s colder down there.”
It was dark. Eva held on to Hans’s robe in front of her as they went down the steep stairs. Hans tried to get the light to turn on, but the bulb was out. “Scheisse,” he said, and then he fumbled around in a box and switched on a flashlight. “Komm,” he said. “Schau.”
On a wooden shelf, next to a can of paint, were two small glass jars with yellow pieces of cloth inside of them.
“What? What is this?”
Hans shone the light on the jars. “See,” he said, and Eva looked at him, smiling there at her. “Look! Look at the jars. Don’t look at me, you silly woman.”
On the jars were white labels. One said hugo hermann; the other said eva stiller hermann.
“They’re your smells. Your smells were bottled. So we could track you if we needed to. Hugo had many subversive friends, Wolf Biermann, Vera Lengsfeld. It was the way things were done.” Eva looked at Hans. He had a wistful expression, thoughtful. And then he turned to her with a look of pride. “I brought you yours, and Hugo’s. I took them for you.”
She had always known he was Stasi. She just didn’t like to think about it. And what was he now? Maybe it was time she stopped wanting not to know. Eva picked up the jars carefully. Wolf Biermann. Vera Longsfeld. Her Hugo. Ghosts, all of them. She said, “They won’t fit in my purse.”
“I’ll give you a bag, Schatzi,” he said. Eva’s eyes had adjusted to the dark. Hans stood there, his face regal with power and kindness.
“Is that what was in those boxes at the lake house?” She hadn’t wanted to ask; it just came out. Eva winced, unnecessarily. He put a hand on her arm, somewhat gently. It was a relief.
“Don’t you worry about those boxes, Schatzi. In fact, pretend you never saw them.”
Chapter 22
Hugo had been devastated when Wolf Biermann left. But no one was surprised. By that time, many artists were tired of how things were, of the constant surveillance, of how disappointing the government was, of how they’d become the opposite of what they had promised to be. The lack of goods didn’t help, nor did the fact that they had things better than the vast majority of the population and even then, they didn’t have the things they wanted. Desire for good things or a good life were seen as capitalist, as greedy. People were confused; they wanted, but they were ashamed of their desires. And was that such a bad thing? Eva thought shame had its purpose. When she occasionally looked at American magazines—People, Vanity Fair, Glamour—she was often disgusted. It was too much. To
