“Mutti! Wie geht’s?”
“Hast du die Krista gesehen? Oder weisst du, ob sie bei Maggie ist oder war in den letzen beiden Tagen?”
“Krista? Deine Nachbarin?”
“Genau.”
“I have no idea where she is, Mutti.”
Then Eva remembered the number in her purse. She went back to her apartment and opened her wallet, unfolded the piece of paper. The handwriting was from a woman, not from the skinhead, not from that boy. Frau Weber. She dialed the number.
“Ja bitte?” a woman said.
“Kann ich bitte Frau Weber sprechen?”
“Ich bin Frau Weber.”
“Frau Weber, Ihr Sohn hat mir Ihre Nummer gegeben.”
“My son? What? Who are you? My son is dead! Tot! Tot! Mein Sohn ist tot!” She started weeping loudly, then screaming, “Tot, tot!”
Eva hung up. Of course he’s dead. And probably, thought Eva, so was Krista.
She went back to Frau Haufmann’s. She explained to her and the police that no one knew where Krista was. No one she knew had seen her.
Eva went back into her apartment. She hadn’t mentioned the skinheads. This was her first sin. She turned on the lights and saw everything—her bed, her record player, her little table. It held her warmly for one second, but then anguish set in. Her heart was beating so hard. Her leg! She sat down at her table, and for a moment, she thought she might die of a stroke. She closed her eyes. She thought of Mrs. Haufmann praying. She began to pray. Dear Father, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. She did not call Maggie. Not after where she left her, not after everything. She lied about that. That was her second sin.
Eva got into bed and immediately fell asleep. When she awoke, she woke slowly, still lost in a dream. In the dream, Hugo was a man in his forties, the man she fell in love with. He was laughing with his friends—they were all there, Wolf, too—and they were sitting in the backyard of their old house. The trees were green; it was summer. The sun shone, and in the dream Eva’s arms were slick with warm summer sweat. Her whole life was ahead of her. Of course they’d made mistakes, but there was no end in sight, no end to the possibility that all could be good again. That life would go on and on. In the dream, Elena walks up to Eva, but it is the Elena of now, not Elena the little girl. In the dream, Eva stops her light laughter, the feeling of ease goes away. Then Eva woke up.
She looked at the clock. It was almost 2:00 p.m. She got up, unstable, holding the sides of the wall, but made it to the kitchen to make coffee. She took a morning pill as she waited for the coffee to brew.
The police had been different from the police of the GDR. This was nothing new—a change, a difference, and yet it still felt similar. She didn’t like them. She didn’t trust them. But they had taken all the information about Krista. They also called for an ambulance and took Mrs. Haufmann away. The fear in her face! The fear in her blind, sickly face. And yet she didn’t protest at being taken away. How could she? She couldn’t take care of herself.
Eva put on the Billie Holiday record, but it irritated her, so she took it off right away. It was silence she needed. To think. She closed her eyes, sitting at her little table. The coffee began to work on her. She should call Liezel, but she wouldn’t. Then, she should go over to Maggie’s. She should ask Maggie if she knew where Krista was. The lies, they kept building. They built a small, hard wall inside her.
As she stood to bathe, Hansi knocked on her door. He called to her, “Eva! Bist du herein?”
“Ja! Ja!” Eva opened the door and there he was. The man who loved her.
“Komm! Gehen Wir!”
“Nein, Ich muss ein shower nehmen.”
“Ach! Ich kann nicht warten!”
“Okay, Moment, Moment.” So no shower then, she thought, grimly. He waited outside while she got dressed, put on lipstick, sprayed her hair.
Once in the car, her legs began to hurt. She rubbed them.
“Was is los?”
“Meine Beine tun mir weh.”
Hansi grunted. Eva looked at his big, Slavic face. His broad nose, his thick forehead and hair. She smelled him, that wonderful, familiar smell; the cologne, the stale smoke, the oil of his skin.
“My neighbor Krista is missing. The young girl. And her mother, so sick, she can’t see, really, she’s lost nearly all of her sight—she was taken away too.”
Hans said nothing.
“Did you know? Do you know what happened to her?”
“Ich weiss nichts. Ich kenne ihnen nichts.”
“Doch. You know them. You’ve seen Krista over the years.”
“Ja, ja. But I don’t know them, really. Why do you ask me these questions?”
“Well, you are full of surprises. You know all sorts of things that surprise me. You know where the Stasi kept samples of my smell.”
“That’s because I was Stasi, Schatzi.” Hansi turned to her. “Aber du weisst dass shon.”
Yes, she knew. But was this something they had ever talked about? No. She knew all sorts of things that she didn’t like to think about. Why bother? What could she do? And there was maybe knowing something and then there was really knowing something for certain. There was her faith in God, a belief she kept with her every day, but did she know? Did she have evidence? Her sort of evidence, yes. But the day in and day out of life, these were the things that struck her as even more unknowable than God in heaven who sent a Son to Earth to save their souls. So what did she really know? The world was beyond her.
“Can you take me to Maggie’s quickly?”
“I have no time! I have to meet someone.”
“Are we going to the cabin?”
“Yes.” He looked at her, then back at the road. Just a glance. A glance, and a smile. These things
