Midnight Hunter

??ll thrust his beer bottle into the air and roar with laughter. And we’ll laugh too, not because what he’s saying is funny but because it feels so wickedly defiant.

I open my eyes and the dream evaporates. Ana’s gone, Ulrich’s gone, Dad’s gone. There’s only the smooth white plaster of this strange bedroom ceiling and tears fill my eyes. I miss them so much it’s a physical pain. I hope Dad and Ulrich are together, wherever they are. I’ve considered asking Volker if they’re in prison but I’m afraid he won’t answer me and I’m afraid that he will. So I cling to the hope that they’re somewhere in East Germany and we’ll find each other soon.

The days are as tense and unpleasant for me as the first one was. Volker always seems to be somewhere nearby, listening, watching, though thankfully he doesn’t try to touch me again. Guilt and self-loathing dog me wherever I go. I’ll be in the middle of a task Lenore has given me, like filing or typing, when a wave of it hits me and I struggle to breathe. Why did I react the way that I did when he kissed me? It must be because I’ve never been kissed before. I was caught off guard. It wasn’t that I liked it or I find him attractive.

When Lenore and I are alone in the filing room I ask her if she’s heard the rumor about Volker having a lover in the West. Her eyes grow so wide I think they’re going to pop out of her head. “Are you mad? Herr Oberstleutnant would never betray the Party like that. He’s loyal to them above all other things.” She’s so indignant at the suggestion that Volker could be doing anything illegal that she doesn’t talk to me for two hours and I become quite annoyed with her.

Lenore’s devotion to Volker, I soon realize, isn’t put on to ingratiate herself with him. She really does think he’s wonderful. He’s affectionate toward her in an elder brother sort of way, teasing her and making her smile when he’s in a good mood. He doesn’t attempt to tease me, though he brings us little presents now and then like Western magazines and Swiss chocolate. Whatever one gets the other gets, too, as if he’s careful of not creating friction between his two secretaries, though his fingers seem to brush mine in a way they don’t Lenore’s. Whatever he gives me I put into a drawer as soon as his back is turned and slam it shut.

I want to dislike Lenore for being naïve about Volker but just when I think I have her figured out, she surprises me. One long, wet afternoon neither of us seem to have the energy to be good little secretaries and my fingers ache from so much shoddy typing. Volker is out somewhere, probably putting the fear of God into the populace. Lenore brings her chair over to my desk, ostensibly to teach me shorthand, but we end up flicking through magazines and eating the chocolate Volker has given us. I try not to, but it really is very good chocolate, creamy and sweet and melts on your tongue. Heaven in a little silver foil packet. The sugar makes us giggly and we end up trading jokes. Lenore tells me a political gag that I never thought could pass her lips.

“A group of East German ministers are sent on a diplomatic mission to Austria where they are introduced to all sorts of important people. Finally, they meet the head of the Austrian Navy. One minister bursts out laughing. “But you have no coastline!” The Austrian is very offended. ‘How rude. We were very polite when the GDR’s Minister for Trade was introduced.’”

It’s a very Lenore sort of joke because she does get so annoyed with the shortages, but I’m still scandalized she would tell it. Scandalized and delighted. I start to snort with laughter when I notice that Volker has returned and has stopped dead a few feet away from us. He’s overhead every word and there’s a hard, unfriendly look in his eyes. Lenore makes a little gasping sound when she notices him and her fingers grab mine beneath the desk.

Volker sits on the edge of her desk, facing us, his legs crossed at the ankles. I feel my spine straighten, ready to defend her, words of protest on my tongue. It was my idea, I made her tell me. I told five jokes just like that you didn’t hear. She didn’t mean anything by it.

“Why do Stasi officers make such good taxi drivers?”

My mouth falls open. Volker looks back and forth between us, then leans forward, conspiratorial, and lifts his dark brows once, twice. “Because we know where you live.” He tips back his head and roars with laughter, then goes into his office and closes the door.

Lenore looks at me, white-faced and bewildered, then buries her face in my shoulder, her body shaking with helpless giggles. I can’t quite believe what just happened.

Another day Volker comes in from a meeting with his coat slung over his arm and he stops in front of my desk. “Liebling,” he murmurs, so quietly only I can hear. He usually calls me Fräulein Dittmar when there are people around. When I’m alone with him in his office he calls me Evony. I’m rarely in his office, though, as I can’t take dictation without knowing shorthand and I ensure I’m making very slow progress at it.

When I look up, Volker draws a short-stemmed red rose from a fold of his coat and holds it out to me. A red rose, in January. He must know someone with a greenhouse. “Take it,” he says, a small smile on his lips, but I shake my head. He’ll get angry now, and his eyes will turn black because I’ve refused him. The magazines and chocolates I took at once, if gracelessly, but a rose? I can’t take a rose from him.

He only smiles, his eyes a tender blue. “It’s for you, take it.”

As with the softness of his kiss, it’s his gentleness that undoes me. Chewing the corner of my lip, I take the bloom, and as he lets go of the stem his forefinger strokes the length of mine, sending shivers up my arm. “Danke,” he says, just as quietly. He turns to Lenore and in a normal tone of voice says, “And of course there’s one for you.”

Lenore’s exclamations of thanks are loud and effusive but he waves her off and goes into his office, closing the door. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she says, smiling down at her flower. “I’ve not seen roses like these in years. Herr Oberstleutnant is so good to us.”

It is a beautiful flower. The petals are vivid red, like blood, and are as soft as the insides of cats’ ears. I look to the window at the far end of the corridor, of which I can see just a sliver. All is leaden and grim beyond the glass. I hold more beauty in my hands than there is in the whole city.

Lenore finds two small vases for our roses and places mine beside my typewriter. My eyes can’t help but be drawn to it for the rest of the day.

In the evenings after dinner I try to hide in my room, but from the third day Volker insisted I sit with him in the living room. I’m to read or do anything else I want, but I must remain on the sofa opposite him. I don’t know why, as he ignores me for hours on end, reading over reports which I think must be Stasi intelligence. Occasionally he lifts the telephone at his elbow and makes a call, presumably to one of his colleagues, questioning them about production figures at a factory or the number of new recruits among the border guards. I listen carefully, pretending to read a history of Rome or the Americas, but I don’t learn anything useful. Probably the really interesting work that he does happens behind closed doors where I can’t listen in. It baffles me why he concerns himself with things that seem far beneath him and incredibly tedious. But I begin to realize that Volker is a thorough and methodical man. Thanks to Lenore, I know that the Stasi doesn’t just amass informants and raid the houses of traitors. They do a whole host of things. Gather intel on the West, for instance. Intercept mail and communications, thwart sabotage, investigate suspected dissidents. They guard the Wall and protect government buildings and Party members. They’re responsible for documenting travelers, providing diplomats, liaising with the Soviets, running prisons. Their reach is breath-taking. I had no idea.

Which one of these was our undoing? I wonder. The Stasi knew we planned to flee through the bakery. How?

While covertly studying Volker in the evenings I work out that he’s looking for coincidences or inconsistencies, small things that probably don’t mean anything, but might. When he spots something he picks up the phone and arranges for someone to look into it. Despite my dislike of him I have to respect his dedication t

o his work, though I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that der Mitternachtsjäger is good at his job.

Every now and then his eyes wander from the typed pages and I catch him watching me, his expression thoughtful. Sometimes he looks at my ankles, crossed together as I read. Sometime it’s my neck as I flex it from one side to another, stiff from sitting still too long. My insides clench with alarm when I see him looking at me, wondering if he’s about to get up and move toward me, but he doesn’t. They’re admiring looks. Softly appreciative. I think it must be the way a man looks at a woman when he wants to touch her, but I don’t know how I know that. It unnerves me, and I find myself wishing that if he did have to look at me he would be a lecher, a groper, so I could tell him how disgusting he is.

At night I’m sometimes woken by the click of the latch on the front door and I know he’s going out hunting. He always leaves just before midnight and when he’s gone I get up and watch him through the living room window as his uniformed figure retreats down the garden path to his car. The front door is deadlocked and there’s always a guard standing by the gate. I’ve seen from the kitchen window that there’s another in the alleyway out back. Volker is careful.

When he goes out on these forays he takes his car and drives it himself, but beyond that I have no idea where he goes or what he does. Sometimes I’m still awake when he comes back at two or three or four am. Other nights I fall back asleep and find him standing and reading the paper in the kitchen at half-past seven. He never yawns or appears weary or acknowledges to me that he went out. I covertly study his face, wondering if der Mitternachtsjäger had a successful night or not, but he gives nothing away.

On Sunday morning, after I’ve been his captive for nine days, I go out to the kitchen very early. It’s so early that Frau Fischer hasn’t come yet and I don’t expect Volker to be up, and he doesn’t seem to be as the apartment is quiet. There are small things moving down in the garden, blackbirds and thrushes whirring through the bare branches. I want a cup of coffee, and I stand yawning by the stove waiting for the kettle to whistle and watch a red squirrel take a few pattering steps over the frozen ground.

Nine days. There haven’t been any opportunities to escape as almost every day is the same: I go to Stasi HQ with Volker and then I return with him. If he leaves me alone then there are always soldiers nearby to make sure his prisoner doesn’t get away. But something will happen and I’ll get my chance, I’m sure of it. Volker will let his guard down or he’ll take me somewhere where I can get away from him. Or one of my friends will find me, one of the people who was in the bakery that night who got away. I can’t have been the only one to run back out onto the streets of East Berlin. It was chaos down in the bakery. I was captured because I was unlucky enough to have drawn der Mitternachtsjäger’s attention but that means others could have evaded him. We’ll pass on the street and our eyes will lock, and they’ll know I need help.

I remember Dad and how jumpy he was the night of our intended escape. Maybe it was because of Frau Schäfer being taken, or maybe he had some premonition that it was all going to go wrong. Animals are said to seek shelter hours before a thunderstorm hits through some sixth sense, so maybe that happens to people, too. Or maybe he was just rightly terrified because we were about to attempt something dangerous.

Prison, dead, East or West? I wonder, my mind revolving over where Dad might be. Four possibilities, and Volker knows the answer. He can’t be in the West as he’d never leave me behind in a country he hates, and I will not countenance him being imprisoned or dead. I pray that he’s in the East, biding his time until we can escape together. But I don’t know. I can’t know. So until I ask the possibilities are all true, and none are true.