Midnight Hunter
Lenore bids her goodbye and we head back down to the car, but we don’t get in as she says we can walk. The sun is shining feebly, though it’s still bitterly cold. Lenore huddles in her cream wool coat with its fur collar. The guard trails a few paces behind us and I feel his gaze prickle the back of my neck.
Seeming determined to get me talking, Lenore asks. “So tell me, how well do you know Herr Oberstleutnant?”
“I don’t.”
She frowns, puzzled. “At all? How did you meet?”
I don’t know what to say and I look away, but this only seems to pique Lenore’s interest. She could be an informant or may report anything I say back to Volker. Would this be such a bad thing, though? I’d dearly like to tell him to his face what I think of him, but by proxy will do. “I don’t like him. He frightens me, and he’s making me stay with him in his apartment.”
Lenore’s eyes widen in surprise. “Making you?” Seeing her astonishment I feel tears fill my eyes. It’s just how Ana would look if I confessed the same thing to her and it makes me miss her so much.
“Oh, you poor thing, don’t cry. Here.” Lenore digs a handkerchief out of her handbag and gives it to me. While I wipe my face and try to compose myself, she talks on, briskly. “These are strange times we’re living through what with the Wall and the shortages and the border closing. But the Party has our best interests at heart and we have to make the best of things, don’t you think?”
No, I don’t think, but I don’t want to say so to her and with the guard listening in.
“You’re lucky that he’s interested in you. Oberstleutnant Volker is…a difficult man.” Lenore gives me a quick, wry smile, as if he’s a poorly trained but loveable hound. “But he’s very handsome, too. Most of the secretaries at HQ have tried to catch his eye but he keeps to himself most of the time. If you can grow to like him and make him fall in love with you, he might marry you.”
The suggestion makes me want to be sick. I know Lenore is trying to be helpful and I am grateful for that, but like Frau Fischer Lenore seems only to want to please Volker. And he’s difficult? He’s a cold-blooded killer.
The fact that Lenore doesn’t ask why Volker is keeping me in his apartment doesn’t surprise me. We don’t know each other and the world we live in doesn’t invite easy confidences. Prying isn’t just considered rude, it’s suspicious, and plainly she thinks I’ve landed on my feet so what could I gain by questioning things?
I refold the handkerchief and hand it back to her. “Thank you for being kind to me. I know you don’t have to be.”
“Oh, don’t be silly! I’ve been dying for Herr Oberstleutnant to get another secretary so I’d have some company again, and you’re miles
better than old Frau Hahn who had the job before you. She retired a few weeks ago. Dry old bat. Smoked horrid f6s all day and made me do all the work.”
Despite everything, I manage a watery laugh. “I’m afraid I won’t be much better. I only know how to solder radios.”
She links her arm through mine, as if determined that we shall now be the best of friends. “Yes, but I will have fun teaching you and I know you’ll put some energy into the job. And you needn’t smoke f6s. A few smiles at Herr Oberstleutnant or another officer and you can get Kents or Marlboros.”
I’d sooner die than smile at Volker or any other Stasi officer. “Oh, I shan’t bother. I don’t smoke.”
“Even better—you can trade with them. Do you know that three boxes of Kents will fetch a pair of silk stockings, or a little bottle of French perfume? A tiny bottle, but it lasts for ages.”
I listen as Lenore explains the unofficial bartering that goes on around Stasi HQ. Though the items are different, the system is familiar. We would trade for things in the factory and our apartment building, like exchanging apples for string. Silk stockings didn’t come into it.
She takes me into one small, understocked store after another, the indifferent wares laid out on dusty shelves. Everything has a picked-over look and we have to rummage to find anything decent. Lenore asks me what I already have. “Lipstick? Nylons? Underwear?” I shake my head at each query and she grows more and more incredulous. I can feel her wanting to ask me how this could be, but in the end she seems to decide it’s better not to know. “Well, we’ll just have to get you everything.”
I let her choose the stockings, lipstick, powder and nightclothes for me. She tells me which shoes to try on, and she decides on two pairs of pumps with two-inch heels, one brown and one black. Only the black ones are leather, and Lenore had to go through a mountain of boxes to find them. I can tell she’s pleased with herself as her cheeks are pink with accomplishment.
There’s a pair of white patent leather heels that she looks at for a very long time, but then puts back, her expression pained. I notice they’re her size, not mine. “Don’t you want those?”
She shakes her head, lips tight, and I guess the reason she put them back isn’t that she doesn’t want them, but that she can’t afford them. Despite her adoration of Volker, I like Lenore. I think Ana would have liked her too. I pick the white shoes up along with my black and brown shoes and head toward the register. “We’ll pretend they’re for me.”
“No, Evony, don’t—” She tries to take them back but I don’t let her. The look in her eyes is so grateful that I might have just snatched her firstborn from the path of a speeding car. “Danke. It’s like finding hen’s teeth, shoes like that in East Berlin. If I waited until my next paycheck they would have been sold for sure. I’ll pay you back.”
Doing this for Lenore is the only good thing about today, and I shake my head. I saw the stack of bills he gave her and it’s more than enough to cover all this. “No, you won’t. It’s not my money.”
We move onto buying bras, briefs and garter belts, and here Lenore insists that I take some interest. I tell her I want the plainest ones that will fit me: no lace, no satin, and no pretty colors. In this the store is against her as it stocks almost exclusively ugly tan garments.
Putting down a black satin garter belt, she sighs. “Fine. But you’re getting cream, not the tan. I’m holding the money, remember?” Lenore gathers up the underthings that I’ve chosen, along with a basketful of lotions, soaps and other bathroom supplies, and goes to pay.
Carrying string bags full of shopping we head back to the car, the now thoroughly bored guard trailing in our wake.
“It’s only midday so we’ll go back to my apartment, have some lunch, and get you fixed up in your new things.” Lenore smiles, but my heart plummets. I loathe the prospect of being presented to Volker for inspection. I’m not a willing participant in any of this and I don’t want him getting the impression that I am.
Lenore’s apartment is just a short drive away and she shares it with another secretary who works in a different government building. The apartment is small and plain but they’ve made it cheerful by putting up fashion photographs from Western magazines and draping bright cloths over the furniture.