Midnight Hunter

Once I’ve made my coffee I stand where I am, sipping it, my hands clasped about the mug and enjoying a rare moment of solitude.

Except I’m not alone. A movement out of the corner of my eye makes me turn and I see Volker in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching me. He’s in his shirtsleeves, his hands deep in his trouser pockets. I don’t know why but I find him even more unnerving when he’s not in uniform. The nights when he takes his jacket off, throwing it over the sofa and rolling his sleeves back I find it hard to concentrate on my book. My eyes keep drifting up from the page to look at his forearms, which are strong and roped with veins. His skin has a faint golden cast to it even in the depths of winter and his hands are large and square. His bearing is confident. The people I’ve known all my life don’t look like Volker. I prefer him in uniform because it reminds me of what he is: a Stasi officer, not a man.

He steps forward, his eyes on my hair. I normally keep it pinned up but this morning I haven’t bothered yet and it’s hanging in long curls. He lifts his hand and brushes the back of a finger down one strand and I feel it as keenly as if he were caressing my face. It’s so intimate, so private in the post-dawn hush. We might be anyone. We might be lovers. I feel an awful compulsion to angle my cheek toward the warmth of his hand. But he’s Volker, not my lover, and not someone I should be letting my guard down around let alone wanting him to touch me. I jerk away like he’s burned me.

And he looks hurt. Breathing my anger in and out through my nose, all the words I don’t dare say to him blare in my head. You don’t get to be hurt that I don’t want you to touch me. You stole me, you’re keeping me prisoner. I’m the one who reproaches you.

Smoothing out the taut expression on his face, Volker looks back at my hair. “You should wear it down sometimes, Liebling.” He leans past me and grasps the coffee pot, and I hurry out of the room.

Anger boils through me for the rest of the day and I can’t take to anything. I almost wish it wasn’t Sunday and I was at Stasi HQ so I could lose myself in work. Why I should be so unreasonably furious about what happened in the kitchen I don’t know, until I realize that I’ve gradually begun thinking of Volker not as a Stasi officer, and not as der Mitternachtsjäger, but as a person. I don’t want him to become a person to me. I don’t want to admire the verve with which he works or enjoy the low rumble of his voice as he talks on the telephone, twisting a fountain pen in his long fingers. He’s a cruel, cold-blooded killer who—

And then I remember. How could I have forgotten? He’s a Nazi on top of everything else. I held the picture in my own hands: Oberstleutnant Reinhardt Volker of the Staatssicherheit was once Hauptmann Reinhardt Volker of the Wehrmacht. Someone in the factory got a hold of the photo and we passed it around furtively, this evidence that the man we most feared was once a hated Nazi. Some people, especially the men of my father’s age and older who’d been conscripted, were circumspect, saying that not everyone who fought for Germany was a Nazi. They were in the minority, though. He was an officer, most said. He wasn’t like us. Those that had power then have power now. The bastards in charge have merely changed their uniforms.

By evening I’m thoroughly enraged, with both him and myself, and I decide that this bizarre attraction I have to him stops now. I should have made more of an effort to get to know the boys at school and the young men at the factory instead of holding out for a ridiculous fantasy. Then I could have experienced what normal attraction was like. This close proximity to Volker is making me crazy.

After a silent dinner, we sit on the sofas as usual and he works, but I can’t keep my eyes on my book. They flick up every few minutes to glare at him and my heel bounces on the rug.

Finally, Volker looks at my feet and puts his papers aside. Folding his hands together, he asks, “Is there something you wish to say, Evony?”

Oh, you bet there is. I can’t hold it in any longer and the words come out like bullets. “What did you do during the war?”

He raises his eyebrow in surprise. “The war? I was in the Wehrmacht, an officer in the Afrikakorps. Why?”

“Were you a Nazi?”

Something flickers in Volker’s eyes, almost as if he’s flinched. “No. I was in the armed forces, not the Waffen-SS.”

I’ve heard this distinction before but I don’t know enough about the two divisions to understand what that means. I do know that the SS were more brutal and terrifying than the regular army. They ran the secret services and the concentration camps and were closer to Hitler. But Hitler and his subordinates commanded the Wehrmacht, too.

“Where were you born?” We were taught in school that there were never any fascists in East Germany, that they all came from the West. I don’t know whether this is true or not but it’s all I have to go on.

“Dresden. Evony, why all the questions?”

Dresden is in East Germany and he could be telling the truth. After all there is a picture of Dresden in my bedroom and an antique, gold-rimmed Dresden porcelain dinner set displayed in a glass cabinet not six feet from where I’m sitting. I examined it late one night when he was out hunting, looking for more clues as to who this man is.

Instead of answering his question I ask another of my own. I don’t know where this newfound bravado has come from but I’m determined to use it before it dries up. “Did all the fascists come from the West or is that just what the Party wants us to believe?”

Volker laughs, a genuine, amused laugh. “They still teach you that? Germany was divided down arbitrary lines after the war. East Germany is geographically close to the USSR so this eastern sector now answers to the USSR. Of course some Nazis were born and bred in what is now East Germany.”

Is that the extent of his loyalty to the Soviets and communism, the fact that he found himself in a part of Germany closer to the USSR? If he can base his loyalty on something as flimsy as geography then I can very well believe he was once a fascist. “So you were a Nazi.”

His face hardens. I know I should stop talking but I’m tired of all this hypocrisy and pretense. I jump to my feet, no longer able to control my emotions. “Why can’t you just admit it? You exchanged one regime for another, one uniform for the next. If China invaded tomorrow you would probably be wearing their uniform by sunset. You love power more than you love what is good and right, and you always have.”

Volker stands too, looming over me, his eyes dark and flashing. I seem to ha

ve gravely offended him. “Call me a Nazi again, Liebling, and I will make you regret it.”

He’s standing very close, too close, and even with his jaw set in anger he’s handsome. “You’ve already taken everything from me. You’re a Nazi. So go on, hit me, send me to prison, do your worst. Do you think I care?”

But he only shakes his head slowly, frowning like he’s puzzled. “I don’t think you really believe that. So why are you…?” Then his face clears and a smile dawns on his lips. “Ah, I see what you are doing. You were hoping I was a Nazi, weren’t you? Is it easier for you to think of me as a monster?”

His sudden change of attitude catches me off guard. I prefer him to be angry so I can be defiant. I don’t know what to do when he smiles at me. “You are a monster. You’re keeping me here against my will.”

“I’m keeping you safe. Do you know where you’d be if any other Stasi officer had caught you? In Hohenschönhausen. They’re not all as merciful as I am.” He hooks an arm around my waist and draws me closer to him. I feel the heat coming off his body and my hands come up to press against his chest. I stare up into his face, too shocked to react or pull away. When he speaks his voice rumbles against my fingers.

“I’m not a monster, Evony. I’m very nice if you get to know me better. Would you like to get to know me better?”

I open my mouth to protest that it’s the last thing I want, but he kisses me. His arms wrap around me and his lips are soft but insistent. It’s just like that first night in his apartment, my head screaming that this is wrong but my body not listening. So this is what it’s like to be kissed. Every place he’s touching me, his lips on my mouth, his hands on my back, feels over-sensitized.