Midnight Hunter

Found myself, as if all this is an accident. The Stasi are probably at our apartment right now, packing our meagre possessions away and taking them to be burned or resold. Traitors forfeit the right to their own property. But did Volker just say what I thought he said—that I’m to go out alone with this girl? My heart leaps. I could lose her in an instant.

“Yes, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the young woman chirrups, taking the wad of Ostmarks he hands to her. “You have an appointment at four pm but I’ll see we’re back before then.”

To my surprise, Volker gives her an amused smile. “Four? Does it take so long to do a little shopping?”

Fräulein Hoffman’s laugh is musical, almost flirtatious, and she flips her long hair over her shoulder. How can she stand to look at him like that? If she secretly hates him she’s doing a very good job of hiding it. “If you want it done properly it will. You did say she needs everything.”

Perhaps she doesn’t hate him. Perhaps she… But I can’t think any further in that direction as it turns my stomach. If he’s got her, why me?

“Hmm. Very well. Hans can drive you, and I’ll call down to the front desk for an escort. And Fräulein Hoffman? I want the receipts, and the change.” He wags an admonishing finger at her, but his smile is teasing.

She opens the door to Volker’s office and hangs up his hat and coat on a hook just inside the door. Returning to us, she bats her eyelashes at him and smiles sweetly. “Of course, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

Volker bestows his smile on me, but I don’t return it. I’m not a child to be indulged and I don’t want to be sent off with this silly young woman to go shopping. Does he think I’ll be grateful if he buys me a new dress? My hand itches to slap the smile from his face and I want to scream at him, Where is my father? I didn’t miss what he said about the escort. He means a guard with a gun. So much for my plans to give Fräulein Hoffman the slip.

Ignoring my baleful look, Volker says, “Enjoy yourself, my factory girl.” And he disappears into his office and closes the door.

Fräulein Hoffman tucks the marks into a white handbag and gives me a broad smile. “This is fun, isn’t it? Much better than the morning of correspondence I thought I had ahead of me.”

She collects her coat from a hat stand cluttered with garments and umbrellas and we head downstairs. The various sections of the office are pointed out to me and she reels off names and departments faster than I can take them in. “Don’t worry if you don’t remember all this,” she says, seeing my bewildered face. “It takes some time to settle in at HQ but I promise everyone’s very friendly.”

I grimace. Friendly, Stasi HQ?

When the elevator opens on the ground floor I see Volker’s black car waiting outside the glass doors and a uniformed guard beside it. He’s young and dark with too-large ears, and as we cross the foyer toward him he watches me like I’m a grenade that might not have its pin. There’s a pistol holstered at his waist. For all Volker’s indulgent smiles it seems he’s taking no risks when it comes to keeping me prisoner.

My companion gives the guard a curious look but doesn’t say anything, and we all get in the car. “Michelstrasse in Prenzlauer Berg please, Hans,” she says to the driver. And to me, “I’m Lenore. I’ve worked at HQ for just over a year now.”

“Evony.”

She waits for me to go on, to tell her something about myself, but I don’t. Her smile fades. A moment later she looks out the window, uncertain. I don’t mean to be unfriendly but nothing feels normal today and I don’t think I can pretend it is. The guard is sitting in the front passenger seat but I feel the constant pressure of his eyes on me in the rear-view mirror. Volker has probably impressed on him it’s more than his life is worth if I get away.

The car stops outside a private residence and not a store, which I find odd, but I get out because Lenore does. She’s talking again, pretending that the moment of awkwardness didn’t happen, and I wonder if this is her coping mechanism for dealing with the Stasi and people like Volker: to pretend everything’s lovely. She can’t actually think it’s lovely, can she?

“…because the shops have barely anything, let alone clothes that look nice on. Herr Oberstleutnant likes us to be well presented at all times and of course it can’t hurt if the other officers are friendly to us, too.” She gives me a knowing smile and I wonder if Lenore is a flirt. But after all there are two men with us now, the driver and the guard, and her eyes have skimmed without interest over them. Maybe her smiles are only for the officers.

We go up to the second floor of the apartment building and Lenore knocks on a door. A woman appears, clothed in the most remarkable assortment of colorful garments, a tape measure round her neck and a pincushion fastened to her wrist. She greets Lenore like an old friend—or a good customer?—smiles at me, frowns at the guard, and ushers us all inside. It’s about the size of Volker’s apartment but every passage and room is stacked with bolts of cloth.

She’s a dressmaker, I realize. That’s what Lenore was saying: you can’t find good clothes like the smart green dress she’s wearing in the stores, but you can have them made. I look around at the silks, wools, velvets and organzas, wondering where they all came from. Not made in the GDR, surely. Maybe in Moscow, but my guess is that most are from France and Italy as the USSR seems to prefer manufacturing synthetic fabrics as they’re easier to mass produce. Stroking a bolt of pale yellow silk I consider how much I’m learning and seeing today. This is a very different East Berlin to the one I lived in. I wish I could tell Ana there is a secret dressmaker in Prenzlauer Berg and that the wives, girl

friends and secretaries of the Party and Stasi men must all shop here.

The dressmaker swats my hand away from the pristine fabric. “Filthy nails,” she scolds. I hide my hand behind my back, my face burning because my nails are filthy, and broken, too.

Lenore speaks briskly. “We need a new work wardrobe for Evony, Frau Schneider. She’s just started at HQ this morning and she only has, well…” Both women look me over, Lenore apologetically and Frau Hoffman critically. With a twist of her mouth the woman bids all of us except the guard follow her down the corridor.

“But I’m to—” the guard begins.

Frau Schneider gives a nasty laugh. “I don’t think so, my boy. Wait outside the room if you must, but you’re not coming in.” She takes us into what was once the living room but has now been turned into a sort of reception area with a large sofa, a green and mustard yellow rug on the floor and stacks of magazines.

“Strip, down to your underwear.” Frau Schneider yanks the measuring tape from around her neck. Seemingly unsurprised by this, Lenore sinks down onto the sofa and starts leafing through a magazine. I look uncertainly between them, not sure why I’m being asked to undress.

“Don’t stand there looking gormless, we’re all women here. Unless you have scales underneath your clothes?” When I still don’t move she shakes the tape measure at me. “I need to measure you.”

I do as I’m told and soon I’m standing in the middle of the room in my bra, briefs, garter belt and knitted stockings while Frau Schneider barks orders at me. “Arms out. Arms down. Stand up straight, girl.”

“You’ve nice legs,” Lenore says to me over the top of her magazine, her head on one side. “Herr Oberstleutnant is fond of nice legs.”

“Short-waisted, though,” the dressmaker mutters, her fingers pressing the tape over my behind as she measures the length of my back. Then she stops what she’s doing and looks at me closely: my face, my breasts, my hips. “Working for Oberstleutnant Volker, are you? Just work clothes? No evening gowns, négligées?”