Adam and Evelyn (15 page)

“DO YOU WANT
to come along, Pepi?” Evelyn asked. “We’re going down to the lake.”

Pepi was sitting beside Adam and browsing through the magazines.

Frau Angyal was sitting across from them. “Pepi, Evelyn asked you a question.”

“Are you coming with us?”

“No, I’m staying here,” Pepi said and turned the page. Evelyn offered a quick wave, and with a beach bag slung over his shoulder and a blanket under his arm, Michael called out, “Later!”

“We will see you later,” Frau Angyal responded, but she didn’t bother to look up either.

Evelyn walked ahead, Michael followed. They walked around the house in silence and then down to the road.

Evelyn came to a sudden halt and turned around.

“I’m so sorry, I couldn’t help myself, it just slipped out somehow.”

“What did?”

“You’re not angry with me?”

“I don’t have the vaguest idea—”

“For playing along with their stupid game, for—oh, you know what I mean.”

“Let’s walk on ahead—not here.”

“I’m just not up to this.”

“It’s no wonder—come on, Eve.”

“That cow, that stupid cow doesn’t even answer me.”

“But then why did you ask her?”

“That’s what I meant, it just happened somehow.”

Michael nodded.

“I’m no match for that kind of hatred.”

“I told you right off that we needed to—”

“In her mind now I’m just a floozy, a slut—”

“Eve, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“ ‘Western whore,’ that’s what they’re thinking, believe me. It wasn’t enough that I walked out on their beloved Adam, but then I go and get myself a Westie!”

“A paying guest.”

“That makes it even worse. They hate you for that too.”

“Calm down, Eve. Nobody hates us. But it just doesn’t compute for me, why you want to stay here, with the Angyals. I’ve been asking myself that all along.”

“My stupid neediness. I really was looking forward to seeing Pepi again, her parents, the house.”

“He never would have found us anywhere else.”

“You don’t know Adam. He would have searched till … And then these damn women! When they gang up on you, there’s nothing more cold blooded, more patronizing!”

“We’ll look for something really nice, for a place that’s much, much nicer.”

“Do you know what’s the worst part? The worst part is that I actually feel guilty, because I think exactly the same way they do.”

“Eve! He cheated on you for years, and now, when you’re beginning a new life—”

“But how? Do you suppose they’re going to open up the border again? The Hungarians can’t afford to try that. And at some point they’ll just transport them all back here, every single one of them!”

“That’s not going to happen, believe me.”

“Didn’t you hear about it? They shot those two people, two people—”

“One, and he attacked them first—”

“Baloney—‘attacked,’ that’s their lingo. They just picked them off, your fine Hungarians. We’re in the East here, even if you do see it differently. You don’t know them.”

“It doesn’t matter, Eve, by Christmas we’ll be together.”

“I’ve heard enough of that fairy tale. We’ve been here for almost two weeks now, and nothing’s happened.”

“You can depend on it.”

“Depend on what?”

“On me.”

“You can’t change anything, not one damn thing!”

“The most important thing is not to be afraid. That’s so important.”

“But I’m not as strong as you seem to think. I’m not going to climb into a car trunk, or run between border guards, ducking real quick when they shoot.”

“You don’t need to be anyone else but you.”

“For you I’m just the nice little waitress, and if you say jump, then I jump. That’s not who I am!”

“Whatever you say you are, that’s who you are—you, just as I see you right now.”

“Oh! There’s no way you can know who I am.”

“Let’s move out. At least the last few days without any Angyals or that tailor.”

“No.”

“And for all I care into the Budapest Hilton. I’ll try to get another week of vacation, and if it’s at all possible, I’ll stay.”

“A couple of days in the Hilton, and then I get to move to a camp, thirty people to a tent, like Palestinians. The camps are full of Stasi plants, who then later will plead to be allowed back in, into their socialist fatherland.”

“We’ll go to the embassy together, I’ll take care of things. You’ll be
able to find a place to live somewhere, I’ll pay for it, and when everything’s all set—”

“As an embassy refugee living outside the walls? Are you ever a dreamer! Now that’s enough to make me afraid.”

“Eve, stop it, you’d wear just about anybody out.”

“That’s what I said, you don’t know me. And if this is already too much for you—”

“Let’s take it one step at a time. We can get married, we’ve always got that possibility. For now let’s just find another place to stay, okay?”

“And what sort of place?”

“One where we don’t have to lie on the floor and nobody’s upset that we’re together.”

“And Elfriede? I can’t just carry her around with me.”

“Then give the turtle as a present to the Angyals or Adam, he’s the one who dragged it all the way here.”

“Just a moment, please. I’d be insulting them for good and all.”

“What do you mean, ‘insulting’? The Angyals? You really are an angel.”

“It is, or at least it was, a friendship. It’s also a matter of hospitality. I could never do it.”

“ ‘Hospitality’?”

“You don’t understand.”

“They treat you, like, well, you know, like you yourself said, and now you start in about hospitality.”

“Come on, let’s keep walking.”

Michael tried to hold the beach bag and blanket on one side and put his other arm around Evelyn, but the bag kept slipping off his shoulder. They crossed the road and now started down the footpath shaded by trees.

“Am I seeing things,” Evelyn asked, “or are there really more people here every day?”

“They have to open the border, that’s the only thing that will work. Half of East Germany is camped out here.”

“Maybe I
will
tell Pepi that he likes to screw his customers, how I had to see it with my own eyes the day I came home early.”

“Oh, Eve. There’s no reason you have to do that. She’d only think you’re trying to justify yourself. That gets you nowhere, believe me, absolutely nowhere.”

“What a shame. I should have taken a picture, Adam with his fat Lilli in the bathtub.”

“You act as if you have to prove something to them. Why? You don’t have to rely on them. In a couple of months we’ll send them a pretty postcard from Rio or Paraty!”

“I feel like I’ve been thrown overboard. Pepi is my friend, not his. They’d never have met if it weren’t for me.”

There was still an open spot on the meadow close to the bulrushes. Michael spread out the blanket and arranged two rolled-up towels as side-by-side pillows. Evelyn pulled off her skirt but kept her T-shirt on. Michael began to rub lotion on her legs. “You want me to pick up the story where we left off?”

Evelyn nodded, laid her head back on her crossed hands, and closed her eyes.

“The machine painted white had told the first story, and now Trurl called for the second machine to approach, it curtsied to the king and—”

“The king was going to explain,” Evelyn said softly, “why he’s shaped like a sphere.”

“Okay, fine,” Michael said, then wiped his hands on the grass and lit a cigarette.

“Eve, hello, Eve?” Michael whispered.

Evelyn’s face was hidden by her hair. Michael bent down to her. She was snoring softly. Her legs had goose bumps. Michael spread her skirt over her thighs, stubbed his cigarette out in the grass, and lay down on his back. If he turned his head toward Evelyn, he could kiss the tips of her hair.

“HOW ABOUT
a last swim?” Evelyn asked. “The moon’s out.” Michael had stopped on the restaurant terrace, where a band dressed in pleated shirts and red bow ties was still playing Abba songs. The vocalist’s voice was barely audible, although her lips were touching the microphone.

“That stuff has a life of its own!” Michael bounded down the stairs, kicking his legs high.

Pretending her left fist was a mike, Evelyn sang, “You are the dancing queen,” and stretched out her right arm to point at Michael. He grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Thanks,” he said.

“That was fun! Where did you learn all that?”

“What?”

“All those dances. You’ve got to teach them to me, one by one.”

“But you can already do them.”

“Nah, can’t either.”

“You looked me right in the eye and did them.”

“And the second you let go it was all over.”

Michael bent down and picked Evelyn up in both arms. She threw her arms around his neck, laid her head on his shoulder. After a few yards she lost a sandal.

With Evelyn still in his arms Michael did a knee bend, snatched the sandal up with one finger, straightened up, and kept on going.

When he stopped, she kissed him on the neck. “Just a little farther, one tiny little bit farther,” Evelyn whispered.

“Merde!” He tried to set Evelyn down. She held on tight. “The car,” he said, and untangled himself from her.

The door on the driver’s side was half open.

“Didn’t you lock it?”

Michael walked around the car.

Evelyn put her hands to her mouth when she saw the smashed window. Michael sat down in the passenger seat and opened the glove compartment.

“And?” she asked.

His hands were still groping. “Gone. It’s all gone.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” Michael said and pulled a wad of forints from his shirt pocket. “That’s all I have to my name.”

“Your papers too?”

“And the credit cards, the whole works.”

“You didn’t leave anything back in the room?”

“The door key.”

“They stole the radio!”

“They could have that as a present.”

“How did they get it out?”

“I’m such an idiot. I didn’t want to dance with a big bulge in my pants pocket. I figured, it’s a hotel parking lot, nothing like this is going to happen.”

“It’s my fault. If I’d had a purse, but I’m just not a purse person, I—”

“We’ve got to get the police here.”

“This late?”

The large glass door to the hotel was locked. Michael rang several times. A gaunt old man fingered his bundle of keys as he approached. For a good while they stood opposite each other, separated by the heavy pane. Both rattled the door—the doorman inside, Michael outside.
“Goddammit, it’s locked, doesn’t he realize that?” The doorman vanished.

“I’m sorry, I apologize,” Evelyn caressed Michael’s hand.

“They may be in cahoots. He’s supposed to watch the parking lot and has locked himself inside here now.” Michael pounded on the door. The doorman came running back, holding a key up high.

“Are you certain that this happened to you here?” the doorman asked, with the receiver in hand as he dialed.

“Who’s going to park a car here with a smashed window and leave money inside?”

Michael had to spell his name and provide his license number and the make of the car.

“They are coming to investigate,” the doorman said and pointed to a sofa, framed by two floor ashtrays, their silver hemispheres overflowing with butts.

“Let’s wait outside,” Evelyn said.

“Be glad the car’s still there,” the doorman said as he held the door open for them, and then relocked it behind them.

Michael sat down on the top step and lit a cigarette. “Want one?”

Evelyn shook her head. “No matter what, it was wonderful, no one can take that away from us,” she said.

“Are you chilly?”

She leaned against him. “Maybe it’s a sign, maybe it means something good.”

“What good could it possibly mean?”

“Maybe it says that we two should cross the border together.”

“Cross the border, where there’s woods and fields? Illegally?”

“Yes, sure, we don’t have anything on us. And if they grab us, you say you’re from Hamburg and I’m your wife.”

“Who’s going to buy that story?”

“They won’t know any better. And in the West they’ll figure out what’s what, but maybe they’ll catch on and say, yes, it’s true.”

“But why should anyone from the West cross illegally?”

“Well, because he doesn’t have any papers. You yourself said it was a fifty-fifty chance.”

“You must be kidding!”

“Don’t you want to try it? The two of us together, hand in hand, we just run across?”

“If they nab me, I guarantee they’ll think I’m a spy or whatever.”

“But they don’t know who you are.”

“They’ll figure it out. And then I land in East Berlin.”

“We’d have a good excuse.”