Tante Eva

by Paula Bomer

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

The story of a woman in Berlin and her American niece, a pair bound together and driven apart by loves, desires, frustrations, and addictions.



East Berlin, a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eva, a retired nurse living in poverty in a slum-like apartment block, makes it through her day on a combination of stimulants and sleeping pills, wine and brandy. She waits for visits from her married lover and makes occasional attempts at contact with her distant daughter. Her friendly teenaged neighbor is her closest companion. Then her American niece, Maggie, arrives in Berlin. Eva is thrilled. But happiness begins to slide from Eva's grasp as Maggie's own fierce drug addiction reveals itself.



Tante Eva is a story that deftly takes in decades of family history and German history, estrangement, joys, and disappointments. It is a portrait of East Berlin in the years after the wall came down, and a story of a family torn apart by personalities, histories, and addictions. It is the finest book yet from Paula Bomer, an author whose work Jonathan Franzen describes as "some of the rawest and most urgent writing I can remember encountering."

Release date: May 18, 2021

Publisher: Soho Press

Print pages: 264

Sample

Chapter 1

It was dark even though it was only four thirty in the afternoon. That’s how it was in November. Eva walked the five blocks from the shopping district to her apartment building, an immensely tall, white building, constructed in the 1960s. In any other country it would have been a housing project, but in East Berlin at the time it was built, everyone—well, almost everyone—lived in buildings like hers. Now, her area had become a sort of slum. She walked slowly, the support hose chafing her thighs. She had varicose veins and was overweight, and the hose helped, for the most part. She passed a group of skinheads standing on the corner. “Guten Abend, Fräulein,” one said in a deep, joking voice. Laughter broke out. There were three of them this afternoon, smoking cigarettes, bottles of beer in their hands. One was clearly the ringleader, the one who had greeted her. He was mocking her; she wasn’t stupid. They were probably in their twenties, but they looked ancient—translucent skin, a glowing red emanating from underneath. She knew what that was—the drink. Often she thought, where are their mothers?
     She had in mind to greet them back, but she was afraid, even though she tried to convince herself they wouldn’t hurt her. She was very Aryan. Wasn’t that what they worshipped? Blonde, blue-eyed people—the master race? Why menace her? She tried walking more quickly, something she was sure they noticed. She looked down at the sidewalk, avoiding their gaze. She sped up a bit, ashamed, ashamed of her fear. Fear and anger, how they go together, what twins they are. The smallest of the group—shorter than her, the short ones always had to prove themselves—started following her. He was to the left of her now, imitating her awkward gait. He smelled like alcohol. He brandished his bottle of beer like a weapon. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed his leather jacket, his tattered jeans, his black boots. A swastika tattoo on his neck. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen any of them, and yet she couldn’t help noticing more details each time. When one of them got a new tattoo, when they were so high they just slouched sitting with their backs against the abandoned corner building, when one had a black eye. And she knew some of their names at this point. The ringleader was Johann.
    “Kann ich Ihnen helfen, Fräulein?” he asked, making a bowing motion at her.
     “Nein danke,” she said. She looked at him, trying to avoid his eyes, but they caught. Something about his face made her shudder—the wide nose, the weak chin, the hanging lips. He looked like someone she once knew. Was he one of her daughter’s old classmates? What happened to people?
     Finally, he was behind her.
 
• • •
 
She tried to reason with herself, to calm herself. They only hurt the Turks and the Arabs and the Africans, of whom there were so many now that the Wall was down. They weren’t crazy about some of the Slavs, either, the darker ones. When eastern Germany had been East Germany, she was never scared, not once. There was no crime. There were no skinheads, not visibly at least.
     Now, well, now it was very different. It wasn’t the city she’d moved to decades ago. And even then, she moved here because of Hugo, her husband. But it was her home now. It had been for a long time. She still had her Austrian passport. Her brother lived in Vienna and had for years told her to move there. She couldn’t. For one, she couldn’t leave her lover, Hansi. Never could she leave him. She loved her siblings—her brother in Vienna, her sister in America—but she didn’t want to move. She just wanted the old GDR back. And she wanted her Hansi, too, even though he was married, even though he hid things from her. She knew he hid things from her to protect her. But sometimes she wanted to know him better, to know everything about him. If he only had more time for her. If only he would leave that woman. Marry her. When she caught herself thinking this way, she tried to reason with herself. One thought was, in time. In time, they would be together.
     Her building stretched up high above her. All around were empty lots, half-torn-down buildings, and squatters and beggars and immigrants filling them. Fires broke out with some regularity. She put her bag down and fumbled with her keys. She was shaking fairly badly, finding it difficult to get the key in the lock. The elevator was broken, this she knew, and once in, she walked the ten flights very slowly. Thank goodness for the support hose. She used to travel to the West to buy them. Her legs were thick and swollen and throbbing, just from an hour or so of walking. Some days were harder than others. Some days, she didn’t even notice her legs. Some days her legs felt fine, when she was high and happy and when Hansi was waiting outside.
     She saw her neighbor Gabi’s daughter on the way in.
    “Hallo,” the girl said, standing outside her half-open door. A nice girl, maybe eighteen, but still living with her mother and taking care of her. She had values. Family values. She was devoted.
    “Hallo, Krista,” Eva said. “Kann ich Dir helfen?” she asked. So many pretty things about her, thought Eva. Long, thick hair, like so many young girls, not aware of how it’ll thin. High breasts, cheekbones and a mouth like a pink cushion.
    “Danke,” Eva said, and Krista took her bags and her keys and let her in to the apartment. If her daughter couldn’t help her, she may as well borrow her neighbor’s. Krista seemed to enjoy helping her. She had a heart. Eva assumed it was also nice to get out of her mother’s apartment, to have a break from tending to her mother’s every need. The poor woman. She’d been sick for so long.
 
• • •
 
After holding the door for Eva, Krista came in and locked the door behind them. She set down the canvas bag with milk, cheese, and coffee, as well as the sleeping pills. Eva didn’t hide anything from Krista at this point. Krista knew about the pills. God knows what her mother was on. She began laying out everything on the counter for Eva, hanging the bag on a hook next to the sink.
    “Du bist so lieb, Krista,” Eva said.
    “Ach, das ist doch nichts,” Krista said and sat down on the hard-backed wooden chair at the small table against the wall.
“Wie geht’s? Was machen deine Beine?”
     Eva sat on her twin bed, a cot really, and rubbed her legs. She wanted to take off her hose. They were constricting and she was ready to be rid of them, even though they were so helpful. As close as she felt to Krista, she’d never undressed in front of her. “Nicht so gut heute, wenn ich ehrlich bin,” she said.
    “Das tut mir leid, Eva,” Krista said, and looked at her with a piercing sort of warmth, a look new to Eva.
    “Ich könnte sie massieren,” Krista offered.
     Eva was taken slightly aback. This was new. She’d never offered to rub her legs before. She always inquired as to how Eva’s legs were; she knew of Eva’s pain. Eva knew that Krista changed her mother’s bedpans, bathed her, did everything for her. Rubbing her legs was nothing in comparison, perhaps.
     “Wirklich?” Eva asked.
     “Hier, lass mich mal,” Krista said, and knelt on the cheap blue rug at the side of Eva’s bed. Eva watched as Krista removed first her shoes, untying them carefully, setting them, lined up, next to her. They were good shoes; they weren’t leather, they were synthetic, but they had cushioned supporting soles. Then, Krista, determined, began pulling down Eva’s stockings. Eva, to her great discomfort, felt a second of arousal, and her face went red.
      “Krista,” she said, “lass mich.” She tried to stand. Krista, hands on Eva’s thighs, pulled them down and off swiftly, much more quickly and less painfully than when Eva did it herself.
     There was a whiff of stink in the air, like sour milk. Eva’s flesh, her feet. Now the two women looked at each other as Krista began to massage Eva’s thighs. Eva stared into Krista’s gray eyes. Then she looked down at her own legs—blotchy, but mostly pale with a slight olive undertone. Her sister claimed their ancestors had been raped by Genghis Khan, which is why they weren’t totally fair skinned. Rivers of veins under the flesh, rising at points, then fading deep into her body. Krista’s hands were long fingered and she slightly pinched when she dug into Eva’s thighs. She looked at the top of Krista’s head, a middle part down her visibly oily hair. The scalp that showed had white flakes, and Eva could smell her too, not just herself.
     She closed her eyes. A vision of washing her younger sister’s hair in Leoben, after her mother died and she became the caregiver. Wrapping her naked six-year-old body in a towel, rubbing her dry, hairless vagina, her tears. “Nicht so doll,” she’d cry. And Eva, overwhelmed, saying, “Halt die Klappe!” Eva then would brush her tangled hair and Liezel would try not to cry, saying, “Das tut weh.” Eva ripped through, saying nothing, yanking harder as she braided her hair, hoping it hurt her.
     “Zu doll?” Krista asked, a bit of perspiration on her upper lip, above that pink cushion mouth.
     “Nein, nein,” Eva said. It was slightly too hard, but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She leaned back against the wall. Krista stopped for a minute to put the one pillow on the bed behind Eva’s back.
      “Du bist ein Engel,” Eva said quietly, and Krista rubbed and rubbed, from her thighs down to her feet, ending by rubbing each toe, one at a time.
 
After Krista left, Eva sat there on her bed and felt how smoothly her breath came and went. She closed her eyes and thought about how soon she could take her night pill. Since she’d stopped working as a nurse, she worried about getting her prescriptions filled. But there had been no problems. She took stimulants in the morning and often at lunch, sleeping pills at night. Six of each of them on a good day, more if she was having a bad day. She knew it was why she trembled. She knew it was why she sometimes saw things late at night, when the blue light of the moon shone into her room, on her bed, next to the only window in her apartment. She knew all this, of course. And so? It was her life. It was how she liked things.
     She’d first eat. She had some bread from yesterday; it was stale, but it would do. She cut it into thick slices and then cut the cheese, layering it with care on the bread. She sat at the table. There was a bottle of red wine on the table, and she poured herself a large water glass full of it. She was home. As humble as it was—one rectangular room, the small table against the wall with two chairs, her bed, a wardrobe, and her record player on a low table with a handful of records stacked neatly beneath—it was hers.
     She would eat in silence tonight. Maybe take an extra sleeping pill or two and then play a record. Yes. That is what she would do.