HOLLY ANHOLT

Tenant

IT’S SO THAT I HAD BEEN WARNED by Oksana about Simona Jastrow. I took care right from the start with her. It’s the case that, combined with suspicions I could scarcely avoid about myself for having made my deal with the Schiessls, Simona’s presence in my parents’ old house seemed to me a cruel omen. She was obviously obsessive, demanding, self-deluded, narcissistic, and mistrustful, the kind of person you could try to win over and be left with nothing but sand in your smile. So why did I come to pity her? I suppose for all those reasons. Or what I could finally see was her intelligence. Simona was right about something: that every person’s politics are so deeply mixed with the personal that terrible mix-ups between them can take place. That the divorce of individuals could be confused with the divorce of peoples seemed as plausible as it was terrible.

As for the odd coincidence that she had once informed on my lawyer Anja to the Stasi, I knew it because Oksana had told me even when Anja had not. As between myself and Anja, and myself and Simona, it had to remain a secret. I didn’t wish Simona to have another reason to mistrust me.