Monika Schröder: The Dog in the Wood

Afterward, he was exhausted. Fritz lay down on the bales of hay. He pulled his jacket tighter and rolled onto his side, making himself small. He was thirsty, but he didn’t want to go inside. He didn’t want to meet Irmi, who would ask about his swollen face and red eyes. He couldn’t be comforted.

He didn’t know how long he had lain there when Irmi found him.

“What are you doing here? Are you sleeping?”

Fritz got up, put his jacket on the nail by the door, and mechanically began to move the manure onto a heap.

“Are you all right?” She stepped closer, but he pulled away.

“How long do you want to keep this up?” Irmi asked. “You will need to speak to Oma Clara again, eventually.”

He shrugged. “You’re not talking to me either anymore?” she said in her older-sister voice.

“I’m just tired,” he said, too empty to talk. He stabbed the pitchfork into the dirty straw. Lifting the forkful into the wheelbarrow was harder than he remembered.

“Come on! It’s hard for all of us. We have to stick together and keep up the farm.”

“It doesn’t seem so hard for Oma Clara,” Fritz said, forcing the pitchfork into the next heap of dirty straw.

“Of course it is. She just wants us to go on. When Mama comes back, she’ll be very happy and proud of us. Let’s not make it harder for Oma Clara,” Irmi continued. She picked up a shovel and began to help loading up the remaining piles.

“When Mama comes back…, when Mama comes back…,” Fritz repeated her words quietly. “But when will she come back?” He looked at Irmi.

“Oh, Fritz.” Irmi put down the shovel and walked over toward him. He let her put her hand on his shoulder. “We don’t know. All three of us hope for their quick return.”

“But I wish Oma Clara would try harder,” he said, moving just one step aside so that Irmi’s hand slid off.

“No one can do anything,” Irmi said.

“I don’t believe that. Something needs to be done.” Fritz lifted up the wheelbarrow and pushed it toward the barn door. “I can’t stand just sitting and waiting.”

Outside, he unloaded his smelly, steaming load onto the manure heap at the corner of the yard and hurried back into the warm stable. Irmi was shaking the fresh straw out over the floor, distributing it evenly.

“Soon we get to spend some time outside the house anyway.”

“How’s that?”

“A letter from the school administration arrived today. We’ll both begin school on Monday,” Irmi said. “It’ll be good to meet some other kids.”

Fritz hadn’t missed going to school. Right now he couldn’t even imagine mustering the strength to walk to the schoolhouse.

Fritz opened the gray notebook with the torn cover. Some pages had been ripped out. Fräulein Streblow, the teacher, had told them that due to a shortage in paper it would take a while until they would receive new ones. Fritz looked at the lines on the page, then up at the blackboard in the front of the room where Fräulein Streblow had written the first writing assignment on the board: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” All the men in his family had been farmers. He hadn’t written for a long time, and the pencil felt strange in his hand. Fritz had to look at the wall chart with the cursive letters to remember how to form them. The boy next to him was writing quickly. He had already filled several lines. Fräulein Streblow smiled at Fritz encouragingly. Before time was up, Fritz wrote a few sentences on how he would become a farmer.

For recess the students went out into the yard behind the schoolhouse. Fritz unpacked his sandwich and watched the smaller kids draw squares in the sand to play hopscotch.

With a sting, Fritz remembered Mama. She would have made a better sandwich than the dry one Oma Clara had packed. Mama would have accompanied him to school and would have had some encouraging words for the first day. But maybe Fritz was getting too old for that anyway. He could hardly remember the last time he had been at school. As he finished his sandwich, the boy he had sat next to came up to him.

“Are you new here in Sempow?” the boy asked. “You don’t seem to know anyone either.” The boy had curly red hair and freckles. He smiled at Fritz, showing a large gap between his two front teeth.

“Yes, I’m new.” Fritz looked at his sandwich, wishing the boy would go away then.

“Where are you from?”

“From Schwartz.”

“Where’s that?” The boy spoke with the nasal vowels of the sea coast accent.

“It’s about a day’s trip south of here.” Fritz turned sideways to show that the conversation was over.

“My name is Konrad, and yours is Fritz. I saw it on the cover of your notebook.”

Fritz wanted to say something mean, like “Oh, so you can read,” just to make him go away.

“We came from Danzig in a trek,” Konrad said. Fritz suddenly imagined him on one of the rickety carts he had seen with Paul. Konrad was not smiling anymore.

“How long did it take you to get here?” Fritz asked.

“Three weeks. It was terrible. It was so cold. We had to sleep outside, and we were hungry. Once, a farmer took us into his house and gave us soup. It was the most delicious soup I ever had.” Konrad paused. “What did you write about?”

“Write about? When?”

“For the teacher. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I wrote I want to be a farmer.”

“I want to be a railroad man like my dad,” Konrad answered. “My dad worked for the Reichsbahn.”

“Did he drive trains?”

“No. He worked in an office, but he knew a lot about trains. We used to have a big toy train at home in Danzig, but I couldn’t take it with me. I could only bring my book with pictures of our trains.” Before Fritz could ask more about Konrad’s dad, the bell rang and they had to go back inside.

Back in the classroom, Fritz observed Konrad from the corners of his eyes. Konrad listened closely to everything Fräulein Streblow said and raised his hand to answer questions several times. How could Konrad muster all this interest in school? Fritz grew tired from sitting inside for so long. He was glad when it was time to copy down the homework and pack up.

Out in the hallway the boys took their rucksacks from the clothes rack. Konrad asked, “Would you like to come to my house this afternoon to see my train book? I live above the blacksmith’s shop.”

Fritz didn’t know anything about trains. But he was curious about Konrad, who also had lost his home. Fritz hadn’t met with another boy since he and Paul had pushed the Russian on the motorcycle.

“Yes, sure,” Fritz said. Just an hour in the afternoon to look at a train book wouldn’t hurt.

When Fritz opened the gate to the blacksmith’s shop, he faced the broad backside of a horse. A Russian soldier was holding the wooden handle of a small noose that was tied around the horse’s upper lip. Every time the animal jerked its head the soldier turned the noose and tightened its grip. Fritz shivered, thinking of the pain that must cause, being pinched like that on the sensitive upper lip. He stepped closer and noticed the quiver in the animal’s flank. The Russian soldier smiled at him, pretending to salute by tipping his left finger to his cap. Fritz smiled back. The blacksmith stood over the fire in a leather apron, holding a horseshoe in the fire with long tongs. With a swift move he put the red-hot iron on the anvil and began to hammer. Sparks flew left and right from the glowing horseshoe.

“ Guten Tag ! Hey! We have a visitor!” the blacksmith said. “Aren’t you Clara Lendt’s grandson? What’s your name?”