Monika Schröder: The Dog in the Wood

“We owe it to the nation to defend ourselves!” Grandpa declared resolutely. “We cannot surrender to the Bolsheviks!” Small pearls of sweat collected on his forehead. The old man used the back of his huge hand to swipe it off. “We cannot just give up!” he blustered, pushing his chair back and leaving the kitchen, taking his plate with him.

“Let him be!” Oma Lou pleaded.

“Let him be. He doesn’t let us be! That’s the problem!” Mama shook her head and took another bite from her bread. Fritz looked at his sister. Irmi began to cry. He forced himself to take another bite from his half-eaten sandwich. Mama, still chewing, bent across the table and squeezed Irmi’s hand.

“I’m so afraid. What are they going to do to us?” Irmi sobbed. Fritz wished she would stop right now.

“It’ll be all right. Don’t worry,” Mama said, swallowing. “We don’t have anything they want.”

“But I heard Erna Seiler talk about what they are doing to women and girls. She heard it from a woman who fled from the East. They put a girl in a…” Irmi was now dissolving in tears. Fritz wanted to run outside. Why couldn’t she keep quiet? It was hard to breathe in the kitchen, but he was not allowed to leave the dinner table before everyone was finished.

“It will be all right,” Oma Lou said, wringing her hands helplessly. “The Almighty will protect us!” Oma Lou hardly ever mentioned God, and the family seldom attended church. Hearing her mention God now was more alarming than comforting.

Mama and Oma Lou exchanged worried looks. Fritz wiped his mouth with the back of his right hand, leaving a glistening smear on his skin. He forced himself to take the last bite from his sandwich. The bread tasted like paper. He took a sip of milk to make swallowing easier.

“Would anyone like a piece of sheet cake?” Oma Lou asked. But they had all lost their appetites, and Mama started to collect the dishes. Fritz felt bad to turn down Oma Lou’s offer, but he needed to get up and move around. He returned the butter to the cellar. Irmi washed her face at the kitchen sink.

From the living room they could hear the sound of the radio. After a long high-pitched static squeak, classical music flowed from the brown receiver. Fritz was drying the dishes when the familiar voice of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, began a speech honoring the führer’s birthday. Dramatically, he affirmed Germany’s final victory and thanked Hitler in the name of the German nation. Due to the static Fritz could not understand everything, but he picked up the words “heroes” and “infamy of the enemy.” Goebbels continued, “Within a few years after the war Germany will flourish as never before. Its ruined landscapes and provinces will be filled with new, more beautiful cities and villages.” Oma Lou shook her head and turned to join her husband in the living room. Fritz put the last plate back into the cupboard. Mama removed her apron and hung it on a nail close to the door.

“They don’t know what they are saying anymore. The Nazis have lost. They just don’t know it yet. It’s time for peace.”

Grandpa Karl didn’t let Lech sit at the family table, so Mama had Fritz take his meals out to the barn. Fritz was glad to see Lech. Since Lech had come to work for the family last summer, Fritz had grown close to the big, burly Pole. Lech sat at his workbench in the barn, holding a piece of wood under a light. In his spare time he carved figures out of soft wood.

“Hmm! My dinner.” Lech turned around and cleared the workbench for Fritz to put down his plate. “Thank you!”

Lech didn’t have much hair on his head, but his arms were covered with reddish curls, and a ring of the same curls circled his head.

“You look like three days of rain, Fritz. What’s the matter?” He scrunched his face into a mock frown, sending a ripple of small wrinkles onto his strong nose and over his freckled forehead. Lech’s funny grimace usually made Fritz laugh, but today he couldn’t even smile.

“They were arguing again. Grandpa Karl wants to fight the Russians,” Fritz said, sitting down on the bench next to Lech. “And Mama says that he shouldn’t.”

“Your mother is right.” Lech took a large bite out of the bread and chewed off a bite from the cheese. “Even the German army couldn’t stop the Russians. That’s why they will be here soon.”

“Grandpa wants me to go with him and take a rifle.”

“You’d better stay away.”

“But I have to do what he says. Maybe I should practice shooting,” Fritz said, imagining himself again fighting Russians with Grandpa.

“No you shouldn’t,” Lech said, finishing the first slice of bread. Fritz wished he could tell Lech about the hole, but a secret was a secret.

“Maybe you could come with me?” Fritz asked.

“With you and your grandpa? I don’t think your grandpa will trust me to defend his farm against the enemy.” Lech nudged Fritz. “Don’t worry about shooting at Russians. Your mother won’t let you.”

“But the Russians will come soon. What will happen?”

“We’ll wait and see. They will be here any day now. They will come, and then they will go on to meet the Americans and British in Berlin.” Lech gave Fritz’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “It’s like when a boat meets a storm. There will be broken water for a while, and then things will calm down.”

“ Choppy waters, not broken ,” Fritz corrected. He had helped Lech improve his German, but Lech often confused words. Fritz wondered if he did it on purpose, just to make him laugh.

“Okay then, choppy waters,” Lech said. “But you know what I mean?”

Fritz nodded, hoping that it would be just a short storm.

“But you know what? I speak some Russian.” Lech smiled at him. “I’m from eastern Poland, from an area that used to belong to the Ukraine. The Ukrainian language is very close to Russian.”

Fritz remembered the map on his schoolroom’s wall. Ukraine was a big country, part of the Soviet Union, bordering the Black Sea, a place the Nazis had wanted to take over.

“So you can ask them what they want. That’s good.” Fritz felt a little lighter.

“And now you should pass me the small carving knife over there, the one with the green handle.” Lech pushed the plate away and turned his attention back to the piece of wood he was working on when Fritz had entered the barn.

“What are you making?”

“I’m still working on the old couple.” Lech was carving two figures standing side by side. The man was wearing overalls. The woman was dressed in a peasant skirt and blouse. Lech took the carving knife Fritz passed him and with a few swift movements gave her face an aged expression.

“You are making her old,” Fritz said.

“They are old.”

Lech motioned toward the lump of wood that Fritz had been trying to shape into a dog. “Why don’t you work on your dog?”

“My dog looks more like a pig without a neck.” Fritz held the lump of wood in his hands. He would never be able to make it look like a dog.

“The dog is already there.”

“Where?”

“Inside the piece of wood.” Lech passed Fritz a carving knife and motioned him to start working.

“I don’t see it.”

“Not yet. But it’s already there inside. You just need to uncover it.”

Mama had just stretched out on the sofa for her Sunday afternoon nap when they heard knocking on the front door. It was Fritz’s friend Paul.

“How did you get away from watching your little brother?” Fritz asked.

“Thomas is taking care of him today, so I’m free. Let’s go to the main road!”