Dog Years (51 page)

But when one day the carpenter lost his purse, containing aside from change a bundle of faded dog hairs; but when the carpenter went to see the Führer's favorite dog, whom Harras had sired, in the newsreel, but next week's newsreel unrolled before his eyes without the Führer's dog; but when news came that a fourth former journeyman of the Liebenau carpenter shop had met a soldier's death; when heavy oak buffets, walnut sideboards, extensible dining-room tables on richly carved legs could no longer be turned out at the carpenter's workbenches, and the only operation permitted was the nailing together of numbered pine boards: parts for Army barracks; when the year 1944 was in its fourth month; when people said: "Now they've done old Herr Brunies in too"; when Odessa was evacuated and Tarnopol was encircled and had to surrender; when the bell rang for the next-to-last round; when food tickets stopped keeping their promises; when carpenter Liebenau heard that his only son had volunteered for the Navy; when all this -- the lost purse and the flickering newsreel, the fallen journeyman and the lousy barracks parts, Odessa evacuated and the lying food tickets, old Herr Brunies and his enlisted son -- when all this added up to a round sum demanding to be written off, carpenter Friedrich Leibenau walked out of his office, picked up an ax that was new and still coated with grease, crossed the yard on April 20, 1944, at two in the afternoon, planted himself with parted legs in front of the empty kennel of the poisoned shepherd Harras, and with steady overhead strokes, lonely and speechless, smashed the edifice into kindling.

But because the fifty-fifth birthday of the selfsame Führer and Chancellor, to whom the young shepherd dog Prinz of Harras' line had been presented ten years before, was celebrated on April 20th, everybody at the apartment house windows and at the workbenches in the shop understood that more had been smashed than rotting wood and torn tar paper.

After this deed the carpenter had to stay in bed for a good two weeks. He had overtaxed himself.

There was once a carpenter,

who with practiced overhead strokes chopped into kindling a dog kennel that stood for a good many things.

There was once an assassin, who packed a bomb, experimentally, in his brief case.

There was once an Air Force auxiliary who was waiting impatiently to be inducted into the Navy; he wanted to submerge and to sink enemy ships.

There was once a ballet dancer who, in Budapest, Vienna, and Copenhagen, was knitting rompers and jackets for a baby that had long lain buried at the edge of Oliva Forest, weighted down with stones.

There was once an expectant mother who liked to jump off moving streetcars and in so doing, although she had jumped nimbly and not against the motion of the car, lost her two-months child. Thereupon the expectant mother, again a flat young girl, went to work: Tulla Pokriefke became -- as one might have expected -- a streetcar conductress.

There was once a police president whose son, generally known as Störtebeker, who intended to study philosophy later on, who might almost have become a father, and who, after projecting the world in sand, founded a teenagers' gang, which later became famous under the name of the Dusters. He stopped drawing symbols in the sand; instead, he drew the rationing office, the Church of the Sacred Heart, the Post Office Administration Building: all angular buildings into which he later, and at night, led the self-grounded Dusters. The conductorette Tulla Pokriefke belonged halfway to the gang. Her cousin didn't belong at all. At the most he stood lookout when the gang met in the storage sheds of the Baltic Chocolate Factory. A permanent possession of the gang appears to have been a three-year-old child, their mascot, who was addressed as Jesus and survived the gang.

There was once a tech sergeant who trained Air Force auxiliaries as AA gunners and quasi-philosophers, who limped slightly, had a way of grinding his teeth, and might almost have become a father, but was tried, first by a special, then by a general court-martial, was broken of his rank and transferred to a punitive battalion, because, while in a state of drunkenness between the barracks of the Kaiserhafen battery, he had insulted the Führer and Chancellor in sentences marked by such locutions as: forgetful of Being, mound of bones, structure of care, Stutthof, Todtnau, and concentration camp. As they were taking him away -- in broad daylight -- he bawled mysteriously: "You ontic dog! Alemannic dog! You dog with stocking cap and buckled shoes! What did you do to little Husserl? What did you do to tubby Amsel? You pre-Socratic Nazi dog!" On account of this unrhymed hymn, he was compelled, in spite of his bad leg, to dig up mines on the steadily advancing Eastern front and later, when the invasion had begun, in the West; but the demoted tech sergeant was lucky and wasn't blown sky-high.

There was once a black shepherd, his name was Prinz. He was transferred, along with the Führer's headquarters, to Rastenburg in East Prussia. He was lucky, he didn't step on any mines; but the wild rabbit he was chasing jumped on a mine and could be retrieved only very partially.

Like "Camp Werewolf" northeast of Vinnitsa, the Führer's Headquarters in East Prussia bordered on mined woods. The Führer and his favorite dog lived a secluded life in Zone A of the "Wolf's Lair." To give Prinz exercise, the officer in charge of dogs, an SS captain, who had owned a well-known dog kennel before the war, took him for walks in Zones I and II; but the Führer had to stay in his constricted Zone A, because he was always busy with staff conferences.

Life was tedious at the Führer's headquarters. Always the same barracks, where the Führer Escort Battalion, the Army Chiefs of Staff, or guests come to comment on the situation, were lodged. Some distraction was provided by the goings-on at the gate of Zone II.

It was there that a rabbit ran between the sentries on the perimeter of the Zone, was shooed away amid hoots of laughter, and made a black shepherd forget the lessons learned in his school days at the police kennel: Prinz broke loose, bounded through the gate, past the still laughing sentries, crossed with dragging leash the road leading to the camp -- rabbits pucker up their noses, which is something no dog can stand -- resolved to follow a pucker-nosed rabbit which luckily had a good head start; for when the rabbit lit out into the mined woods and disintegrated on an exploding mine, the dog incurred little danger, although he had taken a bound or two into the mined area. Cautiously, step by step, the officer in charge of dogs led him back.

When the report was drawn up and had found its way through channels -- first SS Major Fegelein appended comments, then it was submitted to the Führer -- the officer in charge of dogs was broken to private and assigned to the very same punitive battalion as the demoted tech sergeant reduced to clearing mines.

The onetime officer in charge of dogs took an unlucky step east of Mogilev; but when the battalion was transferred to the West, the tech sergeant, with limping yet lucky leg, deserted to the Allies. He was moved from one PW camp to the next and finally found peace in an English camp for antifascist prisoners, for along with the usual guardhouse peccadilloes the reason for his demotion was noted in his paybook. Shortly after, at a time when the
Götterd
ä
mmerung
recording was all ready to be put on, he and some like-minded companions organized a camp theater. On an improvised stage he, a professional actor, played leading roles in plays by German classical authors; a slightly limping Nathan the Wise and a teeth-grinding Gotz.

But the would-be assassin, who months before had concluded his experiments with bomb and brief case, couldn't get himself admitted to a camp for antifascist prisoners of war. His attempt at assassination was also a failure, because he wasn't a professional assassin, because in his inexperience he neglected to go the whole hog, because he decamped before his bomb had plainly said yes, and tried to save himself for great tasks after a successful assassination.

There he stands between General Warlimont and Navy Captain Assmann as the Führer's staff conference drags on, and can't figure out where to put his brief case. A liaison officer of the Field Economic Office concludes his talk on the fuel question. Materials in short supply, such as rubber, nickel, bauxite, manganese, and wolfram are listed. The ball-bearing shortage is general. Somebody from the Foreign Office -- is it Ambassador Hewel? -- speculates on the situation in Japan now that the Tojo cabinet has resigned. Still the brief case has found no satisfactory resting place. The new alignment of the Tenth Army after the evacuation of Ancona, the fighting strength of the Fourteenth Army after the fall of Livorno are discussed. General Schmundt asks for the floor, but He does all the talking. Where to put the brief case? A freshly arrived report creates animation in the group around the card table: the Americans have entered Saint-L
ô
! Hastily, before the Eastern front, the position around Bialystok for instance, can come up, action is taken: hapazardly the assassin puts the brief case with contents under the card table, on which lie the general staff maps with their complicated markings, around which Messrs. Jodl, Scherff, Schmundt, and Warlimont stand calmly or bob up and down on booted toes, around which the Führer's black shepherd rambles restlessly, because his master, likewise restless, wants to stand now here now there, rejecting this, demanding that with hard knuckle, talking constantly, about those defective 152-millimeter howitzers, then a moment later about the excellent 210-millimeter Skoda howitzer. "Had all-round firing capacity; with the trailer mount removed, just the thing for coastal fortifications, Saint-L
ô
, for instance." What a memory! Names, figures, distances pell-mell, and moving about the whole time, always with the dog at heel, all over the place except in the vicinity of the brief case at the feet of Generals Schmundt and Warlimont.

To sum it up, the assassin was a dud; but the bomb wasn't a dud, it went off punctually, cut off several officer's careers, but removed neither the Führer nor the Führer's favorite dog from the world. For Prinz, to whom as to all dogs the region under the table belonged, had sniffed at the abandoned brief case and possibly heard an uncanny ticking: in any event, his cursory sniffing commanded him to transact a piece of business that well-trained dogs transact only out of doors.

An attentive adjutant, standing by the shack door, saw what the dog wanted, opened the door a crack -- wide enough for Prinz -- and closed it without disturbing noise. But his solicitude brought him no reward; for when the bomb said Now!, when it said Time's up! Pickupthechips! Endoftheline!, when the bomb in the brief case of the assassin who had meanwhile run for it said Amen, the adjutant among others was hit by several splinters, but not a one touched the Führer or his favorite dog.

Air Force auxiliary Harry Liebenau -- to get back to the suburb of Langfuhr from the great world of assassins, general staff maps, and the unscathed Führer figure -- heard about the unsuccessful attempt on the Führer's life on the turned-up radio. The names of the assassin and his fellow conspirators were given. Thereupon Harry began to worry about the dog Prinz, descended from the dog Harras; for no special communiqu
é
, not a line in the papers, not so much as a whispered word revealed whether the dog was among the victims or whether Providence had spared him as well as his master.

It wasn't until the next newsreel -- Harry had his induction order in his pocket, was no longer wearing the uniform of an Air Force auxiliary, was making good-by calls, and going often, because there were seven more days to kill, to the movies -- that the German Movietone News had something to say, quite marginally, about the dog Prinz.

The Führer's headquarters with demolished shack and living Führer was shown in the distance. And against the boots of the Führer, whose face under low-pulled cap seemed slightly swollen but otherwise unchanged, rubbed, black with erect ears, a male shepherd whom Harry identified without difficulty as the carpenter's dog's dog.

The bungling assassin, however, was taken to the gallows.

There was once a little girl,

whom forest Gypsies palmed off on a high school teacher who was sorting mica stones in an abandoned factory and was named Oswald Brunies. The girl was baptized with the name Jenny, grew up, and became fatter and fatter. Jenny looked unnaturally roly-poly and had to put up with a good deal. At an early age, the plump little girl took piano lessons from a piano teacher by the name of Felsner-Imbs. Imbs had billowing snow-white hair, which demanded to be brushed for a good hour every day. On his advice, Jenny, by way of keeping her weight in check, was sent to a ballet school to learn ballet dancing.

But Jenny went on swelling and promised to become as fat as Eddi Amsel, Dr. Brunies' favorite pupil. Amsel often came with his friend to look as the teacher's collection of mica stones and was also present when Jenny tinkled out scales. Eddi Amsel had many freckles, weighted 203 pounds, had ready wit, knew how to draw good likenesses quick as a flash, and in addition could sing clear as a bell -- even in church.

One winter afternoon when snow lay all about and new snow kept falling on top of it, Jenny was transformed behind the Erbsberg, near the gloomy Gutenberg monument, into a snow man by playing children.

At the same hour, as chance would have it, fat funny Amsel, on the opposite side of the Erbsberg, was likewise transformed into a snow man; but those who transformed him were not playing children.

But suddenly and from all sides a thaw set in. Both snow men melted away and discharged: near the Gutenberg monument a dancing line; on the other side of the mountain a slender young man, who looked for his teeth in the snow and found them. Whereupon he made them rain down on the bushes.