The Goose Fritz

by Sergei Lebedev

  Of course, the village respected the Sergeant for not sticking his medals in everyone’s face, but that’s not enough. There was something else. Say, when a man is chopping wood, it’s a peaceful picture. Whatever the Sergeant picked up—ax, saw, chisel, curved pruning knife—the metal took on a different meaning in his hands; it became menacing, and not peaceful. The teeth of the saw, the blade of the ax, the point of the chisel, sated by birches and aspens, dulled on bast and bark, suddenly seemed to show their predatory fangs, with a thirst for salty blood, hot, and not the innocent juice of trees; that is what the villagers sensed, and that’s why the Sergeant was the Sergeant, with a capital S.

  Only his close neighbor, Fedoseyevna, a city woman sent to work in the village, had her own opinion of the Sergeant. She had once been a Komsomol member, was full of ideals, and had married his neighbor, a shock-worker tractor driver, before the war; he burned to death in a tank beyond the Oder River, when the German Tigers and Panthers were counted in tens, not hundreds. However, two tanks ambushed and burned the entire unit while they were bumbling around like orphans at the canal, looking for a way to get across.

  Fedoseyevna wore mourning for her husband longer than customary in the village. And then she became the head teacher—she taught history—and decided to create a local history museum at the school and interview natives about how they fought and what they saw in the war.

  This is how their feud started. Before, they’d lived without conflict, greeted each other in a neighborly way, the Sergeant even helping repair her greenhouses. She was a widow, after all, and he had certain ideas about that. He respected her in his own way for her long mourning, that she remained faithful to the twenty-five-year-old dead man, his childhood friend, whose remains, mere ashes and soot, were scraped out of the tank by the funeral squad. Why the hell did she have to start questioning him, and bring two Pioneers with her, a boy and girl, to write down the conversation?

  “Ask your dead husband,” the Sergeant told Fedoseyevna. She’d asked about the war, wanted him to talk so that the village children would be brought up on the example of veterans. And he shut the door.

  Had she been a man, the Sergeant would have punched him. He could not admit that Fedoseyevna had wounded him deeply: in fact, his inner desire was to talk things out with her. And it had seemed to him that she’d discerned his inner desire, and that infuriated him. Hanging over this disagreement was the shadow of misfortune that no one had ever seen.

  The villagers knew that in July, on the anniversary of the day the Sergeant was wounded in the Battle of Kursk, he closed his shutters and drank. Some said he took down the picture of Stalin from the wall, filled his glass, put it right up to the mustache, and drank with the Leader. Others maintained that he was perturbed about the only wound he’d received that wasn’t, strictly speaking, military, and took this day to drink in anger over the mine shard that had clipped a chunk of meat from his buttock. He drank in the shuttered house, pouring himself a full measure of his old hatred for the enemy, but the booze didn’t work on him, with his calloused heart. In the evening he went out onto the street with a steady gait, not swaying, looking for Germans.

  The villagers understood, and didn’t tell him that the war had ended almost forty years ago. They said that the Germans who had been there were chased away by heroes, just a week ago, and then headed West. Our soldiers hadn’t left a garrison behind, after all, it was a small village, just one well. They presented the Sergeant, a hero liberator, with a glass of samogon moonshine with a hard-boiled egg and a crust of bread and coarse salt. That’s the strong kind, the Sergeant always said, rejecting fine-grained salt from the store.

  The kids reacted by hiding in ravines and bushes, it was all a game to them, but the adults took it seriously. No one scolded the Sergeant later for going around the village and upsetting people. Once the Sergeant beat up the new postman, somebody’s nephew on a summer job who bicycled around in a stylish jacket; the jacket looked like a German uniform from a distance, and so the Sergeant decided that he was a German messenger. The Germans often traveled on two wheels, and the bike was shiny, from somewhere else, the Baltics perhaps. The Sergeant grabbed the postman and gave him a beating, but the village took his side and the aunt made it clear to her nephew that he could not write a complaint to the police.

  One spring Fedoseyevna was given a new gander; it was either Polish or Hungarian—a distant relative worked in the socialist countries and gave the old woman a present. The gander truly was fine-looking—exceptionally white, like fresh snow; the orange beak was brighter than a tangerine; the body was powerful but not heavy, as it preferred flying to walking; mean and angry, it had killed the old gander, even though it was younger and weaker-looking. In short, an exceptional gander.

  Fedoseyevna called it Martyn—she liked the brazen sound of the name, it suited the gander. But the Sergeant gave it a different name. One day—it was a moonshine day, he was in his cups—the Sergeant came out onto the street and the gander blocked his way, hissing. The Sergeant didn’t count domestic animals and fowl or forest creatures among the living; he was called in to slaughter pigs, kill fowl, he shot rabbits in the woods for the sheer pleasure of killing, he visited old wartime friends in Siberia and hunted bears in their den, and here was some goose. But the Sergeant, drunken to a state of terrible sobriety, looked at the gander and said with a nasty smile and a murderous amazement:

  “Why, he’s a real Fritz! Freeeeeetz!”

  And as he patted its long neck, he added, as if sizing it up, “You grow up, Fritz! Grow up! And then ...”

  The gander let him pass—probably for the first time in its life, for it did not fear dogs or cats; it shook its head in confusion, then hissed at the Sergeant’s back and coiled its neck.

  That’s how the gander got its new name—Fritz. The kids told their parents, the grannies gossiped, and the whole village began calling the gander Fritz to spite the feisty Fedoseyevna, who after all wasn’t from the village. Fedoseyevna resisted, but the gander forgot its former name, the boys teased it—Fritz, Fritz, watch the blitz—and it got angry, not flapping its wings, but stretching its neck and trying to bite. Fedoseyevna cried a bit—the neighbor after all had stolen her gander, in a sense, by renaming it—but then she got used to it, eventually even taking pride, and considered the gander to be German, even though it had never seen the German Democratic Republic or the Federal Republic.

  It happened about three years later, when Fritz reached his prime. He had intimidated every small creature, his goslings were growing up—with their father’s temper, troublemakers, but without his coloring, they were all grayish; apparently a flawed breed, the villagers gloated.

  Kirill saw it all that day; he and his pals were playing soldiers on the sand hill. They had roads in the sand, and one of the boys—acting like a German driver—pulled a toy truck on a string. The partisans had laid “mines” by tying strings to some sticks; if they pulled the string in time, the stick would hit the truck from underneath and knock it over; if they were too slow, the sand would fly in all directions, and the German convoy would keep going. The sand hill was by the pond, near the Sergeant’s and Fedoseyevna’s houses.

  The Sergeant was drinking on that July day, the anniversary of when the German shard had torn his ass off as he was crawling along. He went out the gate, stared at the kids, and the boy “driving” the truck no longer wanted to drive; the Sergeant came over, examined the disposition, snorted—shitty partisans—and looked at each of them. He didn’t like children, considered them the plague and let them know it, but he never touched them. For the first time, Kirill noticed the Sergeant’s enormous hands, as if they belonged to a seven-foot giant but had been sewn onto him at the hospital; he saw the gray lupine hairs on his fingers and the thick yellow nails.

  “Scram!” the Sergeant ordered. Kirill’s friends scooted along the fence and ravines back to the village, but Kirill himself was going back to the dachas. He stalled, but the Sergeant h
ad already turned around. He knew that no one would stick around when he told them to go.

  Kirill pressed himself down into the sand pile.

  The Sergeant went to the pond; and once again Kirill saw the huge hands that wouldn’t fit in a pocket, he thought; they weren’t human, they were bull-like, bear-like.

  Fedoseyevna’s geese were swimming in the pond; Fritz strode along the swampy bank, protecting the goslings testing the water. Seeing the Sergeant, the goose turned and headed toward him; Fritz hissed, and his eyes turned furious, recognizing his enemy. The Sergeant, when sober, teased him frequently. It seemed like the Sergeant would back off, maybe even run away, because a drunk could not handle a devious and agile goose; the Sergeant’s anger was stale and rotten, like a two-year-old pickle; the gander was filled with pure fury, as if he had been waiting a long time to get even.

  But the Sergeant had been waiting for the goose to attack. With a swift movement of his arm, which suddenly became too long, telescopic, he grabbed the gander by the neck and raised him in the air, squeezing the throat tighter. The bird struggled, beating his wings, he must have weighed fifteen kilograms, how could he hold that weight with an extended arm? But the Sergeant held him, and Kirill felt what strength lived in the old man’s body, a slow, crushing strength, like a vise; he felt it as if he were the goose, feeling the steel fingers on his own throat.

  The gander sagged, the tips of his wings trembling. The eyes had lost the madness of the attack and were meek and rolled backward; the Sergeant patted the bird’s head with his left hand, saying, “That’s it, Fritz. Gotcha. That’s it, Fritz. Don’t struggle. You’ll only make it worse. That’s it, Fritz. Your time has come. It’s come.”

  The Sergeant looked into the gander’s eyes. Kirill realized that he wasn’t seeing a bird but some German corporal or camp cook who made the mistake of stepping away from the bunker just then. It was important for that little German to die quietly—he was of no use for the scouts, his rank was too low—no screams, no sobs, and so the Sergeant was seeing him off into death, whispering almost gently, to keep him on the road to death, not wanting to return even for a second, dying obediently, without any unnecessary fuss.

  Kirill wanted to run out and latch onto the Sergeant’s hand, to release the goose. But he sensed that the Sergeant would take him for someone else: he wasn’t seeing the pond or the geese or the village houses; he was there, in the war, in the swamps near the Dnieper River or in some German town. He couldn’t be pulled out of there, because it was all mixed up in his head; the Sergeant wouldn’t see you, a boy from the nearby dachas, he would see a young soldier in the Volkssturm, and not vaguely, as in a deceptive dream, but determinedly. His memory would transform your clothing, your face, place an anti-tank rocket in your hands.

  Kirill was afraid of many things, but this kind of fear was new. He sensed he had wet himself. The King of Fears came in the guise of the Sergeant, strangling the gander Fritz. The Sergeant believed he was killing a real German; the horror was in the very existence of such a situation, because it meant that nothing had any foundation, there were no laws among people.

  The Sergeant put both hands around Fritz’s neck, interlaced his fingers, and the goose’s neck began to turn. It was then that Kirill heard the goose screaming, not hissing or honking, but screaming, and his cry was close to human speech, as if Fritz were trying to explain to his killer that he was not a German soldier and was calling on the world as witness. But the head was already moving unnaturally, the way a living thing cannot. Then there was a crunch, the thread of life broke, and the head fell to the side; a green mass oozed from the beak.

  The Sergeant laid the goose on the ground carefully, stood staring at the dead bird. Then he looked around, saw the rest of the geese as if anew, clustered by the pond, clucking softly. Fritz’s son, the second eldest gander in the flock, had gathered them and stood a bit in front, both to declare his leadership and not to irritate the Sergeant with excessive bravery.

  Kirill wanted to shout—fly, run, save yourselves!—but he couldn’t speak. The Sergeant muttered with icy zeal: “Fritzes! Oh-ho, how many! Fritzes!” He went to his house, repeating “Oho! Oho!”

  Kirill hoped that the Sergeant was off for another drink and he would be able to chase the geese into the bushes or the reeds or summon an adult. The Sergeant went into the house; Kirill wanted to run, but a soldier’s sense told him to wait: don’t hurry, don’t show yourself. And sure enough, the Sergeant came out on the porch with a hunting rifle; he sat down by the fence, stuck the barrel between the boards, and looked through the sight. Kirill thought that the sight would bring the geese closer, make the Sergeant’s gaze sharp—optics, clean glass, they don’t lie—and he would come to his senses, understand with whom he was warring on a hot July day, who was hiding by the pond stretching their long necks; then he noticed that the Sergeant’s trouser pockets were bulging with cartridges.

  The first shots were like the crack of a shepherd’s whip. The pointed bullet tore right through the goose; bang, bang, bang—the geese fell, bloodied feathers flying; the Sergeant did not miss. Then the rifle jammed. His fingers had stumbled, with the samogon pumping through the veins, they had not loaded the cartridge properly. He jerked the magazine and then froze—as if the resistance of the mechanism twisted something in him as well.

  Fedoseyevna ran out to the geese; they were sprawled on the grass, one fluttering a wing, the Sergeant’s aim was slightly off. You couldn’t see the blood from a distance, but you could see they were dead; a dead man can look alive in death, but a bird lies there like a sack. The bullets had taken away everything—grace and personality.

  The Sergeant stood, turned, and looked straight at Kirill, hidden behind the sand pile. Kirill wanted to bury himself in the sand, but it was too late—the Sergeant had seen him, seen him with the vision that turns geese into Germans. Kirill felt he was the gander Fritz, felt those hands on his neck. He realized that the Sergeant was going to kill him, boy or goose, it made no difference to him.

  “What have you done, you Herod! Herod!” Fedoseyevna attacked the Sergeant, pushed him in the chest. “Herod! Herod! Herod!”

  Herod; Kirill did not know the word, but it struck the Sergeant, penetrated his drunken head. Maybe he remembered the priest’s words from childhood, back when there was a chapel that stood at the head of the spring, and a brick church, too—now it was a kolkhoz warehouse.

  Kirill thought the Sergeant would kill Fedoseyevna. He never allowed anyone to touch him, and here she had him by his shirt lapels. But he sank to the logs, shook his head, and then fell to his side. Fedoseyevna forgot about the geese, ran into the house, her worn heels kicking up the hem of her unwashed slip; she returned with a pail and poured the well water, icy cold, over the Sergeant.

  He came to. People were watching over their fences, but did not come out into the street, understanding this was between the two of them. He shook his wet sleeves, looked around, as if he didn’t know who he was or where; he saw Fedoseyevna with the pail and asked peacefully, but with surprise, “Have you lost your mind, old woman? It’s my day today. I have the right to drink.”

  The Sergeant was so quiet that Kirill climbed out from the sand hill to get a better look at the old man: Where was the killer who shot the geese three minutes ago? A harmless old man sat drying in the sun, as if Kirill had had a nightmare that would not be repeated.

  But Kirill realized that it would. There would be another day, just as sunny, portending no disasters, and the Sergeant would come out, half-mad from the samogon, and whatever came his way—a dog, a suckling calf, the electrician with a folding ladder—would be a fascist. And Kirill won’t have time to run away again, because the others were faster, smarter, and braver, and he would be the one who must remain for the Sergeant to punish.

  Kirill hated the Sergeant for the knowledge that would never give him any peace; his fate was determined.

  In the meantime, the Sergeant noticed the dead geese. After
a pause, he asked grimly, “Me?”

  “You,” Fedoseyevna replied and burst into weeping, not the way she usually cried, with scant tears, but sobbing, bitterly and helplessly; even an infant would see that she loved the Sergeant.

  The Sergeant hiccupped, once, twice, three times, as if the large demons had already left him, and now much smaller demons, harmless, like flies, were crawling from his mouth. Still weeping, Fedoseyevna struck his back and sobbed, “Not you, you didn’t do it! It’s the damned war inside you!”

  Kirill thought she had forgiven him, completely, and would forgive him another ten times, even if he shot the whole village and butchered all the innocent animals. And had the Sergeant shot Kirill, Fedoseyevna would have wept for the boy, but she would have also forgiven it.

  The hiccupping stopped. The Sergeant put his arm around her and led her to her house, but he did not lower his eyes at the sight of the dead geese—as if to say, it’s my fault, I know, but I won’t let anyone blame me.

  ***

  The following spring when Kirill was brought to the dacha, the Sergeant was no longer among the living. They said he went hunting in the winter and died. There had been a lot of snow and the hares went over the fence covered by snowbanks to gnaw on the new branches of the apple trees. The Sergeant didn’t notice the old communications ditch, left over from the war, covered by the snow, and rammed one ski into it, fell, and broke his leg; an open break. But he did not give up, he took off the skis and crawled back to the village; he shot his rifle, thinking someone would hear his distress call.

  He would have made it, but a blizzard came up, covering the ski trail, and he lost his way. The hard cold came after the snow, chilling the forest; the air froze between the firs, there wasn’t a sound or a rustle, everything was clenched by the frost, except for the water frozen in the trunks, which broke the trees from within.