I worked at ingratiating myself with the guard, bringing him tidbits from our larder, discovering he had a sweet tooth and taking him cake whenever I could.
“Do you mind if I speak to you from time to time?” I asked him.
“Why’s that?” he asked. “So you can take secrets to your traitor brother and father, I suppose.”
I looked shocked and hurt. “No. Not at all. Quite the opposite.”
He glanced up at me, his mustache coated with strawberry jam. I continued, hesitantly. “I think I could be more useful to the Reich as an interpreter than as a farm girl. I speak German and Czech, of course, and I would like to interpret in English too, but I only have my schoolbooks and no chance to practice. I heard you speaking perfect English.”
He licked his lips, though some jam remained on his mustache. He studied me carefully, and I tried to look as hopeful and guileless as possible.
“I used to be a schoolteacher,” he said.
I prayed my father would forgive my disloyalty. “If my father and brother hadn’t gone off with the…traitors, I might have been able to go to university instead of being stuck on this farm with my mother, hoeing turnips for the rest of my life.”
I put on my sulkiest expression and hoped he would be taken in. It was partly true, of course. I had hoped to go to university, and my father had been preparing me for the entrance exams when he left. I’d been taught at home by him ever since the school had asked me to leave when I was fifteen for refusing to obey the head teacher.
I’d repeated a silly joke about President Hácha’s bushy eyebrows trying to mate with Hitler’s mustache. It wasn’t even very funny, but I was wiggling my eyebrows and my top lip, and my friends were giggling so hard, they were almost crying. Then they started to wave at me, still helpless with laughter. I thought they wanted more, but they were trying to signal a warning that the school principal had come up behind me.
He dragged me to his office, with a huge portrait of Hitler behind his desk, and ordered me to apologize to him. I pressed my lips together, and though words were buzzing in my mouth like wasps, I wouldn’t let them out. They certainly weren’t the words he wanted to hear. He wasn’t used to being disobeyed and told me to go home and not come back to school until I was ready to say I was sorry. My mother was furious and said I had to return at once.
Dad said, “At least the child has principles.”
My mother retorted, “Principles won’t milk the cow. And won’t get her to university.”
“You can teach her German literature,” said Dad. “I can teach her everything else.”
After I went to bed that night, they had a terrible row, but dad won the argument, and I never went back to school. Until he went away a year ago, I had lessons from him and my mother. I missed my friends and even missed my lessons, but I wasn’t going to say sorry. It was my act of resistance, the only way I could go into battle.
Then my father had left, taking Jan, but refusing to give me the chance to go with them to fight the Third Reich properly. I was angry with my dad and furiously jealous of Jan. I missed them, feared for them and deeply resented them leaving me stuck on the farm. Five years of nothing but work, work, work with the constant scrutiny of my mother. A sulky look wasn’t hard to manage for the guard.
He shifted the rifle from one hand to the other and relaxed, obviously making a decision.
“I will help you with your English. I was a very good schoolteacher, and I hope you will be a very good pupil. I will set you a lot of homework.”
“I will. I promise I will.” I was trying not to grin too widely. “Shall I bring my books to you at the dinner break tomorrow? Would that be all right?”
He agreed, looking at his watch. “Tomorrow, then. Bring me your books, and we’ll see what can be done. And now those lazy dogs need to go back to work. Look at them all taking their ease as if this was a holiday.”
I looked at the five skinny men lying under the trees, trying to recover their strength for the afternoon’s work, and fury whipped up in me. But I kept my head turned away, clenched my fists and counted to ten.
“Lazy dogs,” I agreed. “This won’t get the turnips hoed.”
The guard called, “Raus, raus,” and the prisoners struggled to their feet, picking up their hoes.
“Thank you so much.” I said, “I will be your best student. But what should I call you?”
He hesitated for a second and then said, “My name is Weber. You should call me Herr Weber.”
A bee buzzed around him, and I wondered whether to tell him about the jam on his mustache, but thought it would be just retribution if the bee stung him—perhaps on the end of his gray nose.
“Thank you, Herr Weber. Until tomorrow.”
• • •
The next day I sat down during the dinner break with Herr Weber, and he set me dull grammatical exercises. The prisoners watched me with surprise, but I felt that somehow Bill would know this was a way of getting closer to him. I was more careful with my homework than I’d ever been before, and after only three lessons, Herr Weber told me I was a good student and would be of excellent service to the Reich.
“You are a quick learner,” he said. “You could become an interpreter one day.”
I paused as if a new worry had crossed my mind. “Would I need to improve my spoken English as well as my grammar?”
He glanced at me with a flicker of suspicion, but my innocent smile reassured him. “You certainly would.”
“But how can I do that?” I said in a puzzled tone.
He laughed. “That’s easy!”
“Is it?”
“Of course. We have all these teachers in the working detail. So many prisoners. Do you know we have taken millions of prisoners of war? They just hold up their hands and allow themselves to be captured.”
“That’s marvelous,” I said, and very quietly, “Heil Hitler.”
Herr Weber continued. “Instead of lazing about at dinnertime, they can teach you English!”
I clapped my hands in astonishment. “That’s a wonderful idea. I would never have thought of that. How can it be arranged?”
• • •
The next day at dinnertime, Herr Weber led me to where the men were sprawled beneath the trees.
He kicked one of the other men with his toe cap, to wake him up, but I sat down firmly next to Bill, and Herr Weber just shrugged and left me to it.
“I have English class,” I announced.
“You’re a bleedin’ miracle worker,” whispered Bill.
I opened my primer and pointed at the third chapter, “Meeting and Greeting.”
Bill jumped to his feet. “How do you do?” he said, and held out his hand. I stood and gave him mine, and he shook it firmly but not too hard.
“How do you do?” I replied.
The men lying about around us turned to watch the show, but I didn’t care.
“Do you come here often?” he asked, separating each of the words and saying them a little loudly.
“I live.”
“I live here,” he corrected me, and I was pleased. He was really going to help me learn, not just muck about.
“I live here, on farm,” I said.