“Yes, I know,” the father interrupts at this point, “he had a cold.”
“It was at your suggestion that he absented himself,” Fritzekarl continues, his voice breaking and going hoarse over the phrase, “You wrote me some sort of excuse, to say that he was staying home at your wish.”
The father puts his weight first on one foot and then on the other. “As a matter of fact, it is my wish that he stay home when he has such a severe cold.”
“Oh, I didn’t have such a bad cold at all,” the son breaks in. He is leaning on the handle-bars of the bicycle that his father had to fight for. “I could have gone, perfectly well.”
The man looks at his son, a long look of surprise and pain and the resignation he has learned. “Well,” he says, and moves toward the door.
But Fritzekarl stops him. “A moment, please,” he insists, but politely. “Your son was in school on that day and the following day. So he cannot have been really ill. Let me call your attention to the fact that he should have been present at practice and that it is my duty to report the absence!”
“Oh, please —” the boy was speaking for his father, quickly, bargaining “— don’t do that, please! It won’t ever happen again — will it, father? —really, never again!”
The father wanted to protest; he felt the despairing look of his wife, the outrage and embarrassment of the scene. “How dare you speak to me like that!” was what he was repeating in his mind. But he knew the consequences of such an argument, for himself, and for his son. Even if he could convince the Nazi authorities of his own part, and Fritzekarl’s rudeness, his son would still have to face the Jungvolk, paying for his father’s moment of “courage.” And so he only said, hesitatingly and stiffly, “No — it certainly will never happen again!”
“I thank you,” replied the fourteen-year-old superior of the treasonable son. The father was dismissed.
He cannot air his resentment; he has to expect eavesdroppers and spies everywhere. His wife tells their son everything — not out of malice, but in the mistaken hope of reclaiming him this way. And the new maid is a person to be feared. She listens at doors, reads everything that’s lying around the house, and she happens to be having an affair with a Blockwart; he could destroy a family single-handed. The boy would hardly denounce his own father, the man reflects, but if he repeats some remark to the maid, she will run to her Blockwart, the Gestapo (Secret State Police) will have it right away, and the doom will begin to move on them. Or, if they decide to dismiss the maid, her vengeance hanging over their heads may be even worse.