Der Hund Hört Zu

2023 Write Now Winner - Adult

Helen crossed Mühlenstrasse to go to the park with two dogs on either side of her. Two were well-behaved terriers, one was a miniature schnauzer who was slow and had to be dragged along, and the fourth was a standard poodle. The poodle was difficult to handle, and was always trying to pull Helen in one direction or another often toward a squirrel or a rabbit he had noticed.

It would have been easier to walk them on the sidewalk of the boulevard: no small animals to distract the poodle, the din of the traffic keeping the dogs subdued. But the privacy of the park was necessary for Helen’s work.

Parks were seldom crowded in East Berlin as most people had little time to take strolls in the middle of the day. Often Helen imagined she walked the dogs of all the rich people in the city or at least those with power, influence, or a high government post. In particular, Helen walked the dogs of many bureaucrats who spent their days receiving phone calls from Moscow that told them what to do. Those were the phone calls in which Helen’s real bosses were interested.

As she walked into the park, the schnauzer whined and tried to lie down. It had been a long walk for his little legs, but Helen gave the leash a tug and continued down the path which wound through the park to a small pond on the east edge of the woods. Near the pond was a metal park bench.

“Cold, hard, iron park benches. Leave it to the Communists,” Helen thought. As a little girl growing up in Berlin during the war, Helen had hated the Nazis. She now hated the Communists only a little less which was why when the opportunity presented itself, Helen became a spy.

Metal benches and magnetized paper clips were central to the communication system Helen’s handler had devised. Stuck on the bottom of the bench each Wednesday afternoon, when Helen took the dogs for their walk, she would find a magnetized paper clip. The paper clips were colored green, yellow, or red. Green meant she should install new recording devices in the dogs’ collars and leave the old ones in the park trash can for her handler to retrieve. Yellow meant she should leave the current recorders in place. A red paper clip meant she was to walk the dogs home and meet her handler at the bus station on Knaackstrasse.

Helen walked to the bench, dogs in tow, the poodle sniffing the air furiously, and she reached beneath feeling for the paper clip. To Helen’s surprise there was nothing. For the first time in her five years as a dog walker there was no paper clip.

Helen sat on the bench. Perhaps there was a mistake. Was today Wednesday? Was the paper clip on the ground? She looked around the bench but still nothing. The poodle gave a tug on his leash as if to dart away, but Helen held tightly.

Should she take the dogs home and try again tomorrow? Should she take the recording devices out of their collars and throw them in the trash?

Helen was deep in thought and didn’t notice a tall slender man sit down next to her until he had already taken a seat.

“Good morning,” he said in English with a deep German accent.

“Guten morgen,” Helen replied.

“You look lost, fräulein,” he said. “Or perhaps you’ve lost something.”

Helen said nothing. She risked a brief glance at the man and then looked straight ahead. Nervously she reached down to pet the schnauzer who was again whining.

“I found this right here on the bench an hour ago when I walked by,” the man said holding in his fingertips a red paper clip. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” he asked. “Look, it sticks to the park bench.” He stuck and unstuck the paper clip three times on the bench between them.

“Nein. Ich habe nie,” Helen said.

The man gave a small laugh and forced a smile. “Der hund hört zu. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say? The dog is listening. What a funny joke,” he said.

Helen’s heart pounded. That was the code that she and her handler used when they met. It was the phrase for when it was safe to speak.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Helen blurted out in English. She wanted to run.

“Mean? I mean nothing fräulein,” he said. “Here, I will leave you this paper clip. It is a souvenir from our talk.” The man placed the paper clip on bench beside her and stood.

“You look tired, fräulein. Walking dogs is a tiring business. Perhaps you should try another line of work? My company may have a job for someone with your skills.”

Helen squeezed the leashes in her fists; her breathe was imperceptible.

“I’ll see you again fräulein. I enjoy this park.”

The man walked away, and Helen was motionless until she knew he was out of sight. The hair on the back of her neck tingled. She stood and quickly tied the leashes of the dogs to the park bench and walked in the opposite direction from the man.

Helen felt a wave of guilt for leaving the dogs, but she convinced herself they would be found and returned to their owners. She also knew her guilt didn’t matter. There was no time to return the dogs. No time for Knaackstrasse. If she were lucky, there was enough time to flee before the GDR realized she would not cooperate. She knew, even now, they would be watching her.

The poodle began to bark. Helen imagined if she looked back, she would see him jumping and pulling against his leash. The well-behaved terriers would be confused at her leaving. She heard them begin barking too. But Helen did not look back. She walked as the light of the afternoon faded. She didn’t dare slow down.