There were two strange things about the model warplane.
The first was that it was hanging in a Christmas shop. The second was
that a circle of barbwire was looped around its left wing. The
barbwire was real. It wasn't part of the model.
To the boy, the circle of barbwire looked like the crown of
thorns that Jesus had worn. He knew that the Roman soldiers put a
crown of thorns on Jesus‚ head as a symbol to make fun of Him. He
could picture Jesus‚ head slumped forward, the thorns of His crown
sticking up like barbs - and all the while the Roman soldiers laughing
and jeering at Him. But the boy didn't see what this had to do with a
model. Why wasn't the crown on the warplane made of real thorns? And
why put it on a warplane? The symbol of the crown had to mean
something, but he couldn't figure it out. He also couldn't figure out
why Dzadzia had it hanging in the shop in the first place.
During the year, the shop was a garden shop, and the
warplane blended in because it was hanging among things like watering
cans and shovels. But when Christmas came the shop changed. Dzadzia
put up tons of decorations. Surrounded suddenly by garlands and tinsel
and bows, the warplane stood out. Suddenly it was right there, where
it had always been, but now you had to think about it. You had to
consider all its guns. There were guns sticking out from its front and
its side, and guns sticking out from its tail. There was a set of guns
thrust out from a bubble under its belly, and another big set from a
glass dome on top of the plane. With all those guns aimed at so many
nutcrackers and stockings decked with tinsel, the warplane seemed bent
on wrecking the place. And that didn‚t seem like the sort of thing
anyone would want to do to a Christmas shop.
The boy decided to ask Dzadzia about the crown of thorns
and about the warplane. Dzadzia answered him straight out like he
always did.
"Thats a B-17 Flying Fortress," Dzadzia said in his soft voice.
"It's the plane I flew in the war."
The boy had forgotten about the war. It was something that happened
long before he was born, long before even his parents were born. And
it was something that Dzadzia never talked about. "What about the
barbwire?"
"The
barbwire is for the barbwire that surrounded the camp where I was held."
"It's not for the crown that Jesus wore?" said the boy.
Dzadzia looked surprised when the boy said that. His eyes
seemed to say that this was something he hadn't expected to hear.
"No," he said, still looking surprised. "It's for the barbwire
that
surrounded the prison camp."
"What were you doing in a prison camp?"
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"We were part of the
fleet that was softening up the coast for the invasion. Our plane
was shot down."
"You mean you crashed?"
"No. The plane caught fire because it had been hit. It
wouldn't fly any more. So our commanding officer gave the command
to
parachute, and that's what we did."
"Where did you land?" asked the boy.
"In
a field of wheat. The Germans were there waiting for us."
"Did you fight them?"
"No."
"They're the ones who put you in the camp?"
"Yes. The camp with barbwire all around it." And Dzadzia
drew a circle in the air with his finger about the size of the barbwire
crown.
"They were mean, weren't they," said the boy. But it was more a
statement than a question.
"Yes," said Dzadzia. "They were very mean."
The
boy decided not to ask any more questions after that.
He knew that Dzadzia didn't have to answer anything at all, and that
he'd been lucky to hear so many of the details that Dzadzia always kept
to himself. But he didn't mind not asking more questions because
he
had heard enough to understand what the barbwire meant. He spent
a lot
of time in the days afterward envisioning the camp in which his Dzadzia
had been held. In his mind he saw a group of prisoners standing
high
on top of a slumping hill. The hill was ringed with strand after
strand of barbwire. And he imagined German soldiers marching
inside
the barbwire with their guns pointed high, and their cruel feet
pounding the soft earth. The earth was too good for them to
touch.
The boy could see that. But it supported them anyway in spite of
the
ugly marks left in the grass by their boots, their guttural shouts, and
the way they spit on and shoved his poor Dzadzia. The earth
supported
them when it could have just as easily swallowed them, or crushed them,
or swooped down on them like a Flying Fortress with all its guns
roaring to life in the middle of a Christmas shop.
Thinking of these things, the boy saw how silly he had been
to have imagined that barbwire could be anything other than what it
really was.
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