Franky Furbo

Franky pats me on the arm while his nose and whiskers quiver again.

‘Well, I’m going down to cook you a good meal. Would you like a big omelet with baked potatoes and carrots, all served with fresh homemade bread?’

He knows I would, he knows everything about me. I smile. He leaves. I look over at Wilhelm. He’s staring at the ceiling and I can see tears flowing from his eyes. I speak and it comes out in German.

‘It’ll be all right, Wilhelm. Franky will make everything just fine. We would be dead if he hadn’t saved us, you know.’

He lifts his head, stares at me.

‘You are German?! You are Bavarian, a Munchener?’

‘No, I am American.’

His head falls back. He stares at the ceiling, the wooden

ceiling.

‘But you speak perfect German, the German I speak, the German from my part of Germany. What is this? Are you an American spy?’

I try to explain how Franky taught me, how, by some magic way, he put part of Wilhelm’s brain into mine.

‘But that is not possible. None of this is possible. Who is it who wears the big fox suit? Is this some American trick?’

I don’t know whether to try explaining it or not. It seems impossible. How can one explain what one not only doesn’t understand but doesn’t even really yet quite believe himself? But Franky wanted me to talk to Wilhelm. I try.

‘This fox we see is a real fox, a special fox. He calls himself Franky Furbo. He is not a giant fox; he only looks big to us because he has made us little as foxes. He has saved us from death with his magic medicine and special skills.’

My God, it sounds just as crazy in German.

‘He made us small, took us from the hole, and brought us here. We are in the inside of a tree, which is where this fox lives.’

‘Yes, he told me these things. But do you believe him? It is not possible. Perhaps you are crazy, but I am not.’

I know how he feels.

‘Yes. I think I believe him, although it is very difficult. When he gave me your language, he also gave me a good part of your life. Let me tell you some things and maybe then you will believe.’

I wait. I have a sensation of a Peeping Tom, looking at this film that is in my brain, at the life of this man who a few hours ago was a stranger to me, the enemy I was trained to fight and kill.

‘Wilhelm, you are married. You have a wife named Ulrika whom you call ‘Riki’. You miss her very much and are worried for her because of the bombs. Your father’s name is Heinrich. Your mother’s name is Heidi. You had a brother named Hans, but he was killed in Russia. You were studying to be an engineer but were taken into the army.’

As I talk, Wilhelm twists to look at me. There is pain on his face. It is the pain of his body and the pain of his emotions.

‘Stop. This is all a trick. I must have been talking out loud when I was unconscious. How do you know these things? This is very cruel of you to treat me like this!’

‘I know much more, but it will not help to say it now. Let us talk about other things. You play chess, yes? Perhaps Mr Furbo will find us a chessboard and we can play. How are you feeling? Do you still hurt? Mr Furbo took away all my pain yesterday and says that soon I shall be able to stand and walk.’

I stop. Wilhelm is quiet.

‘All this craziness must be true then. Do you know that you speak with my voice? When you speak it is almost as if I am speaking myself. How can that be?’

‘It’s as I told you.’

Wilhelm is quiet; he lies back. I’m feeling tired myself. I drift off to sleep. When I wake, Franky has placed a table beside my bed. He helps me swing up so I can sit at the table. He puts slippers on my feet. I look over and see that Wilhelm is asleep. Franky pulls up a chair for himself across from me.

‘Ah, William, it will be nice to sit at a table with someone, to have conversation and eat. I do not often have the chance. Most of the time I am alone. I make friends with some of the other animals in the forest, and once there were two children with whom I was friendly, but now they have grown and gone off to the university, taken work in another part of Italy. I don’t see them anymore. We write to one another and I hope someday they will come back to live near here.’

The omelet is delicious, the carrots cooked just right, not too soft, not too hard. Franky tells me wonderful tales of his life as a fox, how he writes children’s stories to gain the little money he needs for books and necessities. He has a post office box, a bank account, and mostly he orders the things he wants by mail to be delivered at his P.O. box.

‘I used to have one or the other of my two young friends pick up those packages for me, but then I discovered I could transmute matter and make myself look more or less like a human, or even be invisible. This simplified life for me, and also I could travel by transmigration of my body. Would you like to see me as a man? It must be somewhat uncomfortable for you sitting here, eating with a fox. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it. I try not to enter your mind unless I feel it is necessary. It confuses conversation when only one is a telepath.

‘By the way, I hope you don’t mind, but I am a vegetarian; it seems very unfoxlike, but it is my preference. If you want meat while you are here, I can obtain some for you.’

‘To be honest, if you cook vegetables and eggs like this all the time, I won’t need meat, Franky. Also, I hardly notice you’re a fox anymore, so you don’t need to do anything about that either.’

I’d practically forgotten I was sitting there on the edge of a bed, at a table, eating cooked eggs, potatoes, carrots and homemade bread with someone who looks like a gigantic fox. Perhaps Franky Furbo has entered my mind to make me more comfortable. No, I don’t think he’d do that without telling me.

But then, right there, he actually does it. As I watch, he gradually changes: his fur disappears, his muzzle shortens, his arms and legs thicken, and he’s practically a human. There’s still something foxlike about him, but this is probably because I know he’s a fox. A stranger would only think he was a slightly thinner-than-usual human.

‘This is amazing, Franky. I wouldn’t have believed it. And are you little, the way we are?’

‘Of course; if I made myself the size of a human I wouldn’t fit in my own house.’

His nose wiggles and he begins eating. Franky stays in his human form for the rest of the meal. He says tomorrow he will work with me and try to help me get out of bed and walk around.

‘You need to regain some tone in your muscles and loosen up the area where I repaired those vertebrae. Now I think you should slide back in bed, stretch out and try to sleep. Your body has been through much and needs all the rest it can get.’

He gathers up our dishes from the table and carries them downstairs. I realize more than just my body has been through much; I definitely need rest. My brain feels as if it’s sizzling from so many new thoughts.

Two days later, Franky does the same thing to the mind of Wilhelm he’d done with mine. When he’s finished, Franky leaves us alone. Wilhelm starts talking to me in English. His eyes are wide; his face white.

‘But I speak with your voice, the voice you use when you speak English. I know all about you as if we were brothers. How can this be?’

‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Franky Furbo. He’s the one who can perform this miracle. I think only he can know.’

Now we talk easily. Wilhelm is less scared, more willing to believe. At first, we avoid the situation under which we met. Me sliding out on the bridge, his sergeant and he underneath waiting for me. We switch back and forth from English to German, at first, but then he begins speaking German and I speak English. We understand each other perfectly, and, at the same time, we feel like ourselves speaking our own languages.

It turns out they’d seen me from the time I stepped out of the stream. I told him about Stan up on the hill. They hadn’t seen him. I make the motions of the bombs over my head and go ‘Boom Boom’ again. He remembers and I tell him what I was trying to do. We both get to laughing. We laugh the hardest when we talk about my grabbing his rifle in the middle of the bombardment when we were being killed.

‘I thought you were really crazy then, William. First you’re waving your hands over your head going “Boom Boom”, then you take the rifle when we both know we’re going to be killed, anyway.’

He tells me about his experience in the war, how he wouldn’t have been too disappointed if I had captured him. He says his sergeant was a very hard man and I’m lucky he didn’t kill me. He only saved my life because he thought some officer might want to interrogate me. The Germans knew there was going to be an attack soon but didn’t know where it would be. I told him I’d been looking for a way to get captured since Palermo. It turned out we’d been in the same area several times in the battle up the Italian peninsula. We agree we’re both glad to be out of it.

We’re also curious about what’s happening to us. We keep reassuring each other we aren’t crazy. Two people couldn’t be crazy about the same situation at the same time, could

they? There’s only one thing to do and that’s wait to see what happens. He wants very badly to get some message to his wife, Riki, so she will know he is all right, because he knows the sergeant will report him dead or captured. I suggest he ask Franky when we see him again about the possibility of getting word to her.

During the next days, both Wilhelm and I start getting out of bed and exercising. Franky has individual exercises for each of us to help us gain our strength. He also has different potions and medicines he gives us along with our food. We eat only vegetarian food and Wilhelm says he wants meat, so, at first, Franky brings him chicken, steaks, roasts – things like that. But Franky is a good cook and likes to eat. The way he prepares the vegetarian meals for us is so tasty, the meat Wilhelm’s eating begins to look like animal food.

After about two weeks, Wilhelm shifts over to vegetarian food with us. Once in a while he’ll have a Wiener schnitzel, but the main part of his food is vegetables. Franky has all kinds of spices he adds to the vegetables, so it’s hard to tell them from meat sometimes.

He says this is one thing from his fox background that has stayed – he really enjoys eating; but he can’t justify killing animals, especially because he can talk to them.

We have many conversations about ourselves. It is pleasant sharing our ideas, our experiences. Franky does manage to get a message to Wilhelm’s wife, and even brings a letter to him after a few days, written in what Wilhelm recognizes as her handwriting. She says she is well and staying with her family in the country. She tells him his mother and sister are well, also. She was very surprised to find his letter in her mailbox, even without a stamp or a Wehrmacht seal, because how could Wilhelm know where she is, that she is staying with her mother?

But Wilhelm is even more surprised. How could Franky deliver the letter and bring back an answer in only two days? It isn’t possible. Franky only wrinkles his nose, which I now begin to suspect is his way of smiling. I’m ready to believe anything, but Wilhelm has a harder time with believing. It’s not his way; he always wants to know things.

Finally we’re both in such good condition, it isn’t necessary for us to stay in bed. I don’t know where our uniforms are. We are both wearing blue pajamas.

One morning Franky comes in with clothes for us. They are not our uniforms; at the same time they aren’t regular clothes. There is a jacket, or jerkin, which slips over our heads, and trousers almost like knickerbockers, only tighter. There are heavy socks and light leather boots. There’s a wide leather belt to go over the shirt and to help hold up the trousers. He also has brought us light blue underwear, three pair each, the same color as our pajamas. I can’t help wondering where he gets these things, but I’m too embarrassed to ask. I see he no longer wears his white coat but is wearing the same kind of clothes himself.

We put on the costumes. There is also a hat. The clothes are all the colors of the forest, different greens and browns. The hat is dark green, pointed front and back like the kind of hat we used to make from old newspapers at the orphanage. I must say, we look fine in our new costumes, a bit like Robin Hood’s forest rangers, but Wilhelm seems worried. Franky twitches his nose.

‘I know, Wilhelm. You are worried because you are out of uniform and it is against the German military laws for a soldier to wear any other clothes. But your other uniform was so dirty. When you leave, you may have it back. In the meantime, if you want, I can make it so you will be invisible to anybody but William or myself. Please don’t worry so much.’

‘Yes, Franky, but I feel so strange in these soft clothes, these soft boots. What kind of uniform is this? It’s somewhat like Bavarian clothes but much softer. What is this?’

‘Let’s just say it is a peace uniform, Wilhelm, that, for a while anyway, we three are in an army for peace.’

Franky wrinkles his nose again. I smile, then laugh, and Wilhelm joins us. I smile at Wilhelm. It seems a great idea to me. I would definitely not be happy putting on my old dirty olive drabs and going out to war again. Wilhelm looks down at himself in his peace costume.

‘Well, it’s better than being dead, I must say. I was tired and scared by the war, anyway. I’m proud to be a member of our peace army. Can you really make us invisible?’

‘If you want.’

‘But we will be able to see each other?’

‘Oh yes. You won’t feel a thing. We won’t know we’re invisible unless somebody else tries to see us.’

‘OK, let’s be invisible. I’m ready.’

Wilhelm rises and stands to attention. I stand up, too, just to be sociable. Franky wiggles his nose and laughs.

‘OK, you’re invisible, both of you. I am too.’

Wilhelm looks down at himself.

‘How do I know I’m invisible? I can see myself.’

‘OK, if you want to be invisible to yourself, fine.’

Franky waves his hand as if he’s brushing away a fly. I think he’s failed for once, because Wilhelm is still standing there. Then I watch Wilhelm. His face is pale. He’s holding out his hands, touching them together; they’re shaking. He looks down at his legs.

‘Where am I? I’m gone. You did it. I’m invisible!’

‘Only to yourself. We see him, don’t we, William?’

‘That’s right. Are you sure you can’t see yourself, Wilhelm? You’re right there.’

‘Right where? I’m nowhere, I’m nothing! Mr Furbo, Gott in Himmel, make me come back, make me visible again.’

‘Do you want to be visible to everybody, just to the three of us or only to yourself?’

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