Invisible Love by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Howard Curtis

executed?
    After a day spent trembling with fear, the following dawn brought the same news: no factory today. We realized then that, with orders lessening, the factory was idle.
    In spite of the cold, some of us got some fresh air.
    I was walking along the sides of the huts when I saw three soldiers talking to a dog that was leaping about on the outside of the barbed wire fence. The men kept throwing snowballs at it, and each time the dog would chase after the ball, believing—or pretending to believe—that it was solid enough for him to catch it in his mouth. Obviously, each time, it would crumble in his jaws and he would bark in surprise, as if someone had played a bad trick on him. The three Germans would burst out laughing. From my hidden vantage point, I too was amused by the dog’s stubbornness, his leaps and bounds, the carefree gaiety with which he ignored his failures and kept starting all over again.
    Then the three soldiers heard a bell summoning them to resume their duties and walked away. When they disappeared from the animal’s sight, the dog, unable to get through the fence, tilted his head to one side, whined with disappointment and sat down, looking bewildered.
    I stepped forward. Why? I don’t know . . . Especially since it was very unwise for a prisoner to wander too close to the edge of the camp. Never mind, I stepped forward.
    As soon as he saw me, the dog wagged his tail and gave me a big smile. The closer I got, the greater his euphoria. He was stamping with impatience.
    Without thinking, I grabbed some snow and threw a ball of it over the wire. Enthusiastically, he leaped up in the path of the projectile, seized it, reduced it to powder in his teeth, protested, then turned to me with a yelp, beaming with pleasure. I did it again, several times. He would rush at the ball, his hindquarters driven forward by some invisible, irrepressible force, abandoning himself to the intoxication of the race, swerving, tumbling, completely given over to his passion for movement.
    I fell to the ground, my knees in the snow, my torso on my thighs, hot tears running down my cheeks. How good it was to cry at last . . . How long was it since I had last cried? How long was it since I had last felt anything? How long was it since I had last reacted like a human being?
    When I looked up, the dog was sitting snugly in his rough fur coat, staring at me, questioning, anxious.
    I smiled at him. He pricked up his ears, looking for a confirmation. His posture said, “Should I be worried or not?”
    I was crying even more but insisted on smiling. For the dog, that wasn’t a clear answer.
    I walked toward him. He moaned with satisfaction.
    When we were within a few feet of each other, he yapped shrilly and tried to push his muzzle between the barbed wire. Bending forward, I felt his warm breath on my palm, his damp, soft nose. He was kissing me. I started talking to him, I talked to him as I had never talked to anybody in the camp.
    What did I tell him? That I was grateful to him. That he had made me laugh, which was something I hadn’t done for a year. Above all, that he had made me cry, and that those tears were tears not of sadness but of joy. He had overwhelmed me by accepting me after the soldiers. Not only had I not thought he would give me such a warm welcome, I hadn’t even thought he would see me. Most of the time I was transparent, nobody took any notice of me. According to the Nazis, I belonged to an inferior race, good only for dying, or for working hard before dying. A race even below his, because the soldiers liked animals. When he had shown me how pleased he was to see me, I had become a man again. Yes, as soon as he had looked at me with the same interest and the same impatience as he had looked at the guards, he had given me back my humanity. In his eyes, I was as much a man as the Nazis were. That was why I was sobbing . . . I had forgotten I was a person, and I