Panzer

On the day Tanya lost her job, she’d been watching a grainy documentary on the Nazis’ advance toward Stalingrad. She observed the dirt and the fire, and the ladies in folk style dresses. She watched the villagers, the prisoners with rotting mouths, and the boy soldiers with beautiful hair. She noted those idiot motorcycles the Germans drove, with the sidecars that seemed more suited to a circus than a war, hundreds of them, rolling through Russia like they were on their way to a drive-in in the country.

Tanya leaned in toward her screen and the ghost soldiers marched and smoked and stared their what-the-fuck stares. And in the middle of the burning thatch and ignorant sky, a lone cow stood. Just one: small, brown, feeble.

At the sight of the cow, Tanya exed out of the screen, folded her laptop, and tried to exorcise the bovine from her mind but it stood fast. After a minute she logged into a Zoom meeting where Pierre talked about market share and the fickle toy industry. 

Did the cow know it was Ukrainian? She wondered whether the smoke got in its eyes and what it did when the Germans fucked off to the next village to harass the men and tug on the lips and hair and undergarments of the women. To turn livelihoods into sky and dust.

“Tanya, are you with us?” Pierre asked. “You look…” Pierre paused and Tanya stared at her image in the Zoom box, and she knew what he was afraid to say. ‘Disturbed?’

“I’m okay,” she said with a smile, before realizing no one had asked. “I mean, I’m here,” she stumbled. “Mondays,” she offered by way of explanation and Janet tittered and Young-ho agreed and Gregor, who was barely older than a Hitler Youth rubbed his beer-y eyes and tilted the camera away from his unpressed shirt. 

Pierre could be seen looking down at his notes. “Where was I?”

Tanya tried to appear less crazed. She sipped her coffee and watched as Janet peeled the delicate foil from a miniature round of cheese. Such an odd and specific snack. Tanya’d just finished breakfast. She leaned in for a better look at the wrapper. La Vache qui rit. Aware of the intrusion, of Tanya’s face advancing toward the camera, Janet stopped chewing. Pierre cleared his throat and directed his staff toward the third column of the spreadsheet that was now blinking on everyone’s screen.

Tanya, collecting her files and balancing her laptop on her palm as if it was a tray of drinks, moved her office to the kitchen island. She opened the fridge. She’d seen the 60 Minutes factory farm investigation where the cows dangled by their hooves like shirts on a clothesline, the Instagram posts of dogs and cows photographed as couples—the only difference is your perspective!—and the picture of the baby highland cow with its rock-band hair, posing in a claw foot tub. She’d bought it and hung it in her dining room. But those things only made her give up meat for a week. Five days, if she was being honest.

Young-ho said, “With the launch of our farm series we’re anticipating a sales increase of twelve percent in the third quarter.” He paused, craning his neck to see what Tanya was doing. She appeared to be pouring a carton of milk down the drain. “That’s without a targeted marketing campaign.” Young-ho’s voice drifted.

After the milk, Tanya dumped Blend, a bag of shredded mozzarella, and a brick of cream cheese. She set a four-liter bucket of vanilla ice cream in the middle of the sink and turned on the hot water.

 “Sorry, Tanya, are you cleaning your fridge?” Pierre was squinting.

Tanya shifted the camera so it faced the counter where—my God—a roast was thawing. “I was getting a snack.” She grabbed the first thing she could find—a stalk of broccoli—and bit off a floret. 

“Right.” Pierre resumed sharing his hindquarter projections. 

Tanya thought she should just turn off her camera so she could rid her entire kitchen of cow, but that was not a company best practice. Pierre insisted his team see each other to make connection, and to ease feelings of isolation. What did Pierre know about isolation? He had a wife, twins, a pair of Weinaramars—the only difference is your perspective!—a granny in a granny suite, and a library full of books. Isolation was watching your barn burn, the blow flies multiply, and the panzers slink away into the sunset. Isolation was being the last cow in Stalingrad.

“Tanya, can you walk us through the creative for the ad campaigns planned for Q three?” Pierre loosened his tie.

 Tanya cupped the roast in her hands, brought it toward the screen. Blood dripped on her keyboard.

Gregor frowned. “Um…what’s happening right now?”

 “So we start with a wide-angle shot of a farm,” Tanya croaked. “And then we zoom in on a cow.”

 “This specific cow?” Young-ho asked. “The one you’re holding?”

 “And then,” Tanya was speaking through sobs now. “We show the barn on fire.”

 “We’re still talking about LEGO, right?” Gregor asked. “I still work here, don’t I? Where do I work?”

 “Sorry, Tanya, this seems a little off-brand.” Pierre turned to his son, who was playing in the background. “Jules, go in the other room.”

 Tanya whispered, “Then we cut to the Panzer.”

 Young-ho rubbed his chin. “I wasn’t aware we were releasing a Panzer. Would that be under the LEGO City theme or is this specifically for the German market?”

 Janet covered her eyes. “Tanya, turn off your camera!”

 “That’s enough for today,” Pierre said. “We’ll get back at it tomorrow.”

 Young-ho asked, “Will we be releasing a soldier to go with the Panzer?”

 Pierre ended the meeting. Tanya dumped the roast in the trashcan, and closed the lid.

Ali Bryan’s first novel, Roost, won the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and her second novel, The Figgs, was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. She’s longlisted for the CBC Canada Writes CNF prize, shortlisted for the Jon Whyte Memorial Essay Award and won the 2020 Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story. Her debut YA novel, The Hill, was released in March from Dottir Press. She lives in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, where she has a wrestling room in her garage and regularly gets choked out by her family.