In the Land of Armadillos

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  The young man gripped the handle, never taking his eyes from her face. Curiously, she studied the even features, the blank expression. Something flickered in the darkness behind those hollow eyes. Was it yearning? A memory?

  Not that it mattered. The commandant’s rye was not going to grind itself. Shayna returned her attention to the millstones. As it turned out, one of the gears was off, and the waterwheel wouldn’t turn. Lost in the repairs, she forgot about Yossel until dinnertime.

  * * *

  The sunset painted the clouds in bands of rose and aquamarine. With work over for the day, the farmhands were grouped around for a smoke outside the kitchen. Shayna’s feet ached, her back ached, her fingers, too, as she trudged across the footbridge toward the house.

  It didn’t register until the mud reached her ankles. The courtyard was flooded. A steady stream slopped from the barrel down to the barn and clear across the road. Whorls of silty water gurgled at the kitchen door, lapped gently at the bottom step of the storehouse.

  Yossel labored past her under the weight of two overflowing buckets. As she watched in disbelief, he emptied his pails into the barrel, turned around, and headed back toward the well.

  “Stop!” she shouted, running at him. He halted midstep. “Give me that,” she said harshly, grabbing the pails from his fingers. “What are you, an idiot?”

  Maybe he flinched a little. The men tittered. Fuming, she stomped into the house.

  Behind her, the hands filed in for dinner. While they wolfed down their borscht and pierogi, Yossel remained outside, rooted in place. When Achim left to visit a girl at a neighboring farm, the conversation changed course, the men talking in low voices about people who had vanished, news of the war. By the time they pushed themselves away from the table and ambled toward their huts, it was ten o’clock. Yossel was still in the yard, exactly as they had left him, mud setting like cement around his boots.

  “You have to tell him what to do,” said Hersh. “Tell him to come in for dinner.”

  “No,” she said savagely. “He wants to be a Golem? Let him stand there all night.”

  She was sure he was pretending. Looking out the window of her bedroom as she shook out her braid and brushed her hair, she could see him, as lifeless as a slab of granite, shivering in the cold.

  The next morning a stiff rain pelted down from an angry sky, pounding the hardened earth. Shayna joined Hersh at the kitchen door. Water was running off the peak of Yossel’s cap, dripping from the hem of his sodden cloth coat.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said to her brother. “Even animals know enough to come in from the rain.”

  But Hersh was staring at him, watching the rain fall drop by drop from the end of his nose. “The Golem doesn’t have any will of his own. He only does what the rabbi tells him to.” He threw open the door, hollered to him over the clatter of the rain. He might as well have shouted at the waterwheel; Yossel didn’t move. Hersh turned to his sister. “Well, Rabbi,” he said. “He’s your Golem. You try.”

  She could hardly see him through the long, slanting rays of rain, barely distinguishable from the sea of mud around him. “Come in, you jackass!” she yelled.

  He trained his vacant eyes on her, stirred his frozen limbs. Pulling his feet from the sludge with a sucking sound, he lumbered stiffly forward, up the steps, and into the house, where he stopped in front of Shayna, dripping on the kitchen floor.

  “Look,” said Hersh. “It’s not enough to tell him to fill the water barrel. You also have to tell him when to stop. You can’t just say ‘Come in.’ You’ve also got to tell him to take off his boots, change into dry clothes, sit down at the table, have something to eat.”

  “He’s not a baby,” she said in exasperation.

  She told Yossel to wait in the pantry behind the kitchen while she fetched him dry clothing. He disrobed as if she weren’t there, allowing her to pass curious eyes over his bare body.

  Shayna had never seen a man naked, not even Hersh. Tipping her head to one side, she inspected the width of his shoulders, the angles of his rib cage, the way his muscles lapped forth over his narrow hips. She observed other things, too: the kite-shaped plate of muscle at his back, the upside-down triangle of sinew above his buttocks, the shape outlined by the patch of hair between his thighs.

  “What is it, Rabbi?” he said. His voice had a gravelly, unused quality.

  Reluctantly, she did as Hersh suggested. “Put these on. Then come to the kitchen, sit down at the table, and have some breakfast.”

  She caught her breath at the play of muscles across his chest as he thrust his arms into the sleeves of the shirt. When he turned away from her to pull on the trousers, she withdrew, quietly shutting the door to the pantry behind her.

  * * *

  Thursdays, Shayna delivered flour to the bakery in Włodawa. She left shortly before dawn. She had planned on making her escape before Yossel rose; if he saw her leaving, he would follow on foot behind the wagon, trailing behind her like a wraith for the rest of the day.

  Frost lay between the furrows, whitened the stubble of cornstalks razed knee-high in the frozen fields. She flapped the reins over the horse’s shoulders just as the sun burst in a pink and orange haze across the horizon. She raised her chin and closed her eyes, letting the early-morning sun warm her skin. She’d been looking forward to this time away from home, where Yossel dogged her every step.

  The second job they had given him was impossible to screw up, or so they had thought. All he had to do was carry flour sacks from the warehouse to the wagon that went to Reinhart each week. Yossel managed to heap them into a rickety tower twenty feet high before anyone noticed. Next he was given the unenviable task of mucking out the animal shed, shoveling shit and dirty straw. By the time she stopped him, he had dug himself into a hole five feet deep. When she let him feed the animals, he piled the troughs to the rafters with drifts of hay and filled the henhouse knee-deep with cracked corn. The day she ordered him to top up the samovar, well . . . She could have sworn she told him to stop when it was full.

  When properly supervised, Yossel was a good worker; he did whatever he was asked, promptly and without complaint. The other men hissed at him as they passed; he was making them look bad.

  She discovered by accident that he’d been sleeping standing up. One night there was a tumult in the barn, someone had left the door open, and a fox made off with two hens. As she pulled the door shut against a wasting wind, she saw him in an empty stall, head down, swaying on his feet.

  “What are you doing?” she had asked, unnerved by the sight.

  At the sound of her voice, he came to life. “Does the rabbi need me?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “And stop calling me Rabbi.”

  “What does the rabbi want?”

  “The rabbi wants you to lie down and sleep,” she replied firmly, wincing at her own use of the title. “Tonight. Every night.”

  He dropped like a stone into the straw. Within moments, the deep chest was rising and falling with the steady rhythmic breathing of sleep. He must have been dreaming. His feet twitched as if he were running, and he brushed at wet eyes with the back of his hand.

  It was midmorning by the time she entered Włodawa. Expertly, she maneuvered the wagon through the maze of crooked streets, the rows of poplar trees like columns, past the pastel-colored houses and the onion-domed basilica. Toni flicked his ears back at her, harrumphed white vapor from his velvety nose. In the market, tables were laid out with potatoes, cabbages, mildewy clothing. Merchants stood around fires lit in rusted oil drums, stamping their feet, slapping their arms to stay warm. A squad of German soldiers crowded together in a circle, laughing with an officer.

  One of them glanced up, catching her eye. Shayna looked away, remembering the way the fishmonger’s blood had pooled around the cobblestones, but it was too late; the soldier separated himself from his comrades and blocked her way.

  “Good morning, miss,” he said, as if he were delighted to see
her. He assured her she wasn’t in trouble, it was just that he and his companions had a friendly little competition going. Which of these ladies could do the most push-ups, they wondered. Could she help them out?

  Beaming benignly, another soldier took the horse’s bridle, stroked his head as Shayna climbed down from her seat. Maybe she wasn’t moving quickly enough, maybe he didn’t like the look on her face. He smashed the butt of his rifle into the side of her head, knocking her off her feet.

  The soldiers parted to make room for her to pass. Inside the circle, three women were waiting on their hands and knees on the cold paving stones. The place he guided her to was already occupied by a steaming pile of horseshit.

  I’m dead, she thought, tears stinging her eyes. Will Hersh ever know what happened to me?

  The soldier leaned close, smiling confidentially. “Go on. You’re younger than the other ones. I’m betting on you.” He winked. “Don’t let me down.”

  Shayna lowered herself onto the pile of manure.

  The officer’s cap was pushed back on his head, his cheeks flushed with excitement and the cold. He held a stopwatch in his hand as he counted off eins, zwei, drei.

  For the first set of push-ups, she held her breath, almost blind with the pain and odor. But with the deprivation of oxygen to her muscles, she soon found her arms weakening, her pace slowing. It was suicide. Giving in, she gasped great lungfuls of stinking air. The stench filled her nostrils, made her light-headed, made her eyes water.

  Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. She was careful to keep her face blank, expressionless, but her injured eye leaked continuously. For a while she kept track of the numbers, and then she lost count.

  The woman to her left collapsed first. Shayna was conscious of the harsh wheeze of labored breathing as a pair of polished boots clicked slowly to a stop behind her head. There was a moment that felt like forever, and then a gunshot exploded near her ear, the report ricocheting off of the buildings surrounding the square.

  The woman beside her jerked violently, lay still. When the boots had clicked away to a safe distance, Shayna dared a glance. Recognizing the staring blue eyes, the astounded round mouth, she went weak in the knees, her pace slowing.

  “Come on,” the soldier’s voice was nearby, encouraging her. “You can’t stop now! One down, two to go.”

  Her chest was on fire, her head throbbed. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Every movement an agony. It wouldn’t be long now.

  A pair of cognac-colored oxfords stopped at the edge of her field of vision. The soldiers stiffened to attention. With the sound of Reinhart’s hearty voice, she felt tension spark and fizzle in the air. He made a crude joke, the soldiers laughed knowingly, and then the crisis was over, the soldiers drifting apart, strolling away.

  Shayna swayed to her feet. She put a hand to her forehead, recoiled from the stink of her own clothing. Her bruised eye had swelled shut.

  Reinhart was standing right in front of her. “Mirsky?” he said softly. Incredulity, followed by rage, blazed in his bright green eyes, hidden under the wide brim of his fedora. Then the expression was carefully tucked away, the clean-shaven face urbane and bland and smooth again. “You should see a doctor.”

  “I’m fine, Herr Kommandant,” she said stiffly. “I just want to go home.”

  He nodded toward the corpse on the dirty cobblestones. “Who is she?”

  “Zimmer. She sold eggs in the marketplace.” Her voice wobbled. “She knew my mother.”

  Reinhart averted his gaze. “Don’t come back here anymore,” he said in a low, tense voice, just loud enough for Shayna to hear. “You understand? Don’t come back.”

  With a swirl of caramel-colored coattails he strode off, instructing the soldiers to unload the bags at the bakery and escort his miller and her horse safely out of town.

  It took a staggering amount of effort to climb back onto the seat. The soldier who had struck her was now as polite as could be. Shayna struggled to keep her composure as he cheerfully unloaded the flour, then swung himself up into the wagon. She could hear him whistling as they rolled away. At the edge of town, he swung back off.

  “I still think you would have won,” he said, grinning engagingly. “And what a prize I had waiting for you!” He winked. Shouldering his rifle, he stopped to light up a cigarette, then strolled at a leisurely pace down the road that led back to town.

  Shayna lashed the reins over the horse’s shoulders. Toni leaped forward, almost tossing her out of the seat. In a frenzy of fear, she whipped the reins against the horse’s neck until he was going at a full gallop.

  When she reached home, the courtyard was empty. Shayna uncoupled the wagon and led the horse into the barn. He gave a sympathetic whinny and nudged his big head into her side. Exhausted, her head throbbing, Shayna finally dared to look at herself in a cracked vanity mirror hanging from a nail next to Toni’s stall.

  She was covered in shit from head to toe; it was caked in a solid coat across her thighs, her chest, her sleeves. Stench rose around her like a cloud of carrion birds. Her injured eye seemed unable to stop weeping.

  They were all Golems now, the Jews of Europe, forced to commit the same acts again and again like machines, free choice a dim memory. Automatically performing their duties until told to stop, easily replaced, their lives in the hands of the men who called themselves their Masters. The first helpless sobs burst from her throat.

  Yossel was in the empty stall, watching her. Something moved in the blank face, struggled for life in the shadowy eyes. With the tip of his index finger, he traced the black and purple stripe that crossed the orbit of her eye and ran down her cheekbone.

  He left the barn, moving quickly and with purpose. Her stink had chased away even him, she thought dully. But he returned with pails of hot water, sloughed them into a washtub he set in the straw. Steam curled lazily into the air as he pushed the shawl back from her face.

  His long fingers worked the buttons of her coat, undressing her as if she were a child. He unpinned her hair, shaking out the plaits of her braid; freed, it splashed down her back like a puddle. He unfastened her sweater, then her skirt, letting them slip down around her ankles. With great care he untied her boots, sliding the muddy, hobnailed things from her feet as if they were holy relics. He went down on his knees to roll the thick wool stockings down her legs.

  When she was stripped down to her underwear, he lifted her, carried her to the tin washtub. Dipping a cloth into the water, he washed gently around her blackened eye, rinsing away layers of blood and muck until she was clean.

  With the washcloth, he massaged along the nape of her neck, down the length of her arms to the tips of her fingers. He made slow, lyrical circles on her back, sweeping the flannel over her belly, her thighs, her knees. Emotions dawned one by one across the planes of his face, shaped by the liturgy of flickering shadows. There was a ragged catch in his breath as he passed the cloth over the swelling of her breasts, down the slope of her bottom.

  He made her close her eyes as he poured the last of the warm water over her head. Clean water ran in rivulets from her hair, down her body, draining away into the dirty straw.

  Steam rose from her skin in the cold of the barn. Yossel towered over her, massive in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp.

  “Shayna,” he wondered in his dusty, disused voice. Putting his hands on either side of her face, he kissed her.

  He laid her down in the hay. She didn’t see when he took off his clothes. Then he was kneeling over her, his skin pale and smooth and smelling of green fields and mowed grass and children’s games and summertime. His chest was so deep and broad, she couldn’t reach all the way around him. She buried her face in the curve between his neck and shoulder and gripped him between her thighs, and for just a little while, everything was all right.

  * * *

  It was already dark when the soldiers came for Achim, the German farm boy. His chair made a scraping sound on the floor as he pushed away from the dinner table. A few minutes
later he reappeared in the kitchen, dressed in his uniform. There was a moment of awkwardness, as if he wasn’t sure which group he belonged to anymore. “All right, let’s get going,” he said sheepishly, gesturing with his rifle.

  They were walking to Włodawa, where they would meet up with other Jews from the Lublinskie province. From there, they would get on trains for resettlement. No need to pack food or belongings; everything would be provided at their destination.

  Shayna’s fingers shook, making it difficult to button her coat. Fear bled through every thought, the way frigid air bled through the seams of her clothes as she shut the kitchen door behind her.

  The nine occupants of the Mirsky mill joined the convocation of Jews waiting outside, collected from the many little towns nearby. They were quiet for such a large crowd. There must have been two hundred and fifty of them, shepherded by five soldiers with rifles. As they tramped down the road, Shayna peered back toward the place that had housed her family for generations, the mill a landmark in these parts, but it had already been swallowed up by darkness.

  The barren fields along the road were a ghostly white in the moonlight. Dogs barked at them from each shuttered farmhouse they passed. Shayna had no illusions about where the Jews of the Lublinskie province were headed. She couldn’t bear to look at Hersh, pale and frightened, his face sunk deep in the collar of his coat. If she had listened to him, they might have been safe in the forests with the partizans. His birthday was next month, he was going to be eighteen, a man. This year he had finally managed to coax forth a blond wisp of beard. Tears leaked continuously from her injured eye. All those tales of miracles and wonders, did they give him comfort now?

  The column of Jews wavered, came to a halt. Word passed down the line. They were turning off the main road, into the Parczew Forest.

  To her left, Yossel grew agitated. She could see him trying to glance ahead and then behind them, his breath gusting out in great plumes, like Toni when something disturbed him. She took his hand and wove her fingers through his, hoping to calm him. Hersh’s jaw dropped open in surprise.