In the Land of Armadillos

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  For a long moment, nobody moved. Eventually, Reinhart touched his heels to Fallada’s sides, and she jogged reluctantly forward. At the wall, he dismounted. “You,” he instructed the others. “Turn him over.”

  They took his arms and rocked him onto his back. With dawning horror, Reinhart saw that he was just a kid, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. A burlap bag slipped from his fingers. Reinhart bent over and picked it up. A few rutted and discolored apples rolled out onto the leaves.

  “Is he . . . is he breathing?”

  “Dead,” said a man in a dove-gray homburg.

  There was a cart stationed under a tree to collect the last windfall fruits of the season. “Put him in the wagon and take him to Gestapo headquarters,” Reinhart mumbled.

  One fellow took his arms, another took his legs, and between them, they gentled him into the cart. The shabby little parade of Jews began rolling the wagon with its human burden back to Włodawa. He caught a glimpse of the girl’s face as she followed behind, transfigured with anguish.

  With the rifle balanced in the crook of his arm, Reinhart reached inside his riding jacket for his cigarettes. His fingers were shaking so badly, he couldn’t work the lighter.

  In the lengthening shadows under the trees, he discerned a figure. Reinhart had already swung the gun to his shoulder before he recognized the general shape and silhouette of Soroka’s boy Anshel, the telltale fringe of red hair. Quickly, he lowered the rifle.

  “Little saddlemaker, is that you?” he called. “Come out where I can see you. What are you doing out here?”

  In his winter clothes, he was as round as a barrel. “You sent me to the woodsman’s hut. I’m supposed to deliver a message.”

  Was that today? This morning seemed so long ago. Reinhart jerked his head in the direction of the departed wagon. “Do you know them?”

  Anshel’s face was the color of candle wax. “They used to live on my street,” he said. “Before we came to live with you. Yitz . . . the one you . . . he’s a couple of years older than me. I used to play buttons with him.”

  “Buttons?”

  “You flip your buttons against a wall. If your button lands on someone else’s, you get to keep his button, too.”

  “Oh . . . we used to play something like that . . . with cards . . .” He felt curiously detached, like he was observing the conversation from a very great distance away.

  “Since the last Aktzia, they’ve been living in the woods. They were looking for apples.” Then, almost inaudibly, “They were going to ask you for work.”

  Mechanically, he nodded. By now, Reinhart was thoroughly numb, but this much registered. He’d killed a boy, his name was Yitz. Before the Germans came, he lived with his family on Wyrkowska Street. On the last day of his life, he was starved enough to risk being shot for a few rotten, wormy apples he’d found on the ground.

  Anshel was gazing worriedly at him, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

  You’ll have plenty of time after the war to have a nice, long nervous breakdown, he told himself sternly. But right now you have to pull it together. Come on. Grow a pair.

  At that moment, Anshel Soroka would later tell his father, Willy Reinhart was as white as a ghost. Then he raked off his hat. Plowed his fingers through his hair. Smoothed his hand over his jaw. Smiled his crafty magician’s smile.

  “Go on, little saddlemaker,” he said, swatting the boy with his fedora before plopping it back on his head. “Get moving. Your date is waiting for you.”

  Anshel set off running down the path toward the woodsman’s hut.

  God, he needed a smoke. He was still holding his lighter. With nerveless fingers, he clicked it once, twice, and then it broke apart in his hands.

  Seized with fury, he heaved it into the trees. For a moment it hung there, a small black exclamation mark against the sky, before dropping out of sight.

  * * *

  “So, Reinhart, you killed a Jew.” Partizans had cut the telephone lines so many times by now, the connection was tinny. Rohlfe was calling from Gestapo Headquarters in Włodawa, only a few kilometers away, but it sounded like he was calling from the moon. “What happened?”

  There was an edge of incredulity to his voice. What he really meant was You, Reinhart, shot a Jew? Reinhart the Jew lover? You’re just like the rest of us after all.

  “I was out riding when I came upon some people, strangers, in my apple orchard. I commanded them to stop. One of them made a break for it, reached over the fence for something hidden. I thought it was a gun.”

  “But the Jews love you, everyone knows that. Why would he shoot you?”

  There was a soft knock at his door. It was Friedman, the bookkeeper, a neat, boyish man with thinning sandy hair and a carefully sculpted goatee. In a previous life, he’d owned a bank in Berlin. Behind him, a porter wrestled with a gigantic rolled-up Oriental rug. “Where do you want this?” he half mouthed, half mimed.

  If Reinhart were honest with himself, there was nowhere to put it, the palace was at capacity, but he had a weakness for pretty things. Highboys, dressing mirrors, and china cabinets cluttered the second-floor gallery like wraiths. In corners and hallways, all kinds of chests and tables and bureaus and cabinets accumulated, a pastiche of styles and periods, with marquetry and gold leaf and brass fittings. Not to mention the four grand pianos crammed into the conservatory. He covered the mouthpiece. “Put it with the others,” he hissed, and waved them out of the room.

  At the other end of the line, Reinhart could hear the scratch of a pen point on paper. “It’s a very serious violation to kill a worker. All Jews are property of the Reich. There will have to be an inquiry, possibly a trial.”

  A trial? It hurt to breathe, like his lungs were lined with broken glass. What did Rohlfe know? Did he have enemies? Someone who wanted his job? Was he being set up? Did that hissing mean that someone was secretly listening in on an extension? What should he do?

  The lie tumbled out of him. “They were partizans,” he blurted. “The boy had a gun in his bag. You know the forest around my castle is riddled with partizan activity.”

  “Oh,” said Rohlfe. “Well, that’s completely different, you shot him in self-defense. You don’t even have any guards out there, am I right? No wonder you’re on edge.” His voice dropped, became confidential, fearful, almost. “I’m sure you heard what happened at Sobibór.”

  “Yes. Brutal.”

  “Fucking animals. Those men had wives, families. You know my dog, Luther? Kolko gave him to me. He’d had a litter of puppies.” He was morose. “They killed Kolko with an ax.”

  “Animals.” He would have agreed to anything Rohlfe said, just to get him off the phone.

  “And you don’t even have a fence around your camp! You’re the one with all the workers, have them build one. You know, I’m going to send you some guards. All these boys are just sitting around town getting drunk. It will give them something to do.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Reinhart hastily. “I’ll put up a fence. Fantastic idea, Rohlfe. Thank you.”

  “About the shooting. I’m sending a man with my report. Just sign it, and we’ll mark this incident closed.”

  A mighty sense of elation powered through him, leaving him dizzy with relief. It was drafty in his office, but sweat pasted his shirt to his back. “Thank you. And if this man happened to return to your office with a bottle of Hennessy?”

  “I wouldn’t say no. Heil Hitler,” said Rohlfe.

  “Heil Hitler,” he replied.

  With a click, he returned the phone to the cradle. Reinhart leaned back in his chair, covered his eyes, and began to laugh weakly. What a vast cosmic joke. Yesterday he’d shot an innocent kid dead. Now he’d lied to an officer of the law to get himself off the hook. Should he feel bad about it? The police force committed more heinous crimes than this one every day. What good would it do anyone if he ended up in jail or, worse, the eastern front? Adampol would be finished, his workers sent up the chimneys
at Sobibór. In this war, his first responsibility was to his people. He was one of the good guys, a hero. So he’d killed somebody. In the heavenly balance sheet, he was still winning by a landslide. If the kid had stayed put instead of risking his life for a bag of wormy apples, he’d be alive. His death was a casualty of the times.

  He was Willy Reinhart, Reich Commissioner for the Collection and Distribution of Agricultural Products, Savior of the Jews, with the power of life and death in the palm of his hand. He’d just passed a test of life and death himself; he thought he deserved a treat. He took a cigar from the box on his desk and ran it under his nose, savoring the sweet perfume of tobacco before clipping off the end of it with a tiny gold scissor and putting it in his mouth.

  * * *

  There was a squadron of mounted policemen, forty of them, cantering four abreast down the road toward Adampol. It was morning, just after breakfast. Outside, the sky was a brilliant heavenly blue, but it was brisk. He could smell winter in the air.

  With a flutter of apprehension, he watched their approach from his office window, where he was cooped up with Friedman, going over the final numbers for the harvest. Then he sighed. “Better go warn Ostrowski that there will be forty more to feed today. And the horses are going to need water, tell Linker.” More out of habit than hope, he asked, “Any word on Soroka?”

  Regretfully, Friedman shook his head, then left the office.

  The saddlemaker had vanished two weeks ago, and Reinhart’s anger was still fresh. A tangle of emotions roiled his heart, sometimes fury taking the lead, other times betrayal, or a deep, aching sense of loss.

  He didn’t deny it, that last episode had been a close one. On a perfectly random, ordinary Friday night, a squadron of Wehrmacht had rolled up to the palace. Without so much as a how-do-you-do, they went right to work collecting his Jews and leading them into the forest. Reinhart had been fast asleep. By the time Wysocki roused him, they were already half a mile away. He had to drive like a maniac to reach them before anything drastic happened.

  Striding down the long line of terrified laborers, he’d found the commanding officer and gone right to work. Bullied, flattered, wheedled, persuaded. Blackmailed, coerced, cajoled, and threatened. Insisted, and wouldn’t take no for an answer, that the officer accompany him to the castle and have something to eat. He had to make some phone calls, Reinhart explained, and the officer could help himself to brandy and anything else from the pantry while he waited.

  Fortunately, he’d recently hosted Lischka, the Gestapo chief of Lublin. One, two, three, he phoned him up, explained the spot he was in (My best workers! Middle of the harvest!), then spent a few pleasant moments reminiscing. Lischka asked if he could speak with the officer in charge, and Reinhart handed him the receiver. A few choice words in the right ear, and the excitement was all over.

  So yes, he could see how it might make Soroka a little jumpy. But he’d pulled it off, hadn’t he? How could Haskel leave him? After all the times he’d saved them, didn’t that mean anything? He was Willy Reinhart, the man with the silver tongue, no one could refuse him!

  Since then, he’d tried to strike up a friendship with the bookkeeper, but it wasn’t the same. Friedman was too refined, too courteous, too apologetic, too eager to please.

  Soroka felt like family. He missed the saddlemaker’s square, careworn face, his determined, plainspoken honesty. For the hundredth time that morning, he wondered where they were. Haskel knew all the roads, every path through the forest, every partizan, every horse, every wagon, every farmer in the province. Obviously, they’d gone into hiding, in someone’s barn or root cellar. He was evenly divided between hoping they were safe and hoping they would come crawling back.

  Outside, a rook stalked pensively through the grass. Reinhart turned away from the window, shrugged on his suit jacket, straightened his tie. He practiced a couple of cheery smiles in front of a small mirror he kept stashed inside his desk before drawing himself up to his full height and striding down the hallway.

  An unfamiliar police captain waited for him under the portico. He clicked his boot heels together and smiled thinly through his toothbrush mustache. His breath came out in puffs of white vapor.

  “Welcome, Captain. What can I do for you?” Reinhart greeted him with a friendly smile. But not too friendly; after all, he was a very important man, and he needed this officer to know it.

  On the driveway, the police had divided into two columns and were making their way around the flanks of the house. Their horses’ hooves struck sparks against the paving stones. Reinhart said sharply, “The palace and everything on the grounds are property of the Reich Agricultural Commission. Your men are not permitted to wander around by themselves.”

  “They’re going to search the buildings,” said the captain pleasantly. “We’re here for your Jews.”

  He’d heard this line before. “I’m sure this is a mistake,” said Reinhart genially, staring down into the strange officer’s eyes. “These people are my best workers, every one of them a master craftsman, tops in his field. Absolutely necessary to winning the war.”

  This gimmick had always worked. But now, unperturbed, the captain returned his gaze. “Those are my orders.” His voice was not angry, and it was not unfriendly. It was the voice of a man who had no doubts, no qualms, and no questions.

  Reinhart felt a twinge of dread, the clammy sheen of perspiration collecting between his shoulder blades. “Of course, of course, we all have orders. Captain, why don’t you come in and have something to eat? Your men, too, all of you, sausage and eggs for everyone, right from the farm, a real feast. I won’t take no for an answer. I can promise you, you haven’t eaten like this in years!”

  “Sausage and eggs, that sounds wonderful,” said the captain, allowing himself a rueful smile. “We left Różanka early this morning. But we’re on a tight schedule. We have two other operations after we’re done here.”

  “Różanka! Hmmm. Pretty girls in Różanka. Is Braumueller still the chief of police there?”

  “No,” said the captain. “It’s me now.”

  “I see. Let’s talk in my office. Can I offer you coffee? Tea? I know it’s early, but something stronger, perhaps?”

  The captain followed him into the foyer. Reinhart saw him glance appreciatively at the glossy woodwork, the polished floors, the paintings, the furniture; at Petra, who stood at the top of the grand staircase, remote and pale.

  Wysocki edged out of the kitchen, his broad forehead a typographical map of worry. “Kommandant Reinhart, I was just going to send a wagon to Farmer Swaboda for some more bacon. I’m sure our guests are hungry. Also, with your permission, I’d like to speak to the gamekeeper. I haven’t seen such a perfect day for hunting in ten years.”

  Conversationally, the captain said, “Tell your Polacks to go home and lock themselves inside.”

  Wysocki hesitated, his eyes darting to his master.

  “Schnell schnell!” the captain yapped.

  Another man might have been pissing his pants by now. But he was Kommandant Willy Reinhart, he’d snatched people from the jaws of death a hundred times. Why should today be any different? He just needed to get to his telephone. He ran through a mental list of contacts. Who loved brandy, women, hunting? Who craved custom leather riding boots, fur coats, diamond jewelry? He wasn’t going to waste precious minutes with Haas or Rohlfe, not while these schweineren were out there rounding up his people. He would call Kastner, the Business Director of Agriculture, based in Chełm, or perhaps Lischka again. And if they failed to help, he still had an ace up his sleeve. He would reach out to Obergruppenführer Globocnik, who’d spent two sunny weekends at the palace last year and had recently been promoted to a new post in Italy.

  Reinhart was too nervous to sit. Sliding behind his desk, he stood hunched over the telephone, a handsome Bakelite objet d’art trimmed with gold. Who to call first, Kastner or Lischka, Lischka or Kastner? Lischka, he decided. Goldfeder had just finishing repairing the clasp
on a five-strand pearl necklace. Lischka’s ugly wife had a penchant for pretty things.

  He lifted the receiver and cradled it to his ear. When the operator came on, he said, “Hello, Else, when are you going to leave your husband and run away with me? I need to speak to—”

  A hand slapped down on the cradle, severing the connection. “No calls,” the captain said.

  Reinhart calculated. In his experience, some men didn’t respond to pleasantries and gifts, they only respected authority. He revised his tactics.

  “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to, you cockroach?” he snapped. “I’m on a first-name basis with half the Reichsleitung in eastern Poland. I won’t be told what I can and can’t do in my own camp by a fucking captain.” He stalked to the door. “Who’s your commanding officer? He’s going to hear about this. You can just bend over right now and kiss your ass goodbye.” Forget Lischka, he would approach Kastner in person. How long did it take to drive to Chełm?

  The captain had lashless, close-set eyes that trod the line between gray and brown without the warmth of either one, the color of a shadow sliding along the side of a building, or the barrel of a gun, like the one he was holding now. “Stop right there. You’re under arrest, Kommandant Reinhart.”

  His legs loosened under him, and he gripped the back of the Louis XIV chair for support. “I’m— What? What for? What are the charges?”

  “You’re too close to your Jews,” said the captain. The sun gleamed on the death’s-head badge on his cap, outlining it in gold.

  Reinhart’s throat closed up, it was hard to breathe. His mouth gapped open and shut, searching for the right words, but for once, he had nothing to say. “I’m going to be sick,” he said unsteadily. The captain made a face of disgust, but he didn’t stop him when Reinhart flung aside the velvet curtain, wrenched open the window, and leaned out as far as he could.

  In the courtyard, an untidy procession of his workers was forming, the men gathered from their workshops, women and children from the huts, storehouses, and barns. A tall needle-nosed policeman bellowed that they were moving out, hiking through the forest to another work camp where their services were needed, and he wanted them to organize themselves into a line that was four across. Reinhart saw Friedman at the head of the line, arranging his family to the officer’s specifications, always so helpful. Friedman had two sons, Reinhart knew; the youngest was only three. It was this little boy whom Friedman kept beside him now, taking his hand. Reinhart counted six soldiers. There had been dozens more. Where were they?