In the Land of Armadillos Read online

  Toby paused here, his index finger caressing his lower lip. Did he already know how the story would end? Or was he making it up as he went along?

  “One by one, the people of the town came out of their houses to join their neighbors around the tree. When the last citizen had arrived, the birds began to caw and flap their wings. And then they took off, blinding the villagers with a whirling vortex of multi-hued feathers.

  “When the thick cloud of grit had cleared, the tree was gone, crumbled into powder at the villagers’ feet. Mourning doves with purple throats strutted through the sawdust, cooing, leaving delicate footprints. A snow-white stork settled onto a long-abandoned nest on top of a house. Sparrows picked up straws in their beaks and went straight to work. From that day forward, wherever the townspeople went, they were accompanied by the songs of birds. It filled their lives with beautiful music, but it also reminded them of what they were capable of. Remember, the songs warned them, and do not forget.”

  Toby was finished. The delirium evoked by his voice evaporated, leaving a husk of a man standing before an open window, with the cold air blowing through his hair.

  Max got to his feet. With an ominous thunk, he pulled the windows shut. “I don’t like it,” he grumbled. “Not at all appropriate for a child.”

  The fire in Toby’s eyes died back to a flicker. “Everyone’s a critic,” he said.

  The SS man caught Toby’s arm above the elbow and squeezed hard. “I get it, Toby,” he said softly. “I know what the story is about. The villagers throwing stones at the innocent boy are the Germans, aren’t they. You’re saying that after this period of senseless killing, there will be an era of remorse and reflection, and then we will all have to learn to live with what we’ve done. Do I have that right?”

  Toby cringed under his touch. Max leaned over him, bringing his flat, smooth face even closer. “You’re an artist, Toby. You have the luxury of being able to think in this way. As for me, I am a soldier. I deal with reality. And the reality is, Germany has enemies everywhere, enemies who wish to see her destroyed, enemies who must be put down with force. You know as well as I do, Stalin is the real villain in this war. Although it comes at a price, we must be vigilant.”

  Affectionately, he patted Toby’s shoulder. “Don’t feel bad,” he said. “We’ll keep working on it. Maybe we should just go with my idea. The knight slays the dragon, finds the gold, and marries the princess. The important thing is, we made a start today.” He shook his head, marveling at the randomness of life. “If you would have told me six months ago that my Peter would be a character in a book by Tobias Rey . . . ”

  “A book that will never be published,” Toby murmured, looking down into the street.

  “Uch, such a pessimist,” said Max cheerfully, getting to his feet. He buttoned his uniform jacket, pulled on his jackboots. “I’d better get back to work. Lunchtime already, and just look at me, sitting around with my feet up, listening to fairy tales.”

  His good humor had been restored. At least Toby’s story had taken his mind off of the loss of his horse. Feeling generous, he said, “Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? Adela, too.”

  Toby stood out in silhouette against the window, his gaunt body bent and black like a punctuation mark. Behind him, the outside world, slanted tile roofs, elegant townhouses, empty yards full of yellow weeds, soldiers pursuing Jews down dead ends and narrow alleyways.

  “Thank you, Max,” he said. A smile of surprising sweetness touched the ironic lips. Suddenly, he doubled over, his whole body wrenched by deep, hacking coughs.

  Max slipped on his gloves. “That does it. I want you to see a doctor. I’ll have my secretary arrange it.”

  “Why bother.”

  Max was learning to ignore it when Toby said things like that. At the doorway, he took a last delighted look around the room. “Beautiful, just beautiful,” he said, and he closed the door behind him.

  * * *

  It was like the Wild West out there. Everywhere, Max had to fight his way through massive crowds being hustled toward the marketplace, the movie theater, the synagogue, the high school, the train station. In addition, he had to dodge Gestapo men running down Jews with phony papers, hidden Jews exposed by neighbors, the occasional and illegal settling of a score. It was loud: Soldiers shouted directions, children cried, women screamed, there was the regular crack of gunfire. The pavement rang with the echo of thousands of footsteps.

  In the market square, near the Great Synagogue, he came across Gruber, Rohlfe, and Hackendahl at the head of a broad column of civilians that snaked back into the distance farther than he could see. Impatiently, Rohlfe corralled Max into helping with selection. That was how he happened to see Toby, waiting to cross the street at the corner of Solna and Mickiewicz streets, half a block away.

  He was bundled in the new coat Max had procured for him—an imported, nicely tailored camel hair, the exact color of Lilo’s tail—and he was accompanied by an attractive woman, Adela, Max realized after a moment. She was wearing a crimson wool coat and a stylish green hat with a feather in it. Had she not been standing next to Toby, he wouldn’t have recognized her. He had never seen her without her apron.

  She said something to Toby, who glanced down and responded with a smile. When she turned her face up to his, Max could see she had put on lipstick.

  A strange feeling stole over him. In the street, outside of his villa, under the blue sky, Toby and Adela were not his workers, not his prisoners, not his playthings, they were just people. If they hadn’t been wearing the white schadenbands with the blue stars, they might have been his neighbors in Köln. He had to overcome the temptation to raise his arm and wave hello; after all, to his fellow SS officers, they were the enemy.

  He turned to find Hackendahl staring at him. Max viewed him with a certain amount of childish envy. Rohlfe’s protégé always appeared so flawless, his conduct irreproachable, his performance invariably correct. His wife had moved to Włodawa with him, too, the lucky bastard, and she headed up a little culture group for the women. Though he and Max were about the same age, he was already an Obersturmbannführer.

  Right now he was standing perfectly still, his breath coming out in little white gusts. Max saw the officer’s eyes flick away from him and fasten on something in the middle distance. Then he took off, sprinting quickly across the square in the direction of Solna Street.

  The next moments unspooled with a sense of unreality, as if they were happening in a movie. Max saw Toby looking carefully up and down Mickiewicz Street. Adela took his elbow, and they stepped down off the curb. Halfway across the intersection, Hackendahl caught up with them, coming up behind Toby and putting his arm around him, pulling him close to his chest. Toby looked frightened; Max saw his hands come up to pry at the SS man’s grip, his long white fingers fluttering against the black uniform.

  Even in the best of health, Toby would have been no match for the strapping SS officer. The gun was already in Hackendahl’s hand. He raised it to Toby’s temple and pulled the trigger.

  Did Max really scream the word no, or did he just think he did? As he lurched forward, his legs numbly pumping, Hackendahl fired again, then stepped away. Toby was a crumpled heap at his feet.

  Time warped and stretched like a rubber band as Max elbowed his way through the crosscurrents of soldiers and civilians clogging the street. He squatted beside Toby, aghast. His hat had fallen upside down in the gutter; blood was leaking out of a ghastly hole in the side of his head. Gently, he took his arms and rolled him onto his back.

  There was no mistaking it, Toby was dead. His eyes were wide open, the pupils dilating. On the gray, wasted face, the deep lines were fading, replaced by an expression of ceaseless wonder.

  Max seized him by the shoulders. Toby’s lips parted with a click, as if he were going to say something. But his mouth was full of blood.

  “Are you happy now?” he shouted down at the dead face. “You finally got what you wanted, you dumb Jew bastar
d. Is this better?” Helpless with fury, he shook him, Toby’s head rolling loosely from side to side.

  Gruber was standing over him. “Stop it, Haas,” he said quietly. “He’s dead.”

  Max blinked. A gaggle of townspeople was gawking at him in horror. When he looked up, they scattered, continuing hurriedly on their way. Slowly, he let Toby sink back onto the cobblestones, then got to his feet. Hackendahl was posed like a recruiting poster for the SS, legs apart, smoke drifting from the muzzle of his pistol.

  “Last month,” he said, spitting out the words. “At the Judenrat. Remember? You killed fifteen Jews.” Max stared at him with repelled amazement. “One of them was Liederman, my dentist.” Incredibly, he was wiping his eyes. “He was not a bad little fellow,” he blubbered. “Why did you have to kill him? Do you know how hard it is to find a good dentist?”

  Hackendahl prodded Toby’s flank with the toe of his boot. “There,” he said shortly. “You killed my Jew. Now I killed yours.” The skirts of his coat billowed in the wind as he turned on his heel and went back to join Rohlfe in the market square.

  Max wanted to tear his fucking head off, beat him with his own gun until his brains came out of his ears, but that wasn’t possible. There was nothing he could do. He squeezed his eyes closed, pressed his shaking hand over his mouth. He was afraid he would scream. At the same time, his throat was closing up; it was hard to breathe. He didn’t feel a thing, he told himself savagely. It was over in seconds. He fell without a sound.

  But none of that brought even the slightest glimmer of comfort. There was a tightness in his chest that was swelling rapidly into bottomless, insurmountable, desolating, terrifying grief. The world staggered beneath his feet.

  That was when he remembered Adela. Max looked up, and found her standing a little distance away. When she noticed him seeking her, she vanished into the milling crowd.

  Gruber was calling his name, and he heard himself automatically answer yes. After a last sorrowful glance, he turned away. The body lying in a halo of blood wasn’t Toby anymore; whatever Toby had been was gone.

  Slowly and deliberately, Max walked back to the market square. With every step, he battled for control over his emotions, forcing the ugly and unfamiliar feelings down, down, down, as far away as possible, where they would stay safely locked up in a dark and unexamined vault at the back of his mind forever and ever. To his surprise, water was leaking freely from his eyes. Gerda will be here in the spring, he told himself, clenching and unclenching his fists. Everything will be fine when I am with my family again. Nothing makes sense without my little bunny by my side. But the tears wouldn’t stop coming.

  By the time he reached Rohlfe and Gruber, he was outwardly calm, able to assume his duties again. Lucky for him, it was freezing; he could blame his running eyes and constant sniffling on the cold.

  At his trial, witnesses would remark on his demeanor that day, known forever after as Black Thursday. They would tell the judge how subdued he was, how often he wiped his eyes, how kindly he addressed them, a remarkable aberration in the career of Sturmbannführer Maximillian Haas, famed throughout the region for his reputation as a cold-blooded killing machine.

  By the time the day was out, ten thousand Jews had been transported to nearby Sobibór. Two hundred more shared Toby’s fate, shot dead on the streets, empty lots, stairways, and back alleys of Włodawa. Their bodies would lie upon the pavement until the following day, when they would be picked up in a wagon and burned in a field outside of town.

  Late that evening, Max plodded through the market square back to his villa. As he handed his coat to the housekeeper, she reported that the cook was missing. Exhausted, barely listening, he took the bottle of vodka and climbed up the steps to the attic.

  The light was out, it was dark. With all the activity of the day, he had almost forgotten that Toby was gone. He left it off. In the dark, Toby might still be there, sitting languorously on his stool in the middle of the room, watching the smoke from his cigarette make pictures in the air.

  Max collapsed on the bed, unbuttoned his jacket, and upended the bottle of vodka into his mouth. The liquor burned his throat, sent a stinging glow through his body. It was the first time he had felt good all day, so he did it again, and again, and again, until the bottle was empty.

  That was when he heard something scuttle across the floor.

  In astonishment, he watched a small armored creature, red, oblong, with a head like a squirrel and a tail like a pointing finger, waddle under the bed. Looking up, he realized that the paintings were in motion. The creatures at the tables sipped their cappuccinos and bantered with their companions. The little men in homburg hats soared across the ceiling in tight formation. As for the armadillos, he could hear the sound of their marching feet, locked in step, tramping in perfect synchronicity up and down the undulating hills. It was so real, he could hear the clink of dishes being washed in the café’s kitchen.

  The tailor’s dummies tilted toward each other, conspiring like spies. On the table, the brushes clacked their handles in an accusatory way; it was obvious that they blamed him for their master’s demise. In the corner, the discarded painting rags seethed like a pile of snakes. With a silky, slithering motion, they knitted themselves together and stood erect. The pile swayed back and forth, trying to get its balance; then it lumbered toward him in the form of a man.

  “Max,” it hissed in Toby’s voice. “Maaaaax . . .”

  The SS officer stared at the entity made from rags, his eyes starting from his head. With a sibilant sound, it moved in his direction, sliding one ropy leg in front of the other like a baby learning to walk. Max was too frightened to scream.

  He covered his head with his arms, waiting for the inevitable blow. The air moved around him as the thing approached, reeking of turpentine and pine resin. When he worked up the courage to peer between his fingers, he found it standing before him, close enough to touch.

  “Where am I, Max?” it whispered. “Where am I?”

  Slowly, understanding swept over him. The apparition wasn’t violent, or angry, or vengeful; it was confused and disoriented and lost.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to you, Toby,” he said timidly. “I wanted to help. You know that.”

  The thing had no eyes, no mouth, no face, but he saw it turn its head to the side as if someone were calling its name. “I have to go now,” it sighed in a voice like dry leaves scraping across a sidewalk. Unbelievably, it slogged its way to the door and turned the knob. He could hear it mourning all the way down the stairs. “Where am I, Max? Where am I? Where am I?”

  He woke up the next morning to a clear blue day, sprawled on the bed in the attic, still dressed in his uniform. When he rolled over, an empty vodka bottle clattered to the floor. Outside the window, a net of high herringbone clouds streaked across the heavens. Everything was in its place; the brushes in their vase, the armadillos on the walls. Only the pile of rags was gone. Though he told himself the housekeeper had finally gotten around to throwing them out, he ran down the stairs for a hammer and nailed the attic door shut himself.

  Dear Gerda, he wrote in a letter posted on November 20. I have told the housekeeper to prepare a room on the second floor. The attic will be too cold for Peter’s delicate lungs.

  From among the handful of Jews allowed to remain in Włodawa, Max found a carpenter and a housepainter. He ordered them to paper over the entire upstairs hallway, erasing all traces of the passage that led to the attic. When they were finished, he had them both transported to concentration camps.

  The Führer is right, he concluded in his diary. Associating with Jews is dangerous, like an infection. Oh, they might be intelligent, they might be charming, they might treat you like a friend, but once they get under your skin, worming their way into your affections, they twist you all around, making you see things a different way, screwing you up for good. From now on, my relations with them will remain at arm’s length.

  * * *

  Gerda and Pe
ter Haas never made it to Włodawa. Toby was wrong; Gerda wasn’t fucking Peter’s riding instructor. It was his doctor she was fucking.

  Włodawa was liberated on August 24, 1944. Max eluded capture for three full years. He was working as a grocer under an assumed name when one of his former workers happened to step into his shop.

  The Americans came for him that night. Immediately, he handed over his war diary, confident that it would vindicate him. After all, didn’t the entries prove that he was only a soldier, acting on his superiors’ instructions?

  The Allies translated the diary into ten languages. With careful analysis, it was estimated that Sturmbannführer Maximillian Haas was present at the deaths of more than eighteen thousand innocent civilians in Russia, Poland, and parts of the Ukraine. He would have hanged but for the testimony of two witnesses: Bianca Lipowa, distinguished for her acts of heroism in the Polish resistance; and Adela Saltzman, his Jewish cook. Max was happy to see them, glad they had both survived.

  He was pleased to hear that Adela wanted to meet. He welcomed the opportunity to reminisce about the old days. Visitors were scarce. Gerda had left him, and he didn’t want Peter to remember him this way.

  She sat across from him at a steel-topped table in the bowels of the prison. Even with the strong overhead lighting, she was stunning, and he experienced a painful cramp of yearning. She had filled out a little since the war; her hair was cut stylishly, and she wore a fitted green coat with a velvet collar that emphasized her curvaceous figure. Her perfume—lily of the valley, the same as Gerda—cut through the stench of carbolic cleaning fluid in the sterile, featureless room.

  “It was kind of you to come,” he said. He tried an affable smile. “We had some good times, didn’t we?”

  The hooded eyes believed otherwise. She hadn’t bothered to remove her gloves, and now she folded her hands on the table. “My family is dead. I am the only survivor.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The look she gave him was undeniably ironic, but she chose her words carefully. “You may have killed many people, Haas, but you were very good to me. As for Toby, you treated him like he was your son. That’s why I came.” He dropped his gaze to the table, surprised to find that his eyes were wet. Her words drifted over him like a cloud. “We should pledge our allegiance to the people we love. Not nations, not countries or politicians. I think you understood this, but only when it was already too late.”