In the Land of Armadillos Read online

  From her pocket, she slid a yellowed and creased square of paper. “The day of the last Aktzia . . . after Toby was murdered . . . I ran back to the villa to collect a few things. I shouldn’t have, I had to leave right away, but I climbed up to the attic one more time. It was the only way I could think of to say goodbye to him.”

  She unfolded the paper and began to read. “ ‘Shayna Mirsky, the miller, and her brother Hersh. Hammer, the tailor. Morganstern, the rabbi’s son. Bella Soroka, the saddlemaker’s daughter. Adler, whose father owned the bank. Hipsman, the letter-writer. Glincman, who was Falkner’s coachman. Katz, whose family owned the lumberyard. All three Pomeranc boys, whose father traded cattle. Szapiro, who collected tolls on the bridge. Tannenbaum, who ran the projector at the movie theater. Wakerman, who raised chickens . . . ’ ”

  She went on, but he wasn’t listening anymore, her soft, husky voice transporting him back in time to a place where dust motes danced in the sunlight and a thin black scarecrow of a man ravished white walls with blinding color. “ ‘. . . Edelsberg. Melczer. Wizotsky.’ ” She finished and glanced up at him over the paper. “Do these names mean anything to you, Haas?”

  He shook his head.

  “You might know their faces. They are the thirty-six people whose likenesses Toby painted on the walls of your son’s bedroom, scattered among the patrons of the Café Blue Cockatoo.”

  She signaled for the guard and rose to her feet.

  “Ten thousand Jews from Włodawa went up the chimneys in Sobibór,” she said. “But the people in the paintings . . . all of them survived.”

  THE PARTIZANS

  For generations, Lufts and Hellers had been next-door neighbors on Wirka Street, a polite name for a string of ramshackle wooden cottages at the southern end of Włodawa. Here, where civilization sputtered out before giving way to the deep primeval forests, Zosha and Zev’s parents were just the latest in a long line of Hellers and Lufts that stretched from the present back to the early 1700s, two hundred years of eking out a hardscrabble existence, shoulder to shoulder, from the compacted soil behind the rundown houses that sat on the ever shifting border between Poland and the Ukraine.

  They knew each other in all the ways that brothers and sisters know each other. At the same time every morning, they set off to school attired in hand-me-downs, Zev’s oversize pants cinched tight around his six-year-old waist, Zosha’s blond pigtails in disarray; with both parents in the field before dawn, there was no one home to braid them. Often Zev and Zosha would meet on the same errands, to the butcher, the baker, the tobacconist, the newspaper kiosk, dodging the press of older customers in the shopping streets that led to the marketplace. On holidays, Zosha would peek between the railings of the women’s gallery to find Zev among his brothers on the main floor of the Grand Synagogue, usually in the process of being cuffed by his father for dozing off. Until Zev turned thirteen, Zosha was taller and stronger, and she used it to her advantage, secretly tying the laces of his shoes together under a chair, or grabbing his cap and sailing it across the muddy cobblestoned street.

  After classes were through for the day, Zosha and the other girls often lingered near the sports fields to watch the boys play soccer. Damp with sweat, his sharp knees bruised and dirty below his short pants, Zev would come to an abrupt stop whenever the soldiers of the local regiment marched by, rigid and splendid in their green uniforms, leather boots polished to a high, gaudy shine.

  She came to know the features of his face as well as she knew her own. The straight brown hair that fell around his ears, the gray eyes that resembled the surface of a calm ocean. The round cheeks that lengthened and hollowed as he grew, the tea-with-milk color of his skin. The way his full pink lips smiled when he teased her. As they entered the long corridors of adolescence, he grew taller than she did, and she noticed that, too, the width of his shoulders, the strength in his hands.

  But by all customary measures of Jewish success, Zev began to fail. In arithmetic, history, and literature, his grades scraped bottom. At Hebrew school, the rebbe beat him for restlessness. Instead of praying three times a day like his brothers, Zev slipped away to play cards with boys his father called gangsters.

  It was about this time that the fights came on with alarming regularity. There were no secrets on Wirka Street; the windows were open, walls were thin.

  You want another helping? I’ll give you another helping! Smack! Your rebbe says you’re as stupid as a golem! Smack! Willig says you started a fight with his boy today. Why do I believe him? Because he’s the butcher’s son, and you’re a nothing! Smack! Why are you crying? I’ll give you something to cry about!

  Voices were raised, harsh words flew, the kind that can never be taken back. Sometimes Zosha heard things break, or the blows of flesh on flesh.

  On those nights, Zosha would find Zev hiding out in the animal shed, his forehead pressed against the smooth gray flank of Ferdele, the horse. While the dog slept in a corner and a few skinny brown chickens scratched for bugs in the straw, Zev would allow her to slip her hand into his, and she would tell him marvelous tales of a make-believe world called Yenensvelt, where clouds were spun from colored sugar and waterfalls ran with milk. Hip to hip on a tussock of fragrant green hay, they would remain for hours, safe in the close warmth of the barn.

  In the year Zosha turned fifteen, Zev ran away. It was the end of May, at the height of a glorious spring. During that azure hour between night and dawn, she was awakened by the stealthy squeal of the Hellers’ front door opening and closing.

  Zosha rolled out of the bed she shared with her younger brother and went to the window. A man in an old brown jacket and a soft cap was standing on the porch of her neighbors’ house, his face hidden in shadow.

  She had lived alongside him for too long not to recognize the nape of his neck, the loping gait of his step. But everything else was different. Zev had shed the traditional knickers and the long black coat of his forefathers, the beard and payess of the pious. Without them, he was changed, unfamiliar.

  At the squeak of the floorboards under her feet, he froze. It was cold enough that she could see his breath, a ghostly mist against the gloom. Satisfied that no one was coming after him, he hefted his burlap sack onto his shoulder and set off down the street.

  Zosha was afraid to call out to him, afraid she might jeopardize his escape. Instead, she watched him walk away. When he was no more than a small dot on the brightening horizon, she thought she might have seen him turn around and seek out the window where she stood.

  His parents wept and moaned, they tore their clothes. Little by little, she overheard details, late at night, when her parents thought she was sleeping. Zev Heller had abandoned his heritage, his religion. He was sleeping with Polish girls, he’d been baptized in the Orthodox Church. It was even rumored that he was eating pork.

  In their religion, this was a sin that required mourning, a fate comparable in gravity to death. But Zosha remembered the hurtful words, the bruises, and the black eyes, and thought, I hope he is happy.

  * * *

  September 1, 1939, was a Friday.

  First the Germans blew up the train station. The day after that, they bombed the bridge that led over the river, barring escape.

  Zosha watched as the Deutschen marshaled prisoners in Polish infantry uniforms past her house and down Wirka Street, vanishing into the scrim of trees around the forest. Two days later, hunters found the dead scattered through the marshy underbrush like fallen timber, the leaf litter under their boots saturated with blood.

  Watching the silvery bellies of enemy planes fly in tight formation overhead, Zosha felt a tightening in her heart, a sickening sensation in the pit of her stomach, and just like that, she knew. This was the beginning of the end of the world.

  * * *

  It was Reinhart who told them that everything would be all right.

  He came one day, in his caramel-colored overcoat and his fancy fedora, filling the people in town with relief. Already,
people were saying he was a good German. There is plenty to do here, he told them firmly, organizing and dividing the craftsmen around him. Don’t worry.

  Lawyers and philosophers went to work in the woods, teachers and trombonists rebuilt the railroad and bridges. But people in the marketplace whispered rumors they had heard, old men beaten to death for nothing, women forced to clean paving stones with their toothbrushes, beards cut off with bayonets. They whispered other things: entire towns, men, women, and children, taken to the woods and shot after digging their own graves. Others argued; how could this be true? The Germans would be destroying their own workforce. It was absurd.

  Gerstein, the butcher, was carried off by a soldier on a motorcycle; two days later, he was found in the woods, cut like a steer into six ragged pieces. Rabbi Morganthau was imprisoned until a ransom could be collected; it was quickly paid, but the Deutschen shot him anyway. The Lords and Masters made a group of merchants do jumping jacks in the square until they collapsed, then shot them where they lay; Korn the fishmonger was among them. On a hunt organized for important visitors from Berlin, the Germans bagged a tremendous red stag, a record for the district; three wild boars; a lynx; and two Jews.

  The day it was discovered that there was a shortage of paving bricks, a work detail was sent to the cemetery to pull up tombstones. Berel Holtzmann swore that when he pulled on his own father’s headstone, he could feel him pulling back.

  * * *

  On a cold gray morning, Zosha accompanied her mother to the market square. A stranger in a black leather jacket caught her eye as he crossed in the opposite direction.

  She lowered her head. By October 1942, Włodawa had already been occupied for three long years. In times of war, women learn quickly that it is best not to attract the notice of strangers.

  Despite her best efforts, he slowed, stopped. “Zosha?” he inquired. “Zosha Luft?”

  Lifting her head, she took in the strong hands, the sensuous lips. His eyes were still the gray of a calm ocean, but in the years he’d been away, they had changed. Specks of gold inflamed his pupils.

  The air smelled of wood smoke and tanned hides. Plumes of vapor rose like spirits between them as they stood in the center of the square regarding each other.

  Her mother gave him a scalding glare, tugging meaningfully at Zosha’s elbow. She had not forgotten the ugly rumors of pork and Polish girls. He dropped his gaze and thrust his hands into his pockets. At the same time, a man materialized at his side, calling him Wolf, speaking in an unfamiliar dialect.

  Zev roused himself, moving like a man waking up from a dream. “This is Baer,” he said. This was accompanied by a rueful grin, a self-deprecating shrug. “In the forest, we all have nicknames.”

  She stared at him, startled by his candor. With those three words, in the forest, he had communicated a secret. He was a partizan, a foot soldier of the resistance movement based in the dark heart of the Parczew woods.

  “You look different” was all she could think of to say. The child’s open face had grown lean, angular, handsome. Embarrassed by the state of her dress, the worn and patched dowdiness of her clothing, she passed a self-conscious hand over her head to smooth her hair, and as if he could hear her thoughts, Zev said, “Leave it alone. It’s beautiful.”

  “I’ll see you around,” he said finally, before he and the man he called Baer sloped off across the square. As her mother hustled her forward, Zosha stole a glance over her shoulder, just in time to catch him doing the same.

  * * *

  Life went on, much as it had before. Zosha looked after her brother, Shimmy, while their parents went off each morning to the forced labor camp. Only now, wherever she went, Zev was already there.

  Walking Shimmy to the bathhouse, she would find Zev loitering in front of the cinema. As she traded table linens with a merchant in return for a few rotten potatoes or a wormy cabbage, she would turn to find him gazing at her, deep in conference with a pack of tough-looking men.

  Despite the bitter wind gusting through the cracks in the drafty wooden cottage, Zosha stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom and contemplated her body, first clothed, and then unclothed. With this act of abandon, her cheeks burned and the hairs on the back of her neck pricked up, as if someone had breathed on them. She experienced pleasure and fear in equal measure, though she could not have explained why.

  * * *

  The knock on the door came late at night, when the Luft family had already settled into bed. Three short raps, followed by the command barked in their harsh language, Raus, raus, raus! Zosha and her family were herded into the street by two soldiers holding automatic rifles, where they joined a river of frightened villagers being harassed and harried toward the outskirts of town.

  When she looked up, she could see the sky overhead, wide and black and velvety, illuminated by a crisp full moon and tiny white stars. And then they were under the tree canopy, and the heavens hid themselves away from the Jews of Włodawa.

  The November wind moaned through the pines as Zosha stumbled barefoot over frozen roots, holding tightly to her brother’s hand. Low-hanging branches caught her hair, tore her thin cotton nightgown. She could hear dogs barking, the crude insults of the foreign soldiers, the muddled chanting of men, the frantic cries of mothers and children.

  The column of villagers came to an abrupt halt. Zosha shifted her weight from one foot to the other on the icy ground. Off to the side, having a smoke, was a boy who used to play soccer with Zev. His uniform looked new. She caught his eye, smiled. When he recognized her, he turned away.

  The line moved forward.

  Before her, a clearing opened in the forest. Cleaving it in two was a long pit, jagged and wide. There was Reinhart pacing back and forth, pale and unnerved, his hands clasped behind his back. Two Gestapo men in warm belted overcoats were laughing. Officers chatted among themselves, idly batting riding crops against their boots. Someone’s little dog was weaving in between their legs.

  An SS major threw down the cigarette he was smoking, crushed it carefully under his boot, and stepped up to address them. You, you, you, you, you, he separated out a group of families and ran them at a smart pace to the steep edge of the pit. There, he told them to stop and turn around.

  The moon slanted gentle shafts of light into the clearing, allowing Zosha to recognize their faces. The young mother who lived in the house across the road was holding an infant to her shoulder, eyes glazed over with sleep. A woman from the other side of town, a distant cousin, hid her daughter’s face in her skirts. A man, shaking so much he could barely stand up, held his hands over his son’s eyes.

  The soldiers raised their rifles to their shoulders, took aim. There was a sound like firecrackers, and the line of human beings jerked like puppets and fell into the pit.

  Zosha’s family was next. A soldier screamed in her face, Lauf! Lauf! and lashed at her legs with his whip. Still holding Shimmy’s hand, she stubbed her toes on rocks and branches, following her mother. When they had reached the pit, she caught a glimpse of the boy who used to play soccer with Zev, raising his rifle to his shoulder, nestling it to his cheek, sighting along the barrel.

  The bullet that went through Zosha’s throat lifted her up and tossed her backward into the pit. She was aware of the sensation of flying, then landing on something that was soft and yielding. Turning her head, she saw her father’s face, his eyes fixed and staring.

  Again the sound of firecrackers. Another line of bodies came skidding down the side of the pit, burying her under a tangle of arms and legs. She recognized the corpse that lay on top of her, a certain Mrs. Kimmel, the music teacher. Fear rose like a fiery bubble to her throat, but she was unable to make a sound.

  The Ukrainian guards noticed it first, a strange lowering stillness, a dense burden of silence. Uneasy, they swung their rifles at the trees. Confident in the power that their greatcoats with gold buttons and tall shiny boots conferred upon them, the Deutschen didn’t notice it at all.

 
A great rush of air rolled towards them through the darkness, flattening the grass, snaking through the underbrush, growing into a vast, tumultuous roar. It blasted forth from the trees, boiled over the trench, and screamed up the other side, overtaking the soldiers where they stood.

  All at once the woods were filled with ear-shattering roars, deafening screeches, wild, animalistic ululations. Zosha heard the rattle and pop of close gunfire, shrieks of pain and terror, harsh grunts and squeals.

  A bloodied arm ripped free of its trunk fell in the trench, landing with a thunk. Close behind, a single leg spiraled dreamily to earth, shod in a cognac-colored riding boot.

  Objects were raining from the sky. Dark hunks of flesh plopped around her with the sound of ripe fruit dropping to the ground. A hand. A foot. A riding crop. A pair of pants with something still in them.

  There was a heavy thud. From the corner of her eye, Zosha could see the oblong head of the boy who used to play soccer with Zev, a look of astonishment grafted to his features for all time.

  Something leaped into the trench, landing on all fours with a rippling snarl. The weight of Mrs. Kimmel, the music teacher, was suddenly lifted from her, and a blast of arctic air struck her face.

  Zosha didn’t know whether she was dead or alive, awake or dreaming. Silhouetted against the light of a full moon was a gray and hairy beast. From the waist up, it was a timber wolf, the most feared animal in the Parczew Forest. Below the belt, powerful human legs were barely concealed by the tattered remnants of an army uniform.

  The lean, ferocious head sniffed her with a blunt, tapered muzzle. It bared long canine teeth, displaying black and bloodied gums.