In the Land of Armadillos

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  It was another hour before he left. So that his visit wasn’t a complete waste of time, Pavel fried up some eggs and sausages with tiny new potatoes, and together they had a big country breakfast. Hahnemeier had to open the top button of his trousers. While they debated this year’s crops and whether signs indicated a hard or easy winter, the farmer wondered queasily about the girl’s whereabouts. Was she in the toilet, just outside the kitchen door? Was she in the fields, on her way home because she smelled breakfast? Had she taken it into her head to drive the animals to pasture herself? And where was the dog?

  The sun was just breaking through over the potato fields, flooding the gray landscape with tender lavender light. As Hahnemeier settled himself onto his overburdened horse, Cezar came bounding out of the barn, barking viciously, saliva flying from his black jaws.

  “You don’t keep your barn door locked?” he said, unperturbed. “You’re too trusting, Pavel. In times like these, you really should.” The Volkdeutscher kicked his horse in the ribs and cantered off toward town.

  Not until his guest had disappeared into the morning mist did Pavel whisk open the barn door. Illuminated by long slanting sunbeams, the dust kicked up by his boots flared like sparks as he hurried past the animals to the last stall.

  “Reina!” he called in an exaggerated stage whisper, but there was no answering movement from the pile of hay. He realized he had never used her name before, addressing her only as you or girl. Slowly, he scratched the stubble on his chin, screwing up his face in thought. If he were a little girl, where would he hide?

  Of course. The answer was right in front of him. How many times had he run from his father’s rage, escaping to the cozy gabled space under the rafters? Cautiously, he climbed the creaky ladder into the hayloft and stuck his head through the trapdoor.

  She was right there, her few items of clothing rolled up in a ball, huddled like a baby bird in a nest. He became aware of the presence of an unfamiliar sensation humming along his nerves and throughout his body, a rapturous tingle of well-being.

  “It was very clever of you to hide here,” he said. “How did you know he was coming?”

  “Fallada told me,” she said.

  “You mean he barked?” He must have been really drunk if he’d slept through more than a minute of the dog’s deep-chested, full-throated alarm.

  “No, he told me,” she repeated in her lispy, hesitant voice. “He tells me things all the time. But this morning was different. When he woke me up, he said to hurry, the Deutschen were coming up the road, I had to hide in the hayloft.”

  “The dog said that?” Earnestly, she nodded, making the orange curls bounce and shimmer. “That’s impossible. Dogs can’t talk.”

  Her eyelashes were a pale golden color, almost invisible with the sun coming through them. “Fallada can. He told me to hide last time, too.”

  Someone had filled her head with fairy tales. They would have done better to teach her something useful, like cooking, sewing, digging potatoes out of the frozen ground. “Fine, fine, Fallada tells you everything,” he grumbled. “Maybe he can make us breakfast, too. Don’t just stand there, come down and have something to eat. You’re safe for now, and the animals are waiting.”

  * * *

  It came that night, the banging on the door, the sound of a motor, raucous shouting in German. Terrified, Pavel leaped out of bed with a glance at the crate. Empty. How did she know? He unbolted the door to find Hahnemeier glowering on the top step, a gun in one hand, smelling of alcohol. “Where are they!” he roared.

  The headlights were blinding. Pavel raised his arm to shade his eyes. “Who?”

  “Your Jews, you fucking polacke! You think I’m an idiot? You’re hiding them in the barn! You’ve been lying to my face for months.”

  Outfitted like Hahnemeier with red swastika armbands on the sleeves of their civilian coats, a gang of Volkdeutscher militiamen stood on the road in front of the cottage with torches, guns slung behind their shoulders. The flames popped and crackled over the rise and fall of the crickets’ song.

  “What are you talking about?” Pavel shouted back furiously. Maybe he could bully his way through this. “It’s me, Lothar, your friend Pavel Walczak. The Jew hater. How many times have I told you where to find their partizans? How many times have I told you which farmers were hiding Jews? You know me. I hate those filthy zydzi more than you do. Someone sold you a bill of goods. Forget about this. Come on in, your men, too, let’s knock off the rest of the slivovitz.”

  Hahnemeier turned to his men. “Set the barn on fire,” he instructed them. “Shoot anyone who comes out.”

  The men touched their torches to the roof. With a whoosh, the thatch exploded into a fireball, clouds of gray smoke barreling high into the starry sky. Suddenly, the night was alive with the screams of animals, the cow bawling, the horse trumpeting its panic. “No!” Pavel cried, running toward the barn.

  Inside, the roof was already engulfed in flames. Fiery yellow tongues lapped and sucked and gnawed at the rafters, howling like some monstrous wolf. Outside, he heard high-pitched squeals, then a gunshot, and realized they had shot the pig. He threw open the horse’s gate and smacked its rump. It started forward and galloped out the door. In the next stall, the cow was paralyzed with fear, squeezed into a corner, where she remained immune to his slaps and entreaties.

  Coughing, he passed an arm across his forehead. The fire was gaining on him; it had overtaken the open area where he stored the tools and feed sacks, voraciously consuming the aged wooden furnishings and the dry burlap bags. The hayloft. Get to the hayloft. It was only a few steps to the ladder, but the heat grew more intense at every rung. He wasn’t halfway to the top when part of the roof collapsed, dropping into the cow’s stall and setting the straw alight.

  Flames eddied all around him now, licking at him from feed troughs and bales of hay, from the thick blanket of straw scattered on the floor. Fire bayed at him from the rafters, from the old-fashioned covered buggy with the sprung seat that had borne his parents to church and now bore only roosting chickens, from the baby crib he’d never been able to give away, from the good strong walls nailed together a century earlier by his great-grandfather’s father.

  The flames paused for breath, then doubled in size. A beam fell, whizzing past his head. He clenched his teeth and ascended another rung, and then he was at the top.

  Through the trapdoor, he could see into the hayloft. The cozy hiding place under the rafters was an inferno, exhaling heat like the mouth of a giant furnace. Even the floor was on fire. Pavel flung one arm up to protect his face, breathing through the fabric of his sleeve, and felt for the form of a small girl near the opening.

  That was when the ladder gave way, dropping him to the floor of the barn. He couldn’t see; the smoke was thick and dirty, it was like breathing a physical entity into his lungs. Blinded, he groped his way forward, feeling his way along the wall until a rush of air struck his face. The doorway. With the fire shrieking like a freight train behind him, he hesitated. Hahnemeier’s men were outside, he had ordered them to shoot anyone coming out of the barn, but it had to be better than burning to death. Pavel threw himself forward.

  They knocked him to the ground, wielding fists, kicks, and truncheons, and when they tired of that, they employed the butts of their guns. Pavel curled up in a ball, trying to protect his face, his belly, his groin.

  “Enough.”

  Backlit by firelight, a breeze stirring his thin hair, the former beet farmer looked like he was leading a political rally. Pavel blinked up at him through a haze of blood.

  Just then something streaked out of the barn, like a meteor, or a falling star. One of the geese, trying to escape the flames burning along its back and wings. A militiaman swung his gun to his shoulder and fired. With an abbreviated squawk, the goose tumbled to the ground, rolling head over heels like a fiery pinwheel until it came to rest in the tall grass beyond the courtyard. To his horror, Pavel saw that it wasn’t dead; one flaming w
ing was raised against the black sky. Another gunshot and it was still.

  Hahnemeier leaned over him. “Your clothes were on fire,” he explained. “My men had to put you out. Maybe they were a little too enthusiastic. You should see yourself, Pavel. You look like hell.”

  Behind his head, flames were blasting up out of the hole in the roof like a broken gas jet. Finished for the night, his men were hopping back on their truck, each with a souvenir. One carried the dead pig over his shoulder, another held a brace of flapping chickens by the feet. A third, his eiderdown quilt. A fourth, the goose.

  “I should shoot you, my dear Pavel,” Hahnemeier said reproachfully. “The laws are very clear on that point. But up until now, you’ve been a very good friend to the Reich. A very good friend.” The Volkdeutscher winked. “So I’m giving you a second chance. You can keep the horse and wagon. After all, we still need you to bring in the harvest. But please, Pavel, you have to promise me. No more of this nonsense. Michalowa stays over sometimes . . . Come on. I’m not an idiot.” He wheeled around and strode off, swinging himself up into the passenger seat of the truck. He waved his hat in farewell, bellowing, “If you had told me a year ago that Pavel Walczak would have anything to do with Jews . . .”

  There was an ominous groan, then a protracted sizzle from the interior of the burning structure. The barn shifted, tilting toward the left, and then the walls shivered. With a whoosh, they crumbled into the foundation, sending up a fiery vortex of orange sparks.

  Pavel rolled onto his stomach, felt the rough packed earth of the yard scrape his cheek. There was a sharp ache in his chest. He had failed, he had utterly failed, he had stood by and watched as the little girl suffered a lonesome, hideous death. A choked sob burbled out of his scorched throat. He pressed his hand to his mouth, trying to keep it down, but there was no stopping it, tears were spurting out of his reddened eyes, coursing down the sides of his blackened face. He wiped them away with the backs of his burnt and blistered hands, wishing that Hahnemeier had killed him after all.

  Walczak? someone whispered. He didn’t recognize the voice, there was a roaring in his ears. There you are. Don’t move, I’ll get you home. And another thing, Walczak. Don’t worry about the girl. She’s fine.

  * * *

  Someone, he didn’t know who, half carried and half dragged him into his house. Strange hands cut off his clothing, bathed him, applied something warm and soothing to his skin while he drifted in and out of delirium, sometimes in excruciating pain, sometimes feeling a benevolent goodwill toward all.

  When he came back to consciousness, he was in his own bed. It was nighttime, the lamp was lit on the table. Beside him, darning a basket of socks in the yellow light, was the incomparable widow Michalowa. By the fire, the girl sat with the dog.

  Pavel began to cry again, tears leaking tiredly out of his eyes. “It’s all right,” Michalowa assured him, brushing back his hair. When she bent over him, he smelled honey and vanilla. “She was at my place the entire time.”

  “But how?” he croaked. “How?”

  “Shhh,” she said. “Don’t talk.” She helped him to a sitting position and fed little sips of water through his cracked lips while she told him what she knew.

  Hahnemeier’s men must have been on a rampage last night. Earlier in the evening, they’d raided Jasinski’s farm. Glancing at the little girl, she lowered her voice to a whisper. They had discovered an entire family hiding in his barn. At gunpoint, Hahnemeier had forced them to wade into the cold river, deeper and deeper, until it was over their heads. “His wife and children, too . . . the ones who didn’t drown, he shot.” She crossed herself, wiped her eyes. “Except for Jasinski . . . him, they buried alive.”

  Pavel turned his face away from her. How many homes did I send Hahnemeier to? Five? Six?

  “A little soup?” she said. “You haven’t had anything to eat since last night. You need to keep up your strength.”

  Impatiently, he shook his head. He didn’t deserve her kindness. At ten o’clock last night, she said, there was a quiet knock at her bedroom window. Hoping it might be her sons, Michalowa tiptoed to the kitchen door, opened it a crack. In the sliver of light between the door and the steps, she saw Reina in a nightshirt. At the same time, she noticed a revolting stench, a cross between skunk spray and a rotting corpse, and she realized that the dog must have accompanied her; in the dark, all she could see of him was a pair of fiendish red eyes. She hustled her into the kitchen, wrapped her in a blanket, gave her tea to ward off the chill.

  According to the girl, Fallada had roused her from a deep sleep, poking his cold, wet nose under her arm and licking her face until she opened her eyes. When he saw that she was awake, and these were her exact words, he explained that the Deutschen were coming, and this time, instead of her hiding in the hayloft, he would lead her through the fields to Michalowa’s house.

  What did it mean? the widow asked Pavel. Could there be any truth to this story? The little princess had never been there, how did she know where to find the house? Was the dog some kind of a ghost, a spirit? Or had she made the whole thing up? As for herself, she told him, she didn’t care if Satan himself had brought the girl to her place. She was just glad she was alive.

  Her gaze shifted downward to study her hands as they smoothed out invisible wrinkles in the pressed white sheet. There was more. She thought she knew why Hahnemeier had been suspicious. Several times she had ordered the girl who did her cooking to make a big pot of potato soup for the widower Walczak. Without considering its significance, she specifically told the girl not to use meat. This must have been the tip-off; who, except for Jews, ate soup without meat? The cook had a boyfriend with a suspiciously shiny new bicycle. Only collaborators had shiny new bicycles.

  With effort, he pulled his hand out from beneath the covers, wrapped to the elbow in white gauze. He rested his bandaged hand on top of hers. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said earnestly. “Who knows how it happened. The day before, with Reinhart, out in the open, we could have been seen by anyone. A poacher, another shepherd, someone sleeping in the haystack, an extra hand hired for the harvest . . . There are eyes everywhere. I should know.”

  She gave him a tremulous, grateful smile. To his immense surprise, she leaned over, kissed him on the forehead, the tips of her hair brushing against his chest. It happened so quickly, he hardly had time to enjoy it.

  Pavel leaned his head back into the soft pillow. There was so much he didn’t understand. He should be in despair over the loss of his barn, he should be in a white-hot fury with the cabal of international Jewish bankers for bringing so much trouble down upon his head. Instead, a strange feeling came creeping over him, an ineffable notion of well-being, of satisfaction in being part of a cause greater than himself. Something like love fluttered in his heart, and gratitude that his little stitched-together family was safely together under one roof.

  Marina—from now on he was to call her Marina, she said—was still talking, but he had to close his eyes. He was on morphine for the pain, she explained. A Home Army medic had left it for him. There were superficial burns on his face and arms, and his throat would hurt for a while, painful but not life-threatening. The main thing was to keep his wounds free of infection. If he could do that, he would be digging potatoes again in no time.

  Pavel felt himself ebbing away into unconsciousness, but before he fell asleep, he directed her toward the cupboard that held Lidia’s salve and instructed her in its use. She opened the jar, sniffed, dipped a finger into it, looked doubtful.

  He turned his head to look at the hearth. The little girl was playing with the dog’s toes, singing the song from an old children’s game, the old bear is asleep in the woods, when he wakes he’ll eat us up! And then he fell into a deep, druggy torpor where, in his dreams, he was holding hands in a circle with Reina, Lidia, Kazimir, Reinhart, Marina, her two sons, the dog, and sometimes the dark-haired partizan. Over and over, the bear awoke with an angry roar. Over and over, the ci
rcle broke, the children scattering in all directions.

  Looking back on it, Pavel would realize that Hahnemeier was always the bear.

  * * *

  The Russians liberated Włodawa in August of that same year. Finally, the partizans emerged from the trees. For a while, they could be seen everywhere, driving around in jeeps with the Soviet and Polish military authorities, sporting new army uniforms covered in decorations. Quickly, a government sprang up. Pavel’s barn wasn’t the first to be rebuilt, but it wasn’t the last, either.

  Now was the time for revenge. With trepidation, people who had taken over the homes of their Jewish neighbors waited to see what would happen upon their return. But only a few stragglers ever showed up, seeking news of missing family members before moving on. Pavel trembled as local collaborators were pointed out to the Russian soldiers, who arrested them on the spot. Miraculously, no one pointed at him.

  Marina’s boys returned, whole, healthy, with tales of bloody battles and wondrous escapes in the Parczew woods. Marina couldn’t stop touching them, needing to reassure herself that she wasn’t dreaming, they had really survived, they were actually there, sitting at her table, eating eggs and bacon.

  Days went by, then weeks, but no one came to claim the little girl. In church, there was a new priest, young, from Lvov. Anyone harboring Jewish children could bring them to the convent in Chełm, he announced. The nuns would care for them until their parents were found or other arrangements could be made.

  Something in Pavel rebelled against this. An idea began to grow in his mind. What if she just stays here? Why should he give her away to strangers? Didn’t he have as much a right to her as anyone else? He could care for her as well as any old nun. In the fall, after the crop was brought in, he would sign her up for school. Maybe he would even get her measured for a new dress, buy her a real pair of shoes.