In the Land of Armadillos

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  One sunny August day in 1989, he received an official-looking letter with a government seal on the envelope. It informed him that a museum in Israel called Yad Vashem had designated him, Pavel Walczak, as Righteous Among the Nations, for hiding Reina Soroka Wilks on his farm from 1943 to 1944, despite considerable risk to his own life. In two weeks, there would be a ceremony on the steps of Town Hall, with members of the family, the mayor, representatives of both the Polish and Israeli embassies.

  At the age of eighty-seven, Pavel could only shake his grizzled head. Imagine, the biggest anti-Semite in the county receiving a medal for this act that had seemed so repugnant to him at the time and had ended in bringing him every good thing.

  That was when he finally told Marina that he had passed her name to Hahnemeier in an effort to distract him from the presence of the little girl he was protecting against his will.

  “I know,” she said. “Of course I knew.”

  He looked at her, dumbfounded. She explained, “Three soldiers knocked on my door, pointed their guns at me, said they had information that I was hiding Jews. It was just daybreak, I was still in my nightgown. I remember how they kept staring at my breasts. It wasn’t true, I wasn’t hiding anyone, but my boys had buried a box of ammunition in a pit under the barn. If they found it, I was dead. The soldiers made a big mess, turned everything upside down. It ended only when I offered to make them breakfast.”

  He hid his face behind his hands. Gently, she pried them away, pulled her husband’s craggy head between her honey-scented fingers. “That was a different man,” she said firmly. “That Pavel Walczak died a long time ago. The night his friends burned down his barn for the crime of protecting a little girl.”

  Half a lifetime had gone by, and he still couldn’t believe she had chosen him. He took her hand, turned it over, and kissed it. “Thank you, kochanie. For all of it. For coming to find me, for getting me home, for taking care of me. Me, Pavel Walczak, who deserved it less than anyone. All on a night when monsters walked the earth.”

  Her eyebrows shot up, she opened her mouth to protest. He held up a hand to stop her. Not yet. It had taken him forty-five years to get to this point, he wanted to finish. “But most of all, thank you for your forgiveness. That means more to me than everything that came before.”

  “I didn’t take you home,” she said, surprised. “After bringing Reina to my door, Fallada ran off, I couldn’t stop him. At midnight he showed up again, whining and scratching. He wouldn’t stop barking until I followed him. You were already in bed, barely breathing. Perhaps you should have thanked the dog.”

  * * *

  It was a warm evening. There was a horse-drawn hayrick over in the field closest to the strip of forest; this far east, things didn’t change so fast. Over the rise and fall of the cicadas, he could hear a dog bark, a telephone ring, the chants of children at play.

  He caned himself out to the edge of his field. From the barn, he could almost hear the lowing of a cow, the contented cluck of chickens. But that was impossible, there were no animals in the barn; for years now, it had been given over to the production of Lidia’s Magic Cream.

  A breeze stirred the hair on his forehead, stirred the trees at the edge of the old potato field, currently leased to someone who grew sunflowers. Across the road, the corn was high, almost over his head. In another few weeks it would be harvesttime.

  A dog emerged from the corn. As big as a mountain, black, with a blunt boxy snout and eyes that glinted red in the sunset, it sat down on the edge of the road and looked at him. The long scraggly tail thumped the dirt.

  It was followed by a little girl, bursting from the rows of cornstalks. “There you are!” she scolded him, grabbing his collar. “Bad dog.” She was dressed for a party in a frilly pink dress and black patent-leather shoes, pink ribbons woven into her braids. Unmindful of her party clothes, she plopped onto her knees and buried her face in the dog’s neck, whispering to him as she stroked his thick fur. When she noticed she was being watched, she blushed, turned bashful. Together, the girl and the dog vanished back into the corn.

  Marina came outside, leaned against the porch railing. “Almost harvesttime,” she said, echoing his thoughts.

  Just above the tree line, the sun was sinking into a pillowy stack of cumulus clouds in shades of turquoise, pink, amber. He smiled, thinking of the first time he had seen her standing there, silhouetted against the sunset.

  “It’s getting cool,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “Why don’t you come in?”

  He had lived long enough to know there were things in this world that could not be explained. “Coming,” he said, climbing the steps to the cottage.

  THE GOLEM OF ŻUKÓW

  The Russians and the Germans pummeled the Polish army all through the harvest season of 1939, trampling golden fields of shimmering wheat, fertilizing the earth with their blood. When it was over, Poland divided neatly between them, the Russians withdrew to their side of the Bug River and advised the Jews of Żuków to leave their homes and come along with them.

  The supply officer was Jewish. “You think Stalin is bad?” he murmured to Shayna. Momentarily alone in the office as his troops piled bags of flour on the back of a truck, he caught hold of her wrist. “Listen to me. You have no idea.”

  Shayna ignored him. Warnings like this had been sounded before, in voices thick with foreboding. Politicians would rattle their sabers, shout threats, demand impossible things. Young men would shoot each other dead in near and distant fields. Life would go on. Everyone needed flour.

  Shayna and Hersh’s parents were the third generation of Mirskys to inherit the farm. As the proprietors of the only grist mill in a province famed for its endless fields of wheat and rye, they worked hard during their short lives, wearing themselves out before they turned forty. When their father was killed in the first week of fighting, their mother had already been in the ground for five years.

  There were many farmers willing to take advantage of the new orphans. After all, there was a Depression going on, the son was young and a dreamer, the daughter, just a girl. Offers for the mill rolled in, preceded by phrases like People say I’m too generous and As a favor to your parents. But Shayna’s black eyes crackled with a fierce intelligence, her tongue was quick and sharp, and she soon put an end to all that.

  It was true that Hersh loved to read, but the dreamy exterior concealed a calculating mind. While Shayna ordered the hands around, made sure the wheels ran true and the gears mended, he stayed late in the office, poring over bills and receipts.

  As he totted up their totals, Hersh told the farmers tall tales of forbidden feasts presided over by demons, many-headed dragons destroyed by their own teeth, sly foxes outwitting greedy wolves. Slapping heavy bags of flour on the backs of their wagons, they shook their heads, regarded him with lined faces burned by the sun, hard flinty eyes. Life was brief and brutal and pitiless, they told him. Fairy tales were a waste of God’s own time.

  * * *

  When the Germans finally arrived, it lacked a certain drama. A lone soldier putting down the rutted road on a motorcycle, followed by a few camouflage-colored trucks. Soon afterward, a guard was installed at the mill, armed with a helmet and a Mauser.

  Nothing much changed. Farmers came in with grain, Shayna made deliveries to town. Apples, rye, and wheat still came in from the Earl of Zamoyski’s estate, though now that his hereditary lands had been confiscated, SS Kommandant Reinhart’s name was stamped on the bags.

  Shayna treated the Nazis as she would any other client: She saw that the job was done well, weighed accurately, bagged securely. Achim, the soldier the Germans installed at the mill, was a farm boy. After a week of watching the millstones turn, he put down his rifle, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work alongside the hired hands.

  On a cold Thursday in October, Shayna drove the wagon to the nearby town of Włodawa. The horse’s name was Toni; she flapped the reins over his back to make him go faster, but he had his own ide
a of how long it should take to get there.

  It was market day. Farmers had arrived before dawn to set up their booths, and the air was filled with the sounds of women haggling, the smells of dung and cabbage and smoke. Shayna waved at the woman who sold eggs, a friend of her mother’s, a big woman with high pink cheeks and a generous body.

  Shayna pulled up in front of the bakery. A squat, square-headed man emerged in a cloud of steam, wiping his hands on an apron dusty with flour. A stranger.

  “Where’s Handelman?” she said.

  “Not here,” he said.

  “Let me talk to Fania,” she said. The baker’s wife.

  He apprised her with pale blue eyes. “Gone, both of them. Resettled to the east. I’m the baker now.”

  She felt a chill pass over the hairs at the back of her neck. Once he had finished unloading the bags, she chirruped to the horse, shook the reins over his gray shoulders. But the new baker blocked the road in front of the horse, putting his hand on Toni’s bridle.

  The baker’s skin was pasty and scarred, his eyes flat, his expression unreadable. A light sheen of perspiration beaded on her forehead, though there was snow on the ground and the horse’s breath came out in white gusts. It took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t looking at her.

  In the market square, five men performed jumping jacks, presided over by an SS officer and three laughing soldiers. As she watched, one of the men collapsed. With a start, Shayna realized that she knew him. Korn the fishmonger. Still laughing, the officer took out his pistol, aimed carefully.

  The horse, startled at the gunshot, would have bolted if Shayna hadn’t been holding the reins so tightly. The baker released Toni’s bridle, averting his gaze to the bags of flour on the cobblestones.

  “Same time next week,” he said. She heard herself agree. “Be careful,” he muttered, then stepped away.

  Her heart pounding, she clucked to the horse. Reassured, he set off down the street that would lead them out of town and away from the blood tracing a delicate spiderweb pattern in the cracks between the cobblestones.

  * * *

  They sat in Shayna’s bedroom, the walls papered with tiny flowers.

  “We should leave,” said Hersh. “Disappear into the forest. Join the partizans.”

  “And leave the mill? The mill that’s supported our family for generations?”

  “It’s not our mill anymore, Shayna. It’s the Deutschens’ mill.”

  “You, with a gun,” she said, amused, dismissing the idea. “The Germans will kill you on your first day. I can see it now. You have them surrounded. Someone asks you a question. Next thing you know, you’re blabbing away, telling them the one with the flying rabbi and the demon with the stretchy arms, and bang.”

  “The widow and the demon with stretchy arms,” he reminded her sulkily. “Were you even listening? It was the midnight before Rosh Hashanah, and a widow was on her way to synagogue for selichot. A stranger carrying a prayer book asked if he could walk beside her. It was a dark, moonless night, so she was glad for the company. When they reached the shul, the lights were out, and it was cold and deserted. She went upstairs to the women’s gallery to wait, but as she took her seat, she saw him staring at her, his eyes like red coals burning in the darkness. And then he reached out to her, like this, and his arms stretched and stretched, like this, all the way up to the—”

  “Okay, Hersh. That’s enough.”

  “There’s nothing to tie us here,” he said. “We should go.”

  “Reinhart likes you,” she said.

  It was true, Reinhart did like Hersh. The commandant had visited last summer, and Hersh had shown him the grounds: the waterway that ran the mill, the stone storehouse, the giant gears, the pitted stones. At the sight of the great waterwheel paddling in the stream, the German officer had smiled like a little boy.

  And because he was Hersh, he told the commandant a story. At least it was a good one, with a midwife, a tabby cat, and a treasure. Clapping Hersh’s slight shoulder, Reinhart guffawed and said that no one had told him a bedtime story since his grandmother died. Then he winked at Shayna, climbed into his big black Mercedes, and drove away.

  “When the time comes, he’ll kill us anyway,” said Hersh.

  “They need the mill,” she reminded him. “As long as Reinhart’s happy, we’re safe.”

  “I’ll bet Korn thought he was safe, too,” said Hersh, and the discussion was over.

  * * *

  That night was cold, colder than it had been in weeks. It was still dark out when Shayna was awakened by a noise.

  She bolted upright, her heart thumping. Pok. Pok. Pok. The sound was coming from outside. As her heartbeat slowed, she realized it was the front gate, banging in the wind. Someone must have had left it unlatched.

  She settled back into the warmth of her feather quilt. She had been dreaming, and in the dream, her mother, the woman who sold eggs in the market square, and a tabby cat were perched on the end of the mattress, encouraging her to find a suitable young man. Shayna had been explaining to the cat that she liked her independence, a husband would insist on doing things his own way. She was grateful that the noise had roused her. Her jaw was sore from grinding her teeth.

  She smelled him before she saw him. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw that someone was standing before her bed. Completely naked, he towered over her, long ropes of muscles bunching and shaking, smeared in filth from his hair down to his toes. His hands were clasped together over the place between his legs.

  Seeing that she was awake, he leaned forward. “You called me, Rabbi?” he said urgently. “It’s me, Yossel.” And then he fainted dead away.

  * * *

  Two things they established immediately. One, the young man was Jewish; standing before them stark naked, it was impossible to miss. Second, and this was important, he was crazy.

  “What’s your name?” Shayna asked him again.

  “I told you,” he answered plaintively. “Yossel.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You called me. You said you’d call me whenever the Jews were in trouble. Don’t you remember?”

  Hersh stared at him, wide-eyed. “My God,” he said, in a voice choked with laughter. “He thinks he’s the Golem.”

  She looked at him fiercely. “Real life going on here, Hersh. Not one of your stupid stories.”

  “You know this one. It was just before Passover, and Rabbi Yehuda Loew, the Maharal of Prague, got wind of an evil plan. Someone was going to tell the peasants that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make their matzo. It was a lie, but it always worked; angry mobs would storm through the streets where Jews lived, killing everyone they found, destroying everything they touched. So, the Maharal made a man out of clay that he dug from the riverbank. His sole purpose was to protect the Jews from danger.” He corrected himself. “Not a man. A monster. The Golem of Prague.” He smiled sweetly at his sister. “If he’s the Golem, I guess that makes you the rabbi.”

  They washed him off in the barn. Whatever he was covered in stank of dead fish and decay. Despite repeated applications of soap and water, the color of his hair remained the same, a muddy brown, like the sticky clay they used to scoop out of the land near the river when they were kids.

  He was built like a laborer, with a deep wide chest and big sinewy arms. Blank, stony eyes stared out at her from shadowy sockets. From the trunk in the attic where they kept Papa’s clothing, Shayna loaned him trousers, a jacket, a shirt. Before she handed it over, she saw Hersh surreptitiously slide a tiny paper scroll into the jacket’s inner pocket.

  “It’s the Shema,” he explained sheepishly. The prayer Jews chanted each morning, at bedtime, and before dying. “The Golem wears it next to his heart. It’s how the rabbi brought him to life. Don’t look at me like that. He asked.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Shayna. “Fairy tales.”

  Hersh and his stories. Before his bar mitzvah, Papa had made arrangements for him
to learn Talmud with a doe-eyed rabbinical student who bartered lessons for flour. Dutifully, Hersh had mastered the intricate legal discussions constituting the body of the Mishnah. But when it came to the myths and legends of the Midrash, his eyes took on a misty faraway look, and he would ramble on about the pious ox who refused to work on Shabbos, or the exact number of plagues that befell Pharaoh and his chariots in the Red Sea. This was undoubtedly their mother’s influence. Until he was eight, Hersh was confined indoors with weak lungs. To entertain him, Mama had filled his head with talk of dybbuks and demons, fireflowers that conferred mystical powers, enchanted talking bears. Folktales she’d heard from her mother or from the Polish women who cooked and sewed and cleaned for them.

  Shayna gave in. “Fine, he’s the Golem,” she said. “He must belong to someone. Tonight he can sleep in the barn.”

  The next morning Hersh took the wagon to town. No one seemed to be missing a confused young man. Shayna asked the farmers waiting for their flour, receiving terse shakes of the head in response. But when the guard, Achim, went outside to open the sluice, one of the farmers relayed a terrible rumor he had heard: all the Jews in the town of Lubień marched into the Parczew Forest, massacred. Shayna dismissed it. All these bubbameinsas about atrocities. Propaganda warmed over from the last war.

  “We can’t send him away,” said Hersh. “He doesn’t have any papers. If the Germans don’t get him, someone else will.”

  She put her hands on her hips, pursed her lips in a frown. Another dreamer she had to be responsible for. “All right, then. If he’s going to stay here, he has to work.”

  “You can’t give a Golem an ordinary job,” said Hersh. “The Maharal was very clear about that. You have to save him for something really big. Like helping the Jews in their time of trouble.”

  “He’s helping this Jew,” she said. Turning to the young man, she made sure to speak very slowly and clearly. “We need water,” she enunciated carefully, handing him a bucket. “Fill up the barrel outside the kitchen door.”