In the Land of Armadillos

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  Whatever it was, he hoped it was enough, because he was about to trust her with his life. Kneeling over her, he put his lips close to her ear. “Petra, Petra,” he whispered, pushing strands of damp hair from her face. “Don’t cry. There’s nothing I can do for Falkner, it’s true. But maybe we can still do something. Tell me, Petra. Do you happen to know anyone who might have a way to get in touch with the partizans?”

  Her eyes blinked open, the lashes wet and clumped together. She scrutinized his face with a probing intensity, like she was searching for something she might have previously missed. With her long white fingers pressing the sides of his face, she kissed him. As he stared into her eyes, clear and pallid and changeable like the river, he felt himself grow hard again. She felt it, too, and pulled him down on top of her.

  As he entered her, a thought fired once across his consciousness like a shooting star. Had their roles been reversed, Falkner never would have signed those papers.

  * * *

  They showed up just after lunch, Streibel, his mistress, and fifteen gunmen. Feasts were prepared, rooms aired, linens pressed, black-market brandy trucked in, the gamekeeper put on alert. A bevy of girls from the typing pool were rounded up, and if they weren’t the prettiest ones, at least they were the most willing. He thought it wise to pack Petra off to stay with her mother.

  His marvelous cook outdid himself, and so did the serving staff. There were roast pigs on gold plates, boar and venison and rabbit and pheasant, sauces and gelleés and hard-to-find condiments, wines, and liqueurs from every corner of Europe. The bosomy blond secretary he’d met in the Gestapo HQ showed up; she took his hand with a demure smile, but once she had some champagne in her, she leaned over and kissed a dark-haired girlfriend right on the lips.

  After the meal, there were chocolates, brandy, cigars. A band of musicians played “Lili Marlene.” People coupled off, swaying slowly on the dance floor, the girls leaning their coiffed heads into the soldiers’ uniforms. Reinhart congratulated himself. Streibel had made no further inquiries into his Jewish workers. The hastily arranged hunt weekend was already paying off.

  One man was still seated at his table, tapping his foot along with the music. He looked to be around Reinhart’s age, with a wide, honest face, a friendly grin, brown hair parted neatly on the side. When he saw they were alone, he leaned forward. “Thank you, Herr Reinhart,” he said shyly. “We really needed this break.”

  “It’s always my pleasure to host our hardworking soldiers. Where are you from?”

  “We’re a police unit from Hamburg. My name’s Engler.” They shook hands. “Our work is difficult,” he confided. “Very difficult.”

  Reinhart thought of the four sisters throwing their arms into the air and sliding into the mass grave. “Yes, anyone could see that.”

  “I have a wife, two little girls. So, personally, I find it very hard to shoot women and children. That’s not why I became a policeman, you know?” The liquor was loosening his tongue. “Before the first operation, back in Józefów, our commanding officer told us that if any man wanted to be excused, he should just go. One of my friends, a fellow I’ve known for ten years, stepped forward. His sergeant tore him a new one, really lashed into him, but he just walked away. I thought about it, too. But, you know, I’m a career man, I have to think about my future. So I stayed.”

  Reinhart nodded, puffing on his cigar. It was all a dream, a strange and troubling dream. Soon he would wake up.

  “Some of us have invented little tricks to help us get through it. Like my friend Diederich, for instance. He only shoots mothers. You can understand that—it would be worse for them to see their children killed before their eyes. And me, I just do children. They wouldn’t be able to live without their mothers, so the way I see it, it’s an act of mercy.”

  Reinhart drank a lot that night, more than ever before. The blond girl from the Gestapo typing pool had a generous bottom, a warm, soft weight snuggled in his lap. The room twirled around in an agreeable way. He was laughing, he didn’t remember why. When had she taken off her clothes? Suddenly, he was in his room, sitting at the edge of his regal king-size bed. He had no memory of how he’d gotten there. Blondie was unbuttoning his trousers, working her way down his belly with her lips. The last thing he remembered before passing out was the sensation of drowning in a vat of Chanel No. 5.

  The next morning he awoke to a sky that was a brilliant and unrelenting blue. He lurched to his feet, lumbered naked to the window. Drawing back the drapes, he cursed; the hunting party was already assembling in front of the palace. He pulled on his hunting clothes and hurried to join them.

  Wincing against the cruel sunlight, he put his boot in the stirrup and swung himself onto Fallada’s back. For this, he was rewarded with a walloping headache.

  The hunt master tootled his horn, leading them at a fast clip down the road. Near the front gate, they turned in to the forest. Reinhart slowed Fallada to a walk, letting the others pass him by. Usually, riding was his greatest pleasure. Today bouncing up and down in the saddle was torture. “Go on without me,” he instructed the hunt master. “Give them a good run. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  It was unseasonably warm, the forest floor was thawing. Layers of mist hung in the air, lingering at shoulder height. A meandering creek tinkled against the rocks at Fallada’s feet. Yesterday it had been iced over. She dipped her head and nosed around for something tasty.

  A family of deer materialized from nowhere, promenading slowly out of the mist and onto the path. He caught his breath. Four does, each one a milky white. One dropped her lovely head to nibble at some moss, another pawed the leaves with her little pointed hoof, while a third kept guard over a luminous fawn.

  Fallada snorted, alerting them to their presence. Four graceful heads bobbed up as one. Together, they switched their ears forward, studying Reinhart critically with their big dark eyes. Little gusts of steam rose from their leathery black noses.

  Albino deer were extraordinarily rare. The gamekeeper hadn’t mentioned them, perhaps he was trying to protect them. Just then the nearest doe turned her flank to him, presenting him with a perfect target. His heart beat faster. Quickly, he shouldered his rifle, curled his finger around the trigger, drew a bead.

  Reinhart wasn’t a religious man, but to see four of them at once was practically a sign from God. He lowered the gun to his side.

  The does heard it first, the pounding of many hooves. As if they’d received a signal, they took off, bounding away into the forest.

  Thirteen horses and thirteen riders sailed over the creek, spraying him with gouts of mud. The riding jacket was ridiculously expensive, made by a London tailor, he should have been furious, but all he felt at this moment was an abiding regret. He would have liked the does to get away, to continue with their secret and mysterious existence deep in his woods. He touched his heels to Fallada’s sides and followed reluctantly after them.

  If he’d been less hung over, he would have been paying more attention. A pine bough slapped across his face, knocking him out of the saddle and onto the ground.

  His head was spinning, had he blacked out? Reinhart sat up. Dead leaves were pasted to his ruined jacket and fell from his hair.

  Using Fallada’s saddle straps for support, he hauled himself to his feet. Ruefully, he rubbed the back of his head; he’d lost his hat when he fell. In the distance, he could hear the sound of excited voices. The hunting party was on the banks of the Bug River, he could just make out their figures. Having waded a few feet into the powerful current, the does found themselves trapped. Water eddied around them, gray and leaden, lapping sullenly at the raw and muddy bank.

  The hunters dismounted. Holding their guns, they advanced slowly on the cornered deer, coaxing them in gentle, soothing tones. As he watched, the does turned to face their pursuers, their slender legs braced for battle, their tapered heads lowered in defense.

  It would all be over in a few minutes. He turned away, hiding his face agains
t Fallada’s neck. It was childlike, superstitious, almost, but he didn’t want to see them destroyed.

  A snowflake landed on his cheek. Surprised, he looked up to find the sky scudding over with iron gray clouds. Fallada whinnied nervously, stamping skittishly in the ashen leaves. “You just want to get back to your nice, cozy stall, don’t you,” he murmured, stroking her thick coat, the color of bittersweet chocolate. Oh, she was a girl, all right, she was flirting with him to get her way. Involuntarily, he shivered. The temperature was dropping, one snowflake became a flurry. The wind was picking up, too. Strange, the sky had been a cloudless baby blue not half an hour ago. Fallada swung her pretty face toward him, nibbled his hair. He smiled at the touch of her velvety lips on his cheek. “All right, all right. You know I can’t say no to you.” He reached into his pockets, feeling for the sugar cube he always kept there. As she took it from his fingers, he sighed. Those men were important guests, and he was their host. Like it or not, he should be there for the kill.

  “Come on, girl,” he muttered. “We’d better get over there.” He took hold of her reins.

  But the horse had other ideas. She planted her hooves in the spongy earth and wouldn’t budge. “Sorry, Willy,” she said. “I can’t let you go down there.”

  Reinhart glanced cautiously around to confirm what he already knew, he was entirely alone. He must have hit his head harder than he thought. He seized the horse’s bridle, staring into her liquid, lake-colored eyes.

  Impatiently, she butted his chest with her big head. “We really must go. We’re running out of time.”

  “You can talk?”

  “Of course I can talk. I’m talking right now, aren’t I?” Her voice was sweet and soft and silvery, as it should be, given her fine temperament and her aristocratic lineage, with a light Polish accent.

  He shook his head. “No. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Fallada, but none of this is happening. I hit my head when I fell off your back, and now I’m dreaming.”

  She stretched out her long neck, burrowing her pretty little muzzle against his throat, tickling the hairs behind his ear. A real temptress. “Now, you listen to me, Willy Reinhart. I know a few things about you. I know when you’re happy or sad and what you had for breakfast. You want to do the right thing, but sometimes you can’t. You’re scared of Streibel. You feel bad about Falkner. You’re worried your workers don’t get enough to eat, and sometimes, when you think no one is looking, you leave a sack of potatoes out where they will find it.

  “So you see, Herr Kommandant Reinhart, I know all about you. And I promise you that after this is over, we can chat until the cows come home. But right now, my dear Willy, we have to get out of here.”

  A curtain of snow descended from the sky, thick, heavy flakes. With that, the temperature plummeted. Frigid air constricted the delicate passageways inside his throat and lungs. He couldn’t feel his fingertips. Plink, the sweat collecting in his eyebrows and along his hairline burst into icy crystals.

  Around him, the wind began to cycle in huge gusts, gathering itself into a spinning vortex of snow and ice, sucking away light and visibility. “Too late!” she hollered over the howl of the wind. “Hold on to me, Willy!”

  There was a metallic thunder, like a million artillery shells firing from a million cannons. In the next moment, landmarks were erased. He didn’t know which way was land and which was sky. With his arms around Fallada’s neck, he hung on for dear life as she protected him with her body.

  He twisted around, trying to catch a glimpse of the hunting party. Veiled behind a screen of falling snow, he could barely make out their silhouettes.

  The deer were gone, but the men of the Einsatzgruppen still stood there, transfixed. What were they staring at? He blinked back the icy shards of snow burning his eyes and settling on his lashes.

  The Bug River was overflowing its banks. Gentle ripples became little waves, the little waves grew bigger. When the wind hitched around in the other direction, they surged another five feet. Now they were the height of a man and edged with seething white foam that looked like teeth. The breakers organized themselves, purposefully piling wave upon wave. The water shot upward in a gunmetal-gray fountain, and before his very eyes, the river stood up.

  The hunters fled, scattering in all directions. He could hear their cries. But the river stayed where it was, growing higher, higher, as high as the trees, higher.

  For another moment the river flowed peacefully upward into the sky. And then, with a brittle crack, it froze solid, in the shape of a monstrous, curling fist.

  Only then did it begin to move. With colossal legs like a truckload of tree trunks, the river left its bed to stalk the hunters across the flat, snowy terrain. Reinhart could feel the earth shake with each step.

  As it closed in on them, the top began to crumble, like the crest of a wave before it hurls itself against the shore. There was a long, hollow creak, like the sound a glacier might make when it moves, and then the whole mass came crashing down, the frozen river detonating in an icy explosion, smashing everything below it into a fine white powder.

  The concussive force of the blast carried him backward. He lost his grip on Fallada’s neck, catapulting into the vast white void.

  He opened his eyes when he felt Fallada’s velveteen muzzle brush against his cheek. Once again he lay beside the meandering creek tinkling through the rocks. Everything was exactly the way it was in the moments before the storm: The sun was up, the temperature mild, the sky a tranquil, blameless blue, and Fallada was nosing hopefully around the creek for something tasty to eat. When he turned his gaze to the river, that was the same, too. Nothing had changed at all, the wide gray waters that marked the border with Russia rolled patiently toward eternity. Other than a set of bootprints stamped into the mud, of men and deer, there was no trace.

  * * *

  Escape from Sobibór! It was all the German colonists could talk about. A week ago, three hundred Jewish prisoners had murdered their guards and melted into the forest. The minefields got some of them, and the SS shot eighty more, but many remained at large in the six kilometers of woodland between Adampol and Sobibór, armed and desperate.

  Blue shadows lay in the grassy lanes between the trees in his orchard. There were still plenty of leaves in the branches and more on the ground. As Fallada danced along, she shuffled them with her hooves, sending them skating through the air. She shook her head and nickered, telling him, he was certain, that she was grateful for the exercise. Affectionately, he patted her neck. For the past week, he’d kept her a prisoner in her stall, unwilling to brave the woods. For now he thought it wise to stick close to the palace.

  He gave a slight tug on the reins. Fallada came to a smooth stop, and together, man and horse surveyed their patch of the world, a panorama of stubbly fields shaved close for winter.

  Nearly a year had passed since the attack on the hunting party, and only today was the matter finally laid to rest, with an official stamped letter absolving him of blame. Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik, the SS general for the southeastern region, was eminently approachable; on all levels, his administration was satisfyingly riddled with corruption. For the price of a phonograph, a box of bananas, a bag of salt, and a crate of gooseberry jam, someone in Globocnik’s office was more than happy to dismiss the allegations that Reinhart, as the sole survivor, was in bed with the partizans.

  A flock of gray geese flapped overhead, noisily honking. His stomach grumbled in reply, reminding him that he’d had no lunch. “All right, Fallada. Guess we should be getting back. Nearly dinnertime, isn’t it?”

  Only Reinhart knew what had really happened that day in the Parczew Forest; he’d witnessed the land of Poland rise up and defend herself. It saddened him that Fallada refused to speak again, but he still conversed with her, hoping to catch her off guard.

  “I wish you could see how beautiful your mane looks today, rippling in the breeze! Like tongues of fire.” She laid her ears back and snorted, and he was confide
nt she understood.

  The revolt at Sobibór had shaken him with its savagery. Synchronizing their movements with military precision, the craftsmen in the concentration camp’s workshops rose up against their overseers in a coordinated attack. The shoemakers told a supervisor to come to their workshop and pick up his new boots. When he arrived, they were waiting for him with their hammers. At the same time, the tailors invited a Ukrainian guard to try on his new suit, then stabbed him to death with their scissors. As for the construction workers . . . well, he’d heard something about an ax. Not that he had any sympathy for those butchers over at Sobibór—on the contrary, they deserved whatever they got—but the ferocity the prisoners had exhibited gave him the chills.

  He jigged up and down in the saddle as Fallada trotted through the apple trees. At the end of the orchard was a fieldstone fence, and beyond that, the woods. On most days, they sailed over the fence and went for a gallop. Fallada quickened her pace, gathering speed for the jump. He tugged back on the reins. “No forest today, my love. Not until things settle down.” He guided her to the left, breaking through a lane of trees, and that was where he came upon them, three men and a girl, standing in his orchard.

  Reinhart’s nerves jangled an alarm. With one smooth motion, he lifted his hunting rifle, braced it against his shoulder. “Halt!” he roared.

  Three of them froze. But the fourth, a scruffy young man, stared at him, his face cowled in shadow. And then he bolted for the stone fence.

  Reinhart sighted down the barrel, aimed at a place between the shoulders of the ragged coat. “Stop! Put your hands up!” he cried. But the scruffy young man ignored him. Reaching the fence, he dived over it, scrabbling for something on the ground. Good Christ! What did he have back there? A gun? A knife? A grenade? As he swiveled around again, Reinhart pulled the trigger. A gunshot boomed across the barren fields, startling a flock of starlings into the air. Twenty feet away, the young man let out a gasp—“Ah,” he said—and slumped against the stones.