In the Land of Armadillos (14 page)

“They gave me back my gun, offered me a cigarette, a chocolate bar. They wanted to know where I had found the grouse. I could speak a little German—it's similar to the Yiddish I picked up from the Singers—and this made them even more excited. None of the Poles spoke German except the Jews.

“I was so relieved. And what was more, I had made new friends, important friends. Deep inside, I was thrilled. This could be the start of something big. Maybe they could help me get a job, a good job, that made real money . . . then my father would have to treat me with more respect. I could be a hunting guide or a gamekeeper. I wanted to make myself useful to them. After all, weren't they our new leaders?

“That was what I was thinking when I showed them the footprints in the snow.”

He pulled out the soiled handkerchief again. It was very cold. He had to keep wiping his nose.

“One of the Germans kicked apart the branches covering the opening and shouted at whoever was in there to come out. Six people came crawling up out of that hole. They were like raccoons after hibernation, blinded by the light. As they climbed out one by one, the soldiers booted them into the snow.

“To tell you the truth, I didn't recognize them at first. They had wasted down to skin and bones. Their hair was long and matted, their clothes were tattered rags. They had been hiding there for almost a year, living on mushrooms and roots. The Singers.

“The soldiers clapped me on the back, congratulating me on my find. One said, ‘Let's kill them right here.' Another one said, ‘No. I have an idea.' He said to me, ‘Why don't you come with us, this will be fun.'

“So we started walking. We walked and we walked and we walked. All the time, Sender was next to me, whispering in my ear. ‘Stefan, why did you tell them? Stefan, how could you give us away? Stefan, Stefan, Stefan,
Stefan
!' ” He clapped his hands over his ears as if he could still hear his friend's voice. “I said, ‘How was I supposed to know it was you in there? It could have been anyone.' ”

The priest nodded, understanding.

“After an hour of walking, we could hear voices, laughter, gunfire. There were trucks and motorcycles, horses, dogs. Important-looking men in shiny leather coats. Officers with medals and ribbons. It was like the circus came to town. Off to one side was a big hole in the ground. A group of Jews being guarded by soldiers stood behind a rope.

“Reinhart was there, of course.” The priest's eyelids were lowered; he looked as if he were sleeping. “He was standing with a couple of other officers. He looked very pale. He knew some of the people being killed, they worked for him. He had promised that he would protect them. Either he was lying or his friends back in Berlin had other ideas.”

Now the old man fell quiet. He looked over at his grandson. The little boy had found some scraps of coal. Eric had collected branches that they could use as arms. His knit cap was sitting rakishly upon the snowman's round head.

Quietly, the old man resumed his story. “A group of soldiers was smoking and leaning on their rifles, passing around a bottle of liquor. My new friends introduced me to their officer. He seemed happy to meet me; he clapped his hands together and asked if I could help them out. The soldiers were all laughing because I was so young.

“My knees were like jelly, but I did what he said. A line of Jews ran over, stopped in front of us. People I knew. Weissbrot, who used to sell candy and newspapers at a store around the corner from the market square. Professor Schulz, one of the teachers at the high school. Rapaport, whom I used to play soccer with.

“The officer shouted a command. The soldiers put out their cigarettes and lifted their guns. When he gave the word, I pulled the trigger. The Jews fell down into the pit.”

“My God,” said Eric reflexively. The priest bent him a sharp look.

The old man noticed. His brows lowered in a frown. “What else could I do?” he said roughly. “You couldn't just say no. I had to think about myself, my father's position. What would
you
have done?” Agitated, he took off his hat and rubbed thick, stubby fingers over his pink scalp.

Fearful that Eric's outburst might have frightened the old man into silence, the priest scoured his brain for an innocuous question to get him talking again. But before he could think of anything to say, the old man went on in his dry, papery voice.

“They weren't all dead. Some of them were only wounded, moaning, trying to free themselves. It didn't make a difference; someone scattered sand over them, the officer called for more Jews.”

“The Singers were in this next group. Directly in front of me was Moshe, the father. They were ordered to strip. He was standing before me naked, holding his hands over his private parts. I lowered my rifle, I couldn't do it. This man had been like a father to me. But then I saw my new friends watching me. I raised my rifle to my shoulder. When the officer gave the command, I fired.”

He was quiet for a long while after that, so long that the priest thought he was finished with his story. He was surprised when the old man's voice stuttered querulously back to life, cracking in the frigid air.

“Why did I look down into the pit? I didn't want to see her dead. I wanted to remember her the way she used to be. But then a powerful fear came over me. What if she was only wounded? What if she was suffering?”

“Her?” the priest was confused. “She? Who are you talking about?”

The old man didn't seem to notice that he was there. “I stepped forward and looked down into the trench. The rest of them had died instantly, thank God. They lay in each other's arms, close together, even in death. Except for Cilla. My darling Cilla . . . ”

He broke down, began to weep. The sound was like the parts of a machine grinding together, rusted from disuse. “It was
Cilla
who was my friend,
Cilla
who invited me home,
Cilla
I went fishing with,
Cilla
who got spanked when we stole the apples. My sweet, beautiful Cilla, with her long brown hair and laughing green eyes, the pink mouth I always wanted to kiss . . . When my father beat me, it was Cilla who put her arm around me, Cilla who teased me until I smiled again.”

He was staring off into the distance, past the dull gray buildings, the black, leafless branches with their burden of ice. “She was sitting up, holding her stomach with both hands. A bad way to go. It takes a long time to die, and you are in pain the whole way. Even worse, maybe they would bury her alive.”

He screwed his hands into fists, pressed them into his eyes. “How could that
szwab
miss?” he burst out bitterly. “
He was five steps away from her.
” For a moment he stood there scowling and shaking his head, an angry old man remembering an ancient hurt.

“They were already shoveling sand over them. I was looking down into the pit, into her eyes, and I saw pleading there.
Help me, Stefan,
she seemed to be saying.
Help me
.

“I am a hunter, I said to myself. I do not let even an animal suffer. So I raised my rifle to my cheek. I aimed carefully. I did not miss.”

The priest was staring at him. He had abandoned all pretense of polite conversation. When the old man spoke again, he was calm, almost matter-of-fact. “They brought Jews all that day, and the next day, and the day after that. On the third day, we were finished. There were no more Jews in Włodawa. We were Judenrein.”

The priest was finding it difficult to speak. “And where did it take place, all this killing?”

The old man looked surprised. “Right here,” he said.

The boy had finished his snowman. It sat at the frozen edge of an undeveloped patch of land between the buildings, the scarf Eric had contributed fluttering in the wind. What was unusual was the grass, a summery apple green even though the temperature was a steady fifteen degrees Fahrenheit and the sidewalk was ridged with ice.

The priest felt goose bumps rise along his arms. “Thank you for your help,” he said.

“No, Father, thank
you,
” the old man replied, his smile a garish rictus of gratitude. “I've never told anyone that story, not even my daughter. It's good to talk about it after all this time. I should have told you the truth from the beginning. I think I was hiding it even from myself.”

This time the wizened cheeks crinkled up into a jovial grin, and the priest caught a glimpse of the boy he must have been before history caught him up in its jaws and twisted him into something hideous, a boy who might have been the lover of a murdered girl named Cilla.

The old man wanted to linger, to talk some more, but the child was tugging at his sleeve. “Maybe there's a reason that you came here today,” he suggested with a satisfied sigh. “All these years, I haven't been able to take Communion. Maybe God sent you to me.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the priest said automatically. He wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible, as he would from a bad smell.

Only reluctantly did the old man totter away after his grandson. Eric went to retrieve his scarf and cap from the snowman. When he straightened back up, he noticed that the priest was crying, tears falling from his red-rimmed eyes.

“That was horrible,” he said.

“Yes,” agreed the priest.

“We should report him to someone. He's a war criminal.”

The priest, whose last name was Reinhart, wiped his eyes with the heels of his hand. “Yes. We should. But then none of these people would ever talk to us again. We'd be defeating our own purpose.”

They began to walk down Wirka Street toward their car, a battered green Soviet-era Å koda. “I think I have frostbite,” said Eric. “I can't feel my fingers. I haven't built a snowman since I was ten.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Father, I know this sounds crazy . . . but the story he was telling reminded me of something. You know that photograph? The one in the file?”

They had reached the car. Gratefully, the priest slid behind the wheel. Despite the deceptively cheery presence of the sun, it was brutally cold. He took off his gloves to open the manila file that lay on the cracked leather seat of the Å koda. Inside were a few xeroxed pages, accompanied by a grainy black-and-white photograph taken by some anonymous bystander at a mass killing just like this one. The priest squinted at it, trying to imagine it imposed over the present landscape. There was his father, standing with a quartet of officers over to one side. A few soldiers penned in a blurry mass of human beings. In the forefront of the picture, a young man in civilian clothing stood at the jagged edge of a pit, a too-large jacket hanging awkwardly on his frame, aiming his rifle at a girl in the bottom of a trench that was already partially filled with bodies. She was naked; her hands were pressed against her stomach.

The priest had seen all too many photos like this one, but he had to admit, Eric had a point. There was something in the way the gunman stood, a tenderness in the way he cradled the stock to his cheek, something more in the way the girl was looking up at him. The priest shivered.

“Where are we going next?” said Eric, scribbling notes into a loose-leaf notebook.

Carefully, the priest spread out the map of Poland on the dashboard. It was dated 1939, the names of the towns were printed in German. He had to be careful with it; the paper was yellowed and cracking at the folds. It was dotted over with tiny red X's. “There are so many places like this,” said the priest wearily. “And these are just the ones my father knew about.”

“How can you keep on doing this?” said the younger man. He had finished with his notes and was closing the photo back into the file.

“I have to. It's the only way I can think of to atone for him.”

“This guy—we didn't even get his name—did he tell you anything new?”

The priest heaved a sigh. He repeated the old man's words.
He looked very pale. He knew some of the people being killed, they worked for him. He had promised that he would protect them. Either he was lying or his friends back in Berlin had other ideas.

“That's something,” said Eric. Sympathetically. “He couldn't have been the monster they say he was.”

“You should have noticed by now,” the priest said. “Sometimes a monster looks just like any other man.”

He started up the car. After overcoming an initial reluctance, it came juddering to life.

P
avel Walczak hated Jews.

When the first German soldiers came knocking on the door of his isolated farmhouse, they were just thirsty. Pavel took it upon himself to point out the homesteads and businesses of his Jewish neighbors.

Later on, he would inform upon locals he suspected of aiding Jewish partizans, and after that, he would volunteer the names of farmers he suspected of hiding Jews. Upon sighting bedraggled strangers venturing timidly from the safety of the trees to beg for food, Pavel made a special trip to town to tell the SS where they could be found.