In the Land of Armadillos (27 page)

Reinhart glanced at the inlaid long-case clock next to the fireplace. It was a hundred years old, at least, maybe two, from the now-defunct pharmacy of a certain Pinchas Grinstein. By the time he asked Haas if he could have the pharmacist installed at his castle, Grinstein had already been shot for some infraction. But Reinhart's eye had fallen upon the clock, and later that day he'd sent a wagon for it. It wasn't stealing if the owner was already dead, was it?

The table laughed at something Hackendahl said. “
Aktzia,
” Gruber was shouting to Haas across the table, but his eyes were following a bosomy, honey-haired girl around the room. “Saturday morning.”

Reinhart frowned. “What
Aktzia
?” He leaned forward. “What about my workers? We're in the middle of hay season. Without them, it's going to rot in the fields. Nobody told me anything about any
Aktzia.
”

Gruber, his eyes still on the bosomy blonde, put a fat, conciliatory hand on his arm. “All right, all right, don't get your panties in a bunch. They're not taking essential workers this time. Just children, twelve and under. Now, will someone pour me another brandy?”

*  *  *

The solution was obvious. He had a castle. The castle had stables, a henhouse, storehouses, workshops, sleeping quarters for seasonal field hands. His Jewish workers could stay with him until the current madness blew over.

The trick was getting the wives and children to Adampol. Technically, what he was doing was hiding Jews, and everyone knew how that ended, a bullet in your brain, a trip to a concentration camp for anyone you'd ever said hello to. He couldn't just have them waltz past Streibel's men, saying, “Excuse me, can you let us through, please, we've been invited to stay at Reinhart's castle.”

Alone in his office, under a painting of an eighteenth-century Zamoyski ancestor surrounded by hunting dogs, he buried his head in his hands. It was already Thursday; he had only one more day to come up with a plan.

Images of Soroka's daughter kept interrupting him. Could it be a coincidence that her hair, which she kept in a long thick braid that reached to her waist, had all the same autumnal tones as Fallada's tail, mahogany, bronze, a rusty gold? He shook his head, irritated with himself. This was getting him nowhere. He pushed himself away from his desk and went to the window.

From his corner office, he could look out to the front of the house, at the vast trimmed expanse of lawn that rolled on and on until it disappeared into a fringe of old-growth forest. Most important, he had a view of the drive, the better to see which farmer was coming in with his produce—or which Party big shot might be paying him an unexpected visit.

The castle looked its best in late afternoon, he thought, when the sun washed her white pavilions in gold. Rising squarely from the flat Polish landscape, the baroque facade was dramatic, spectacular, complete with towers, a crenellated turret, wide sandstone steps leading up to a domed portico ringed with enormous ionic columns. A flagstone walkway meandered all the way around the courtyard, with exotic ornamental trees carved into geometric shapes. On sunny mornings, he liked to breakfast on the terrace, where potted geraniums were set at precise intervals atop the balustrade.

His own Shangri-la, insulated from the insanity consuming the civilized world . . . except for the smell that floated in sometimes from the camp at Sobibór, only six kilometers away, a smell that didn't belong among the fields, the farmers, the forests, and the plowed earth.

A dusty brown mule lurched into view, hauling a wagon up the long drive. A delivery of hides. He didn't recognize the driver, the tanner must have hired a new man. Wysocki was already out there, directing him around the back. The hides were for Soroka. They were keeping him busy with a flurry of new saddle commissions (the Nazi officers loved their horses), a set of wagon harnesses for Falkner's drainage project, and oh yes, one of the Volkdeutscher farmers wanted his carriage reupholstered.

Reinhart's gaze settled on the wagon, broad, deep, and wide, stacked high with cowhides. His brows contracted in thought. And then he smiled.

*  *  *

It wasn't bad, it wasn't bad at all, he thought, pacing meditatively through the muddy lane to the stable. Having all his workers together in one place offered a distinct advantage. He didn't have to worry about the Gestapo accidentally rounding them up while he was away on business, for instance, which happened once to Falkner.

Here in Adampol, he was isolated from the horrors of the world outside by a thick forest . . . but it was a forest bristling with partizan activity. There were Polish partizans, Russian partizans, Jewish partizans. There was even a German deserter or two.

As for him, he didn't wear the uniform, and he had a reputation for being a good German, but he wouldn't count on it to save his life if he were confronted by a band of resistance fighters. His duties had him constantly traveling, on the road or in the fields, through the woods, in and out of villages. Everyone knew who he was. He'd taken to carrying a gun wherever he went.

He turned up the path that led to the stable. Linker, his stableman, had Fallada out in the middle of the aisle, brushing her down. She nickered inquisitively.

“Hold on a minute, princess,” he said, and fished for the sugar cube he always kept for her in his pocket. She snatched it from his palm without a jot of gratitude. “How are you, my girl?” he murmured. “Did you enjoy your bath?”

She whinnied and tossed her head. Her forelock fell in her eyes like a little girl's bangs. The irises were a pale moonstone blue, practically human. Not for the first time, he thought he detected a sentient wisdom keeping watch in their opalescent depths. One of these days, he was certain, she would answer him.

Soroka's younger son was there, too, polishing the saddle his father had made. Though he was small for his age, the little redhead was agile and alert, an expert at making himself useful.

Reinhart lifted the saddle to inspect it, tilting his head one way, then the other. The leather shone with the translucent luster of an old oil painting.

“Good job, kid,” he said. “You're going to be the best saddlemaker in Poland, just like your papa.”

The boy wriggled and glowed under the praise. He was about the same age as his own Matthias, he realized, funny that he'd never noticed it before. With a surprising stab of regret, Reinhart wondered what his boys were doing at that moment. Getting dressed? Eating breakfast? Or were they already in school?

Soroka's boy wasn't alone, he had his little sister with him. She had made herself at home in the hay, where she was watching the barn cat nurse a litter of kittens. The cat, a mean yellow tabby, didn't seem to mind the little girl's presence, acknowledging her now and again with a switch of her tail or a slow blink of her yellow eyes.

Soroka and Wysocki lumbered through the stable doors, conferring in Polish. When they saw Reinhart, they switched to German.

“Novak is here with a dead sheep,” reported Wysocki.

“Where?”

“Right outside. Should I tell him to leave it behind the stable?”

He scribbled his signature on the form Wysocki offered him. “Yes, same as the others.” The carcass would be gone by morning. Officially, he had to account for his farmers' dead livestock. Unofficially, he left them where his hungry workers would be sure to find them.

He turned to Soroka. “All right, what is it, Haskel? You look like you're sitting on pins and needles.”

The saddlemaker was carrying a package wrapped in a blanket. It smelled enticingly of neat's-foot oil. “First things first. What does Miss Ostrowski think of her new saddle? Does it need any adjustments?”

“Petra asked me to tell you that she has never owned anything that fits her behind as perfectly as your saddle. She made Linker carry it to her room so she could look at it while she's in the bath. She says you're an
artiste.
She also wanted me to tell you that your beautiful daughter raises the tastiest rabbits in the county.”

Soroka chuckled, but tension hummed in the air between them like a live wire. “I have something for you,” he said.

“I've been out all day visiting farms around Natalin,” Reinhart said. “I have a metric ton of paperwork I need to fill out. Come to my office. We can talk there.”

Soroka followed him past the grand staircase, past the stone fireplace with the earl's coat of arms carved in relief, past the alabaster bust of Mars, the god of war, that sat on the mantel. In his office, Reinhart pushed a stack of ledgers from a needlework chair and motioned for Soroka to sit.

The saddlemaker pulled off his cap and scratched his head. “That kid you hired to deliver messages for you. He's an informer.”

Reinhart went wobbly in the knees. He had to sit down. “How do you know?”

“His bicycle. No Pole has a new bicycle unless he's working for the Germans. It's a dead giveaway.”

His insides were turning to water. Where had he sent him? To Bobak, who seemed to have an endless supply of hard-to-find redcurrant jelly; to Ulinski, who organized French champagne . . . Zygoda, who could always be depended on for a Leica camera. “Christ. I've already sent him to three different places Rohlfe shouldn't know about. And those are just the ones I remember. What am I going to do?”

Soroka fitted his cap back onto his head. “From what I understand, it's, ah, not a problem anymore.”

Reinhart sagged with relief. “Thank you, Haskel. How do you hear these things?”

“Oh, you know. A little bird told me.” Soroka never talked about it, but he had a son living in one of the illegal Jewish camps in the forest. Was he also a partizan? Reinhart didn't want to know.

Soroka massaged a freckled hand over his sunburned neck. “Listen, Reinhart. There's no pretty way to ask you this. If it ever got to a point where you didn't think you could protect us anymore . . . you would tell us, wouldn't you?”

Reinhart's eyebrows steepled up. “I think you forget who you're talking to.”

“I know, I know. Willy Reinhart, the man with the silver tongue. No one can say no to him! Do you know the story of the fireflower? No? Famous Polish folktale. In the heart of the forest, there grows a fern that blooms only once a year, on Kupala Night. The flowers of this plant are fiery flames. To collect this flower, you must enter the forest before midnight on the longest day of the year. Demons will test you, bombarding you with questions. If you allow yourself to be distracted, the fireflower burns to ash. But if you resist the demons, the fireflower gives you the power to read minds, find treasure, fight off evil!” The saddlemaker flashed a smile. “Sure you don't have a fireflower around here somewhere?”

Reinhart laughed. “You've discovered my secret. I keep it in a vase on top of the piano.”

“You would tell us, though. If it was time to find a safe place to hide.”

“You can count on me, Haskel.”

Soroka puffed out his cheeks, relieved. “Thank you, Chief. It's not for me, you know. It's for Hanna, the kids . . . a man has to protect his family.” Now he was embarrassed. He dropped his gaze to his shoes. “Better get back to work. Anshel will polish a hole right through the seat of your saddle.” He bent over, retrieved the package at his feet. “Oh, this is for you. Last time you stopped by, I saw that you could use a new pair of boots.” He unwrapped the blanket. Swaddled in the soft cloth was a set of high black riding boots.

With delight, Reinhart turned them one way, then the other, admiring the play of light across the lacquered leather. “Is there anything you can't do? You're like a wizard, Haskel.”

The phone rang. Petra wanted to go dancing. Was there a way to make that happen tonight? Absently, Reinhart turned away to take the call, stroking his new boots. The saddlemaker folded up his blanket and withdrew, quietly shutting the door behind him.

*  *  *

Haas wanted to know if his saddle was ready yet.

In a tense meeting, Reinhart had requested a certain Yakub Freund, a pipe fitter, to be taken off the rolls for transport and instead channeled to Adampol. By reputation, the Chief of Employment was a true believer, a cold-hearted, steely-nerved National Socialist killer. Reinhart gazed into his dead-pool eyes, pushed a silver pocket watch across the desk, and Freund was his. But as he was leaving, Haas asked about his saddle.

Not long ago, Haas had executed the entire membership of the Jewish Council for acting too slowly for his liking. Reinhart wanted Haskel to put the saddle at the top of his to-do list.

“Tell Soroka to come see me,” he told Wysocki. “It's important.”

Soroka didn't come that morning, or even that afternoon. All that day, the drive was crowded with incoming deliveries of potatoes and onions, horse-drawn wagons jockeying for position with army trucks shuttling crates of live chickens to the train station. As if he didn't have enough to worry about, there was a troubling letter from home, Matthias had been expelled from school for keeping a flare gun under his bed. Then there were the phone calls, unreasonable demands from the Fatherland: More potatoes. More rye. More wheat. More everything, or else. And that wasn't the worst of it.

As the sun set and the saddlemaker still did not appear, Reinhart began to grow angry. He didn't treat his workers like slaves, like the commandants of other camps did with their Jews, nor did he close them in with barbed wire and guard towers. But he was still Willy Reinhart, Regional Commissioner of Agricultural Products and Services, he held life and death in the palm of his hand, and he assumed a corresponding measure of respect.

In the evening there was a social event in Włodawa for the local Reich leadership, dinner at the SS club, followed by a gala movie premiere. It was nearly midnight by the time he returned from the theater. Meeting him in the domed portico, a manservant took his coat and quietly informed him that Soroka was waiting in the manager's office.