In the Land of Armadillos (28 page)

“I won't be long,” he told Petra. She wore a sable stole against the chill, furnished by his crack furrier, Silverberg. As she flowed up the grand staircase, her new diamond earrings glittered in the chandelier's golden light.

In contrast, the office of the manager was practically spartan. Four white walls, a wooden desk, shelves lined with ledgers, a bare bulb that hung from the middle of the ceiling. Soroka was standing directly under the light, his face shadowed beneath the brim of his hat. Reinhart noted that his shirt was torn, which only inflamed him further; was this any way to appear before the Kommandant of the Adampol Labor Camp?

Feeling strangled by his dinner jacket, he stalked behind the desk, slinging open his tie. A month ago, he might have made a joke. But not today. Today he'd seen his excellent miller, a girl of twenty, performing push-ups over a steaming pile of horseshit in the town square while policemen laughed and pointed guns at her head. Today he'd heard about a regiment of German soldiers slaughtered by God knows what in the Parczew Forest. Today the crew digging potatoes was shorthanded because they'd already taken so many Jews away. Today there had been that telephone call from the General Government offices in Kraków.

So, instead of joking, he told Soroka that men had been shot for less. That his so-called superiors were breathing down his neck. That by protecting the saddlemaker's family, Reinhart was risking his own life. That all the Jews in Poland, except for the necessaries, were going to be gone within the next three weeks. Did he not realize, Reinhart bellowed, how lucky he was, that there were tens of thousands of Jews transported every day, Jews who would break their backs for him, Jews eager to take his place?

Soroka stood perfectly still, nodding, nodding, nodding. The saddlemaker absorbed his anger the way the color black absorbs light. “Where've you been, anyway?” Reinhart searched in his pockets for a cigarette, his customary good humor restored. “I've just come from a movie in town. Scientists, sabotage, sexy blondes. I highly recommend it.”

Soroka sounded tired. “The baby was sick.”

Reinhart rolled his eyes, jamming the cigarette between his lips as he hunted for his lighter. “When
isn't
the baby sick. You should take him to a doctor.”

The saddlemaker lifted his head. The pale blue eyes were red and watery, the honest square face swollen with grief.

“A doctor can't help him anymore,” he said.

*  *  *

The last Jews were transported from Włodawa to Sobibór in the middle of November 1942. In three days, ten thousand lives vanished into smoke, like a colossal magic trick.

In the end, there weren't enough train cars to ship ten thousand people quickly enough, so on the third day of the Great
Aktzia,
anyone left on the platform was ushered to a scar of wasteland behind the tracks and gunned down. When the men tasked with the execution ran out of ammunition, they improvised with clubs.

As the guns chugged and spat, Rohlfe and Streibel stood well back. With their jackbooted legs spread wide, they discussed a particularly wild drinking party at the SS club, where a secretary named Else had climbed on top of a table and taken off her clothes. Apparently, she was not a true blonde.

An officer yelled, another one snapped a picture. To the shouted approval of his friends, a soldier hauled a pretty girl across the dirt, holding on to her long black hair. Babies were thrown into the air and caught on the tips of bayonets or shattered against the frozen ground. According to testimony later delivered to the tribunal investigating war crimes in the Lublinskie province, a burst of laughter erupted when a skinny local kid, not yet fifteen, was conscripted as a shooter. In this festive atmosphere, the last Jews of Włodawa waited patiently for their turn before the guns and, when they were called, ran forth with such alacrity that you'd think they were running to freedom.

Guns popped, Streibel's dog yapped ceaselessly, men warmed their hands before a fire boiling in a barrel. Between the smoke and the barking, Reinhart's eyes were burning, and there was a terrible pounding in his head. But then he spotted him, Goldfeder the jeweler, sprinting out of the throng to take his turn in front of the pit. Reinhart leaned forward on his horse. “There he is,” he said.

Streibel screamed at the top of his lungs, and the line halted. With a few well-placed blows to the shoulders, the jeweler was cut from his neighbors and escorted away. “Choose me, Reinhart!” someone else shouted before being clubbed to the ground.

Streibel had a girlfriend, the girlfriend had a birthday. Reinhart would provide the gift, a diamond brooch, created by his new jeweler. He was glad to be finished here. He pulled on Fallada's reins.

But Streibel was feeling chatty. He laid a gloved hand on the horse's arched neck. She laid her ears back and snorted at him. “Your Fallada is the most beautiful animal in the district,” he said enviously. “She makes my Tristan look like a mule, and he's got a pedigree as long as your arm.”

He bantered back. “Well, it's a good thing I saw her first, then.”

Streibel chuckled, then lowered his voice. “You know what's going on with Falkner, of course.”

Reinhart felt a prickle of unease; a cold sheen of sweat branded the back of his neck. “No, I don't hear anything. We're in our own world over at Adampol.”

“He's been taken in for questioning. Turns out he's a traitor. Signed work papers for anyone who asked, warned his Jews when
Aktzias
were scheduled, even hid them in his home.” Heavily, Streibel shook his head, implying a slew of crimes too loathsome to detail. “We think he was aiding partizans. Can you believe it?”

No, he couldn't. He was genuinely astonished. The pounding in his head accelerated. “How did you find out?”

“Oh, we have our ways. People talk.” A small shrug. “He denies it, of course. You're chummy with your Jews, did you know anything about this?”

This question was tantamount to an accusation. Falkner's arrest might even be a lie, this casual interview designed to shake something loose. Reinhart knew he should say something to exonerate himself, but just now his mouth had gone dry, his tongue was glued to his palate. “No,” he bleated.

Streibel turned his head, watching the operation with renewed interest. A row of four girls was up before the gunmen, with pale oval faces and big dark eyes, they must have been sisters. They were holding hands. The youngest was no more than eight.

Streibel turned his attention back to Reinhart. “He was never really one of us, you know. He didn't join the Party until 1938, when his job was threatened. He was even arrested once, in 1933, for distributing Communist leaflets. It's all there, in his file.”

Poor Falkner, his nervous bobbing Adam's apple, the hank of hair that gave his head the shape of an upended lemon. In addition to the pretty wife with the disapproving gray eyes, there were two boys and a little girl. Reinhart wondered what would become of them. The chief engineer of the Berlin Drainage Project had more courage than he would have accorded him.

“You look nervous, Willy. Why? Don't worry, you're not in any kind of trouble. Everyone likes Willy Reinhart.” An assistant handed Streibel a mug of coffee. He frowned at some information on a clipboard, scribbled his signature. “And why is that? Because they know you're a decent man. All kinds of people tell you all kinds of things.” He took an unhurried sip of his coffee. “Say, Willy. How many Jews do you have over there, anyway? What is it, five hundred? Six?”

The smell of gunpowder and hot metal addled his senses. “No, no, nothing like that,” he protested with forced conviviality. Streibel had called him by his first name to demean him; only inferiors went by their first names. It was freezing, but sweat was running down his ribs. “I have three hundred and fifty. Every one of them tops in his field, absolutely necessary to the war effort.”

“None of them is necessary,” Streibel said. “The goal was always to exterminate the Jews.”

There was a dull buzzing in Reinhart's brain. He rallied with desperate gaiety. “Where's my head?” he cried, slapping his forehead. “I rode all the way out here to invite you, and then I nearly forgot! How long has it been since you've spent a weekend at the palace? Too long! Well, I want to make up for it. How about Friday? Good food, lots of liquor, pretty girls. Bring your men. Can you make it? What do you say?”

The Gestapo police chief's mirthless eyes studied him. By now, Reinhart had sweated through his shirt, he could feel it clinging to his skin. But then, miracle of miracles, Streibel's face lit up in a boyish grin, and he was patting him fondly on the arm.

“All right, Willy, all right.” He was laughing, though no one had said anything funny. “You're a good man, the best! I'll see you on Friday.” He was dismissed.

Reinhart wheeled Fallada around, urging her forward with a touch of his heels. He was wobbly with relief. Luckily, he was on horseback, walking would have been completely out of the question. He was almost out of earshot when he heard Streibel calling after him.

“Oh, and about Falkner. I'm going to send some papers over to the palace. The messenger will wait. It would be best for everyone if you signed them right away.”

Without looking back, Reinhart raised his arm in farewell. Fallada's hooves clipped across the frozen scree, carrying him away, far far away. A child screamed, pop, the screaming stopped. Feeling dizzy, he shut his eyes, then quickly forced them open again. You never knew who was watching. He slowed to light up a cigarette, protecting the tiny flickering flame with a cupped hand.

Stumbling along beside him, the jeweler was quaking uncontrollably. Reinhart snapped his lighter shut, inhaled deeply. In a few minutes, a healing sense of unreality would take over, he could depend on it, and then he'd be fine.

“Come on, Goldfeder, let's go home,” he said, flashing his famous smile. “Trust me. Everything's going to be all right.”

*  *  *

Later that night, for the first time in memory, he had trouble in bed. Petra tried her best, she'd been under him, over him, beside him, upside down, bottoms up, and on her knees, but there was nothing she could do, the events of the day had unnerved him.

They'd wanted him to denounce Falkner.
I, Willy Reinhart, do solemnly swear that. Abel Falkner did commit acts of treason with. Witnessed by. In the presence of. Sign here and here and here.

He'd inscribed his signature with a flourish, knowing that it didn't really make a difference what he did. The powers that be had already decided that Falkner was a goner. If he didn't do as they said, he'd be a goner, too, Adampol liquidated, Streibel had made that perfectly clear. The statement he signed would almost certainly be used to condemn a man to death, and the vision of lanky, do-gooding Abel Falkner standing bound and blindfolded before a firing squad wouldn't leave him alone, inserting itself repeatedly between his dick and Petra's exquisite thighs. Just now she was seated on top, pert pear-shaped breasts jiggling fetchingly above his head. He lay back in the soft pillows and tried to enjoy it.

Falkner was the past, he told himself firmly. What mattered now was Adampol. His people trusted him, they depended on him to protect them, it was his duty to keep them safe. He was prepared to do whatever it took. There might be more
Selektzions,
more
Aktzias,
but they'd blustered through them before. One day, maybe soon, the war would be over. To rebuild, the winning side would need craftsmen, and then they would come to him. “Thank you for saving Stein, he's the best carpenter in Poland,” they would marvel. “Thank you for saving Weinschneider, the best tinsmith. Freund, the best pipe fitter. Ottensusser, the best electrician. Flaumanhauft, Mannheim, and Kaminetzky, the best road-construction crew ever. Those were crazy times, weren't they? Let's put them behind us.” And he'd be redeemed, every wrong, rotten deal he'd ever made, forgotten. It would be worth it.

Finally, Petra conceded defeat, slipping off into the covers. Wordlessly, she lay beside him, comforting him with her soft presence.

He rested a hand on the curve of her hip. “Falkner's been arrested. They've transported his workers and burned his camp to the ground.”

Except for a slight widening of the eyes, her face didn't register any surprise. “What was he doing?”

“Hiding Jews. Helping partizans.”

“What will happen to him?”

“Shot, if he's lucky.”

She turned away from him on the bed. At first he felt the mattress vibrate, just slightly, and then he saw her shoulders shaking. He reached out to touch her. To his surprise, she pulled away from him.

“What is it?” he asked, bewildered. “Is this about Falkner?”

“I was thinking about his wife. His children.”

“But his wife hates you.”

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “He has a son, a little fatty, maybe ten or eleven . . . I think his name is Michael. The other boys at school make fun of him, they call him mean names, I overheard him once in town, crying. It was at that place, you know, where all the SS wives go in the afternoon to have coffee. He was sitting at a table with his mother. She bought him an ice cream, and he was eating it and crying. She looked so sad. I heard her tell him that it didn't matter what people said as long as you knew inside of yourself that it wasn't true.” Mascara was running in jagged black stripes down her cheeks. “What's going to happen to them?”

“I don't know. Maybe they'll send them to a prison camp.”

She made an awful sound and covered her face with her hands. As she sobbed, her rib cage fluttered like a baby bird's wings.

He was baffled. This was completely out of character. Until now, his mistress had been calm, submissive, serene. Almost deliberately docile, now that he thought of it, content to receive his presents and entertain his guests.