In the Land of Armadillos (3 page)

Under his protection, and with a steady diet, Max had expected Toby to fill out a bit or, at the very least, to cheer up. But if anything, he looked worse, the lines in his elongated face etched too sharply for his thirty years, the angles of his body growing more extreme by the day.

“You've got to stop fucking Gruber's secretary,” Max growled, plopping heavily onto the bed.

Startled from his trance, Toby nearly lost his balance. “I'll try, boss,” he began to say before breaking into a harsh cough.

Max removed his officer's cap and flipped it onto the desk. “That doesn't sound good,” he said. “How long have you been coughing like that?”

Toby was bent over double; it took him a moment to catch his breath. “Since yesterday,” he rasped.

Max frowned at the artist's shirt and trousers, too thin to be of any use against the eastern cold. “You should dress warmer. It's cold as a witch's chuff out there tonight.”

It was the end of a long day. There had been an action at the hospital, all the patients shot in their beds, concurrent with a raid on the orphanage. His presence had been required at both operations. A cloud of fatigue was descending over him, assisted along its journey by the champagne served at the premiere. With a sigh of relief, he unbuttoned his dress-uniform jacket. He kicked off a boot, pushed the other one off with his toes. As he made himself comfortable, something nosed its way into Max's perception.

“You do have a warm coat, don't you, Toby?”

The artist shook his head, coughed lightly into his fist.

“Well, why not?”

He shrugged, his shoulders rising and falling with indifference.

Max sat up straight, indignant. “This is outrageous. We have warehouses full of clothing. I'll see to it that you get another one right away.”

“Don't trouble yourself. When I die of pneumonia, you'll be commended for saving the Reich the cost of the bullet.”

“You're not allowed to die just yet. Not before you finish Peter's room, anyway. I'm joking, I'm joking. Don't go anywhere. I know just the thing.”

Max padded down the stairs in his socks. This late at night, there was only an oil lamp burning in the kitchen, the corners of the room sunk in murky shadow. He could have woken the housekeeper, but making the preparations himself gave him a certain proprietary pleasure. When the copper kettle began to sing, a voice from behind him murmured, “Can I be of service, Sturmbannführer?”

With all the extra duties of the last month, he had nearly forgotten about his new cook. On the petite side, with a pleasing round rump and a small, nipped-in waist, she had that dusky skin tone some of the Jews had, wan but pretty. Her eyes were large and hooded; to him, it seemed that they swam with myriad unfathomable secrets.

“I've forgotten your name,” he said.

“Saltzman, Adela, Sturmbannführer.”

“And how long have you been working here?”

“A month, Sturmbannführer.”

Slowly, deliberately, he poured hot water over the tea leaves. “Was it you who made that saddle of rabbit for dinner last night?”

The shoulders were bowed, the eyes cast submissively downward. “Yes, sir.” A husky voice for such a slight figure.

“Relax, relax,” he said in a tone that was meant to be congenial. “That was the best rabbit I've ever eaten. Where did you learn how to cook like that?”

“From my mother, sir.”

“Well, Saltzman. The next time you see your mother, you can tell her that Sturmbannführer Maximillian Haas says her daughter is the best cook in the entire country.”

“Thank you, Sturmbannführer,” she answered, her gaze still trained on the floor.

“Call me Haas. You can go back to bed.”

“Yes, Sturmbannführer,” she said, and evanesced into the shadows beyond the door.

When the tea was ready, he slowly climbed the stairs. On a tray, he balanced a tall glass set on a china saucer, filled with a transparent ruby-red liquid. For himself, there was a bottle of vodka. “Here,” he said brusquely, setting it carefully down on the desk. “Oma's recipe. Tea with wine and honey. Drink up.”

Toby took the glass in his slender, aristocratic fingers. “Honey,” he murmured. “I haven't had honey since . . .” He didn't finish the sentence. Closing his eyes, he brought the tea near to his nose, abandoning himself to the sweet fragrance. The lines in his face eased, faded. Without them, he looked ten years younger.

It was late. Max should have gone downstairs to sleep, but after the unusual pressures of the day, he found he was hungry for company. He sat back down on the bed. “Tell me something about yourself, Toby,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Do you have a wife? Sweetheart?”

The artist cupped the glass with both hands. “No wife, no sweetheart. Before the war, there was someone.”

Max loosened his belt a couple of notches, slid down farther on the mattress. “So what happened? Why didn't you marry her?”

It was some time before Toby answered. “She isn't the marrying type.”

“Oh, come on. All women want to marry, to become mothers, care for a home . . . It's in their nature. You're not making sense.”

“All right, then, it was me.
I'm
not the marrying type.” Toby's smile was too quick, the hand that ran through his lank hair, too unsteady.

Max turned this preposterous statement over in his mind. He couldn't conceive of a man who didn't yearn for the comforts of hearth and home. An idea formed in the depths of his consciousness, swirled slowly into focus.

“You're hiding something. Come on, Toby. The truth.”

Toby went rigid, his graceful slouch frozen into corners and edges. “The truth is . . . I was seeing my translator. She isn't Jewish. It wasn't illegal then, you can't arrest her for that.”

“I'm not looking to arrest anyone. It was just a friendly question.”

Toby brushed the tips of his fingers across his forehead, as if he had walked into a cobweb. “The war started. She left me. But that was a long time ago. What about you?”

“Me? What's there to know? I'm married to the prettiest, cleverest, most wonderful woman in the world. I have a son, Peter, my brave little soldier.” He felt around in his jacket for his wallet. “Here they are, take a look.”

In the small black-and-white image, Gerda was propping Peter up on a carousel horse. Toby accepted the photo in his pale fingers, regarded it for a moment before handing it back. “It's a nice picture,” he said.

There was a soft knock at the door. Guiltily, as if he had been sharing a confidence, Max leaped to his feet, buttoning his jacket.

But it was only the housekeeper. “Yes?” he said impatiently. “It's very late.”

Even this hour of the night, not a single hair escaped the tight blond bun. These Poles. Such a tidy people. “Telegram, Herr Haas,” she said. “It came while you were out.” He took the envelope from her hand, and she left as silently as she had arrived, closing the door softly behind her.

Max tore it open and scanned it, his heart beating wildly. It was from Gerda. Peter had come down with bronchitis. Their move was being postponed until after Christmas. The doctor thought he should remain where he was for now.

Panic filled his throat the way wind fills a sail. Rattled by the unexpected emotion, he fumbled for a cigarette and tried to light it; when his hands shook, Toby held the match. Max took a few puffs, then angrily stubbed it out on the tray.

“She's put it off again,” he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “Now you don't have to rush.” But his voice betrayed his agitation, and he reached up to rake his fingers through his short hair, parted with martial precision. “They should have been here months ago, but always something holds them up. First it was his allergies. Then she was concerned about school. Last time it was those fucking partizans. I'd shoot them all myself if it would get her here any sooner.” His next words were so forthright, so baldly honest, that he startled even himself. “What's the matter with her, anyway?” he burst out bitterly. “I haven't seen them in so long, I hope I recognize them when they get here.”

God, it was good to say those words out loud. He loosened his tie and poured himself another two fingers of vodka. “Forget I said anything. Let's change the subject. Tell me the truth, Toby. Do artists really draw naked women?”

With the hand holding the glass of tea, Toby waved indifferently at a flat case leaning against the wall, bound in marbleized paper. “I was going to ask you if I could leave my portfolio here for safekeeping. See for yourself.”

He lifted the portfolio onto the bed and untied the strings. It fell open to an ink sketch of a woman lying back on a bed, her knees apart. One hand rested behind her head, the other lay lightly on the dark isthmus between her thighs. Max felt himself grow warm all over, felt the shock of adrenaline to his brain, his throat, his balls. In the drawing, she wore black stockings and a camisole that rode up over her breasts. At the bottom, he could read the inscription
. Paris, 1938,
it said.

“Who is this?” he demanded. “A model?”

The corners of the gray lips curled up in a slight smile. “A friend.”

Max studied the girl in the drawing. From her dreamy expression, it seemed to him that she was enjoying herself. “What was Paris like?”

“Exactly what you want Paris to be like. Girls willing to sleep with you for the price of a meal and a good time. Interesting people, from a hundred different places, with a hundred different opinions. Food of the gods. Streets overflowing with books and art and beautiful women. And the nightlife!” The burnt-out eyes sparked at the memory. “Frankly, in Vienna, it's the same thing, only with better pastries. And the girls are kinkier. But for sheer quantity and variety, nothing beats New York.”

“New York,” he exclaimed. “What were you doing in New York?”

“I was invited to teach in an art school there.”

Max was intrigued. All he knew about New York was what he saw in the movies. “Are the buildings really as tall as they say? Did you see a baseball game? Al Capone? Did you go to Coney Island?”

“There's nothing like it. It's a city of immigrants, everyone is from somewhere else. But that's its strength. There's an energy in New York, an attitude, that you don't find anywhere else in the world . . . like they can do anything, with a little luck, if they try hard enough.”

“They're like children, living in Cloud Cuckoo Land,” said Max, dismissing the Americans with the wave of a hand. “So, tell me, Toby. Why did you come back?”

A shadow crept across the gray, exhausted face. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. My life was here. My dealer . . . my publisher . . . my family . . . a woman . . . ”

“Do you still think it was the right thing to do?”

“No, I think I was an idiot. What do
you
think, Herr Sturmbannführer?”

They both laughed.

Max turned the page, hoping for another sexy pose. But the drawing that followed was a portrait of a woman, handsome, with a long, thin nose, dark eyes, and the traces of a knowledgeable smile playing about sensuous lips. “Who's this?”

There was an uncharacteristic halt in Toby's voice when he answered. “My mother.”

Max surveyed the drawing for a time before he spoke. “She looks very intelligent,” he said. “And yet like she is a woman who enjoys life.”

Toby's face took on a healthy color when he smiled. “That's her, exactly. She was a dress designer up until the war. I must have inherited her artistic sensibilities. My father was an academic, a physicist. He was obsessed with the study of time. Can we go back in time. Forward in time. Are there universes parallel to our own. Is it possible to exist in a time other than the present. It could get very abstract.”

“Where are your parents now? Are they in the ghetto with you?”

“They were taken away in April,” said Toby. The afflicted look that lifted when he talked about the past returned, drew a curtain over the conversation. “I should go,” he said, unmolding himself from the chair. “It's late.”

“Are you kidding?” Max objected. “It's past curfew. You'll be shot.”

Toby shrugged his thin shoulders and smiled his cynical smile, as if to say
, At least it will be quick.
“It hasn't happened yet.”

So this was his regular routine. “Yes, well, they're trigger-happy tonight. There was an
Aktzia
at the hospital, another one at the orphanage. You're not going anywhere.”

He sank slowly into the chair. “Is that what all the shooting was about?”

“Yes.”

Toby looked like he might faint. Max leaned forward, gripped his arm. “Come on, Toby. Have some courage. Better them than you,” he said.

When the artist opened his eyes again, he looked ill. “Lie down,” Max instructed him gruffly, getting off the bed. “You look terrible. I'll bring you a blanket. You're sleeping here tonight.”

*  *  *

“She's here,” said his secretary.

“Oh, good,” said Max. He hurried to his office, careful to close the door behind him. “So glad that you could come, Fräulein Rozycki,” he said enthusiastically, turning to the woman seated in the chair. “Did my secretary offer you something to drink? Tea? Coffee?”

“No, thank you,” she said. She was struggling with her composure, as any woman would when called upon to visit the offices of the Gestapo on Staromiejska Street. “And it's Lipowa now. I'm married. What have I done? I have a right to know why I'm here.”

He was relieved to hear that she spoke a good German. So few Poles did. Without the need for a translator, their conversation could be kept private. “It's nothing like that. This is a social visit. It turns out we have a mutual friend.” Her expression showed that she found that difficult to believe. Max was struck by the feeling that he had seen her somewhere before. “The artist, Tobias Rey.”