In the Land of Armadillos (30 page)

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 confident 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.

For a long moment, nobody moved. Eventually, Reinhart touched his heels to Fallada's sides, and she jogged reluctantly forward. At the wall, he dismounted. “You,” he instructed the others. “Turn him over.”

They took his arms and rocked him onto his back. With dawning horror, Reinhart saw that he was just a kid, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. A burlap bag slipped from his fingers. Reinhart bent over and picked it up. A few rutted and discolored apples rolled out onto the leaves.

“Is he . . . is he breathing?”

“Dead,” said a man in a dove-gray homburg.

There was a cart stationed under a tree to collect the last windfall fruits of the season. “Put him in the wagon and take him to Gestapo headquarters,” Reinhart mumbled.

One fellow took his arms, another took his legs, and between them, they gentled him into the cart. The shabby little parade of Jews began rolling the wagon with its human burden back to Włodawa. He caught a glimpse of the girl's face as she followed behind, transfigured with anguish.

With the rifle balanced in the crook of his arm, Reinhart reached inside his riding jacket for his cigarettes. His fingers were shaking so badly, he couldn't work the lighter.

In the lengthening shadows under the trees, he discerned a figure. Reinhart had already swung the gun to his shoulder before he recognized the general shape and silhouette of Soroka's boy Anshel, the telltale fringe of red hair. Quickly, he lowered the rifle.

“Little saddlemaker, is that you?” he called. “Come out where I can see you. What are you doing out here?”

In his winter clothes, he was as round as a barrel. “You sent me to the woodsman's hut. I'm supposed to deliver a message.”

Was that today? This morning seemed so long ago. Reinhart jerked his head in the direction of the departed wagon. “Do you know them?”

Anshel's face was the color of candle wax. “They used to live on my street,” he said. “Before we came to live with you. Yitz . . . the one you . . . he's a couple of years older than me. I used to play buttons with him.”

“Buttons?”

“You flip your buttons against a wall. If your button lands on someone else's, you get to keep his button, too.”

“Oh . . . we used to play something like that . . . with cards . . .” He felt curiously detached, like he was observing the conversation from a very great distance away.

“Since the last
Aktzia,
they've been living in the woods. They were looking for apples.” Then, almost inaudibly, “They were going to ask you for work.”

Mechanically, he nodded. By now, Reinhart was thoroughly numb, but this much registered. He'd killed a boy, his name was Yitz. Before the Germans came, he lived with his family on Wyrkowska Street. On the last day of his life, he was starved enough to risk being shot for a few rotten, wormy apples he'd found on the ground.

Anshel was gazing worriedly at him, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

You'll have plenty of time after the war to have a nice, long nervous breakdown,
he told himself sternly.
But right now you have to pull it together. Come on. Grow a pair.

At that moment, Anshel Soroka would later tell his father, Willy Reinhart was as white as a ghost. Then he raked off his hat. Plowed his fingers through his hair. Smoothed his hand over his jaw. Smiled his crafty magician's smile.

“Go on, little saddlemaker,” he said, swatting the boy with his fedora before plopping it back on his head. “Get moving. Your date is waiting for you.”

Anshel set off running down the path toward the woodsman's hut.

God, he needed a smoke. He was still holding his lighter. With nerveless fingers, he clicked it once, twice, and then it broke apart in his hands.

Seized with fury, he heaved it into the trees. For a moment it hung there, a small black exclamation mark against the sky, before dropping out of sight.

*  *  *

“So, Reinhart, you killed a Jew.” Partizans had cut the telephone lines so many times by now, the connection was tinny. Rohlfe was calling from Gestapo Headquarters in Włodawa, only a few kilometers away, but it sounded like he was calling from the moon. “What happened?”

There was an edge of incredulity to his voice. What he really meant was
You, Reinhart, shot a Jew? Reinhart the Jew lover? You're just like the rest of us after all.

“I was out riding when I came upon some people, strangers, in my apple orchard. I commanded them to stop. One of them made a break for it, reached over the fence for something hidden. I thought it was a gun.”

“But the Jews love you, everyone knows that. Why would he shoot you?”

There was a soft knock at his door. It was Friedman, the bookkeeper, a neat, boyish man with thinning sandy hair and a carefully sculpted goatee. In a previous life, he'd owned a bank in Berlin. Behind him, a porter wrestled with a gigantic rolled-up Oriental rug. “Where do you want this?” he half mouthed, half mimed.

If Reinhart were honest with himself, there was nowhere to put it, the palace was at capacity, but he had a weakness for pretty things. Highboys, dressing mirrors, and china cabinets cluttered the second-floor gallery like wraiths. In corners and hallways, all kinds of chests and tables and bureaus and cabinets accumulated, a pastiche of styles and periods, with marquetry and gold leaf and brass fittings. Not to mention the four grand pianos crammed into the conservatory. He covered the mouthpiece. “Put it with the others,” he hissed, and waved them out of the room.

At the other end of the line, Reinhart could hear the scratch of a pen point on paper. “It's a very serious violation to kill a worker. All Jews are property of the Reich. There will have to be an inquiry, possibly a trial.”

A trial? It hurt to breathe, like his lungs were lined with broken glass. What did Rohlfe know? Did he have enemies? Someone who wanted his job? Was he being set up? Did that hissing mean that someone was secretly listening in on an extension? What should he do?

The lie tumbled out of him. “They were partizans,” he blurted. “The boy had a gun in his bag. You know the forest around my castle is riddled with partizan activity.”

“Oh,” said Rohlfe. “Well, that's completely different, you shot him in self-defense. You don't even have any guards out there, am I right? No wonder you're on edge.” His voice dropped, became confidential, fearful, almost. “I'm sure you heard what happened at Sobibór.”

“Yes. Brutal.”

“Fucking animals. Those men had wives, families. You know my dog, Luther? Kolko gave him to me. He'd had a litter of puppies.” He was morose. “They killed Kolko with an ax.”

“Animals.” He would have agreed to anything Rohlfe said, just to get him off the phone.

“And you don't even have a fence around your camp! You're the one with all the workers, have them build one. You know, I'm going to send you some guards. All these boys are just sitting around town getting drunk. It will give them something to do.”

“That won't be necessary,” said Reinhart hastily. “I'll put up a fence. Fantastic idea, Rohlfe. Thank you.”

“About the shooting. I'm sending a man with my report. Just sign it, and we'll mark this incident closed.”

A mighty sense of elation powered through him, leaving him dizzy with relief. It was drafty in his office, but sweat pasted his shirt to his back. “Thank you. And if this man happened to return to your office with a bottle of Hennessy?”

“I wouldn't say no. Heil Hitler,” said Rohlfe.

“Heil Hitler,” he replied.

With a click, he returned the phone to the cradle. Reinhart leaned back in his chair, covered his eyes, and began to laugh weakly. What a vast cosmic joke. Yesterday he'd shot an innocent kid dead. Now he'd lied to an officer of the law to get himself off the hook. Should he feel bad about it? The police force committed more heinous crimes than this one every day. What good would it do anyone if he ended up in jail or, worse, the eastern front? Adampol would be finished, his workers sent up the chimneys at Sobibór. In this war, his first responsibility was to his people. He was one of the good guys, a hero. So he'd killed somebody. In the heavenly balance sheet, he was still winning by a landslide. If the kid had stayed put instead of risking his life for a bag of wormy apples, he'd be alive. His death was a casualty of the times.

He was Willy Reinhart, Reich Commissioner for the Collection and Distribution of Agricultural Products, Savior of the Jews, with the power of life and death in the palm of his hand. He'd just passed a test of life and death himself; he thought he deserved a treat. He took a cigar from the box on his desk and ran it under his nose, savoring the sweet perfume of tobacco before clipping off the end of it with a tiny gold scissor and putting it in his mouth.