In the Land of Armadillos (6 page)

Toby's eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he passed out. Breathing hard, the SS man stood over the prone, crooked body and pointed his pistol at Toby's heart.

Astonishingly, the hand with the gun faltered, dropped back to his side.

“No,” he said forcefully to the ruined, unconscious face. “I won't do it, you Jew bastard. I won't kill you, no matter how much you want me to. You're going to live, you little shit, whether you like it or not.”

He checked to make sure that Toby was breathing, threw a blanket over him, and walked to the door. The pen drawing of the naked girl and her foot-fetishist lover lay under the upturned chair. Max righted the chair, picked up the drawing, and turned it over.

Bars, walls made from stone, a sink, a bed, a toilet. On the bed sat a man in a prison uniform, reading a letter. Despite his fury, Max could still admire the attention paid to detail in the little portrait of himself.

He gave the artist a good swift kick, then headed down the stairs to get Adela.

From Max Haas's diary, November 12, 1942

. . . a dreadful night, up until dawn selecting Jews for transport, another thousand, and I'm expected to replace them and have the businesses up and running again by the next day. What are they thinking?

There are rumors flying, something bizarre happened in the forest. Either no one knows, or no one wants to say. Many good men lost their lives, Krause and Hanfling from my team among them. It was brutal, barbaric. A man disemboweled and hung in a tree, another found without skin . . . of others, they are finding only body parts. There isn't even anything left to send home to their families. Some say it was the Communists. I'm sure it was the partizans. These people are animals.

From a letter to his wife, posted on the same date.

. . . a firm date for when you are coming. No more excuses! You can't imagine how urgently I need you. The murals in Peter's room are almost finished. After our artist is done with the nursery, I think I'll put him to work in the dining room.

P.S. Please discontinue Peter's riding instruction. I'm anxious for his health. He can resume his lessons when he gets here.

*  *  *

A Siberian wind was blowing down from the steppes. Max's handsome overcoat was made of the finest fabrics, from the finest German mills, by the smartest designers, but it was small comfort against the eastern cold.

Earlier in the day, he had taken Lilo out for a ride. This time of year the landscape was flat and dead, frost lying between the furrows. Lilo snorted, dipping her head up and down, happy to be freed from her stall. Patting the side of her neck, Max urged her into the forest.

Leaves and small branches snapped beneath her hooves, and the pleasantly astringent smell of pine needles rose into the air. Unexpectedly, they came upon a big operation, hundreds of Jews patiently waiting to take their place in front of the pit. Rohlfe was there with Hackendahl, Reinhart, too, looking pinched and serious. Reinhart had visited Max's office a number of times in the past month, always congenial, always with gifts: a gold watch or a diamond bracelet in exchange for one Jewish craftsman or another whom he would whisk away to his labor camp. Max was rather sorry he'd let him have Soroka, he would have liked to keep the saddlemaker in town. He himself had recently ordered a new saddle from him; he was the best in the region.

Gruber called and waved. But Max couldn't stay and socialize, he had a full desk of work waiting for him, so he turned Lilo around and headed back for town.

Near the edge of the woods, he came upon a cadre of ragged, starved-looking Jews. When Max ordered them to put their hands in the air, they turned instead and fled, forcing him to give chase. He'd shot three of them, two men and a girl, when Lilo stumbled on the uneven ground and fell.

The long bone of her right front leg was fractured. He couldn't even coax her to her feet. It was obvious he would have to put her down. As if to break his heart, she put her velvety nose into his hand, snuffling around for the treat that he always carried for her. Running his fingers across the smooth hard hide, he looked for the last time into the liquid brown eyes and almost cried. He was grateful for only one thing—that she didn't know what was coming.

Capping off a perfect day, just as he returned to his villa, Soroka arrived, bringing with him the new saddle. Max almost lost it right then and there. By the time he reached his office, he was practically bawling. After signing a few papers, he picked up his files and went home.

Before he was halfway through the door, his senses were captivated by the smells of plums and cinnamon. Adela was baking. From the upper floor, he could hear music playing—Marlene Dietrich sighing throatily
, falling in love again, never wanted to . . . what am I to do, I cahn't help it.
He went straight to the kitchen.

Adela had turned out to be an able and trustworthy comrade in the struggle to keep Toby's feet planted on this earth. After cleaning him up that long bad night, she had stayed with him until morning. Since then, a bond seemed to have been forged between his artist and his cook; she could often be seen dashing upstairs with a plate of something delectable, and it could be some time before she was seen again in the kitchen. Once he had come upstairs to find them close together in the darkened room. They'd sprung guiltily apart at his entrance. They had no idea how excited he was by the proof that his little matchmaking scheme was working. As she left, he'd intercepted a stealthy look of passion meant only for Toby, her hooded eyes gleaming, her lips wet and parted. Max had been so aroused that he'd had to excuse himself to rush downstairs and write an ardent letter to Gerda.

“How is our
luftmensch
today?” he asked. The Jewish meaning of this word, a man whose existence was so airy that he might blow away in a strong wind, described the artist perfectly. Toby's spirit was so fragile, it seemed to be in danger of evaporating into the air altogether.

Adela made a seesaw motion with her hand.
So-so.
He handed her his coat and hurried up the stairs two at a time.

The day after his beating, Toby's eyes had displayed a sensational combination of hues, all the colors of a peacock's plumage. The sight of the purpled eyes and the gouge across the cheek gnawed at Max, made him feel bad. It wasn't like him to feel this way; he couldn't explain it.

In the days since he'd received the news of his sister's death, Toby had grown even thinner, his fragile connection to life more tenuous. Which was why Max was so glad Toby had hit it off with Adela. There was a strength to her, a solidity, that he found immensely reassuring; this was a woman with both feet firmly on the ground. Though he was not normally an imaginative man, he harbored a vision of Toby as a kite bobbing restlessly in the sky, Adela holding tightly to the end of the string.

It was from Adela that Max finally learned the source of Toby's despair. He had assumed the most obvious reasons: fear, uncertainty of the future, the loss of his family and friends, the dissolution of his nice, comfortable life. But the truth was more insidious. It was Toby who had found the hiding place outside the ghetto, Toby who had sold the last of their valuables to buy his sister's way in, Toby who had insisted that she go. Aliza had begged to stay with him, to share her brother's fate, but he alone had made the decision that she would be safer in the bunker. If he had relented, she might be alive right now. He felt completely and irredeemably responsible for the girl's death.

All of which was incomprehensible to Max. Fate had a way of playing havoc with the best-laid plans. It could just as easily have gone the other way, with Toby shot dead, the sister safe in the bunker. How could a man hold himself so overwhelmingly culpable?

The radio was tuned to a banned station. The music was very loud; Max was sure they would have heard it all the way over at the Gestapo headquarters if it weren't for all the shooting and shouting going on in the streets today. At the top of the stairs, he pushed open the door and switched off the radio.

Here, the smell of turpentine prevailed over the delicate trance of cinnamon that bewitched the rest of the house. Sunlight filtered through the apothecary jars of linseed oil, turpentine, and varnish that Toby lined up like soldiers on the windowsill, filling the room with an ambient amber light. In a corner, the heap of rags he used to wipe his brushes clean climbed ever higher, resembling a snowy mountain range. The surface of the desk had disappeared under disciplined rows of paint with evocative, Old World names, verdigris, malachite, aureolin, madder lake. It was like visiting an alchemist's laboratory.

Hunched on a tall stool in the center of the room, Toby sat with his legs crossed, surveying his work. “Well, boss,” he said, taking a drag on a cigarette, “it's finished. You can kill me now.”

“Why do you have to say things like that?” Max complained.

The indefatigable armadillos marched up and down the perimeter of the room. Blue cockatoos filled the artificial skies in their flight, evolving seamlessly on the next wall into businessmen with homburgs and suitcases, flying like miniature airplanes over Paris. Toby had a memory for faces, and his choices were quixotic. Among the customers at the café, Max recognized the miller; Reinhart's pretty girlfriend; Hammer, the tailor; and of course, the lovely Adela.

Elated, he turned around and around, drunk with the crazy sensation that if he sat down at one of the tables, Bianca would waddle over on yellow claws to take down his order in her little receipt book. He clasped the edge of the desk for support, overcome with the unaccustomed emotion of unalloyed joy. “Sorry to disappoint you, Toby, no one's going to kill you. You're just too good.”

Toby got up and drifted toward the window. While the characters in the paintings grew more vital, their creator's strength seemed to ebb with each passing day. “I've been hearing a lot of shooting,” he said.

“Yes. Big
Aktzia
today, most of the Jews. We're just keeping essential workers.”

The artist paled. In a strangled voice, he uttered something in a language Max didn't understand.

“What did you say?”

He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared down at his town. It was some time before he answered. “I said I can see my house from here.”

“Where?” Max got up, went to the window.

With a long, skeletal arm, Toby gestured at a pretty white eighteenth-century townhouse trimmed with elaborate carved architectural details. Wisteria vines climbed the walls, bare this time of year. A stork's nest sat on top of the chimney pot. A denuded apple tree stood sentry in the front garden among the ivy. The facade glistened with a fairy-tale charm. “That one, at the corner of the market square.”

“You live there now?”

“Oh, no. We had to leave it to move into the ghetto. That's the house I grew up in. I don't know who lives there now.”

“It's pretty,” Max said. “Maybe you'll live there again someday.”

Toby faced him with weary incredulity. “Don't you know, Max. They're going to kill us all.”

“You're being melodramatic,” he objected, but the words sounded weak even to him. Late at night, he had seen the flames shooting from far-off chimneys, he had smelled the greasy stink of burning fat. Max sighed, dropped heavily onto the bed. “Look, Toby. The important thing is, you are safe, Adela is safe. I can't save everybody.” He opened his jacket, kicked off his boots. “Anyway, don't give me any grief today. I had a rotten morning.”

“What happened?”

“Lilo. My horse.” His voice cracked a little. “She fell and broke her leg. I had to put her down. I know, I know. It's not like she's a human being. But still . . .” He bent his fingers over his eyes, then looked at his hand in surprise. He was crying.

But Toby was distracted, looking out the window at the crowds of people being herded through the narrow streets by soldiers with guns. “Why do they shoot horses, anyway?”

“Oh . . . they're so big, their legs are so thin . . . you can't tell a horse to stay off her feet while she recovers. And the truth is, they're in so much pain . . .” He was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Please. I don't want to talk about it anymore.”

They sat a little while in silence. Outside, there were more gunshots. Far in the distance, a woman screamed.

“I had a letter from Gerda today,” Max remembered, breaking the mood of quiet contemplation. “She's coming in the spring. You'll like her,” he said, cheering himself up as he went along. “She's not an artist, but she has very good taste. And Peter. You can give him art lessons.” The stripe he had made across Toby's face with the muzzle of his gun was still visible. He averted his gaze. “You're getting to be very popular. Standartenführer Gruber wants you to paint some naked ladies for his girlfriend's boudoir. Very tasteful, I'm sure. Oberführer Rohlfe wants you to do something for the Gestapo headquarters. Kommandant Reinhart was asking about you, too, some frescoes for his castle at Adampol. But none of this happens until I'm finished with you. I'm thinking of frescoes in the dining room, too . . . maybe a border. Fruits, flowers, that sort of thing.”

But Toby was frozen at the window, riveted by the madness convulsing the streets of his town. Max could see the points of his shoulder blades through his shirt, as sharp as knives. If Adela was bringing him all these treats, why was he still so skinny? “Listen, Toby,” he said, sitting forward on the bed. “When is the last time you wrote anything?”

The artist turned to stare at him, honestly perplexed. “I don't even remember . . . before the Germans came, I think.”

There was a knock on the door. Adela entered, bearing a tray. On it was a teapot and the plum cake that had smelled so heavenly. “I thought you might like some tea, Sturmbannführer,” she demurred.