In the Land of Armadillos (25 page)

By now, the place rang with laughter. People stuck their heads out of their offices to see what the commotion was about. The man held his arms over his head, beseeching her to stop, pleading for forgiveness, babbling excuses, swearing to God and the devil and anyone else who was listening that he would never do it again. The furious little babushka gave her husband another corrective blow with the frying pan, grabbed him by the earlobe, and dragged him out the front door. The German officers shouted encouragement:
You tell him, little mother, again! Give it to him good!

Reinhart glanced hopefully down the corridor at the secretary, her red lips parted in a lovely blond laugh. He took the opportunity to ask for her name, and would she be interested in seeing his castle. Of course she said yes; he would send his driver for her later.

The show was over, work was waiting for him back at the castle. He pushed open the door to the outside. It was a fine May morning, the cherry trees were in bloom, silky pink petals swirled around the cobblestones at his feet. He stopped to admire his sleek new automobile, idling at the curb. It was market day. He could smell horse manure, rotting vegetables, smoke. The square was packed with wagons, tables and booths, tradesmen sharpening knives and scissors, selling pots and pans, old clothes, live chickens. Merchants hawked their wares, villagers milled around tables, voices were raised in haggling. Reinhart smiled. He'd grown up near a town like this, and though he'd left it to attend university in Breslau, it still felt like home.

That was when he spotted them, the angry little wife and the hapless workman, making their way through the vendors. At the other side of the square they halted, dared a glance behind them in the direction of the Gestapo Headquarters. When they saw that no one had followed them, the wife dropped the frying pan on the cobblestones, and the couple embraced. They stayed that way for a long moment, arms wound tightly around each other, bodies pressed together as if they were dancing. Then the man took his wife's face between his two hands and kissed her hard on the lips. After that, they melted into the crowds flowing down Rynek Street, and out of his sight.

*  *  *

The next time he saw the red-haired workman, Reinhart was standing in his shop.

Reinhart was in love. He had just purchased, for a song, the girl of his dreams, a Polish Arabian mare by the name of Fallada. A feminine, sweetly arched neck, a tapering, dish-shaped face with a muzzle no bigger than a teacup, eyes that were the icy blue of a skating pond, and a luxuriant coat the color of bittersweet chocolate. But it was her mane and tail that made people stop and stare: long and wavy, with strokes of mahogany, ochre, copper, and caramel, like a painting by a Renaissance master. She had a pedigree as long as his arm, the horse trader assured him; her parentage could be documented as far back as 1813, to the great stallion Bairactar.

He would need a new saddle, of course. An exquisite beauty like Fallada deserved it, the way a bride deserves a white dress. He was directed to a man named Soroka, the best leather artisan in the region, according to Drogalski, with a shop on the market square across from the grand old synagogue, which had been refurbished by the current administration into a stable.

A bell tinkled when he opened the door. “One moment, please,” a voice called from the back room.

The room smelled like leather and neat's-foot oil. Reinhart inhaled happily. His father was a farmer, and his grandfather before him. Not a peasant attached to some nobleman's turnip field, but a real
Landwirt,
a man with his own farm. Millions of cabbages had paid with their heads for little Willy's university education, where he was supposed to study hard and make something better of himself. He'd wanted to pursue architecture; his father had wanted him to become a judge. He became a lawyer, arbitrating settlements between warring heirs, petty criminals and the state, men and their wives. The money was good, it had won him a pretty bourgeois wife with a small inheritance, but he was bored beyond belief. He'd never really purged the land from his soul. When war came, and with it, the offer of a Party job arbitrating between farmers and the Reich, he jumped at it.

A man came to the counter, wiping his hands on a rag. With a shock of recognition, Reinhart realized that he knew him. “Remember me?” he said with a smile. “Last week I nearly fell into your lap. I should have bought you dinner first.”

Soroka froze. Reinhart could practically hear the questions rocketing through his brain.
What does he mean by that? Should I run? Should I lie? Will he turn me in? What should I do?
A stack of hides lay on the table. Reinhart ran his fingers appreciatively over the smooth leather. “What did they want you for, anyway?”

The saddlemaker lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Who knows. My name was on a list.”

“I'm Willy Reinhart,” he said. “Regional Commissioner for Agricultural Products and Services. My manager tells me you're the best saddlemaker in all of Poland.”

“Thank you, Herr Kommandant, he's too generous.” He hesitated. “Hahnemeier told you that?”

“No, my manager is Jozef Drogalski. Who's Hahnemeier?”

“He was the manager under the earl.”

“Oh, him. Volkdeutscher
.
Used to be a beet farmer. Fired for stealing, I heard.”

Soroka pursed his lips and nodded. Reinhart had the sense that he was being appraised, evaluated.

“Let's have a look at your horse.”

He walked Fallada into the yard behind the house. Soroka unbuckled the saddle, turned it over to inspect the padding, then placed it carefully on the table. Next he ran his fingers expertly over the dip in her back. The horse flinched. A whinny of pain escaped her. Angered, Reinhart felt his fists clench.

But Soroka was grimly shaking his head. “That's what I thought. Feel here.” He directed the commandant's hand to a place on the horse's back. “And here.”

The horse trembled at his touch, flicked her gorgeous tail. Under his fingertips, he could feel scabs, welts, raw skin. Bearing his weight must have been torturous, but she never showed it. He felt ashamed. “Poor girl. I didn't know.”

“Of course you didn't know.” The saddlemaker's lips were pressed together in a thin line. He rummaged in his pocket, found a sugar cube. Fallada nosed daintily into the palm of his hand like the fine, highborn lady that she was. While Soroka stroked her neck, he murmured to her in Polish, and she dipped her pretty head against his chest. “Before you, she belonged to Forster.” He muttered in an undertone, “He always knows better than everyone else.”

A shockingly incautious statement. A Jew could be shot for this, the crime of being critical of a German. He looked curiously at the saddlemaker. Was it deliberate? Was it a trick, a trap?

No,
he decided. The man was just being honest. Reinhart understood that he had found something of value, something that was in short supply here, a man who would say what he really thought.

“Anshel!” called the saddlemaker.

A boy bounced through the door. Resting his chin on the counter, he gazed with wonder at the stranger in his father's shop, at his clean-shaven handsome face, his unimaginably fine coat, his hat with the feather in it.

Soroka leaned over, spoke in Jewish. The boy nodded and skipped back into the other room. Moments later, he returned with a glass jar.

“Go on,” his father persisted, nudging him forward. Hesitantly, the boy put the jar into Reinhart's hands.

“Let her rest for a few weeks, no riding, nothing on her back. Rub this into her sores every day.” Curious, Reinhart unscrewed the top, grimacing when the smell hit his nostrils. The saddlemaker chuckled. “I know.
Es shtinkt!
But it works. Don't worry, Herr Kommandant, she'll be fine.”

The German officer reached down, clapped the boy's thin shoulder. “Call me Reinhart,” he said.

*  *  *

“No!” she gasped. “
Not yet!
”

With her long thighs wrapped around his hips, Petra was rocking fervently up and down, her eyes closed, like she was having a religious experience. Only when she had squealed to a finish, collapsed on top of him did he take his turn.

Afterward, they shared a cigarette. With one finger, she made slow circles in the scruffy hair on his chest. He crinkled a smile, slapped her curvy bottom. “How about getting us a drink?”

She threw aside the covers. He admired her creamy skin, the mole on her right shoulder, as she walked naked to the dresser. Pretty Petra, his marvelous chef's marvelous daughter. Just nineteen years old, she was the village beauty, an angel in the kitchen, and a fury in the bed. With little formal education, she knew three languages and was delightful in each one.

He linked his hands behind his head and watched smoke rise in lazy rings over his head. Women always did as he asked, he was thinking. Men, too, though what he asked from them was more complicated and infinitely more risky than climbing into his bed.

Except for a certain knack with the ladies, he'd led a fairly ordinary life: a good student but not spectacular, decent enough on the playing fields but not a standout. After Germany and Russia blew through Poland, borders shifted, farmers on all sides had to leave their ancestral homes, and this was where he really shone. The transition went smoothly. The farmers thought he was fair. Men in power said nice things about him.

Publicly, he protested that he was just doing his job. Privately, he was immensely proud of his efforts on behalf of his country. He saw himself as a kind of ambassador; in his own small way, he was bringing the German sense of justice and fair play to a dangerously uncivilized part of the world.

In November he witnessed his first massacre.

It was almost incidental. A meeting with a local SS honcho, like a hundred other meetings. Only this one was scheduled in the woods outside of town. A routine matter; could Reinhart fix it so that Farmer X, a cousin to the SS man
,
received the land of Farmer Y, who had, shall we say, moved elsewhere. Also, could he join the major and his wife for a dinner party at their villa.

Reinhart tried to focus on the officer's moving lips. In the near distance, among the slim white trunks of birch trees, wave after wave of naked human beings filed into a pit, knelt on the bodies of their neighbors, and were shot in the back of the neck. Bearded old sages passed him, young girls trying to hide their breasts, mothers gripping toddlers by the hand. The shooters were German soldiers.

Later that night, Reinhart had sat with the windows open, smoking cigarette after cigarette, trying to vanquish the smell of death that filled his nostrils. Was it in his hair? His clothes? It wouldn't go away even after he'd bathed.

Reinhart had no stomach for the Party's racial rants. He'd fought as an infantryman in the last war, where he'd seen enough bodies, blown up, bayoneted, or riddled with bullets, to know for certain that in Death's opinion, all men were created equal. He'd always known Jews, and as far as he could see, they were no different from anybody else. Back home, there had been Jakobowitz the livestock trader, whom his father treated like a brother. At school, there'd been Lemberg, who let him copy his notes, Perlmutter, who listened to his girl troubles and made him laugh.

There were places, secret places, where people who found fault with National Socialist policies were taken. Willy Reinhart was the son of a farmer and the grandson of a farmer. He knew the value of keeping his mouth shut and fixing his gaze on the horizon. Still, the next day he asked his secretary for a map. In the privacy of his own bedroom, he drew a tiny red X over the Bydgoszcz woods.

After that, his rise was of the sort commonly described as meteoric. As crosses metastasized over the face of his map, colonels and generals sought out his company, laughed at his jokes, competed furiously to fulfill his requests. It didn't matter what he wanted—more workers, more wagons, an airy apartment in the best neighborhood, a vacation villa on a lake, placement in elite schools for the boys—he was never refused. It was like he had some kind of power over them.

Within months, he was the lord of Adampol Palace. Ruler over a Polish fiefdom, he had a thousand laborers at his command, and his word was law. Behind his back, people whispered that he was a sorcerer, or perhaps Hans Frank's brother-in-law. As if being related to the German governor of Poland could be the only explanation for his dazzling good fortune.

He rolled onto his side, stubbed out the cigarette. The truth was too mundane for them, he thought, that he was just good at his job. Or was it a gift from the angels?

Petra returned from her quest. As she put his glass down on the bedside table, her shirt gapped open, revealing one perfect pear-shaped breast. Though it was so soon after the last time, he felt the stirrings of desire. He slipped his hand inside her shirt, rubbed his thumb over her nipple. She closed her eyes and caught her lower lip in her teeth.

When he reached up to turn off the lamp, she stopped him. “No,” she breathed. “Leave it on. I want to see
everything.
”

*  *  *

“Excuse me, sir,” said a mournful voice from the doorway.

He blinked, rubbed his eyes. He'd nodded off over the ledger that tracked each farmer's assets, from how many chickens they kept down to the last milk cow. He put his finger on a column of numbers so that he wouldn't lose his place. “What is it, Jozef?”

“The tailor, Hammer. He finished repairing the uniforms.”

“How do they look?”

“Perfect. Like new.”

“Wonderful. Was his wife there? How did she look today?”

“She was wearing the green dress. The one with polka dots.”

“Ah, Dora. You're killing me. Anything else?”

“Yes. We need more workers to bring in the wheat harvest. An experienced crew, please.”