Free In the Land of Armadillos by Helen Maryles Shankman

his feet. He buttoned his uniform jacket, pulled on his jackboots. “I’d better get back to work. Lunchtime already, and just look at me, sitting around with my feet up, listening to fairy tales.”
    His good humor had been restored. At least Toby’s story had taken his mind off of the loss of his horse. Feeling generous, he said, “Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off? Adela, too.”
    Toby stood out in silhouette against the window, his gaunt body bent and black like a punctuation mark. Behind him, the outside world, slanted tile roofs, elegant townhouses, empty yards full of yellow weeds, soldiers pursuing Jews down dead ends and narrow alleyways.
    â€œThank you, Max,” he said. A smile of surprising sweetness touched the ironic lips. Suddenly, he doubled over, his whole body wrenched by deep, hacking coughs.
    Max slipped on his gloves. “That does it. I want you to see a doctor. I’ll have my secretary arrange it.”
    â€œWhy bother.”
    Max was learning to ignore it when Toby said things like that. At the doorway, he took a last delighted look around the room. “Beautiful, just beautiful,” he said, and he closed the door behind him.
    *  *  *
    It was like the Wild West out there. Everywhere, Max had to fight his way through massive crowds being hustled toward the marketplace, the movie theater, the synagogue, the high school, the train station. In addition, he had to dodge Gestapo men running down Jews with phony papers, hidden Jews exposed by neighbors, the occasional and illegal settling of a score. It was loud: Soldiers shouted directions, children cried, women screamed, there was the regular crack of gunfire. The pavement rang with the echo of thousands of footsteps.
    In the market square, near the Great Synagogue, he came across Gruber, Rohlfe, and Hackendahl at the head of a broad column of civilians that snaked back into the distance farther than he could see. Impatiently, Rohlfe corralled Max into helping with selection. That was how he happened to see Toby, waiting to cross the street at the corner of Solna and Mickiewicz streets, half a block away.
    He was bundled in the new coat Max had procured for him—an imported, nicely tailored camel hair, the exact color of Lilo’s tail—and he was accompanied by an attractive woman, Adela, Max realized after a moment. She was wearing a crimson wool coat and a stylish green hat with a feather in it. Had she not been standing next to Toby, he wouldn’t have recognized her. He had never seen her without her apron.
    She said something to Toby, who glanced down and responded with a smile. When she turned her face up to his, Max could see she had put on lipstick.
    A strange feeling stole over him. In the street, outside of his villa, under the blue sky, Toby and Adela were not his workers, not his prisoners, not his playthings, they were just people. If they hadn’t been wearing the white schadenbands with the blue stars, they might have been his neighbors in Köln. He had to overcome the temptation to raise his arm and wave hello; after all, to his fellow SS officers, they were the enemy.
    He turned to find Hackendahl staring at him. Max viewed him with a certain amount of childish envy. Rohlfe’s protégé always appeared so flawless, his conduct irreproachable, his performance invariably correct. His wife had moved to Włodawa with him, too, the lucky bastard, and she headed up a little culture group for the women. Though he and Max were about the same age, he was already an Obersturmbannführer.
    Right now he was standing perfectly still, his breath coming out in little white gusts. Max saw the officer’s eyes flick away from him and fasten on something in the middle distance. Then he took off, sprinting quickly across the square in the direction of Solna Street.
    The next moments unspooled with a sense of unreality, as if they were happening in a movie.