In the Land of Armadillos by Helen Maryles Shankman Read Free Book Online

an overcoat. One of the girls, delicate, with legs like two spindles. Dark eyes in a sensitive face, wearing a coat many sizes too large for her. He saw it now. The girl looked just like her brother.
    â€œDid you say she was wearing a man’s coat?” he inquired cautiously, his eyebrows fanned upward.
    At first Toby’s eyes fixed on him with something like hope. But as the silence dragged grimly on and on, the import of the SS man’s words dawned slowly across his face. Suddenly his features were changing shape, melting, breaking apart. A wordless cry forced its way out of his throat, his voice shattering into silvery pieces that fell to the floor and rolled away into the corners like balls of mercury from a broken thermometer.
    â€œShe didn’t feel a thing, Toby,” Max said urgently, sitting forward, putting his hand on his arm. “You hear me, Toby? She fell without a sound.”
    â€œWas it you?” he cried out. “Did you do it?”
    â€œNo. But I was there,” Max said. Quietly, to calm him. “It was Krause, from my team. A good man. It was over in seconds. She didn’t even hear the gunshot, I swear it.”
    There was another bleat of anguish, and the thin, pale fingers plowed into the unkempt hair, hiding his face from view.
    Max knew what to do. Swiftly, he hurried down the stairs, came back up holding a bottle of vodka. He poured a tall glass for Toby and another one for himself. He pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. “Now, Toby, you listen to me,” he said firmly. “It’s over for her, okay? She’s out of it. No more pain, no more suffering. Do you think she’d want you to give up, to go through all this drama, acting like it’s the end of the world? No, of course not. She’d want you to be happy, to get on with your life. That is how you honor your sister’s memory.”
    But the dark, shaggy head was rocking back and forth, no, no, no, no. Max sighed, rubbed his hand over his own stubby hair. Oh, he’d really put his foot in it. This was going to be harder than he thought.
    â€œListen, Toby,” he started again, more gently this time. “The war won’t last forever. One day all this business of killing will be over, and we will have to start again with the business of living. And on that happy day, we’ll have a drink together in friendship. But for now we just have to get through this. Come on, drink up.”
    Toby stopped shaking, but behind his hands, he was making small, unintelligible sounds, as if he were crying in the language of animals. Finally, his head lifted. His face was puffy, smudged with tears and paint. He wiped it off on his sleeve and downed half of the vodka in a single gulp. “You want to drink? Okay, then. Let’s drink.”
    Toby’s eyes were rimmed with red, but there was a menacing junkyard-dog quality to his movements that was setting off alarms in Max’s head. “Hey, does the Gestapo ever play bar games? As a patron of the fine arts, I think you’re really going to like this one.”
    In his time in the Einsatzgruppen, Max had seen a lot of drunks. Most of them slurred their words, became sloppy, or angry, silent, or sentimental. Toby, on the other hand, seemed to grow more awake, more aware, more precise. He roamed through his portfolio, pulling out a sheet of laid paper. Max caught his breath. It was an ink drawing of a man prostrating himself on the floor beneath a naked woman seated on a bed. The man was worshipfully kissing the underside of her foot. Toby said, “Here we go. You draw a line, and I have to make something out of it.”
    â€œI don’t want to ruin your picture.”
    â€œDon’t worry about that. I’ve got lots of dirty pictures. Come on, it’ll be fun.”
    â€œNo, Toby.” He was uneasy. “You’ve just had a terrible shock. You need to sleep.”
    Toby’s voice had changed,