23

Janina was screaming as I raced down the stairs to the courtyard and the street. She wanted to kick Himmler, and it took both her father and Uncle Shepsel to hold her back.

I careened from person to person. “Where is Himmler? . . . Where is Himmler?” I followed pointing fingers down one street and another until I saw the cars coming, a parade of them. Huge cars, magnificent cars, with the tops down. The cars had uniforms of their own. They were gray and silver and unsmiling and proud, like the men sitting in them. Peddlers’ carts veered out of the way. I was surprised that people were not pouring out of the buildings, mobbing the sidewalks. A few people stood at the curb, hats in hand, looking down. Others kept walking along, eyes straight ahead. Such was a man whose sleeve I tugged. “Which one is Himmler?” The man kept moving as if I wasn’t there. Only the Flops looked at the parade. They stood at attention with one arm outthrust in the Jackboot salute, as if reaching for something no one else could see. A corner of newspaper over a nearby corpse waved in the breeze.

I began to panic. I grabbed at people. “Which one is Himmler?” No one would answer. I trotted along with the cars. I stared at the magnificent men. They stared straight ahead. On their Jackboot hats the great silver eagles spread their wings and seemed to glare at the people, daring them to do something wrong. Their wings were like angels’ wings, except the eagles’ wings were fully unfurled, flying.

I began calling to the men in the cars. “Are you Herr Himmler?”

Some of the men looked down at me. No one answered. I ran from car to car. “Are you Herr Himmler?” I saw a man, the most magnificent Jackboot I had ever seen, sitting in the backseat of the first car. It must be him! His ramrod attention was better than my own in the courtyard, and he was only sitting. Blond hair curled from beneath his eagle-winged hat. His head looked as if it had been chiseled from stone. His jawbone was all the weapon he would ever need. “Herr Himmler!” I shouted. “Herr Himmler!” He did not move.

But someone else did.

The Jackboot in the passenger side of the front seat turned his head slightly, enough so that one of his eyes stared at me for a moment. The eye seemed too large, as it was magnified behind the thick, round lens of his eyeglasses. The only thing magnificent about this man was his uniform. I saw half a little black mustache—it seemed to be dripping out of his nostril—a scrawny neck, a head that seemed more dumpling than stone. Can this be Himmler? The Number Two Jackboot? He couldn’t be. He looked like Uncle Shepsel!

I knew how to prove it one way or the other. His boots. Surely on the feet of Himmler, Master of All the Jews, would be the most magnificent boots of all. Maybe they went all the way up his legs. Maybe they had silver eagles.

The parade was picking up speed. I ran to keep up. “Herr Sir! Let me see your boots! Herr Sir!”

And suddenly I was on the ground. I had run smack into someone. As I got to my feet, a club was swinging back and forth before my eyes. I heard a loud smacking kiss. There was an overpowering smell of mint. Beyond the swinging club the parade rolled through an open gate in the wall and was gone.

I knew who was on the other end of the club. I looked up. It was Buffo. Buffo was the worst Flop of all. He was the only one I was really afraid of. We all were.

No one knew how to account for an existence like Buffo’s. It did not seem that he could possibly be a Jew, but then he wasn’t a Jackboot either. We boys decided to believe he was a Warsaw sausage maker—he looked like a pile of fat sausages—who hated Jews so much that he pretended to be one so that he could live in the ghetto. Then he could become a Flop and torment Jews to his heart’s content.

Like all Flops, Buffo was not allowed to carry a gun, but that made no difference to him. He would not have shot anyone if he could. He carried only his club. It was said that he loved the sound of his club cracking open a skull like a pumpkin, but this was not true. He hardly ever used his club. His real weapons were his hands.

More than anything, he loved killing Jews with his hands. And not just any Jews. Jewish children. If you were an adult Jew, he would walk right past you, but he went out of his way for children. Sometimes he left the streets and waddled through the alleyways and rubble, smacking his club on his thigh, hunting. When he spotted someone to go after, he kissed the club. Fortunately, he was fat and slow. If he managed to catch you or trick you, he used the club to stun you. Then he jammed it into his belt and waggled his fingers for the treat to come.

He always smelled of mint. Not from chewing gum or candy. From mint leaves. He chewed them like some men chewed tobacco. There were always tiny flecks of mint on his lips. If you could see them, and if you could smell the mint, you knew you were too close. In fact, that was how we came to say a child was killed by Buffo: “He smelled the mint.”

His favorite way to kill you was to pull you face-first into his bottomless belly and smother you. When this happened, the odor of mint hovered about the body until the wagon came to cart it away.

I think Buffo hated me most of all. I was the only one who ever got close enough to smell the mint and lived to tell of it. Though he terrified me, I pestered him. I couldn’t help myself. I called him Fatman. I had no sense. If I had had sense, I would have known what all the other children knew: The best defense against Buffo was invisibility. Never let him see you.

Me? If I saw him waddling down the street, I would sneak up behind him and yell, “Fatman!” He would be fuming as he turned around, for he recognized my voice—his personal gnat—and the club would already be swinging and I would be ducking out of the way. “Your ears are hairy!” I would shout, and thumb my nose at him and scoot away into the crowd.

And now here he was, looming above me, smiling and kissing his club, and that was giving me all the time I needed to get away—but I couldn’t. He had my foot pinned to the ground with his boot (a scuffed, mud-caked, un-Jacklike boot). I screamed in pain. He laughed. The club clattered to the street—he wasn’t going to use it. He was going to drown me in his belly. His meaty hands gripped my shoulders. I was dizzy with mint. My nose sank into his belly. And suddenly I was loose. I had yanked myself out of the shoe he had pinned to the ground, and now I was running, bouncing off people.

When it was safe to stop, I sat on a curb. I had foiled Buffo again. I was alive. I took the other shoe off and threw it away. It was spring. When the cold came back, I would steal another pair.

         

That night on the rug, I laughed as I told the other boys about my close call with Buffo.

Uri did not laugh. He said, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” I said.

“Don’t bait Buffo.”

“Why?” I said.

He smacked me, hard, three times. “Don’t,” he repeated. The rest of the boys were silent.

I turned away and whimpered myself to sleep. I never mentioned the man who could not have been Himmler.