Other prisoners were loading the plunder onto trucks. Little sorting was done. The goal was to clear the platform as quickly as possible. All the property. And all the bodies, too.
There were a few dozen of them, those who had perished en route to Auschwitz. Most of them elderly or middle-aged, but among the dead was also a single baby boy, his hair as fine as a feather. He could not have been more than three months old. The adult bodies were thrown like luggage into a waiting truck, but the baby boy received a different treatment. A prisoner carried him reverentially to the body truck, weeping with each step, and laid him down as gently as though the baby were still breathing.
We were all used to death. We’d seen too many dead bodies to give each new one the respect it deserved. But a baby was special. The death of a baby cut deep.
We had lunch on the platform, where there was still some loot to clear. Jakob and I sat in the slim shade cast by the empty train. From under his shirt he produced a lump of bread, likely soaked with his sweat. He cast me a glance, obviously considering whether to share the bread with me. I decided to make it easy for him.
"It’s all right, Jakob. We barely know each other.”
"That's right,” he said. "We don't.” But he tore off a small piece of the bread and handed it to me nonetheless. He dunked the tip of what remained in his soup and chewed on it. My piece was too small for that, so I simply tossed it into my mouth.
"Thank you,” I said, though, of course, that tiny morsel did little to dispel my hunger.
He didn’t answer for a moment, just sipped his soup and ate his bread. You could tell a lot about a man by the way he ate. Jakob did so slowly and methodically, like he was completing a task. "You had me worried there in the morning. Real worried. I'm glad you changed your mind.”
"I’m not sure I am.”
"I know what you mean.”
"Do you?"
He gave me a stern look. "Yes, I do. You think I haven’t imagined what it would be like to rise up against them? But like I said, it would do no good. You know that now too.”
I looked away from him, a little ashamed. Because he was right. I did know. Which was why I hadn’t acted. I was like him now. Like all the men in the Kanada Kommando. I had taken part. I was a small cog in the machinery of murder and plunder, and nothing I did would ever change that.
"It’s a lousy feeling," Jakob said, finishing his soup and setting his bowl aside. "The worst feeling. But if you want to stop it by dying, go jump on a fence. Don’t take the rest of us with you."
The image of Gyuri in the instant of death flashed before my eyes. I tightened my lips and said nothing. Jakob was right. I drank the rest of my soup and forced my mind away from Gyuri and the events of that morning. I had a case to solve.
"You’ve been in this kommando for long?" I asked.
"Five months."
"Ever met a Dutch boy named Franz?"
"Franz? You know Franz?"
"So you have met him."
"Sure. Up until two months ago, I knew almost every man who worked in Kanada. It was a smaller kommando back then. These days, it's much bigger, because so many Hungarian Jews are being brought here. You’re Hungarian, aren’t you?”
"Yes.”
"So you’re new in the camp."
"Almost two months. I was on one of the first transports from Hungary."
"I was probably here on this platform when you arrived. But I don't remember you. I don't remember any of the people who pass through here.”
I wondered why that was. Was his memory shaky by nature, or was it a way in which his mind shielded itself from the horror it witnessed?
"Did Franz work here with you?" I asked.
"Sometimes. Mostly, he worked in the Kanada warehouses. Then one day I heard he’d been assigned someplace else. Haven’t seen him since. How’s he doing?”
"He’s dead."
“Dead?” Jakob shook his head. “Goddamn the Germans."
I studied him. His expression was as lugubrious as always, but he did not appear to be mournful. Then again, apart from when I'd scared him that morning, his emotions never rose above a low guttering flame.
"He wasn’t killed by the Germans," I said. "Someone stabbed him to death.”
"Another prisoner?"
"That's what it looked like."
Jakob was thoughtful as he took that in. Then he shook his head again. “It’s a damn shame. He was just a boy."
"Was there anyone who might have wished him harm?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Why are you asking all these questions? What was Franz to you?"
"I never met him.”
"Then why the questions?”
I had prepared for this, had contrived a reason for my interest in Franz.
"A fellow prisoner, a friend of Franz’s family who heard I was being assigned to Kanada, asked me to look into the matter.” I had deliberately not said that this prisoner was a cousin or an uncle of Franz, fearing that the boy might have talked about his family. For all I knew, there had been no uncles or cousins. I had also decided not to say I was working for the Lageralteste unless there was a good reason to do so.
“The matter?” Jakob asked.
"Franz’s murder.”
"What do you mean, look into it? It sounds like you’re conducting an investigation.”
"I suppose I am."
"What makes you qualified to do that?"
"I used to be a criminal defense lawyer back in Hungary,” I said. "I picked up a few things on how to conduct an investigation." The lawyer idea had come to me during the night, mostly as a way to explain to the prisoner functionaries who had shared a room with Franz why the Lageralteste had chosen me to investigate this case. I was relieved when Jakob seemed to readily accept this falsehood.
"And you actually plan on doing this?"
"Yes, l am."
"Why? It’s a damn shame that Franz is dead, but people die here every day.”
It was a good question, and I needed a different answer than Because if I don’t, the Lagerdlteste will beat me to death.
“Because I don’t like murderers,” I said.
Jakob blinked, caught off guard, perhaps, by the blunt simplicity of my reply. He pursed his lips, then said, “I guess that's a good enough reason. But what’s the point? Suppose you find out who killed Franz, what then? You’re going to put him on trial?”
I didn’t tell him there would be no trial. Just a summary execution, and a brutal one at that. Instead, I said, "I don't know. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. First, I need to know who he is.”
Jakob stuck a hand under his cap and scratched his head. "A murder investigation in this place. I don't know... it seems bizarre, ridiculous even."
"Maybe it shouldn’t. At least not among ourselves.”
He contemplated this and shrugged. “I still don’t see the point of it. But if you got some questions, I’ll answer them as best I can."
"I appreciate it. Do you happen to know if anyone had anything against Franz?”
"Not that I know. Mind you, I don’t think I ever talked about him with anyone. Nor did I know him too well. He started out working on the platform like we did today, but a few months back he was moved almost exclusively to the warehouses. Lucky him.”
"Why do you say that?”
"Because it’s easier to get things in the warehouses. Food, and stuff you can trade for it. They open the luggage there and sort it for shipment to Germany. Here we mostly just haul it to the trucks. Also, in the warehouses, you don’t work among the soon-to-be-dead, just with their stuff. And you don’t carry bodies. It’s not as physically demanding as what we do here on the platform. That’s why most of the work in the warehouses is done by women prisoners."