Together we stood at roll call. As we were counted, I kept glancing sideways at the smoke rising from the crematoriums and fire pits. The corpses burning there were of the people I had seen on the platform. Those whose faces would forever be imprinted on my mind.
After roll call was finally completed and we had gotten our bread rations, Vilmos said he was going to meet his lover. “We’ll meet in twenty minutes or so?" he said.
Neither of us had watches, so the best we could do was estimate the time. “Twenty minutes," I said.
After Vilmos had gone, I started heading for the latrine, but then I saw Mathias. He was leaning against the front of a block, given ample space by the other prisoners on account of his functionary armband. He beckoned me over.
"You’re limping," he said in that even tone of his. His expression did not shift. It was a statement of fact, nothing more.
"A bit,” I said. As big an understatement as I had ever made.
"What’s wrong with your foot?"
"Do you want me to show you? It’s not pretty."
"I’m sure I’ve seen worse," he said.
I pulled off my clog and showed him my wound. It was red and oozing. "The clogs are too small.”
"Or your feet are too big." He displayed no reaction to the ugly sight of my injury. Then again, he had not been lying when he said he'd seen worse. We both had.
"Or that," I said. I gingerly slipped my foot back into my clog, unable to restrain a hiss of pain. "It’s a strange thing about starving: Your feet don’t shrink nearly as much as the rest of you.”
"Did you learn anything today?" he asked.
"Not much. I was at the wrong place." I explained to him that I would need to be in the Kanada warehouses tomorrow.
"I’ll see to it. I’ve come to take you to meet the Stubendiensts who shared a room with me and Franz. You said you needed to talk to them."
"I do, but I can’t come right now. I’m following another lead."
"Oh? And what lead is that?”
I didn’t answer for a few seconds, just looked at him, wondering what his story was. What crime had led to his arrest and eventual placement here in Auschwitz? It must have been serious. He had to be a dangerous man. I needed to keep that in mind.
"If something comes of it,” I said, “you’ll be the first to know.”
He cocked his head. "Are you keeping secrets, Adam?”
"Hardly that. It’s just that I wouldn’t want anyone but the guilty party to get hurt,” I said, hoping I was not stepping over the line.
Mathias gave me a look, then nodded understanding. He knew what the Lageralteste was capable of.
"Tomorrow, then?"
"Yes. Tomorrow." Then I told him about pretending to have been a defense lawyer.
"That's good," Mathias said with another of his tiny smiles. "I’ll let the Lageral-teste know."
He turned to leave but stopped when I asked him, “What did you do time for? The first time, I mean?”
"Why do you ask?"
"Just curious."
He thought it over before answering. “I killed my stepfather. He deserved it, if that makes a difference. Was a real bastard.”
"What did he do? Beat your mother?"
“Among other things. He gave me this.” He touched his scar.
“That doesn't seem enough to send you here,” I said.
“He was just the first. In prison, I killed a few more. They deserved it too.”
"Is that where you met the Lageralteste? In prison?”
"Yeah. That's where we met. Any other questions?”
I said there weren’t, and Mathias walked off, whistling softly. I proceeded to the latrine, and after relieving myself, I circled the building. There was that patch of desolate ground, between the latrine and the unused ditch, where secret meetings could be held. Where the body of a fifteen-year-old boy named Franz had been found. The smell was ghastly. It did not merely hang in the air but also wafted up from the very earth on which I stood. The result, no doubt, of inadequate disposal of human waste.
As I waited, I thought of Vilmos and his lover.
How was it possible to have a tryst in this place, in this stench? How could one touch the filthy, wasted body of a fellow prisoner without recoiling in horror or revulsion? Were love and passion really as powerful as that?
An image of my wife flickered in my mind, and I knew the answer was yes. Because if she were here now, even if she were emaciated and hairless, even if she were dirty and diseased, I would hold her tight and press my lips to hers.
My eyes were moist as I heard footfalls behind me. I wiped them dry and turned. It was Vilmos and another man. His lover.
He was a little man with a narrow beak of a nose and hooded light-brown eyes. Otherwise, he looked just like the rest of us. His hands were clasped before him, and his head was bent forward. He kept raising his eyes and then quickly lowering them, stealing nervous glances at me and then at Vilmos. There was a mousy quality about him. A cornered fearfulness. I wondered what Vilmos had told him about me. His nervousness might have been the result of guilt, or a deep-seated affliction. Some prisoners got that way. You live in constant fear for long enough and it will seep into your bones and ooze out of your pores.
"It’s all right, Zoltan," Vilmos told him in Hungarian. “Adam can be trusted. Just tell him what you saw.”
Zoltan kneaded his hands, his movements twitchy. He clearly did not wish to speak about this, which raised my antennae. Notwithstanding Vilmos’s assertion that Zoltan was incapable of murder, I was keeping an open mind.
"You’re in no danger,” I told him. “But I need you to tell me everything you saw. It’s important."
Still he hesitated, but an encouraging nod from Vilmos swayed him into speech.
"I came here to meet Vilmos,” Zoltan said. "I saw the boy. He was dead. It was terrible."
"I’m sure it was. Where exactly was the body?”
With mincing steps he led me toward the ditch and pointed down. "Right here."
There was no trace of the crime perpetrated here. The earth had lapped up the blood. The body was gone. All that remained was the dry lifeless dirt of the camp. I crouched down for a closer look. Here and there were scuff marks of shoes or clogs, but none that were clear. This crime scene was as dead as the boy who had lain here with a hole in his throat.
"Was there anything near the body?” I asked.
"Nothing but blood. A whole lot of blood.”
I asked him about defensive wounds and got the same inconclusive answer that I’d received from Vilmos, Mathias, and the Lageralteste. I cursed inwardly. This was no way to conduct a murder investigation. Normally, either I saw the body with my own eyes or I had pictures of the victim. And if no pictures existed, I had a police report to consult, written by someone trained at solving crimes.
Who was I kidding? I was no detective. I was merely a slave trying to stay alive. This was absurd. Pointless and hopeless. And yet... what else was there to do? I wanted to live, and I wanted to feel like I was something more than just a prisoner. And investigating this crime, believing I had the power to solve it, gave me that feeling. I realized I needed that, almost as much as I needed food and sleep and something to relieve the sharp pain in my foot. So I pushed away my belittling doubts and tried to focus on the task at hand.
"Did you touch the body?" I asked.
Zoltan shook his head. "I didn’t go near him. I saw him and ran away. I didn't want to be around him for one second longer.”
"You didn’t check to see if he was carrying anything useful?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I was scared."
"Of what? There was no one around, was there? The killer had gone. And it’s not a crime to kill a prisoner in this place, especially a Jewish one.”