Vilmos wiped spittle from his lips. "Don’t you worry, Adam. One day we’ll play chess as free men. In Jerusalem. Or Tel Aviv."
I wished I could believe that. I wished I could believe that this coming Sunday, Vilmos and I would still be alive.
30
Last day to solve the case. Last day to catch a murderer, or Vilmos and I would both die. That was the thought that greeted me as I opened my eyes onto another day in Auschwitz. Though when I thought of it, I had less than even that.
It was Saturday morning. I had until curfew tonight to catch this murderer. Less than a day.
Vilmos had been quiet during the night, so quiet that a few times I had been certain that he’d died in his sleep and had to bring my ear close to his lips to catch his breathing. But there he was, feverish and looking on his last legs, but still alive. He read my mind and smiled. “You’re not going to dump more water on my head, are you?"
I smiled back. “You bet I am. And don’t complain so much this time.”
On the way to the latrine, with Vilmos hanging onto my arm for support, Hendrik caught sight of us. His hateful eyes traveled from me to Vilmos, and his lips curved into a nasty smile. He had seen how sick Vilmos was, and the son of a bitch was happy about it. I gave him a hard look, and he quickly turned away.
He was scared of me. Good. I had enough problems without worrying about him.
After the latrine, we went to the washroom. There, after dousing Vilmos, I washed myself and examined the wound on my foot. It was still painful, and far from healed, but the swelling was down, and the skin around the wound appeared less inflamed.
The rash on my side had subsided as well, though the skin still itched. Overall, if my best friend hadn’t been so ill and I had more than a day to live, I might have felt a glimmer of optimism.
But as we joined the lines for breakfast, I was swamped by despondency. Vilmos might not survive the day, and even if he did, it would take a miracle to obtain the medicine he needed. As for me, I had no idea where to go next in my investigation, and each passing second brought me closer to the deadline set by the Lageralteste. Closer to my violent death, and Vilmos’s too.
While we waited for our coffee, I searched the faces of the prisoners around me for the redheaded man, but I did not see him. For all I knew, he might have been dead. If he was, and if he had indeed killed Franz, then all hope was truly lost. Because the Lageralteste wanted his pound of flesh. He would not be satisfied with my presenting him with a murderer whom he could not punish.
I turned to Vilmos. “You just make it through the day, you hear me? I’ll bring back something good to eat—and medicine, I hope.”
“I'll be here when you get back," he said. "I haven’t beaten you at chess nearly enough to give up on life yet.”
At the Appellplatz, a few SS guards and officers stood surveying the gathering prisoners like herdsmen deciding which cows would go next to the slaughterhouse. Among them was the SS doctor from the selection. When his eyes alighted on Vilmos, the corner of his pink mouth drew upward.
"I want to kill the bastard," I hissed under my breath.
"Focus on staying alive, on solving your case," Vilmos said. "That’s more productive."
We bade each other good day and went to join our kommandos. Stefan and I shook hands.
"Here’s to finding something tasty to eat today," he said.
Or a doctor’s bag full of medicine, I thought. And Franz’s murderer.
As we entered Kanada, the whistle of an incoming train bombarded our ears. My back stiffened, but I did not turn to look. Neither did any of the others.
We started the day shifting luggage into warehouses. I kept my eyes peeled for a doctor’s bag, but there was none. As the minutes dragged by, my anxiety heightened, and with it my despair. Time was running out, and I had nothing to go by.
Franz had been surrounded by men who’d committed murder and wouldn't think twice of doing so again. None of them had an alibi, apart from Mathias, but none had a reason to kill him either. No reason that I knew.
That left Ludwig, but he had no motive either. And there was, of course, the redheaded man. If he was still alive, he was somewhere back at camp, one of the thousands of prisoners who were hard to tell apart in their striped uniforms and caps. I needed to find him today, and I could not ask for help from Mathias or any of the Lageralteste’s men. I had to do it by myself and had no idea how.
What irked me the most was that I had seen that man recently. I was sure of it. But the time and location continued to elude me.
Apart from him, Ludwig, and those few prisoner functionaries who lived in the same block as Franz, there was an untold number of prisoners who might have committed this murder. This included the dozens of other prisoner functionaries who might have come into contact with Franz and the many prisoners to whom he had sold contraband. Hundreds of possible suspects, and not enough time to eliminate from suspicion hardly any of them.
To these I might add all of the male prisoners who worked in Kanada. Any one of them might have held a grudge against Franz. Any one of them might have killed him.
As we carried, hoisted, and hauled, I questioned a few of my fellow prisoners about Franz, hoping I’d get lucky and stumble upon the killer. This did not happen, and as we broke for lunch, I could not escape the dispiriting thought that I had learned nothing useful that day and that my deadline was mere hours away.
As we received our soup, yells and shouts and cries buffeted us from both the north and south. On either side of Kanada, the gas chambers were busy devouring our people. Flames and smoke shot up from the chimneys, casting a gaudy glow to the cloudless sky. The sun stood high above us, a silent witness to all that transpired in Auschwitz.
I recalled tales of sun-worshipers in ancient times. Perhaps it would prove more fruitful to pray for deliverance to the sun than to God. At least the sun was present here. God did not appear to be.
I ate my soup mechanically, burdened by thoughts of the dying and the smell of their burning. Some of the other men were as silent as myself, but others chatted amiably and occasionally even laughed. They had grown callous. If I worked in Kanada for long enough, I'd likely come to resemble them.
After I’d finished eating, I went to the latrine. On the way back, my stomach tight with anxiety and my head filled with grim images of imminent death, I heard a female voice calling my name.
I stopped in surprise and turned my head in the direction of the voice. A woman prisoner was walking briskly toward me, a broad smile on her face.
It took me a second to recognize her. She looked quite different in her prisoner’s dress and black headscarf. And, of course, she had lost some weight.
"Gisella?”
"Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
It was, but that wasn’t the reason my heart was drumming in my chest. Every day in camp, I would stare south at the women’s camp across the rail spur, or north into Mexico, or east into the women's transit camp, where fresh women prisoners often stayed but for a few days before being shipped to work camps throughout the Third Reich. I kept searching for my four sisters, but I never saw any of them.
Gisella was a good friend of my sister Sofia. She had come on the same train as the rest of us, so she might know what happened to my sisters.
"I’m so glad to see you alive," Gisella said. I could tell she wanted to hug me, but she dared not. It was not allowed.
“Let’s go here,” I said, gesturing to a space between two warehouses, but even there we didn’t touch. “What became of your family?”
Her eyes welled up. “Mother and father were sent to the gas chambers. My sister and I were spared. A week after our arrival, she was sent away on a train. I don't know where. You look so thin, Adam. Are you feeling well?”