The Thief of Auschwitz (13 page)

Slazak’s eyes light up with complicity. He bobs his head and says that Drexler is correct. Such a figure is unfit to go on so elevated a series of errands.

Drexler says, “Then that makes two mistakes you’ve made.”

“Two?” says Slazak.

“Two,” says Drexler. “The body from the water project. It was three days old at least.”

“Three days, sir,” says Slazak. “That’s correct, sir.”

“And you certified the count this morning? And yesterday? And the day before that?”

“Yes sir,” says Slazak. “All by the book.”

Drexler shakes his head. “And all of it lies.” He calls out Jacob’s number, and Jacob comes to the front. “The two of you,” he says, “exchange uniforms.” Jacob swims in Slazak’s, and Slazak’s pot belly keeps Jacob’s from buttoning up properly, but they accomplish it. “Now come close,” says Drexler, and they do. He draws a folding knife from his pocket and leans down from the platform and cuts the green patch from the uniform that Jacob wears now, the patch denoting
capo.
Slazak puts out his hand to accept it, but Drexler crushes the little scrap with a muttered curse and jams it deep into the pocket of his overcoat. “Plenty of better men are waiting for your position,” he says. “In the meantime, I have no doubt that these prisoners will do everything in their power to welcome you back among their ranks.” A harsh murmur goes up among the scores of wet and weary men, a kind of animal hunger made audible.

“As for you,” he says to Jacob, looking from his wet uniform up to the cloud cover that simply will not disperse, “hang those clothes up to dry. Make yourself presentable. The night won’t last forever.”

And thus they’re dismissed.

Max

I’ve walked with a cane ever since the days when I could pass it off as an affectation. One of those things that artistic types just
do,
like dressing in those diaphanous hand-dyed fabrics if you’re a woman, or wearing a beret if you’re a man. Like using a cigarette holder. Not that I’ve ever smoked, and not that I could ever see myself in a beret. Berets are for old Frenchmen, and as far as people of my background are concerned, an old Frenchmen is most likely a sympathizer.

I’ve sold them plenty of pictures, though, the French. They have a number of pretty fair museums, and their money’s as good as anyone else’s, although I do confess to having experienced a little shiver—I wouldn’t call it a
frisson,
exactly, ha ha ha—when the euro kicked in and all of a sudden they started using the same currency as the Germans. Time was, you could make a distinction between a French franc and a Deutschmark. Not anymore.

I told my agent from that moment on I’d only accept payment in American dollars. I suppose I sounded like one of those jingoistic political hacks or oafish country musicians—Barry Goldwater or Merle Haggard or someone like that.
Love it or leave it.
Demagoguery and fiddle music. I hate that kind of thing, but on that one occasion I don’t think anyone could have blamed me.

Anyhow, back to that cane of mine. For a time when I was young, people couldn’t decide whether it was an affliction or just an affectation. That was fine with me. It was no concern of theirs. The leg was stiff and I’d have limped without the cane to lean on but I never complained, and when it hurt—which was most of the time even then—I never let it show
. Ever.
A rumor went around for a while that I’d had polio when I was younger. Polio was something that people got back then. You got it and it damaged you for good and even though it went away you never entirely got over it.

Maybe I should have told them I’d had polio after all.

The first cane I had came from an antique shop right here in Manhattan. I didn’t have one when I came over from Europe. Everybody in Europe needed a cane then, or worse. A cane or a crutch or a wooden leg or a gurney. The whole continent was on its last legs, shot full of holes and staggering forward, trying with every last bit of strength not to fall into its own grave. The hospitals were packed with men whose needs were far greater than mine. Who could even think of depriving them? So I limped across Germany and I limped across France and I limped to the boat that took me across the channel to England. And then I limped to the ship that took me over the ocean blue, all the way to New York, New York.

Seven

“If the first one was a down payment,” Eidel asks, “then what would this one be?”

Zofia leans over her chopping block, slicing carrots, and in the pocket of her uniform Eidel can see the tip of a second cigarette. Who can say where or when she got it? The day is still early, the sun isn’t even up, and the delivery commando isn’t due for hours. Perhaps she met Blackbeard overnight somewhere, in an alcove between the blocks or against a wall lit only now and then by the searing arcs of the searchlights. Perhaps, in other words, out there somewhere in the black rain, she’s already lived up to her end of the bargain. The more Eidel looks at her the more she decides that she looks flushed and content, or as flushed and content as a living corpse can be, She looks like a person keeping a gratifying secret.

Zofia leans into the knife.

“Paid in full, then?” says Eidel.

“You could say.”

Rolak passes through, using an iron poker as a walking stick. She frowns to see that some of the carrots aren’t quite transparent, and she growls at Zofia.
“You,”
she says.
”Thinner.”
Zofia glances at the pale orange pyramid remaining to be whittled down slice by tiny slice, and she sighs and sets aside the knife. In the drawer is a whetstone. She locates it and takes it out and cleans the rust from it on her apron. “Don’t fall behind,” says the capo, for there’s no satisfying her either way. Zofia permits herself a half-dozen rapid strokes on either side of the knife and puts the whetstone back and resumes cutting, faster than before. If an ideal round of sliced carrot has the qualities of a thick copper coin, these have the qualities of yellowish dappled sunlight on a woodland floor. Just try picking one up. Just try subsisting on a diet so ephemeral.

Eidel dabs her forehead with the silk handkerchief. The coal stove is roaring and no breeze stirs in the predawn gray. The capo watches the two women work and gives her head one abrupt nod to indicate that she’s satisfied for now. Then she moves on.

Eidel indicates the pile of carrots. “At this rate,” she says, “you won’t have a free minute to smoke that cigarette you worked so hard for.”

“Who said it was work?” says Zofia.

“My point exactly,” says Eidel.

Zofia smiles and shakes her head, a naughty schoolgirl. She smiles and takes the cigarette from her pocket and says in that case maybe she’d better smoke this while she works, raising the knife in one hand and the cigarette in the other and stepping away from the chopping block in the general direction of the stove—until the specter of the capo materializes in the doorway again, and she freezes.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Rolak raises the poker.

In an instant Zofia is back at work, the unlit cigarette jammed cold between her lips, one hand going for a carrot and the other raising the knife, but it makes no difference. It’s too little, too late. The capo has been itching to use that poker and now she does, catching Zofia across the shoulders and buckling her forward over the block. The newly sharpened knife slices away two fingers at the first joint.

Rolak laughs. “Too thick,” she says. “You’ll never learn.”

Without a moment’s reflection, Eidel binds up Zofia’s hand in the silk handkerchief. She would go with her to the hospital if she could—this will probably be the last time she will see her, since there’s a selection at the hospital every other day, a few prisoners left behind and the rest sent on to the gas—but there are carrots to be sliced and she doesn’t dare ask. Her work has doubled, at least for now.

She doesn’t know which she wishes more: that she’ll see Zofia alive again, or that she’ll somehow regain the silk handkerchief that once belonged to her daughter. And she doesn’t know which of these outcomes is the less likely.

*

The men stink like wet dogs. Jacob lies among them naked and shivering, waiting for the three bells to ring. He hasn’t slept. He’s too exhausted to sleep, too full of anticipation for what the day ahead might bring, so he’s lain awake on the hard bunk unable to move and unable to breathe, locked in position with his face pointed toward the spot where Slazak’s old uniform jacket hangs ghostly from a crossbeam. It occurs to him that just this once there is no capo in the block. He can’t remember ever experiencing such a thing. There’ll surely be a new one in the morning. Drexler has no doubt reported Slazak’s demotion, and some individual or some mechanism has arranged for his replacement. Roll call will reveal his identity. Jacob wonders what kind of beast this new capo will be, what crimes he may have committed in the outside world and what crimes he will commit here.

His mind runs to Max. The boy is sleeping beside him now, but when he awakens he must tell him to be especially wary of the new overseer. To keep his eyes open and his mouth shut, because you never know. Any man taking Slazak’s job will be particularly keen to make a good impression on the SS. There’s no telling what such an individual might do.

He realizes that while he’s at it he ought to tell Max to be wary of Slazak himself. After what happened last night, Slazak will be a wounded animal, angry and bitter and certain that he has nothing much to lose. Max, good boy that he is, might have an instinct to be kind to such a creature, but that instinct will not serve him well. Slazak has never liked Max and he’ll like him less now. He’ll pull him down to his level if he can.

There is so much he needs to tell Max. A lifetime’s worth. He lies listening to his son breathe and he stares at the ghostly image of Slazak’s hanging uniform and he wonders how much time he has left to pass on such knowledge as he’s accumulated. Not enough. There is never enough.

The bell rings three times and the men rise, emerging from their wet tangle one after another. Moving perhaps a shade more slowly than usual, given Slazak’s absence. There is no one here to threaten them, not even the guards who stand outside the door with their machine guns at the ready, welcoming them to the day. They stumble to their feet and they stretch and yawn like any gang of hard-pressed men anywhere, grumpy and tired and sore, and in low voices they speculate as to what roll call will bring. Half of them wish for another extended bout like last night’s because it would mean a shorter workday, and the other half is certain that the SS will use last night’s careful count as a means to get them out and on their way earlier.

“What could have gone wrong in the night?” asks one. “Particularly a night as short as this?”

“Just you wait and see,” says another.

They don’t need to wait long. The last men out see it: the dark, narrow slot of one of the bunks isn’t entirely empty. It’s a bunk that’s seen some activity lately, the bunk where Schuler slept until last week and the bunk where his twin slept until a few weeks before that. The men assigned there have been luxuriating in the open spaces left behind by their absence. There’s been sufficient room to roll over, sufficient room to breathe, so no wonder it was there that Slazak found a place to lie down the night before. He’d even asked their permission, as shocking as that was. It was the first time he’d been reduced to anything like common courtesy, but he’d asked and the men had acquiesced, shifting to one side and the other, complaining about the crowding and mocking his pot belly but accepting this alteration to their fate the same way they accepted everything else.

Now morning has come, and he’s dead. Dead in the bunk on his first and last night back among the prisoners. Dead in Jacob Rosen’s muddy uniform, stinking of Schuler’s corpse.

The guards order the last men in line to carry him out and prop him up for the count. Someone reads off his number and the capo from the next block over makes a mark on a piece of paper, but beyond that no one looks very closely. Roll call takes almost no time. There is work to be done.

*

Another woman is in Zofia’s place this morning, a young woman barely old enough to have passed the initial selection at the train station, a rail-thin and careworn creature all knuckles and bones. Just a girl. The capo has her scrubbing the chopping block with fine gravel from the yard and rinsing it with a bucketful of boiling water and scrubbing it again with coarsely ground salt. Rinsing it again. The girl’s pale skin reddens and stays that way. She works without looking up. Eidel asks her name and she says “Gretel” and says no more. Eidel gives her her own name back, but Gretel seems not to register it. Eidel wonders what the poor child has been through, for although everyone’s story is the same there are always variations.

Rolak comes by and sees that yesterday’s stains on the chopping block are still visible and orders Gretel to begin again with more gravel from the yard. The girl sinks. Eidel says she’ll go. She puts down her knife and picks up a crockery bowl and a heavy spoon for digging and steps outdoors.