"I didn't want to be seen near him."
I frowned at him, and then it hit me. "You knew who he was. You knew he was the Lageralteste’s servant."
"Yes.”
"How? Do you live in that block?"
"No. He told me."
"Who? The boy?"
"Yes. His name was Franz, you know."
"I do know,” I said, feeling a prickle of excitement. "When did you speak to him?”
"Four days ago, I think? Maybe five. It’s difficult to keep track of the passing days in this place.”
"Where did you talk?"
"Not far from the kitchen. I saw him walk by and approached him.”
"Why? What for?"
"I was hoping he might sell me some medicine."
"Why would he have any?" Medicine was one of the hardest commodities to get in the camp, scarcer and far more valuable than even food.
"Because he knew how to organize all sorts of things. About a month ago, I bought soap from him. French, with a scent of lilacs." Zoltan permitted himself a fragile smile; talking had alleviated his anxiety. "A terrible deal on my part—bread for a tiny bar of soap—but I had an overwhelming need to be clean. He said if I ever needed anything else, I should come see him."
To organize in camp parlance meant to acquire and sometimes trade illicit or hard-to-obtain goods on the camp’s black market. And there was no better place to come into possession of such goods than in the Kanada warehouses.
"It was odd," Zoltan said thoughtfully.
"What was?" I asked.
"Him. The boy. Because he didn’t seem like a boy at all. He looked like one, but he had the air of a man of accomplishment, brimming with masculine confidence. At least he did when I bought the soap from him."
"But not when you approached him for the medicine?"
"No. His outward appearance was unchanged. He was healthy and well-fed, but at the same time he looked... dimmed, for lack of a better word. And his eyes, they were haunted and troubled and dull, like tarnished silver. He told me he didn’t have any medicine to sell, and that I shouldn’t bother trying to buy anything else from him. Then he said he had to hurry, that he was going to his master, the Lageralteste."
I took a moment to think of what Zoltan had told me. It was obvious why Franz could not obtain any more illicit goods: He was no longer working in the Kanada warehouses. He had been cut off from his supply. But couldn’t he still get certain things just by being in the Lageralteste’s orbit? I would have said the answer was yes, but it seemed I was wrong.
"Did he say anything else?" I asked.
"Nothing. It was the last time I saw him. Until I found the body."
"At which point you immediately left the scene?"
"Yes,” Zoltan said. "I was worried that if someone saw me with him, they would think I’d done it.”
I cast a quick glance at Vilmos to see if he understood the implications of what Zoltan had just said, but he had his eyes firmly on his lover.
"I take it no one saw you," I said.
"Thankfully no."
"How about you? Did you see anyone? Perhaps when you were coming this way? Someone who was going in the opposite direction?"
Zoltan started shaking his head, but then he stopped and his lips parted a little. "There was someone. Funny, but I forgot about him entirely until now. Seeing the dead boy and knowing who he was must have pushed that memory away. But I don’t think the man I saw killed anyone."
"Let me be the judge of that," I said, hardly daring to hope. Was I on the verge of a breakthrough? "Who was it?”
"Other prisoners call him the Mumbler. Do you know who I'm talking about?"
"Yes," I said, my spirit sagging.
"I nearly bumped into him as he rounded the corner of the latrine," Zoltan said. “It startled me quite a bit because I didn’t expect anyone to be here."
"How did he look? Did he have any blood on his clothes?"
"If he did, I didn’t notice. But I admit, I didn’t look at him for more than a fraction of a second. He makes me uneasy.”
The same was true for me and all the other prisoners. For in the Mumbler, each and every one of us saw the future, and it was not a vision anyone wished to contemplate.
"Did he say anything?" I asked.
"He always does, doesn’t he?" Zoltan said. “Nothing that made any sense to me. Not that I was paying any attention. I just stepped past him and hurried on. He didn’t follow me, just kept going to God knows where.”
"Do you think he saw the body?"
Zoltan shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Who knows what he sees? It’s impossible to say how aware he is of what's going on around him. I’m surprised he's still alive."
It was a mystery to me as well. On more than one level.
"Anything else you saw?" I asked. “Anything at all, no matter how minor.”
Zoltan shook his head with finality. "And what I did see," he said, “I wish I hadn’t."
18
“I know what you’re thinking,” Vilmos said after Zoltan had departed. It was difficult to read Vilmos's expression, but if there was any anger there, I didn’t see it. Which only served to increase my anger in turn, and also prodded me to not mince words.
"He’s a coward," I said.
"Yes, I suppose he is."
"And a selfish one at that."
"Cowardice is generally selfish, Adam. We see proof of this every day around here."
"He didn’t even stick around to warn you about the dead boy." I was starting to get angry with Vilmos and not just Zoltan. How could he be so casual about this? "He just scampered off to save his own hide. Do you know what would have happened to you if one of the goons working for the Lageralteste had seen you near the body? Not to mention going through the boy's clothes?”
"I’d have been killed.”
"That's right. And not gently either. The Lageralteste would have beaten you to a pulp. And don't think Zoltan didn't know it. He knew exactly, which was why he ran off like a frightened rabbit."
Vilmos was quiet. He just stared in the general direction in which Zoltan had gone. If my words had had any effect on him, he wasn’t showing it.
The silence stretched for an uncomfortable minute. I was about to speak when Vilmos beat me to it.
"He wrote the most beautiful poetry, you know."
"Who?" I asked, thrown for a second by the abrupt change in topic. “Zoltan?"
"We met at university. Two Jewish boys hoping to expand our minds and make something of ourselves. Being who we are, what we are, we were drawn to each other. Being with him made my university days the happiest in my life. Zoltan was wonderful, and he wrote the most wonderful poetry. Love poems of such delicate and profound emotion that one could cry when reading them. Some were even published. Everyone thought they were written for a woman, of course, but they were written for me." Vilmos turned to face me, his eyes glistening with the memory of a happier lost time. "For me, Adam."
Before I could think, before I could stop myself and rise above my petty need to be right, I said, "But he ended your relationship, didn't he? Then what did he do? Get married?"
Vilmos drew a sharp breath, and I knew I had hurt him, and I cursed myself for it. Yet he didn’t seem upset. He just pushed his lower lip out and gave me the saddest smile I’d seen him give.
"You don’t know what it’s like, Adam, living your life while needing to hide your true self. If you're not married by a certain age, people start to wonder and whisper. In certain circles, not being married, not having a family, can mean a very low ceiling on your career prospects, if not the outright end of them. So, yes, Zoltan got married. Plenty of men like us do. I came close to it myself, and I would have gone through with it if the girl in question hadn't gotten suspicious. So I don’t blame Zoltan one bit for breaking things off with me, nor for getting married. It’s what one has to do in order to live a secure and accomplished life in a society that frowns upon men like us, if it doesn’t actively persecute them. That's not cowardice. It’s self-preservation.”