"Remember, Adam," he said, his tone part amusement, part admonishment, “there is always hope."
I threw my arms around him and hugged him as tightly as I could. The pressure of his arms was weaker than mine, and when I released him, I could see why. Vilmos looked exhausted, drained. There were deep circles under his eyes, and lines of fatigue gouging his face. His shoulders slumped, arms drooping at his sides. I noticed blood on his dirty fingers.
"What happened?" I asked.
"I had to dig out a big rock," Vilmos said. “Bruised my hands a bit. It’s not serious."
But his illness was. I could hear it in his voice; see it in his eyes.
"Come on," I said. "I’ve got a surprise for you.”
He followed me to a shadowy spot between two blocks and there, after checking no one was spying on us, I retrieved the two cookies from their hiding place.
I removed my clogs, reached deep inside each, and pulled out the rolled pieces of cloth I had stuck into their tips. I held each clog upright, and out slid the cookies, slightly battered and misshapen from being squeezed tightly behind the cloth, and most likely not smelling all too great after being at such close proximity to my toes, but still marvelous.
Vilmos’s eyes widened as I handed over the cookies. "How? Where?" He was finding it hard to form full sentences.
"Go on," I said. “Eat them. We’ve only got one or two minutes before roll call."
Vilmos brought a cookie to his mouth, then paused. "What about you? You should have one."
"I already ate my two,” I told him, astounded that even as tired and hungry as he was, Vilmos would still think of my well-being. "Hurry up now."
Vilmos bit into the first cookie, and a small moan of pleasure sounded deep in his throat. He consumed both cookies quickly and gave me a smile full of crumbs, like a child’s.
"Those were heavenly, Adam. Thank you so much. How did you get them?"
"From a suitcase in Kanada."
"And you hid them in your clogs?"
I told him about being searched by the SS guard, how he had shaken the clogs. “I’d stuck the cloth in so tightly that it was like a stopper, and the clogs are so damn long that there was room for the cookies. The son of a bitch didn't think to check inside."
I started laughing, and Vilmos did too, the sort of liberating laughter that surges from the pit of your stomach and bends you over and rattles your bones good and hard. We held onto each other as we laughed, and for a tiny stitch of time, our troubles were forgotten.
Then it was time for roll call, and reality reasserted itself.
We stood for the count, immobile, while before us a sentence was carried out. The guilty party was said to have stolen a potato. The punishment was funf-und-zwanzig, twenty-five lashes with a cane. The prisoner was stripped of his trousers, bent over a table, and a burly SS guard delivered the blows to his buttocks with maniacal ferocity.
We couldn’t cover our ears nor shut our eyes. We were ordered to watch the punishment and hear the victim’s cries. So that the lesson would sink in.
When it was done, the prisoner was pulled off the table and thrown to the ground. He lay there in a crumpled heap until the count was complete.
After roll call, we received our bread rations. In the normal world, a display of horror as the one I’d just witnessed would have robbed me of my appetite. In Auschwitz, there was no room for such squeamishness. You got a chance to eat, you took it.
I offered Vilmos a portion of my bread, saying I would likely be able to get more food in Kanada tomorrow, but he steadfastly refused.
"You need it just as much as I do, Adam. I'm feeling better, honestly.”
He didn’t look it. Vilmos's cough was as nasty as it had been that morning, and when I snuck a hand onto his forehead, before he could knock it away, I felt the heat of his fever. He was still sick. Just putting up a brave front for my sake.
"I hope to see Mathias, the man who got me the clogs, a little later," I said. I'll ask him to move you to an easier kommando.”
“I don’t think that would be wise, Adam."
“Why not?”
“The SS doctor from the selection was at the gate when I returned to camp. I think he was there to see if I made it back. Like it was a game or a wager he needed to settle.”
“The filthy pig,” I muttered.
“And there's every chance he’ll be there tomorrow as well. If I'm not there...” Vilmos left the end of that sobering thought unsaid. We both knew what it meant. The SS doctor was having a bit of fun, waiting to see how long it would take Vilmos to die digging trenches. If Vilmos did not show up for work in his regular kommando, that would be the end of the game, and Vilmos would be sent to the gas chambers.
It was cruel and inhuman, just the sort of entertainment an SS doctor would appreciate. I glanced despairingly at Vilmos, and he said, “Let’s just eat, Adam, okay?”
Just as we were finishing our bread, before I had the chance to tell Vilmos what I’d learned during the day, a familiar figure approached. It was one of the Lageral-teste's henchmen, the one with the conjoined eyebrow, one of the pair who had taken me to the Lageralteste the night I was put on Franz’s murder case.
“He wants you,” he said. “You need to come with me.”
There was no need to specify who he was. I stood up, alarm spreading its icy tendrils over my limbs. “What's happened?"
“He’ll tell you," the man said, and gestured for me to follow.
He led me not to the Lager diteste’s block but toward the latrines, and then behind them. I realized where we were going—the ditch where Franz had been killed.
Had the Lageralteste changed his mind? Had he decided to abort my investigation? Was I to be killed where Franz had been, in some sort of demented symbolism?
When we got to the ditch, there were three men in it. The Lageralteste, Mathias, and a regular prisoner whose face I couldn’t see. That was because he was on hands and knees, shaking and weeping.
"Ah, here’s my clever Jew.” The Lageralteste clapped his large hands together. He was all smiles, all teeth. "Didn't I tell you he was a clever Jew, Mathias?"
Mathias’s expression was placid as he confirmed that the Lageralteste had indeed told him precisely that.
"What’s going on?" I said, breathing a bit easier now that it appeared I was not about to die. Not right then, in any case.
"We found Franz’s murderer,” the Lageralteste said. "That’s what. Just in the nick of time for you, eh?"
"Him?" I said, pointing at the weeping prisoner.
"Yes, that’s the schweinehund,’’ the Lageralteste said, calling the prisoner a pig-dog before planting his boot in the prisoner’s backside, causing him to drop flat in the dirt.
I glanced a question at Mathias, who explained, "We followed your suggestion and ran a search in the camp for a bloody shirt, and—’’
"And this schweinehund had it," the Lageralteste completed. His teeth were bared, and there was foam on his lips. If anyone looked like a dog around here, it was him. A rabid one.
A jolt of pure relief streaked through me. The case was over. I’d succeeded. I was going to live. I could hardly believe it, and couldn’t wait to tell Vilmos the good news.
"Where is it?" I asked. "Where’s the shirt?”
"He’s wearing it," the Lageralteste said. “That’s how we know it was him. I called you here because I figured you’d want to be here when I killed him."
I could not imagine why he thought I’d wish to witness that.