The Thief of Auschwitz by Jon Clinch Page B

him work, a prisoner named Rubin who claims to have been a tailor and who scoffs at Jacob’s hurried work. “I could do that for you in a moment,” he says as he walks away, “but you’d have to give me the jacket for my trouble.” An ironist.
    Jacob’s fingers won’t cooperate, and the roll call draws nearer, and he begins to wonder what this infernal new uniform will cost him in the end. Slazak walks past and gives him the resentful look he once reserved for Schuler. He walks past in the dirt and continues around the corner and then comes back and looks more carefully, clucking and stroking his chin. “It would be a shame to go to roll call without proper identification,” he says.
    “Yes, sir,” says Jacob, not even looking up. He sticks himself with the needle and blood drips onto the patch he’s sewing and Slazak clucks again. Shame, shame, shame. Sweat beads up on Jacob’s forehead and he swipes at it, leaving behind a red streak. “Incredible,” says Slazak. “A few days of soft work, and you’ve lost every bit of strength you once had. This won’t go well.”
    “I’m doing my best,” says Jacob.
    “Perhaps you need a few extra minutes.”
    There is nothing more dangerous than Slazak in a solicitous mood. “Oh, no,” says Jacob. “I’ll be all right. I’ll be finished in plenty of time.”
    “Perhaps we should put off the roll call until after rations.”
    Jacob looks up. “Rations first?” A few other men in the yard stir, like the first members of a pack of wolves picking up some fresh scent. Getting rations before lining up for roll call would be the rarest of delights—not just because the men would eat earlier, but because they would be guaranteed to eat at all. It has been a while since the first evening roll call stretched on into the blackest hours of the night, but you never know. Word spreads in some intangible and unknowable way, as if on chemical traces carried by the air itself. Footsteps stir within the block. Men poke their heads out the door.
    Slazak makes the call, rations it is, and they start to line up. Rain begins, a soft rain that patters down on the dusty clay. Max stands and his father stands alongside him and Slazak says, “Oh, no. Not you two. First you must finish the needlework on that fine new uniform.”
    So that’s how it will be. Jacob hurries, working his fingers even more frantically than before, but by the time he finishes sewing and they’ve made their way to the back of the line the rations are gone. Slazak sees their disappointment and grins. Jacob merely turns and walks off toward the yard, but when they get a few steps away and the bell sounds for roll call he apologizes to Max, saying that this may be all of the punishment that Slazak feels comfortable meting out to him in his new position. They’ll need to be careful, though. He can always punish Max instead.
    They line up with their stomachs complaining. It’s late and the sun is down and the yard is lit by searchlights. The soft rain keeps up. Slazak patrols the perimeter with a pair of other capos, one of them a German convicted of murder and rape before he was freed and sent to Auschwitz, although he has only gone downhill here. Behind them in the darkness are the guards with their machine guns, black guns carried by gray men in shadows that swim with rain. Two SS men stand on the platform looking straight ahead, one of them the young one who rides the bicycle and the other one the sergeant whose hair Jacob cut last week, Drexler. In Jacob’s chest a kindly feeling toward him rises up unbidden, a feeling connected to the sergeant’s approval of him as the new barber, but he fights it down. One personal kindness is nothing compared to the Totenbuch. He hears Max’s stomach growl and knows himself responsible for it. So much for not calling attention to himself.
    The sky opens and thunder rolls and the rain begins in earnest. It’s a cold rain after a warm day, and although it refreshes