was back in that world. That was at least familiar. I would live or I would die based on the whims of people I could not see, could not argue my case with. Fatalism settled into me with the fog.
But with time either the darkness sheds its weight, or you shed yours, because I began, without realizing it, to pace. Three steps took me to the back of the cell; two crossed its breadth. But I was able to make a kind of lap by using infant steps. Sometimes I ran into the wall-the concrete left a scrape on the tip of my nose-but I learned to sense the wall by the movement of air along it, and turned, quickly, to continue my lap.
The tiny cell stank of mildew and my sweat and urine. I held off defecating as long as I could-how long, I don’t know-then gave in. I used my undershirt to cover the small pot, but that didn’t help the stink.
My fatalism wavered over the hours. It wasn’t as strong as it had first appeared. I was still healthy- physically, at least-and could stand up straight. That in itself seemed enough to assure my survival. I was strong, and it didn’t make sense that a man as large and strong as I was could simply be erased.
This is the irrationality of darkness. You begin to grasp at little things. Just the sound of your footsteps on concrete give hope: They are so loud in the absence of all other sounds, they are godlike.
The hunger that came on and off and twisted my stomach into knots seemed like the only way to track time. I could go without eating for a couple days, which perhaps meant I’d been there two days. I considered banging on the steel door and calling for food, but I doubted my voice would make it through. And this was what I knew they wanted, for me to panic.
At some point a slot at the base of the door opened, filling the cell with a dim, painful light. This, at least, was something I had imagined while walking under German guard: an opening in the door for food. A tray slipped through, spilling soup from a tin bowl. Bread, and a brackish, chunky liquid I could not identify. By the time the slot closed again, I had almost finished it.
3
They came four meals later, while I was sleeping. I had slept so much in that cell, though sleep never rejuvenated me. There was the shock of light, the aching eyes, and two sets of hands pushing my shoulders as I stumbled through the steel door and up three flights of stairs, which, I remembered vaguely, placed us on the ground floor, where there were two doors. The one on the right led to the long corridor without numbers and out the front; the left one led, as I learned, directly outside, into a wide courtyard, where vans and cars sat in rigid lines. It was night, and a light blanket of snow covered the ground. They threw me into the back of an empty white van, locked the door, then climbed into the front. I pressed my face against the metal screen. “Where?”
The driver, the one with the mustache, looked at me in the rearview. “Don’t worry so much. You’ll give yourself a hernia.”
The other stuffed my shoelaces through the screen. “Put these back on.”
I tried to remain standing in order to see out the back windows. I thought we were driving south, but when we passed Unity Medical and entered the Second District, I realized we were headed west. The van jostled, and I hit my head on the ribbed ceiling, then squatted. I hadn’t noticed the cold until then; it burrowed into me.
When I checked again, we were in the Fifth District, stately Habsburg homes sliding past. Then a right-hand turn took us to our destination: the Fifth District train station. Unlike the central station, this one closed at ten every night and reopened at six. We drove through the empty lot and into a corner, where a ramshackle building stood hidden in the shadows, smoke trickling out of a smokestack.
We left prints in the fresh snow up to the door. Inside, it was too warm, and a fat man with bristle on his cheeks dealt cards to another fat man at a desk. The dealer smiled at us. “Guests?”
My clean-shaven guard took some folded papers from his pocket and handed them over. The dealer set down the deck and read thoughtfully. Then he leaned on his knees, grunted, and stood up. The keys on his waistband made a racket when he walked to another door and unlocked it.
“Get in,” said my clean-shaven guard.
The one with the mustache said, “Good luck, Inspector.”
This cell was huge-a paradise. There was a bench attached to a wall, and when I stood on it I could just see through the barred window to the overcast night sky. The cold didn’t bother me, and for the moment I didn’t worry about what would happen next. For the moment I could take long strides and even jump, which I did, many times.
4
I woke to the first sunlight I had seen for a long time. But the elation drained away as I looked down on my blackened hands and soiled clothes and tasted the decaying teeth in my mouth. My own grime and smell were intolerable.
The fat card dealer brought some soup that I ate while standing and staring at the sky. When he came to take the bowl, I asked where I was going. He waved the bowl as if it were a little flag, “You’re going to put yourself to use for once, Comrade. You’re going to work.”
“Which camp?”
He shrugged.
Three hours passed, then five, and I watched the sun set through the bars. My time didn’t come until after I’d fallen asleep on the bench, and I woke to the dealer standing in the doorway with three soldiers holding rifles. “It’s your big moment!”
The train was already sitting on the tracks. I was led to its rear, to a cattle car that held three young men-no older than seventeen-with bruised faces. Dirty straw covered the floor, and when the door was pulled shut the darkness and smell of decay covered us. One voice said something about concentration camps. Another told him to shut up.
The train whistled and started to move.
They introduced themselves, and in passing lights through the high barred windows I could connect names with faces. Gyula, his ear crusted with dried blood, was the one who was afraid of concentration camps. Florian, with a purple, swollen right eye that remained shut, had no patience for such talk. He asked what I’d done to end up here. When I told them it was connected to a case, and that I was a militiaman, they fell silent again. But I enjoyed the sound of their voices. “What did they get you on?”
“Nothing!” said Johann, the third, who blushed beneath his bruises. “They didn’t tell us anything. They took us from our homes, beat us, and brought us here. It’s unbelievable!”
They were students who had helped draw up a little manifesto during the height of the Sixth of November fervor, then quietly returned to their studies. But their names had appeared alongside their classmates’, and these signatures became part of the long lists of the condemned.
When the sun rose, we could see through the high windows that we had reached the countryside. Then we stopped at a station that Gyula believed was Ricse. When we arrived at Dombrand, stopping just before the station, I was sure of our destination. Soldiers opened the doors and walked us to another train. Some travelers with luggage watched from the platform, hands shielding their eyes. They put us on another cattle car that was connected to a regional train with passenger cars up front. There were other prisoners there, young and old men, some with no marks on them at all. One held on to his blood saturated pant leg. I moved to a corner and watched them talk among themselves. Then the train pulled up to the station and, pulling myself up to the window, I could just make out the very clean travelers climbing into their cars.
From there we stopped often, letting travelers on and off, and when we reached Vatrina, which must have been the end of the line, the final regular passengers disembarked. The soldiers waited until the platform was empty before opening the cattle cars. There were about sixty of us in all, from three cars. An officer approached, a tall man with buzzed hair who held a black truncheon, and he told us to assemble on the edge of a field that bordered the station. Once we were collected, the officer motioned to the soldiers, who began to herd us across the field and away from town.
