Free The Thief of Auschwitz by Jon Clinch Page B

boy who’s big and strong enough but a boy all the same. He can’t get Jacob’s attention but he gets the boy’s. He winks at him and jerks his head. The boy speaks to Jacob and Jacob looks over toward the junkman and the junkman does it all over again. Standing there pretending to work, going slow, dribbling coal onto the dirt and over his shoes and into his pockets.
    Jacob looks away but the boy looks back. He says something to Jacob again, and Jacob shakes his head. The boy begins to stand but Jacob puts a hand on his knee. His touch doesn’t stop the boy. He rises and slaps dust from his trousers—long, comical trousers doubled over at the cuffs and doubled over again—and then he approaches the wagon.
    “I’ve got a message for Rosen,” says the junkman.
    “I’m Rosen,” says the boy.
    “Good for you,” says the junkman. “But this is for the other Rosen.”
    “You mean my father.”
    The junkman almost stops shoveling, but not quite. One of the guards has turned his attention their way, so he keeps his eyes down and his hands busy.
    “I’ll go get him,” says Max.
    “No no no no no no,” The junkman doesn’t look up. “Not so fast. The guards.”
    By the way he’s speaking not to him but to the ground, Max gets the picture. Slowly, slowly, hardly moving at all, he takes a half step away and leans his back against the green tarpaper wall of the block as if he isn’t here to talk to the junkman at all. After a minute the guard has turned his attention elsewhere.
    The junkman goes on. “You Max?”
    “I am.”
    “Max Rosen?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Son of Jacob and Eidel Rosen?”
    Max steadies himself. “What do you know about my mother?”
    “I know she thinks you’re dead is what I know.” More coal goes onto the ground and he stoops to pick it up, slipping a few grams into his pocket along the way. “I take it Lydia would be your sister, then?”
    That’s enough. Max can’t contain himself. He springs away from the wall and leans in toward the junkman, avid. “She is.”
    “Watch yourself. The guards.”
    But the guards haven’t taken note.
    “What do you know about Lydia?”
    The junkman makes as if to wring his own neck. “Sorry, pal.” The look on his face would suggest that he’s sincere. It doesn’t last, though, because the capo has materialized in the doorway. He stands on the top step surveying the yard and sniffing the air, on his way to see about rations. “Oops,” says the junkman. “Slazak.”
    Poor Max is so overwhelmed with thoughts of his mother and his sister that he can hardly understand. Slazak. It’s the name of some demon conjured from another realm, a word that suggests something not entirely real, and he can’t quite grasp its meaning. He can’t quite grasp anything. He has been raised up and stricken down all at once, brought low in a way that all of the ditch-digging and starvation he’s endured have been unable to accomplish.
    “Slazak,” hisses the junkman again.
    Max falls back against the wall, leaning there like lumber, and the junkman finishes his work. Max hardly breathes. He closes his eyes and keeps them closed for a minute and then opens them again as if he expects the world to have changed in the meantime. To have gone back to the way it was before the junkman arrived. But it hasn’t. The junkman throws his shovel in the wagon and raises the gate. He drags a chain across it and the clanking of the chain gets Max’s attention the way a ghostly visitation might. “Tell your old man,” he says to the boy.
    Nothing. Slazak clomps down the steps and stalks toward the kitchen.
    The junkman climbs back into the wagon. “Tell him she wants to know what they’re going to do without you and your sister. And tell him I owe her a message back. He can give it to me next time.”
    Nothing from Max.
    “Don’t forget.”
    He won’t.
     
    *
     
    “How shall we go on without Lydia and Max?”
    It was a