The Storyteller Read online

  In the first, Josef is a young boy; in the second, he's a man. The quality of both photos is shoddy at best. "I can't tell. But does it really matter? I mean, if all the other stuff he's said fits?"

  "Well," Leo answers, "that depends. In 1981 the Supreme Court concluded that anyone who was a guard at a Nazi concentration camp took part in supporting the activities that occurred there--including murder, if we're talking about Auschwitz Two. The court's analysis was reminiscent of a trial in Germany years earlier in which a suspect said that if German authorities prosecuted him, they should prosecute everyone at the camp, because the camp operated as a chain of functions and everyone in that chain had to perform his function, or the whole apparatus of annihilation would have ground to a halt. So everyone from the guards to the bean counters at Auschwitz is culpable for what happened there, simply because they were aware of what was going on inside its fences, and performed their duties. Think about it like this--let's say you and your boyfriend decide to kill me in my office. The deal is that your boyfriend is going to chase me around the room with a knife while you stand outside holding the door closed so I can't escape. Both of you are going down for Murder One. It's just a division of labor about how you each participated."

  "I don't have a boyfriend," I blurt out. It turns out that it is easier to say aloud than I would have expected, and instead of feeling as if my heart has been ripped out of my chest, it seems as if I am made of helium. "I mean, I did, but things aren't . . ." I shrug. "Anyway. He won't be killing you in your office anytime soon."

  Leo blushes. "Guess that means I'll be able to sleep well tonight."

  I clear my throat. "So all we have to do is prove that Josef worked at Auschwitz," I say. "If he's confessed to that, isn't it enough?"

  "That depends on how trustworthy his confession is."

  "Why would any court think he'd lie about that?"

  "Why does anyone lie?" Leo says. "He's old. He's got mental issues. He's a masochist. Who knows? For all we know, he wasn't even there. He could have read a book and regurgitated that history to you; that doesn't mean it's his own."

  "Even though you have a file with his name on it?"

  "He's already given you one false name," Leo points out. "This could be another."

  "So how do we make sure he's really Reiner?"

  "There are two ways," Leo says. "Either he has to keep talking to you and eventually spill information that's inside this file--up-close SS information that isn't the kind of stuff you can glean from watching the History Channel 24/7. Or we need an eyewitness who remembers him from the camp." He touches the newspaper clipping and the Nazi Party registration photo. "Someone who could say that these two men are one and the same."

  I look at the loaf of brioche, no longer steaming but fragrant and warm. The jam, staining the maple table. My grandmother told me that her father used to ask her a riddle: What must you break apart in order to bring a family close together?

  Bread, of course.

  I think of this, and even though I am not religious, I pray that she will forgive me.

  "I think I know someone who can help," I say.

  "Say what you want," Damian argued. "I am only trying to keep you safe."

  I had opened the door, expecting Aleks, only to find the captain of the guard instead. I had told him I was busy, and this was true. This week, business had grown stronger. We could not produce enough baguettes to feed demand. The loaves, like my rolls, were sweeter than anything my father had ever baked. Aleks joked with me, and said he had a secret ingredient, but he would not tell me what it was. Then it would only be an ingredient, he said.

  Now, I listened to Damian as he lectured me in my kitchen. "An upior?" I said. "Those are folktales."

  "There's a reason tales get told. What else makes sense? The livestock was one thing, Ania. But this . . . this beast is going after humans."

  I had heard of them, of course. Of the undead who rose from their coffins, unsatisfied, and gorged themselves on the blood of others. An upior would eat its own flesh, if it had to.

  Old Sal, who sold baskets in the village square, was superstitious. She never walked near a black cat; she threw salt over her shoulder; she wore her clothes inside out the night of the full moon. She was the one who buzzed about this upior that was terrorizing our village, whispering every time we set up shop beside each other at market. You can spot them in a crowd, she had said. They live among us, with their ruddy cheeks and their red lips. And after their death, they complete their transformation. If that's already happened, it's too late. The only way to kill an upior is to cut off its head, or cleave open its heart. And the only way to protect yourself from one is to swallow its blood.

  I had dismissed Old Sal's stories, and now, I would dismiss Damian's. I folded my arms. "What is it you want me to do, then?"

  "It's said that you can catch an upior if you can distract it," he explained. "Once it sees a knot, it has to untie it. If there's a pile of seeds, it has to count them." Damian reached above my head, took a bag of barley grain, and dumped it on the counter.

  "And why would the upior happen to wander into my bakery?"

  "It's possible," Damian said, "that he's already here."

  It took me a moment to understand. And then, I was furious. "So because he's an outsider, he's the easy target? Because he didn't go to school with you like all your soldier friends, or because he has a different way of pronouncing words? He's not a monster, Damian. He's just different."

  "Do you really know that?" he challenged, backing me up against the wall of the brick oven. "His arrival coincided with the killings."

  "He's here all night, and at home with his brother all day. When would he even have time to do the things you claim?"

  "Are you with him, while he's working, watching him? Or are you asleep?"

  I opened my mouth. The truth was, I had been spending more and more time in the kitchen with Aleks. I told him about my father, and about Baruch Beiler. He told me about how he'd wanted to be an architect, designing buildings so tall that you became dizzy standing on the top floors. Occasionally I fell asleep curled at the table, but when I did I always awakened to find that Aleks had carried me to my bed.

  Sometimes I thought that I liked staying up late with him because I knew he'd do that.

  I started to sweep the barley up with my hands, but Damian caught my wrist. "If you are so sure, then why not leave it and see what happens?"

  I thought of Aleks, running with his brother from town to town. I thought of his hands at my throat, sewing me whole again. I met Damian's eyes. "All right," I said.

  *

  That night, I did not meet Aleks in the kitchen. I was not even there when he let himself inside. Instead, when he knocked softly on my bedroom door, I told him I was feeling ill and wanted to rest.

  But I didn't. I imagined him distracted by the barley, sorting it into piles. I imagined blood on his hands and pooling in his mouth.

  When I couldn't sleep, I lit a candle and crept down the hall to the kitchen.

  I felt the heat through the wooden door, radiant from the oven. If I stood on my toes, I could peer through a chink in the wood. I would not have a panoramic view of the kitchen, but maybe I could see Aleks working as he usually did, allaying my worst fears.

  I had a perfect view of the butcher-block table, with the bag of barley still spilled on its side.

  But the pile of grains had been organized, seed by seed, into military formation.

  The door swung open so suddenly I fell inside, landing on all fours. The candle I was carrying rolled out of its holder and skittered across the stone floor. As I reached for it, Aleks's boot stepped down, extinguishing the flame. "Spying on me?"

  I scrambled to my feet and shook my head. My gaze was drawn to the barley, in neat rows.

  "I'm a little behind in my baking," Aleks said. "I had a mess to clean up when I arrived."

  I realized that he was bleeding. A bandage was wrapped around his forearm