He paused for a moment and then, for the benefit of those who’d never done the classics, said, “Homer’s Odyssey.”

To which someone else said, “I only hope that Penelope is behaving herself.”

The journey took two whole days and nights before, finally, we disembarked beside a wide, steel-gray river, at which point the classics scholar, whose name was Sajer, began to cross himself religiously.

“What is it?” asked Metelmann. “What’s wrong?”

“I recognize this place,” said Sajer. “I remember thanking God I’d never see it again.”

“God likes his little jokes,” I said.

“So what is this place?” demanded Metelmann.

“This is the Volga,” said Sajer. “And if I’m right, we’re not far south of Stalingrad.”

“Stalingrad.” We all repeated the name with quiet horror.

“I was one of the last to get out before the Sixth Army was encircled,” explained Sajer. “And now I’m back. What a fucking nightmare.”

From the train we marched to a larger camp that was mostly SS, although not all of them German: There were French, Belgian, and Dutch SS. But the senior German officer was a Wehrmacht colonel named Mrugowski, who welcomed us to a barrack with proper bunk beds and real mattresses, and told us that we were in Krasno-Armeesk, between Astrakhan and Stalingrad.

“Where have you come from?” he asked.

“A camp called Usman, near Voronezh,” I said.

“Ah yes,” he said. “The one with the church steeple.”

I nodded.

“This place is better,” he said. “The work is hard, but the Ivans are relatively fair. Relative to Usman, that is. Where were you captured?”

We exchanged news, and like all the other Germans at K.A., the colonel was anxious to hear something about his brother, who was a doctor with the Waffen SS, but no one could tell him anything.

It was the height of the summer on the steppe, and with little or no shade, the work—excavating a canal between the Don and the Volga rivers—was hard and hot. But for a while at least, my situation was almost tolerable. Here there were Russians working, too—saklutshonnis* convicted of a political crime that, more often than not, was hardly a crime at all, or at least none that any German—not even the Gestapo—would have recognized. And from these prisoners I began to perfect my knowledge of the Russian language.