I could hear my voice trembling. There were so many single men here, especially among the most recent arrivals. Damaged men. Thick-Neck, I thought suddenly. Men like him. And little Lou. Her lack of shyness, the underpants she just pulled off without thinking about who could see.

“Who did you get that from?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Have you had it long? How long have you had it?”

“I don’t remember, Daddy.”

“I told you not to accept things from people you don’t know. You can never know what they want, I told you that. You mustn’t believe what people say.”

I had a lot more on my mind. I wanted to reprimand her. Because she was so naïve, she trusted anyone. I wanted to shake her until she told me who had given her the food. Who wanted something with her, who wanted something from her. Because nobody gave anything away without wanting something in return. Especially not here. Not now. But she interrupted me.

“But nobody gave it to me.”

And then suddenly I understood. “You . . . you took it?”

“No, I didn’t. No.”

“You took it from somebody.” I was unable to say stole.

“Daddy . . .”

And I didn’t need to hear her say it, because her entire little body communicated it. Her face was bright red. The tears pressed forward between her eyelashes, trickled rapidly down her cheeks. A child’s huge, guilty tears, hard to resist.

I tried to strengthen my resolve.

“Who did you take it from? Who is it that won’t have any dinner today because of you?”

“But there’s tons of them,” she stammered. “In a gigantic room. There are a lot of cans there. You should have seen it, Daddy. Many, many cans. And I just took one single can.”

A storeroom. The camp’s storeroom—all there was left, now that the supplies were no longer being delivered. And she had stolen it from there. We could be thrown out for something like that.

Suddenly I felt cold.

“Weren’t there any security guards?”

She answered quickly, no longer trying to hide anything. “I got in from the back. Under the canvas. It was just big enough.”

That slender body. She could wriggle her way in anywhere.

“Did anybody see you?”

She shook her head. “Nobody. For sure.”

My child stole. How had she learned that? Why?

Everything I should have said. Ought to have said. I ought to have said something that would have ensured that this didn’t happen and wouldn’t happen again. But I was too hungry.

“Don’t do that again,” was all I managed to get out.

Then I took a can opener out of my bag.

It scraped against the metal.

We used our fingers like tweezers, the index and middle finger, picking one piece of corn at a time out of the can. Taking turns.