They were waiting for him to say something, but he took his time because he didn’t want to leave anything out. He looked at the fire; the ship’s clock chimed from the hall, the radio in the kitchen played Schumann, and after a few minutes he recalled the feeling of the red room in Nuremberg, and when he looked up at Rachel and started talking, he could almost see Speiser’s pale sick face against the red walls.

“They’d killed a kapo,” Speiser said, “and we couldn’t let it go unpunished. Yet we couldn’t make an example of them because kapos were Jews, too, and we were killing Jews as fast as we could. You see the problem.”

Bianco didn’t answer. Speiser took another cigarette.

“We walked a fine line in those camps, no one will ever understand. Our solution was to punish such crimes quietly, at night. Ten or twelve German guards would march to the barracks of the criminals, shoot them fast— we used automatic weapons—then quick, quick with the bodies into the woods and underground. That was the plan for 554, too. Quick death by shooting. Infinitely better than the gas, wouldn’t you say?”

“Infinitely,” Bianco answered.

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t always as clean as it sounded.”

Did it sound clean, Bianco wondered. To whom?

“Two of my men were pederasts and if there were young boys among the condemned . . .” Bianco laughed and Speiser looked sharply at him. “You think I’m silly to be offended by pederasty when we . . . did what we did to all of them?”

“I think you’re insane,” Bianco said.

“You don’t understand . . . to some of us the Jews were corrupt people who would defile us. To some, myself included, they were a political tool to unite a country that had existed for centuries as separate states. They might have been instrumental in uniting all Europe. . . .”

Bianco couldn’t listen to any more of that, and he turned away.

Speiser went on, “In any case, we were there to destroy them, not torture, rape, or steal from them. If there’s a blot on my people . . .”

Bianco interrupted, “Ten or twelve of your guards, including two queers, are sent to ‘execute’ thirty-­some Jews, they get to the barracks . . .”

Speiser sighed and went on with his story. “Lieutenant Klinger would tell the head of the barracks why they were there—a reading of the charges, so to speak—then . . . then . . .” Speiser blotted sweat from his upper lip. “They would shoot them,” Speiser said, “except the boys . . .”

Speiser stopped and wiped his face again.

Bianco waited. “But this time . . .” he prompted after a while.