Summary

Prologue. A story is related from one man to another about a childhood memory of someone trying to reach a belt in the mud while locked in the cattle car of a train.

Chapter 1. The man arrives late to an airport in Poland. He takes a cab to Crakow, but learns that he has arrived in the wrong place and missed the train to Auschwitz I. The man goes to a café where he meets a young couple, Mirek and Wanda. Mirek and Wanda take him on a tour of the city, unaware that he knows a great deal about the place. They convince him to buy a piece of amber for a woman who does not exist back home. The man tells them some things he knows about the history of Jews in the city. The couple offers him a ride to...