Jacob's Oath (17 page)

She remembered that he had a brother and asked after him. Immediately she felt the
icy blast. His body stiffened. When at last he said, “He’s dead,” Sarah knew not to
ask more. She had squeezed his hand and said, “I am so sorry.” Jacob had lain rigid,
like a floorboard, staring at the ceiling. He gripped her hand so tight it hurt.

Now, lying on her side, she edged away from Jacob just a little, and pulled the blanket
with her. He stirred and she felt a tug in response. She pulled back. He did the same.
She wriggled back toward him until they both lay snug under the blanket. In his sleep
he put his hand on her thigh. She sighed and let it lie there.

FIFTEEN

Heidelberg,
May 21, 1945

Another glorious day. The sun beat down from the blue sky and trees in the cobbled
squares blossomed red and yellow and white. Their leaves rustled in the breeze.

In the shade of the thick branches, waiters set out tables and chairs, smoothed down
checkered tablecloths and sealed them in place with rubber bands on the corners, and
placed menus in thin metal holders. The occupiers ate and drank, the occupied served
and watched.

Jacob, who guided American visitors around Heidelberg Castle, collected cigarette
butts, and bartered ruthlessly, was running out of places to hide his cash. His cupboard
was beginning to tilt. He needed larger bills, but they were hard to come by.

Every lunchtime he went for tea to the Schwartzer Bock, and for the first time since
he found her on his bed four days earlier, Sarah went with him. On the way they stopped
at one of the bulletin boards covered with requests for work, announcements of events,
photos of missing people, and, his particular area of expertise, goods for barter.

“So what do you think?” Jacob said. “Anything you want?”

Sarah followed Jacob’s finger, reading as he drew it down the list of goods for barter:

A pair of men’s heavy shoes for pipe tobacco; a Siemens electric icebox for a Leica
or Contax camera; food or cigarettes for an English dictionary or cigarette lighter
of good quality; a rabbit hutch and a garden hose, both in first-class condition,
for a stud rabbit; twenty Macedonia cigarettes for a pound of sugar; twenty-five cigarettes
for a bottle of German brandy; tobacco for Russian lessons; a beautiful old china
cabinet for an evening dress, evening shoes, and some opera music scored for a soprano.

“Leicas, that’s what the Amis want,” Jacob said as they walked away. “And watches.
European, not Russian rubbish. Rings, bracelets … What did you think of when you read
that?” he asked.

“I don’t know, what? I don’t really need a Chinese cabinet. Wouldn’t mind an evening
dress.”

He sneered. “So this is what they got, the Nazis, for their thousand-year Reich. Twenty-five
cigarettes for a bottle of brandy. And how many did they kill? To swap a pair of shoes
for pipe tobacco. Look at my shoes.” He was quite proud of them, they were black and
polished. “A perfect fit. I got them for two kilos of turnips that I got for a tin
kettle that I got for twelve cigarette butts. And I got all that for three years of
law school.”

“You should look out for a stud rabbit,” Sarah said. “You could swap it for a garden
hose and what was it? A rabbit hutch? I’ve always wanted a rabbit hutch.”

“Don’t laugh. You’d be amazed what Amis would give for a rabbit hutch.”

“Yes. Two and a half cigarettes. Pall Mall.”

“Hey, you’re learning.” Jacob laughed. He almost took her hand; grazed it with his
but didn’t dare. Although they shared the same bed, they had not repeated the intimacy
of that first night. Hoppi seemed to lie between them. Jacob had even thought of sleeping
with his head at her feet, as he had slept in the camp bunks, two or sometimes three
men to a bed. And Sarah, so used to being alone, felt crowded, imposed upon, and slept
at the edge of the bed.

After that first unburdening, the relief of sharing, neither mentioned the past again.
Jacob tried to avoid it, Sarah couldn’t bear it. She knew that to dwell on such horror
would destroy her. And who knew what the future would bring? She must live for the
present, today, now, and wait. That is already a great deal. To live and wait. But
for what?

During the day each went their own way, Jacob bartering and guiding and earning money,
and Sarah wandering the streets, hoping to meet someone she knew. She had agreed with
Hoppi that they could also meet in the Church of the Holy Spirit. The Nazis burned
down the synagogue, they reasoned, but they would never destroy their own church.

That morning she had risen early and gone there, as she did two or three times a day,
after sitting on the bench by the river, and instead of Hoppi had run into Captain
Monahan of the Sixth. She had hoped to meet him again, for even though he looked like
a bull he had been so kind when she arrived. He had worried about how she would live,
and she wanted to let him know that she had found a friend and where she was staying.
She sent her love to Rabbi Bohmer. He gave her a big bar of chocolate, which she hurried
home to share with Jacob.

“Wunderbar,” Jacob had said, testing the weight in his hand. “Wonderful. I can get
loads of fruit and vegetables from the farmers for this, and I know someone who wants
to swap a woman’s silver watch for food, and there’s this American officer who is
looking for a present for his wife…”

But with a shriek of laughter that made Jacob start, Sarah snatched it back and tore
the wrapping paper and popped a piece of chocolate into her mouth and broke off another
piece and waved it at Jacob’s mouth.

“No, no, oh, what are you doing? It’s worth more in its original wrapping…”

“Ummm, ummm, so smooth, so sweet…”

“Stop, stop…” He tried to grab the bar but Sarah twirled around and threw herself
onto the bed, hugging the chocolate to her chest, smacking her lips and rolling her
eyes.

“Yummy, yummy, too late now … ummmm, uhmmm…” She put another piece into her mouth
and sucked and chewed, and then another until a chocolatey goo dribbled from between
her busy lips.

Jacob threw his hands up in despair. Um Gottes Willen! For God’s sake. “Imagine where
we’d be if I smoked my cigarettes!”

Moments later there was a loud moan from Sarah, who clutched her stomach and bent
over the sink, groaning and crying. “Ow, I feel sick. I feel so sick. Help me.”

Ignoring her, Jacob patted the bedclothes for the chocolate, hoping to rescue some.
Even a half-eaten bar of Ami chocolate would get a kilo or two of tomatoes.

An hour later, as they approached Jacob’s lookout post, Sarah was saying, “I can’t
believe it, I was throwing up, in agony, and you were looking for the chocolate to
sell it.”

“What do you mean? You were pretending, you weren’t even sick.”

“But you didn’t know that. What if I was really sick, you’d just take my clothes and
sell them, right?”

“Right off your back. They’re pretty good clothes.”

They passed a group of boys running in the streets, tugging at each other’s jackets,
shouting and laughing. Jacob stopped to gaze after them and Sarah waited at his side.
He was looking for rather too long. She said, “A penny for your thoughts.”

He shrugged. “You don’t want to know.”

“Of course I do, or I wouldn’t ask. What were you thinking?”

Jacob snorted. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking of how to kill them.”

“What?”

“Well, you asked. I was thinking of how to kill them. How would I actually do it?”

“Are you crazy? Why would you think that? That’s horrid.”

“I don’t know. It just came to me.”

“I could never think like that,” Sarah said. “Not even after everything that happened.
They’re just children. Jacob, that’s horrible.”

Jacob turned and said, “Here’s my café.”

At his side, Sarah said, “Mind you, I couldn’t hug them either.”

After ordering a sandwich and tea for both of them, Jacob excused himself, and entered
the nearby hotel. Ten minutes later, just as the food arrived, he returned. “Good
timing,” he said, sitting down and pouring the tea.

“Where were you?”

“In that hotel.”

“I could see that. I mean, what took you so long? What were you doing?”

Jacob wanted to tell her. But he didn’t know how. She’d never understand.

In the camp life was simple. Yes, it was mindless, the beatings, the torture, the
terror, the killing, the starvation, the sadism, all insane. Yet life could not have
been clearer, it was reduced to its essence: surviving until the next morning, like
a common housefly. We hardly saw or heard, we were automatons, fluttering flames that
at any instant could be snuffed out by the slightest wave of the guard’s hand. The
immensity of our world could not be grasped. The scale of the evil was incomprehensible.
Everything was insane. And so it made perfect sense.

The only thing worse than what he had lived through was people not believing him.
When he had begun to tell people on the road a bit of where he had come from and what
had happened there they had all looked at him in disbelief, as if he was crazy. It
was like being violated again. And so he couldn’t tell Sarah. Not yet. Not all of
it. But some. He had to say something, to someone.

“There isn’t much cheese in this sandwich,” Jacob said, opening it and closing it,
and before Sarah could answer he said, looking down, “There’s something I haven’t
told you. Maxie, my little brother, the way he died. A prison guard killed him.” He
swallowed. “In front of me.”

Sarah put her cup down, she didn’t move.

“I looked after him for as long as I could, he wasn’t very strong, Maxie. He fell
sick all the time, and we always had to hide him, whenever they made us all stand
to attention outside, for hours on end, in the rain, in the sun, all night sometimes,
we always hid Maxie in the hut. There was a pile of wood by the stove, which never
worked by the way, and even the kapo liked Maxie too, everyone did, he didn’t rat
him out. We built a frame and stacked the wood on top and he lay inside. As long as
I could, I looked after him. Maybe you knew, he was always sick as a child. Asthma.
Couldn’t breathe.”

Jacob chewed on his sandwich. Long after he had swallowed the last piece his jaws
were still tensing.

Sarah laid her hand on his. He sighed and looked away, and shrugged as if to say,
what can you do?

Sarah knew that look. How often had she felt the same? And if she told him what that
beast of a Russian had done to her in the basement? Should she? What would he say?
What difference would it make? But all she heard herself say, after a long pause,
was “And what happened?”

Their eyes met, until Jacob looked away. “What happened was I couldn’t look after
him anymore. There was one guard, he had it in for Maxie. Made him stand barefoot
in the snow all night, always made him carry the heaviest load, whipped his legs when
he couldn’t stand up, he’d take food from Maxie’s plate and throw it into the earth
and stamp on it. And can you imagine, when he’d gone, we’d give each other bloody
noses for that dirty scrap.”

If it hadn’t been for Isak, Sarah thought, he would have raped me again, and not only
him. He’d wanted to bring more men, that’s why he’d brought Isak. What had made her
cry out the Hebrew prayer? Shema Yisrael, Adenoi Elohenu, Adenoi Echad—Hear, O Israel,
the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Those were all the words she knew. They saved her.

“Do you ever pray?” she asked Jacob.

He laughed. “Yes, that he’ll come home.”

“What? Who?”

Jacob shook his head. He shouldn’t have said that. “Nothing.”

He thought, See? I came home. Sarah came home.

Everyone comes home in the end. Unless they’re dead. Or if there’s no home. Or if
it isn’t the end.

SIXTEEN

Heidelberg,
May 21, 1945

It was dark when they came home and Jacob read the sheet of paper slipped under the
door. “It’s for you,” he said. They were tired and Sarah’s legs ached from their long
walk.

After leaving their table, which Jacob now called Lookout Point, Sarah had gone with
him to the bus station, where he wanted to sell his pocketful of butts from the castle.
They were mostly Pall Mall, Americans loved them and they were the longest. But when
they reached the big square that was once Bismarck Square and recently Adolf Hitler
Square and was now unclaimed, they saw a tram.

“Hey, it’s working again,” Jacob said. There seemed to be more people hanging on the
outside than sitting inside. “I wonder where it goes.”

As luck would have it, the first tram to run in Heidelberg after the war stopped half
a kilometer short of Leimersdorf, near Sarah’s home.

Jacob elbowed his way up and stood on the back fender. He pulled up Sarah, who wedged
one foot next to his, and hung on to his arm while he held on to the roof’s metal
lip. She pressed his biceps and mimed: I’m impressed. People crammed against them
from both sides. After five minutes they had gone three blocks. “It would have been
quicker to walk,” Jacob said. The tram took about twenty minutes to cover the five
kilometers. Half that time Jacob spent persuading Sarah this was a good idea.

How many times, hiding in a cellar or cooped up in a room for days on end, terrified
to show her face, had she daydreamed of going home? Where she had swung from a rope
in the trees and helped tend the vegetables and collected the eggs? Their little cottage
meant family and freedom, the two things she most missed, most wanted, most treasured.
Yet what would she find? Who had stolen their home? Why go? They hate us there.

But Jacob’s right. How can I come to Heidelberg and not go home?

The tram stopped when the track ended at a bomb crater.

They walked the last stretch where the brick homes became fewer, the gardens bigger,
and the fields closer to the road. A chicken strutted regally before them, as if looking
for the red carpet, followed by a chick struggling to keep up.