Jacob's Oath (2 page)

Inmates—Jews, Gypsies, politicals—huddled at the barbed wire in silence, staring into
the inferno. Jacob thought: What’s on their minds? Those stinking, fetid, typhus-diseased
bunks we shared, two or three in each, head to toe, in the freezing, leaky huts, where
we clung to life and fought over scraps of food, those of us who didn’t give up and
die. Still. It had been home. All we had. A broken brush. A matchbox with a cube of
sugar. Two cubes and you were rich. A filthy rag for a pillow. And now, all going
up in smoke. Well, better than going up in smoke yourself.

Or was it? Jacob shivered. He put his hand on Benno’s shoulder. He’d only known him
a few days. Benno had been transferred to Bergen-Belsen a week before liberation with
a small group of prisoners who seemed in good health. The Germans had caught them
in the south only a month earlier. They were Zionists. Benno had made that pretty
clear: He was recruiting for Palestine.

“There is something for me,” Jacob said. “Listen, thanks for your concern but I’m
going home. Now. Or it’ll be too late. There’s someone I must find.”

“Don’t you get it? There’s no one left. After what you’ve been through in the camp,
torture, murders, you want to stay in Germany? How could you? After what they’ve done
to us? How could anyone want to stay in this hellhole?”

Jacob took his hand from Benno’s shoulder and stared into his eyes. “You don’t get
it. There is someone. I know it. And I promised. Afterwards? Who knows where I’ll
end up? But first, I’m going home. I swore an oath.”

THREE

Berlin,
April 29, 1945

Sarah sensed it first in her bare feet, the faintest quivering of the ground. She
looked up and cocked her head, her right hand rising to pull her shirt tight at the
throat. Her left hand held a squashed tin bucket. She had been about to leave her
shelter to see if the water pump on Dorfstrasse was working. It had been dry for two
days.

The tremor grew and her body trembled with it. That’s strange, she thought, observing
her own body. Is it the ground moving? Is it the cold?

Fear?

It sounded like a cat’s purr.

It became louder. The cracked window-frame rattled and cement flakes shook loose and
fluttered to the floor. Larger bits dislodged and fell with a thud. The rumble became
a growl and then a continuous roar and the basement walls shook so much Sarah cowered
in a corner in case more of the ceiling crashed down on her. Her shelter was already
a pile of rubble from the bombs. She had built four low walls from loose bricks and
smashed wooden rafters and for two weeks had slept and hidden in the dusty space between
them. A sheet of tin on top kept in some warmth.

The mirror fell to the floor, shattering into a dozen shards.

Sarah flinched as it fell and thought, Seven years bad luck. But: How much worse can
it get?

She looked at the trembling door-frame and knew it could get much worse, quickly.
She understood now what it was.

It was the rumble of tanks and armored cars. The Germans pulling out or the Russians
moving in. Either way, thousands of marching men. She knew, If they’re German, they’ll
kill me, if they’re Russian, they’ll rape me. She had to stay hidden. She was safe
underground. But for how long?

Sarah looked down at the empty bucket and her tongue flickered across her dry lips.
Not a drop of water had passed them for two days.

By afternoon it was clear. She could hear loud voices with those strangled long vowels
and hissing sounds, the shouted orders, the revving of engines, the dragging of equipment
outside, and from upstairs, barely, the hushed voices and fearful tiptoeing of Herr
and Frau Eberhardt.

Sarah thought, I should feel happy. The Russians are here, which means the war must
be over, or will be soon. And she did feel a kind of relief that washed through her
body and made her blood feel heavy. It weighed her down. So tired! Now what? Still
she did not emerge from her hiding place.

Sarah lay behind her low wall of debris, dusty, thirsty, exhausted, too scared to
move, every nerve on edge. Looking at the door, listening to the street, she was thinking
of Hoppi, and the little one, who she had never had the joy of knowing. How hard it
had been. And all she had done to survive. That had led her here, to now. Sarah closed
her eyes and flopped against the wall, legs straight out, her head to one side, arms
hanging to the floor. I’ll get up in a moment, she thought. Go outside and ask for
water. Hope they don’t rape me. Maybe it’s safer in a crowd after all, they won’t
touch me there. It’s more dangerous here, if someone finds me alone. Yes, it’s safer
outside.

Sarah made to move, but couldn’t. A few moments more, she thought, close your eyes,
think of Hoppi. Her lips moved with her thoughts. She was used to talking to herself.

Their first year or two on the run hadn’t been too bad, thanks to their friends. Gunther.
Sasha. Elinora. The old lady who they hadn’t even known, who had just offered, what
was her name, with white hair? Can’t remember. Peter and his wife. The ones who listened
to the BBC on the wireless. They’d all risked their lives to help her and Hoppi, given
them shelter.

In the early days they could even take off the yellow star, walk across town, go to
a café. It was strange, it didn’t weigh anything, that little bit of yellow cloth,
but they both felt lighter without it. They didn’t have ration cards, so their hosts
shared their food and helped them find ways to earn money. They had risked their lives
for two terrified Jews. There were enough good Germans, in the beginning at least.
They went from safe house to safe house, leaving each before Nazi neighbors could
become suspicious; a week here, if they were lucky a month there. Not that it was
easy. Creeping in their apartments like mice, using the toilet only when their friends
did, never running water from the tap, always terrified of the nosy concierge, of
a rap on the door at four in the morning. Still. A little smile of thanks played on
Sarah’s lips. She licked them with her dry tongue. She’d have to get up in a minute
though, find some water.

“U-boats.” Submarines. That’s what we are, she was thinking, as she lay in the dust,
there were thousands of us. Once. Jews, submerged. Living underground, out of sight.
Others, too: Gypsies, Communists. So-called enemies of the Reich, a subterranean subculture,
hunted by the Gestapo, with no papers, no homes, where one false step, one miscalculation,
one nasty neighbor, meant torture and death. It was worst in the winter, it was so
cold. By day they rode the subway, the S-bahn or U-bahn, changing all the time so
that inspectors wouldn’t notice them and ask for their ID cards, which had J for Jew
stamped on them. By night they slept in the station toilets, locking the door, and
had to wake early to leave before the cleaners came. In the summer it wasn’t so bad.
They could sleep under bushes in the woods or the parks.

Hoppi, remember in the Tierpark? Jews weren’t allowed but we sat on a bench without
our yellow stars. And then we walked along the flower bed and your shoelace was untied
and you kept treading on it and tripping up but you didn’t dare stop and bend down
to tie it up in case people looked at us. And then, remember the new rule that the
warden had to take the names of everybody in the bomb shelters, that was in Holzstrasse,
with Peter and his wife, remember?

So during the air raids we had to stay in the apartment, and we prayed. Oh, and remember
that time we made love during the raid. Oh, it was so beautiful. As if it were our
last time. We were mad. But what else was there to do? We could have been dead at
any moment. And I know that was the time. As you finished, oh how you shouted in my
ear, I said quiet! they’ll hear us. And you said, Don’t worry, there are too many
bombs. We were on the floor, under the bed, I said to you, right then and there, We
just made a baby.

Our baby. Tears rolled down Sarah’s cheeks. Oh, our baby. So long ago, so very long
ago. Hoppi, we were so young then, you and I.

I was twenty-three and I loved you so.

Sarah talked to Hoppi every day. Could he hear? Who was she to say no?

She heard footsteps above. The lighter ones of Frau Eberhardt, who was the only neighbor
to ever ask how she was; the heavier, more plodding steps of her older, frail husband.
They aren’t so scared anymore, she thought. They’ve stopped tiptoeing. With so much
of the ceiling missing, Sarah could make out their tiniest movement. She hoped they
wouldn’t fall through the floor. Sarah wondered: Did they hang white flags? The Russians
are right outside. Will they come in? They’ll have to. They’ll check the buildings
for fighters, for guns.

But she was too tired to move. She had survived. But what for? What’s left? Who’s
left?

It had been Hoppi’s idea. Right after the transport of … when? November? Was it 1941?
It had been cold and raining; when they still had their papers and lived in their
apartment on Flemsburgergasse. She’d been sewing uniforms at the tailor’s. The Gestapo
and police had knocked on all the doors to give notice to the Jews: “You and your
family are to report at eight a.m. Thursday to the Grunewald train station to go on
labor assignment to the east.”

Permitted to take one small bag of clothes and ten marks.

Hoppi was so smart. They hid in the basement and as soon as the transport was over
they came out of hiding and walked to the lake, the Grosser Wannsee, left a neat pile
of clothes with a suicide note, and called the police, pretending to be shocked walkers
out for a stroll. The police opened a file at the Kriminalpolizei, who hated the Gestapo,
and sure enough, no questions, no search, the police simply wrote a report that two
corpses had been found and buried. Josef Farber, Jewish male, aged 27, of Haspelgasse
12. Sarah Kaufman, Jewish female, aged 22, of Schlosstrasse 97. File opened and closed:
Deceased. Suicide. The Gestapo stopped looking for them, and that’s when they became
submarines.

But it didn’t last long. Oh, Hoppi. Why did you go out that day? Wilhelm, yes that
was who, Wilhelm Gruber. He saw it, he was hiding in a doorway. He told me. You ran,
you fought, they beat you, and that was it. Once they have you, nobody gets away.

Three years. Alone. It was almost a blessing to lose the baby. To be honest. What
would I have done with a baby? Scurry through the streets at night with my yellow
star and a bundle of tiny arms and legs? We’d both be dead. Sarah’s tears had stopped,
and her body stiffened. And what life would he have had? Or was it a she? What life?

For years she had choked at the thought, wept as she still felt the kick of her baby,
as one feels a lost limb.

Eyes closed, almost asleep now, Sarah went back to that place, the worst of all, when
she wanted to die, when her baby had dropped, alone in the cemetery, where she had
been living, she was doubled up in pain and anguish, unable to cry or make a sound
because of the curfew for Jews. There was blood and pain and mess and above all, pure
terror. Terror at what was happening to her body, terror that someone would pass by,
terror at what would happen if she was caught.

Sarah froze. Each nerve screamed. She heard the scrape of material brushing against
the door-frame, the crunch of a heavy foot settling on plaster, crackling as if treading
on paper, followed by another. Even the air moved. Or was that her imagination?

Someone is coming.

Someone is here.

Sarah tried to dissolve into the ground. Could he hear the thud in her chest? Her
wall, maybe a meter high, separated her from the door of the basement room. She heard
another crunch, lighter, like biting into a cookie, as a man shifted the weight of
his feet. Her hair stood on end.

One strange word, softly spoken, an inquiring kind of sound, came from the doorway.
Russian.

A soldier. She must not surprise him. He may be scared too. He may shoot. Sarah forced
out a little sound, a weak baby sound, a whimper of fear, high-pitched, as nonthreatening
as possible. There was an answering word in Russian, and another, louder, it pierced
the little room, and Sarah whimpered a little more. Slowly she raised a hand so that
he could see it, her little hand, and she whimpered again. She raised her head, bit
by bit, and looked at the door.

All she could see was dim light glinting on metal, long and sharp. A bayonet poked
into the room. Behind it, a barrel and then a hand as the soldier leaned forward,
followed now by his nose and his hair and his face. His cap perched to the side, covering
curly blond hair, he was just a boy. She whimpered again, and now the soldier was
standing above her as she sat up by the wall of debris.

She looked at him and their eyes met. He stared at her, his mouth opening. He glanced
around, taking in the room. It wasn’t really a room, just some kind of abandoned storage
space with a partially collapsed ceiling. It was tiny and dim, barely lit by daylight
through a small grill at street level. His gaze settled on Sarah.

What did he see? A young woman with gray smudges of dirt on her face, and arms covered
in dust like camouflage. From beneath a faded kerchief, her brown hair fell in knotted
curls, with white plaster flakes clinging to them, as if trying to age her, to conceal
her beauty. Wearing a ripped heavy wool dress, a man’s brown shirt, and a torn, stained
jacket. Hands pulling her shirt closed at the neck, her eyes wide with fear.

He saw it all but all he noticed was a young woman with bare legs.

He looked around, keeping his gun on Sarah as he turned.

And they were alone.

Sarah pointed to her mouth, touched her lower lip with her right index finger. With
her baby voice, her cowering voice, her nonthreatening voice, she said, “Wasser? Bitte.
Haben Sie ’was zum trinken? Ich hab’ ein solcher Durst. Bitte. Wasser?”

He lowered his rifle. Looked around again as if he couldn’t believe his luck. He smiled
shyly. She almost smiled back. He can’t be more than sixteen. “Please. Water?”