Jacob's Oath (7 page)

The man snorted. “Who told you? Manny the comedian? Rolls-Royce or Cadillac?”

“A bike?”

“Not even. I can give you another sandwich.”

Jacob was too tired to be disappointed. He nodded and hunched forward, munching quietly,
looking at his feet, and at the legs of the chair. He thought, When did I last sit
on a chair? Or eat a cheese sandwich? Or drink water from a glass? I’m like a newborn
baby, everything is new.

As for news of family, friends, neighbors, any confirmation that he was not alone
in the world, this too he was denied.

“I’m sorry,” the man said. “It’s too soon, I suppose, maybe more will come back. I
can find you a place to sleep here in Frankfurt if you like, I’m afraid there’s nothing
else I can do. At least you can rest. We’re all staying in the hospital for the time
being.”

“Thank you. But I must get to Heidelberg.” He took four more sandwiches and put them
in his pockets.

He left the building and headed west, counting the steps, as he always did, each step
seventy-five centimeters. Each day he knew exactly his progress. Thirteen hundred
and thirty-three steps per kilometer. Eighteen hundred and ninety-eight steps later,
almost one and a half kilometers, he reached the river and turned south.

Gray light from the gathering clouds flashed on the dark flowing waters of the Rhine,
whose lush green banks exploded with white and purple magnolias and red and crimson
azaleas. Steep vineyards that cascaded to the water’s edge were heavy with grapes.
Spring was bursting forth in an explosion of color and light along one of Europe’s
mightiest rivers.

For all he saw of it, Jacob might as well have been in a box.

What he did see was people like himself, in rags, trudging alone or in groups, pulling
and pushing all they had in the world. And Americans. Jeeps, trailers, tanks, armored
personnel carriers, field guns, and truck after truck carrying doughboys and equipment
of the 10th Armored Division. Sometimes they forced him off the road, or he had to
wait until soldiers at roadblocks allowed him to continue, but mostly he plodded on,
head down, counting his steps, heedless of the river and its beauty, feeling he could
walk forever but wondering what was the point.

The closer he got to Heidelberg, the grimmer his thoughts. The total destruction he
had seen in Hanover and Frankfurt, Kassel, and the dozens of burned, gutted villages
at crossroads or bridges warned him over and over: Don’t be surprised. There’s nothing
left in Heidelberg. What is there to celebrate?

What caused most pain was that he was glad. Or at least, he thought he was. He wasn’t
sure. He didn’t know what to think. That town that had spat out his family and their
friends, led them to their slaughter, what right did the people there have to live?
He hoped they were bombed to bits. Yet what right did he have to live either? Why
hadn’t he died along with Maxie and everyone else? Anyway, he was dying inside.

As he walked, Maxie came to him, a blurred face behind his eyes, beckoning him. Teasing.
His image was hazy but his voice was clear. “I told you so,” Maxie was saying, in
his deep voice so at odds with his slight body. “You promised you’d look after me …
you promised…” Names repeated themselves in his head, like a loop, a tightening noose:
Gurs. Auschwitz. Maydanek. Belsen. All he knew was the names that had blotted out
the souls of his family. “Told you…” Maxie had the sweetest face, if you ignored the
bruising around the eyes and the open wound on the forehead that never healed but
became infested with crawling white things that Jacob pulled out one by one in the
narrow hut they shared with a hundred others. Maxie never complained. He didn’t dare.
One sign of weakness and he could be killed. Auschwitz. Dachau. Maxie again; now he’s
crying. Sobbing. “I told you…”

They hadn’t played together much at home—Jacob was three years older, they had different
friends—but when Maxie was bullied at school, he came to Jacob. Not that Jacob could
protect him from the braying packs of Hitlerjugend, but at least he could explain
to Maxie what Jewish was and why this label, which at home was most commonly used
to describe their favorite soup, had suddenly turned them into some kind of Untermensch
to be taunted and beaten. Together they could curse the other kids and laugh at their
pathetic little swastika armbands, but they couldn’t fight back. He’d always promised
Maxie one day he’d beat up the Nazi bastards, but instead the bullying got worse,
much worse. As Jacob trudged south, counting the steps, he heard Maxie’s voice trailing
off into a warning whistle: “I told you sssssooo…”

That bastard Hans Seeler. Where is he now?

After seeing him leave the Human Laundry, Jacob had searched the camp for days, but
among thirty thousand people, with the number growing daily as more refugees came
seeking food and shelter, he had lost him.

The sign showed seven kilometers to Mannheim. Seventy-five centimeters a step. That
is … nine thousand, three hundred and thirty-three steps to go. Head down, one at
a time, one after the other. From Mannheim, a left turn into the Neckar Valley and
follow the Neckar along the natural terraces of the Odenwald Hills. To Heidelberg
Castle and the old town and home. What was left of it.

After two days’ walking, and a damp night in a rotting tool shed, he approached Mannheim
just as church bells rang out their once-comforting message of welcome; it was six
o’clock in the evening. He looked around but could see no steeple. It was a distant,
clanging sound, like rocks hitting a tin can. The church must be far away, but with
no buildings standing to block the sound, it carried far and wide. The chimes mocked
the ruins and the suffering.

Just as Jacob found a burned door-frame and lowered himself to sit down, an old bent
man pulled the timber from under him and loaded it onto his cart. At Jacob’s protest,
the man offered him a lift into town. His cart was pulled by the oldest, boniest,
and weakest horse Jacob had ever seen. “Your nag,” he told the old peasant carrying
timber to barter as firewood in the market square, “looks like how I feel.”

It was only at daybreak, after an exhausted sleep inside a bombed-out building, that
Jacob took in the extent of the damage. If anything, Mannheim’s city center was worse
than in Frankfurt. Here, too, glassy-eyed Germans picked their way across the debris,
searched for wood to burn and water to drink. Here, too, was the piercing stink of
bodies and excrement, vegetal and dank.

Jacob filled his canteen at an American water truck outside the destroyed city hall.
He went straight to the front of the line, and when a German with a mustache and muttonchop
sideburns told him to get to the back he told him to lick his ass. That made him feel
good.

Jacob took off his left shoe. It looked fine when I got it at Harrods, he thought.
Especially for dancing. He’d wanted the pair, but couldn’t find the other one in the
pile. He massaged his heel and pulled up his foot and blew on the blister under his
big toe. But for walking three hundred kilometers plus a train ride? He sniffed. What
a fool. Lucky he didn’t find the second one, at least his right foot is okay with
the hiking boot.

Nineteen kilometers left to Heidelberg. As he walked, he counted and calculated. Twenty-five
thousand, three hundred and thirty-three steps. One second per step. Three thousand,
six hundred steps per hour. Seven hours and three minutes.

The G.I.s wouldn’t let him walk on the Autobahn, so he had to use the narrow side
roads. Even they were clogged with military traffic, horse-driven carts, and people
like him, trudging this way and that.

As he reached the Neckar and caught a boat ride to the northern bank to avoid a total
halt in traffic, his thoughts turned to home. He knew nobody was alive. He’d heard
about Auschwitz, he knew about Bergen-Belsen, and he knew he was alive only because
he’d been kept in the Sternlager to be swapped for German prisoners of war. Even there,
with their extra rations and less work, most had died of exhaustion, illness, and
starvation. In the real camp he’d have had no chance to survive so long. Still, where
there’s life, there’s hope. Maybe someone is alive. He’ll soon find out. His pace
quickened as he thought of Papi, yet when he thought of Maxie, he had to stop. They
had been so close in the camp. Looked after each other. He’d washed the wound in Maxie’s
head for weeks, and Maxie would smile at him the whole time he held his head and swabbed
the sore.

As he thought of Maxie, he stared at the river, logs and branches floating gently
by, birds crowing and swooping, an American tug pulling a giant raft piled high with
machinery.

Jacob’s lips turned into a sneer as he thought: Hans Seeler, you pig, your time will
come.

After walking a couple of kilometers, Jacob began to look at himself as others might
see him. I can’t go home like this, he thought.

He sniggered. His shoes! He sniffed his armpit. Ugh. He’d been walking for ages, his
clothes were filthy and his trousers were torn at both knees and the seat. All he
carried was his British army water canteen. I’ve got to get some clothes, he thought.

Maybe Maxie was in heaven after all, putting in a good word for his older brother.
For at that moment, just past a hamlet, he saw a clothesline crowded with fluttering
men’s clothes. It was behind a hedge at the bottom of the garden of a solitary small
house. He looked around: nobody. So what if I take some clothes? Is it thievery if
you steal from a thief? They owe me. They must have many more.

Looking around, he squirmed through a break in the hedge, hid behind a tree for a
moment, checked the garden really was clear, and walked straight to the line. His
hands fell and rose with the speed of a woodpecker as he grabbed what he wanted. He
couldn’t help grinning as he pushed through the same hole in the hedge and almost
ran, gripping a bundle of clothes.

A good haul, he thought, all I need. It looked about the right fit, too. He’d stolen …
well, requisitioned … a pair of trousers, three shirts, underpants, a pair of socks,
and two handkerchiefs. All he needed now was a jacket, and he’d keep his eyes open
for one.

It was already turning hot and the sky was pristine blue. He guessed the time to be
close to nine o’clock. The path along the river was pleasant, apart from the glare
of walking into the sun. As much as possible he kept in the shade of trees that lined
the road. Soon the trees merged into thick bushes that reached the water. I can’t
put on my nice clean clothes smelling like this, Jacob thought. Again, he looked around
and decided not to hesitate. He was a free man, right? Who knew for how long? Enjoy
it.

Without a further thought, hidden by the bushes, Jacob peeled off his odd shoes, his
torn trousers and jacket, his sweaty stained shirt, his smelly underpants and socks
and, shivering with the fresh breeze on his naked body, stepped carefully into the
river. Gasping as the cold reached his crotch, he threw his arms forward and dived.
Within moments he was floating on his back, swimming a few strokes, diving, popping
up and brushing his hair from his eyes. Free as a fish, he thought, shooting a jet
of water through the gap in his front teeth.

Jacob floated on his back, warmed by the sun, a smile on his lips. Even the sudden
intrusion of snow, standing naked in the icy winter, blue and trembling so hard his
bones ached, even the snap of the whip couldn’t remove his smile. I survived. He drifted
for minutes with the river until he turned and swam back, grateful that he remembered
how. Stepping through the algae at the water’s edge, with the mud sucking at his heels
and squishing between his toes, he picked his way over the sharp roots of the tall
rushes and lay down in the grass. He watched a family of startled ducks waddle in
a row to the water. The grass was sharp and hard and scratched his back but he didn’t
care. He threw open his arms and spread his legs and felt the warmth envelop him and
the river breeze dry those private places.

Relief swept through his veins: Yes. It’s really over! He listened to the singing
of birds settling in the nearby bush and to the little blue-chested ones that trilled
and warbled back. Jacob heard himself shout to them all: I made it! I’m free too!

So what?

He felt a tightness, a band around his lungs, a noose closing. It was the memory of
his promise that now he must keep. His stomach clenched at the thought.

As quickly as it came he shrugged it off and jumped up with his arms out to embrace
the sun, which brought back the smile. He examined his sinewy arms; and his legs,
which seemed to be adding some muscle; his hairy white belly and the shrunken prune
below. Hello again, old friend, he thought.

Washed, dried, in clean clothes that were only slightly too large, Jacob set off again
along the Neckar, which now looked to him more beautiful than ever, more inviting
even than when he had pushed in Karl Wagner on his birthday, an existence ago before
Karl donned the swastika.

I could do with some new shoes, too, he thought. Can’t go home in odd shoes.

But a mile on, at the narrowest point where the hills are closest to the river, two
massive American tank transporters were parked parallel to each other blocking the
road. A growing mass of carts, people, and livestock waited in silence. It had been
closed since the day before. Nobody knew why it was closed, or when it would reopen.

There were no river boats here and the bridges had been blown up by the retreating
German army. The only way across, an annoyed matron told him, was an American pontoon
bridge kilometers ahead by the historic Old Bridge: “And that’s been blown up too.”

Jacob wasn’t going to wait. He was excited at being so close to home, at discovering
who was in Heidelberg and what remained of the town. Surely at least the Old City
would have been spared, even if the bridge was down.