Jacob's Oath (25 page)

Everyone knew. The only place where there were more Nazis than in the mayor’s office
was in the police station. The only place you couldn’t find SS was in prison.

He could go to the Americans but they’d just take notes, maybe begin an investigation.
At best, arrest Seeler. Even jail him for a bit. But so what? Revenge? That wasn’t
what Jacob meant by revenge. It would just stop Jacob from getting his.

So what to do? How to get close? Without being seen? He couldn’t hang around outside
the station, somebody would notice and he needed to keep a low profile. An SS guard
is killed and one of his Jewish prisoners is seen nearby. They’d string him up in
minutes.

Jacob decided to wait at the end of the street, well away from the police station,
and follow the Rat as long as he could, all day if necessary; to see where he went,
who he met, how long he stayed, anything that would give him an idea of how to kill
him. Because it was dawning: It wouldn’t be so easy. In all his fantasies of torture,
revenge, and murder that had consoled him in the camp and maintained him on his journey,
he’d never actually asked himself: After he did it, how would he get away?

Because he had never cared. Living, dying, what was the difference? If anything, death
was preferable. It was inevitable, so just get it over with, the only question being
how miserable would be the dying? It was only when Hans killed Maxie that Jacob had
a reason, a manic drive, to live until he had fulfilled his promise to his brother.
Live after that? Why? He had died so many times in the camp already, what did it matter,
one more death?

But now? There’s Sarah. He hadn’t counted on Sarah. I love her, he thought, I truly
love her. He smiled. My first love. As he looked into shop windows, waited in shop
awnings, strolled up and down the street seventy meters from the police station, eyes
open for the Rat, Jacob kept smiling, as he kissed Sarah in his mind. He laughed as
he remembered her whipping the sheet back to display her naked bottom, which seemed
to wink at him, and how she had wiggled it, and that had spoken more eloquently and
urgently than any words. What a brazen hussy. He loved the sound of that. Let’s hear
it for all the brazen hussies. He should go back soon. She was waiting for him. He
had never imagined he could have met somebody so beautiful, so quickly, who loved
him as much as he loved her. Who would have thought?

He was so absorbed in Sarah that Hans Seeler was twenty meters away and walking straight
toward him before Jacob noticed. The three men walked abreast and Jacob had to step
aside. He looked away and brought his hand to his face and coughed into it. He didn’t
think Seeler had noticed but Jacob had stayed on Seeler’s face, in that first moment
of recognition, a shade too long. Did he see me? Did he recognize me? Jacob crossed
to the other side of the street, turned, and followed Seeler and his two friends.

He looked good, Jacob had to admit. He’d even put on some weight in the face. He still
had that lean, sallow, aggressive look, and with his strange pointy-round ears, which
Jacob hadn’t seen under the hat, would look more like a rat than ever, especially
with those whiskers. He had always been unshaven but now he was growing a mustache.
Just when everyone else had shaved off their Hitler toothbrush excuse of a mustache,
the Rat was growing one, but longer.

The men turned into the Bierkeller. After five minutes Jacob went in too, walked through
the bar, and, as he had expected, there they were in the garden. He took a small table
by himself on the other side, facing a bizarre wall frescoe of a naked woman and a
dirty old man. He could see the Rat and his friends in a mirror, across the heads
and shoulders of a full house. Where did all these customers get the money from? Same
place as him, he supposed.

He thought of the camp; of Sarah; he wondered where Theresienstadt was. Karl-Friedrich
at the café had said that a bus with eighteen Jews was on its way. How did he know,
anyway? Who were they? From Heidelberg? Would he know any of them? He thought about
his cigarette butts. He had a couple of hundred now, wrapped up tight in a shirt,
but he’d moved on. The day before, he’d exchanged a bicycle wheel for a Soviet army
whistle on its leather cord and sold that, plus a Wehrmacht bayonet he had bought
five minutes earlier, to an American G.I. at the castle for twenty dollars, a profit
of twelve. He thought of his journey and how sure he had been, he had never wavered,
that the Rat would come home.

And there he is. In shirtsleeves, with his friends, on his second liter of beer, white
foam dripping fom his mustache, talking and laughing and probably telling war stories
he stole from someone else. His forehead was sweating, or was that just the reflection
in the mirror? His ears really are round with a point and do stick out. They really
are just like a rat’s. Who came up with that name first? Funny that that was his nickname
as a kid, and then in Bergen-Belsen, quite independently, that had been his nickname
there, too. It must say something. That he really is a rat.

Three hours later, Seeler and his friends and two girls they had met staggered out
and Jacob, barely awake, followed. He followed them all the way back to the Schwartzer
Bock and that’s when it occurred to him. He’d never get to him outside. Not secretly.
He should do it from the inside. Rent a room there too. Do it at night.

That night, Sarah was angry, preoccupied, nervous with Jacob. She couldn’t stop thinking
of one question, it had colonized her mind. It nagged her as she sat on the pile of
debris at the synagogue. And while she was cooking. And now in bed.

Why am I here? Really? No Hoppi, no baby, no family. No home, just this tiny room,
for which she knew she should be thankful. The worst, she was beginning to realize,
was being among these Nazis. Lining up for rations, she couldn’t look them in the
face. They all looked so normal, out shopping, well-dressed, healthy, gossiping, whining
about how hard their life was, how the butcher had run out of garlic sausage, how
the town was full of foreigners. There were good ones, yes, they had sheltered her,
had saved her life, but they were so few. Even half of those she had to beg from.

That’s why now she stayed at home so much, had hardly met a soul. How could she be
here, a sheep among the wolves? But where else could she go?

She had wanted so much for Jacob to sit with her at the table, to share the little
meal she had prepared for the two of them, but the louse had come home late, after
she had gone to bed. He stank of drink and cigarettes. Sitting alone in a beer garden
till the curfew, after leaving in the morning? Sure. And I’ve been dancing in the
palace. Where had he been all day? What was he doing?

His answer to everything was to hug her and caress her till she pulled him into her,
and this time somehow they found themselves on the floor underneath the table, laughing
hysterically.

“Ow, move the chair,” she said, “it’s in my back.” They had knocked it over. “How
did we get here?” she said, looking up at the underneath of the table. Jacob was panting
so hard he couldn’t answer. He staggered to his feet and pulled her out by the leg.
“You were so noisy,” he finally said with a laugh.

“No, I wasn’t, you were.”

“Well, that’s possible. Both of us. You were noisier, though. We’d better be careful
we don’t get thrown out.”

There was a demon in Sarah that night; she couldn’t sleep, she turned and tossed and
kept Jacob awake too. They kissed and hugged but mostly Sarah sighed and muttered.

“I don’t know either,” Jacob said, when he finally understood what was bothering her.
“How can anyone know, there is no answer.”

Why are we here? Is there an older question in the universe? Yet—was there ever a
more painful time to ask it?

Were we spared for a reason? she had asked, again and again.

“Sarah, how can we know? Did God mean this to happen? Let’s say maybe he got a bit
carried away. Fell asleep. Which is what we should do.” He held her close, in silence,
as they stared at the dark, at the grayness at the edges of the curtain, at its billowing
folds by the open window, at the faintest shadows that played on the bedding and across
the walls. They lay on their backs. Jacob’s left hand rested on Sarah’s thigh, her
right hand rested on his stomach. We’ve got to buy another pillow, we’ve shared this
one for two weeks, Jacob was thinking.

It must have been three in the morning when a thought came as he dozed and he whispered,
“Were you serious about marrying?”

Sarah heard him, barely. “Yes,” she murmured back, “very serious. I love you.”

“I love you, too. Sarah?” He turned on his side, rested his head on his elbow. “Sarah…”
He kissed her, felt her soft full lips warm and tender and moist. “I want to marry
you, yes I do, I want to spend my life with you. We’ll find a place. I promise. Maybe
not here. Maybe not even in Germany. I don’t know where. Palestine? America? Who knows?
But Sarah, I want to spend my life with you. I love you so much.” He kissed her on
the lips, gently, long, and caressed her breast and laid his head on her chest. “I
love you, Sarah.”

“I love you, Jacob. But you don’t think we’ve just been thrown together because there
is no one else?”

“Sarah as life raft?” He cupped her mound and pubic hair. “No. I don’t.”

He lay there for long minutes, feeling her chest rise and fall, her breath on the
top of his head, and laughed and stroked her tummy when it growled. “Hungry?”

“No. Happy.”

“Your tummy rumbles when you’re happy?”

“Yes. And not only my tummy.”

He kissed her navel and stroked her thighs and everywhere else and tasted her wetness
until their passion united them and they moved together until that moment when for
the first time they groaned together and shook together and fell apart with utter
satisfaction.

“When shall we marry?” Jacob said when he had regained his breath. “My father would
have loved you.”

“And my parents would have loved you, too.” She saw their faces, heard the clicking
knitting needles, the clucking of the hens, the call to dinner.

Jacob heard screams and saw blood.

“It’s all over, it’s behind us, we’ll start again,” he said. “That’s what they would
have wanted. That’s what we’ll do. It doesn’t matter where, it just matters that we
will be together. You and me.” He kissed her again, on her lips, on the tip of her
nose, on her eyes and her ears.

“Ouch, that tickles.”

He licked them instead. “I love you, Sarah.”

“I love you, Jacob.”

“We’ll start a family. Soon. Have a baby. We’ll start again, lots of babies, if it’s
a boy we’ll call him Solomon, after my father. And if it’s a girl, Anneliese, after
your mother. That’s what we’ll do. They tried to wipe us out. We’ll show them. Lots
and lots of babies.” Jacob laughed and threw himself onto his back. “We’ll show the
bastards!”

He was earning very good money on the black market but that couldn’t last. He would
have to find a real job. He could go back to law, finish law school. Or he could start
a business. The occupation authorities were already talking about business licences
and one of the first conditions was to prove you weren’t a member of the Nazi party.
That would give him a quick advantage. He could be one of the first. But what business?

“Sarah? Sarah? You’re very quiet. Don’t you want to marry me?”

She had turned away from him. “Sarah? Sarah, what is it?” He leaned over her, tried
to pull her onto her back, back to him, but she pulled away. With his hand on her
shoulder, he felt her crying. Is she happy? Tears of joy?

No.

“Sarah, Liebchen, what is it? Why are you crying?” He rested his head on her arm.
“Baby, what is it? Please tell me? I love you, we’ll marry, have a baby, lots. Darling,
what?”

He felt her body stiffen and suddenly go limp, as if she had collapsed into herself.
She was weeping now, catching her breath between sobs. Jacob went cold. What is it?

“What is it? Sarah, please, you’re scaring me, what’s wrong?

“What’s wrong?” he said, again.

He tried again to pull her onto her back, toward him, but she pulled away and her
body shook.

Jacob lay on his back, staring, his hand on Sarah’s waist. They have ruined us all,
forever, he thought. She had gone quiet now. He knew she wasn’t sleeping. After a
long silence, he said, “Sarah?”

“What.”

“What is it? Please tell me.”

He felt her chest rise and rise and rise before it fell in a great sigh. “Jacob?”
she said.

“Yes.”

“The thing is, there’s something I didn’t tell you before.”

He went cold. He knew there was a lot she hadn’t told him. She had told him almost
nothing. He had done the same. Was there someone else?

“Yes? What? Sarah, you can tell me anything.”

“Anything?”

“Of course.” Wait for it, he thought. Will it ever be over?

She sucked in her breath. “When I was in the hospital in Frankfurt, the American hospital…”
She stopped and squeezed his hand. He could feel her trembling.

“Yes? It’s all right, Sarah, really, tell me, what happened?”

She thought, Say it. Just say it! She would have to sooner or later. We can’t start
with a lie. Not about this. He has to know. Oh, how much she wanted a family of their
own. A sob rose to her thoat, her chest heaved. Get it over with.

It came out in a rush. “Jacob, oh, Jacob.” When she finally said it, it was almost
a shout. “I can’t have a baby. The doctor told me, he said that I would never be able
to have a baby.” It came out with a sob, a shouted sob, and her body shook but just
as suddenly her tears stopped and she went silent.

Jacob felt the blow in his stomach. Bile rose. He wanted to vomit.

It sank in quickly. It wasn’t complicated. So. No babies. No family. After all. They’d
all said, When we get out, we’ll have lots of babies. Those Nazi swine wanted to wipe
us out. We’ll show them. We’ll multiply like rabbits, Jewish rabbits, and every baby
we’ll name after Mommy and Daddy and brothers and sisters and everyone, their names
will live on, in our babies. Jews never call a baby after a living relative in case
the angel of death takes the wrong one. But the angel of death had the last laugh.
He’d taken them all.