Omri, thrown first to the right and then to the left, shouted, “What the hell’s going on? Slow down!”
“This maniac just killed someone, that’s what,” Yonni shouted. “What the fuck are you doing? We gotta go back. Why did you do that? You did that on purpose!”
Ari glared ahead, trying to control his breathing. He felt his heart would explode. “Slow down, for God’s sake,” Yonni shouted, “you’ll kill us, too.” He banged Ari on the shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?”
Ari was thinking, That was crazy. Not that he had killed the cyclist—he hoped he had. Fucking Nazi. No, what was crazy was how close he came to killing them all. He hadn’t thought. He saw the guy, the empty road, and just did it. Lucky he just caught his leg. If he had been a little more to the left, just a little bit and caught him head on, a matter of twenty centimeters, the man wouldn’t have gone shooting off to the side, he’d have shot straight through the window, bike and all.
Next time, think first.
With Yonni yelling and Omri rubbing his head where it had hit the door, Ari raced along the straight, narrow road. He saw a clearing ahead and pulled into it, a semicircular road stop lined by trees. He got out and walked round to inspect the left fender that hit the cyclist. As he suspected, there was hardly a mark, only the slightest dent, and you had to be looking for it. He must have hit the cyclist on his knee, maybe caught the handlebar. Perfect, actually. Lucky, but perfect.
“Five minutes’ break,” he said, unbuttoning his pants and stopping by a bush.
“I can’t believe you did that, why did you?” Yonni said, holding the handle of the pot on the gas fire, so that it wouldn’t topple over. He changed hands and blew on them as the tin became too hot to hold.
“Just did it,” Ari said. “Why, do I need a reason? They’re all the same.”
“Did they need a reason for what they did to us?” Omri said.
“That’s ridiculous,” Yonni said. “How many can you kill? And what good does it do?”
“It does me a lot of good, I can tell you that,” Omri said.
“What would you do, nothing?” Ari said.
Yonni poured boiling water over the coffee and mixed in sugar and handed around the cups. “I’d rather save Jews than kill Germans,” he said. “I’d rather build a town in Palestine than destroy a town here.”
“Noble you,” said Omri.
“Yes, exactly,” Yonni said. “This is my last job. I want to help with the Bricha.” The Jewish Brigade had been smuggling thousands of survivors across Europe to Italian ports and loading them onto hired boats to break the British naval blockade of Palestine.
“That’s our future,” he said. “This is our past. We’re fighting yesterday’s war.”
“Yesterday’s war. You’re so good at phrases, but they’re empty. You’re an idiot if you think the Nazis are done killing us,” Ari said. “And it isn’t only them. What we’re doing here is showing the Arabs what will happen to them if they mess with us in Palestine.”
“Oh, smart. So why are we keeping it so secret then?”
“They’ll get the message, trust me.”
“Okay, children,” Omri said. “Let’s focus on what’s here and now. What’s next. What’s the plan, Ari?”
* * *
Omri and Ari hugged the walls in the darkness, their faces blackened with charcoal. The sliver of moon faded their weak shadows into the gray street. Their steps were slow and silent, muffled by cloth tied around their boots. No guns, just knives. In the center of Stuttgart’s poorest neighborhood, on Karl Blucher’s home territory, any screwup and there would be nowhere to run. They had to be fast, silent, deadly.
They didn’t like to do it this way. They were too committed, there was no way to talk their way out if caught. But Blucher, Untersturmführer in the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, was too juicy a target. Only two months earlier he was still murdering Jews any chance he got, before he made his own run for it. His specialty was to form his men into a gauntlet, make Jews run through their clubs and rocks, and if they made it, beaten and bloody, bury them alive in the forest, just for the fun of it.
The Americans knew he had come home but didn’t act. So the Avengers would.
A hundred meters behind Ari and Omri, Yonni followed in the jeep, without lights and engine off, gliding down the hill. No Allied vehicles ever entered this side of town, so their jeep would ring immediate alarm bells. It was a gentle slope and Yonni used the brakes to keep his distance. He saw their shadows stop moving, and stopped too.
Their plan was so simple it was barely a plan. When Blucher left his drinking club to walk home, Ari and Omri would emerge from the shadows, subdue him, and kidnap him. If it was easy, Yonni would glide up quietly. If there was any doubt at all, they would knife him on the spot. If there was trouble, Yonni would switch the engine on and roar up fast. Yonni wasn’t happy with the plan; his nightmare was always that just when he needed it, the engine wouldn’t start.
Even though the Germans here ignored the curfew, and there were no occupation troops to enforce it, they hoped there wouldn’t be many people around, and that those who were would ignore the jeep. If worse came to worst, Yonni had an automatic weapon on his lap, two pistols on the passenger seat, and two hand grenades between his legs. If the cavalry had to come over the hill, it would blow up the mountain.
They couldn’t wait long though. Every extra moment was an added risk. One yell and the street would be swarming with hard guys.
They’d been told Blucher would leave at eleven p.m. sharp, alone. He would be easy to recognize, Blue, the British Intelligence officer, had told them, handing them three photos. Blucher was exceptionally short and very broad, with a red face and shaved head, and never wore a hat. Blue had said: “Think of an angry boiled potato.”
Ari and Omri each gripped ten-inch commando knives. When they left the doorway and started walking, Yonni would release the jeep’s brake and glide after them, slowly catching up.
“That’s the plan?” Yonni had said.
“That, plus God is on our side,” Ari had answered.
“He better be,” Yonni said. Nothing works every time. It’s the law of averages. “Not so sure about this one,” he added.
And he was right.
Because Blucher did not come out at eleven. He came out at ten of, before they were psyched up. He did not come out alone, he came out with two other men. And just as they began to walk the thirty meters to where Omri and Ari hid in the dark, just when Yonni was supposed to release the handbrake and let gravity do its work, another man stopped by the jeep and looked inside. “Who are you?” he said. At least Yonni presumed that was what he said, because he didn’t speak a word of German. Yonni was focused on the dark shapes of Ari and Omri. They hadn’t moved. What are they going to do? He knew it was a shitty plan. Will they wait and take all three? Or just let them walk by? Call it off?
Yonni thought, I shouldn’t have left the flap up. But he had to in case Ari and Omri called him for some reason. Anyway, it was too late now because the guy was leaning forward and had put his elbow in the window and said something else in German, something different. Yonni couldn’t risk any sound in case it warned Blucher and blew the kill.
Yonni smiled at the man and gestured that he wanted to open the door. He turned his shoulders to hide the two pistols on the passenger seat, and as he told the story later, it was only then, as he tried to hide the pistols, that he remembered he had a semimachine gun on his lap. He put his index finger to his lips and took the gun and pointed it into the man’s face. He told the man to turn around by spinning his finger. He stepped out of the car, and it was while he was knocking the man on the head with his gun, and catching him and lowering him quietly to the ground, that all hell broke loose down the street, and he had to drop the guy, jump back into the jeep, start the engine, and put his foot down, and that was why he was slow to reach his friends.
The cavalry was late over the hill, but it did make
one hell of a mess.
Ari and Omri let the three men approach, closer and closer. The odds had changed but they nodded to each other: Let’s do it. No way Blucher would live. Ari made a stabbing sign. Omri nodded. He understood. No time for a speech. Just do the job. Blucher was on the inside, closest to the wall. They’d been trained for this. Both of them would go for the kill. The other two men would be so surprised they wouldn’t be a problem. They would either run or, if they stood and fought, they would be so shocked they’d have no chance.
Speed and aggression.
Ten meters away. Five. One.
The two killers stepped into the light and both uppercut Blucher in the heart. Karl Blucher was dead before he hit the ground. As the other two men froze in shock, Ari pulled out his knife and swung around. Where was the jeep? In that moment two more men left the club and saw a man on the ground. One of the men by Blucher shouted, and the two men at the club shouted back and within moments a swarm of men appeared at the club’s steps and next were in the street, lit up by a lamppost, running toward Ari and Omri, whose knives were out and dripping red. Blucher’s blood pumped into the gutter. His leg twitched, catching Ari in the shin. The man who had shouted first backed away, still yelling for help. The first man from the club had a pistol in his hand, and now he was fifteen meters away. Uncertain, he slowed to a walk.
“Yonni,” Omri yelled. They couldn’t run to Yonni, they’d get shot in the back. The only way was forward. Attack. Omri grabbed the shoulders of the first man who was so shocked he hadn’t moved, and ran him toward the man with the gun, using him as a shield.
The second man ran away, leaving Ari alone by Blucher’s body, screaming for Yonni. He heard a roar as the jeep shot forward. But Omri was alone, meters from the crowd. There was a gunshot, and another. Ari saw Omri stagger and shouted, “Omri!” There was a shout in Hebrew from Yonni, “Get down! Get down!” followed by an explosion, a ball of flame, a rush of air, yells, screams, and rapid fire from an automatic weapon. The jeep drove straight into the crowd and Omri jumped in, as Yonni sprayed the street with gunfire and hit the brake, waiting for Ari to run up. The engine roared as Yonni flattened the pedal and raced away with Ari hanging on to the back fender. Three hundred meters away, Yonni jammed on the brakes and Ari fell through the door Omri had opened from inside. Yonni turned at the next right and then right again and drove slowly, not to draw any attention.
“Everyone okay?” Ari said.
“Yes,” said Omri.
“Yes,” said Yonni.
They continued in silence through the streets, Yonni following a map that he had memorized, until a U.S. army foot patrol appeared from nowhere, blocking the street. Yonni braked hard and swung to the side, coming to a halt by two doughboys on their knees aiming their automatic rifles at them.
“Where you boys heading? Where are you coming from? Papers,” an officer said.
Ari leaned out of the window. “Good evening, sir. British army.” He handed him a sheet of paper with their orders. “Heading to U.S. Sixth Army HQ.”
“ID.”
They handed them over. The Americans made a note of their service numbers and waved them on. “Be careful,” the American said. “There’s been some shooting.”
At the edge of town they stopped by the side of the road.
“So, Yonni,” Ari said at last. “Where the fuck were you?”
Yonni told him. He couldn’t risk the guy making a sound.
Ari listened, his lips tight. Omri said, “That’s fair enough.”
“Of course it is,” Yonni said. “What do you think I was doing, picking my nose?”
Ari said, “That was very, very bad.”
Omri said, “Was that one or two grenades?”
“One.”
Omri sighed. “I thought I’d had it. The guy shot my guy twice. I couldn’t hold him up. One, two more seconds, I’d have been toast.”
“We better get out of town fast,” Ari said, putting a water canteen to his lips. He half drained it and passed it to Yonni. “They got a hand grenade, dead and wounded. As soon as they work out it’s a British grenade, and who the target was, they’ll know who did it. The false IDs will slow them down, but not for long.”
“Well, we got him,” Omri said. “That’s what counts. Bastard.”
“And they nearly got you. Great plan, Ari,” Yonni said, releasing the hand brake and driving off. “Maybe you should stick to knocking old men off their bikes.”
TWENTY
Heidelberg,
May 30, 1945
A single ray of sun pierced the grayness and lit up a clump of weeds struggling through the marble cracks on the synagogue corner of Lauerstrasse and Grosse Mantelgasse.
In her village, little Sarah had been spared the terrified screams and the pounding of boots and the triumphant yelling of Kristallnacht, that November night in 1938 when the Nazis beat the Jews, set alight every Jewish house of prayer in Germany, and burned their holy books. Yet before the ashes cooled every villager knew: It was over for the Jews.
Now seven years older, she perched, legs crossed, on a pile of bricks and debris stacked in a corner of the smashed marble synagogue floor, studying the sun-washed weeds. She was thinking: This is all that’s left, a gap among the houses, like a missing tooth. All that’s left of Jewish life here are these weeds. And in all the grayness, the sun shines only upon them.
Those weeds are Jacob and me, she was thinking, not the weeds the Nazis saw, to be torn out by the roots, but two shoots of grass growing together, seeking the sun through the cracks. Jacob. A smile came to her lips and a tear to her eye. Hoppi. There was nothing left of Hoppi, not even a photograph. He was gone, destroyed, like the synagogue. One day there will be a new house of prayer. But a new Hoppi? More tears came, of frustration, because she could hardly see him, she could not fix his face, just a blur of shifting lines, watery eyes, a soft mouth, adrift, washing up against the banks of her memory, and out again to sea. She had always known he was gone, as soon as Wilhelm Gruber saw him dragged away and beaten. He would have resisted, struggled, they would have kept beating him, she had known that he was dead for years. Yet now she knew he had been spared the worst. Maybe that was why she accepted it so calmly? Knowing that somewhere he was buried peacefully in the ground and had not suffered for years in a camp after all. But it was also why her return to Heidelberg had meant so little to her. It was as much an escape from the terror of Berlin as a return to the emptiness of Heidelberg. She had come, with no hope, to keep a promise that offered none. But then, where else would she go?
Not to her own village, though everything was familiar, the trees, the river, the neighbors; but was it home? How long had they dreamed of home only to find there was no such place.
Until … Sarah closed her eyes and was filled with warmth. She could feel a wave of affection and love wash through her, like hot sun caressing her bare skin. For now they had their little room. And even hot water in the bath. And their soft bed. They were creating their own little home, together, their cocoon of love.
She smiled at Jacob’s embarrassment. He had been so sweet. So upset that he couldn’t satisfy her. If only he could understand how much it meant just to hold him and stroke him and to be stroked. She, who had shared not an instant of affection for three years. And now with Jacob, who didn’t remember when he had kissed someone, or been kissed.
She had held him and stroked his face and kissed his nipples and he kissed hers, for hours. They had fallen asleep in each other’s arms and when she awoke in the middle of the night they were still hugging. She felt his heat and smelled his maleness and she fell asleep again, and in the morning his arms still held her and their legs were intertwined.
They had spent that whole day in bed and at every failure Jacob had become angry and bitter, and Sarah had told him again and again that it didn’t matter, that she loved him, that it would be all right, that there was no hurry, and he had cursed and hidden his head and struck the bed, as if
it should pay for his pain, as if beating the bed would make him a man.
They had walked along the river and held hands like a dozen other young couples that evening who didn’t need to speak, and as they had kissed, a tug pulling a barge full of Amis had glided by. They had cheered and applauded the passionate couple, and Jacob had called back and laughed, and Sarah had curtsied and blown them a kiss, which won them another roar of approval.
They had laughed and stopped for a glass of beer, which they shared, and a pale stringy sausage, which Sarah refused to touch, even after Jacob coated it with ersatz mustard. “What’s in it? It could be anything.”
“I happen to like cow’s toenails,” Jacob had said.
“With eyelids?”
“My favorite.”
It was early the third morning that Sarah woke to feel the sweetness of Jacob’s lips on hers. He supported himself on one elbow and with his other hand was combing her hair from her mouth, as he gazed into her eyes in wonder. Pale shadows moved on the wall and shaded Jacob’s face, which he buried in the crook of Sarah’s neck. His rapid breathing tickled her and now at last she could feel him against her, growing, probing, slowly, carefully, opening her legs with his. He put his lips to her ear and whispered, “I love you, I love you,” as he pushed gently, at the edge of her, around, seeking, and she said, “I love you, too,” and bit his throat and with her hand felt him, a miracle, and guided him into her, deep inside her, at last.
Jacob’s tears wet her cheeks as he held her so tightly she had to wriggle free. She pushed up against him, with him, arching her back until his cry at the end was from his very soul.
“This is how I want to wake up every day, please,” Sarah said minutes later, as Jacob entered her again. And the next time he did it she said, “Afternoons, too.”
That third day in bed was a day of wonder for them both, as if they were wiping from their bodies’ memory the fear and loneliness that had consumed them both for so long. They emerged from deep holes. They made love with gratitude, they said thank you with their bodies. They could have been bones in the ground or ashes in the wind instead of lovers in bed, and they didn’t need to speak a word of it for they were never alone in the room but were accompanied by the spirits of all their loved ones who were gone, and they knew they were blessed by their approval. The spirits smiled upon their passion.
Jacob's Oath: A Novel Page 16