“What is that actually on your face?” Sarah said. “Would you call that a smile? A smirk? A leer? My goodness, you do look smug.”
“All of those. And with good reason.” Jacob pulled back the sheet and looked at himself in wonder. “I mean, look. I thought I had lost it forever. Now it won’t go away.”
Sarah laughed at Jacob’s pride until a cold shiver shot through her. She closed her eyes and turned away. Her body went stiff. Hoppi had come to her. He did that sometimes. She had whole conversations with him, as if he were an invisible presence walking in the street with her, and she described to him what she saw and how she felt. He comforted her, but not this time. Now he was looking at her looking at Jacob’s nakedness. There was no expression on his face. He didn’t look angry, or hurt, or happy for her, or anything. Just his face, immobile, looking at her. Was he judging her? It isn’t fair, stop it! She felt like crying. An eternity, an infinity suddenly separated her from Jacob. She moved away. And then Viktor’s ugly face. The big brute, the disgusting animal, standing above her, laughing, and just as suddenly Viktor vanished, and Hoppi slowly faded away, leaving Sarah on her side, and she heard Jacob say, “Sarah, Sarah, what is it, are you all right? I was only joking. Please, come back here.” And he had moved to her and held her, and at first she wanted to push him away but slowly she came back and whispered, so softly that he had to put his ear to her mouth. “Just hold me, Jacob, please, just hold me quietly,” and he did, and in this manner they took their breaths together, feeling their chests rise and fall, until sleep took them both.
She awoke in darkness and felt Jacob beside her and pressing against her, and Sarah turned and took him in her hands and kissed and licked him. He stroked her head in his lap and sighed and moaned until he fell back and pulled her up onto him. With a shrug of her hips he was inside her and again they rolled and shifted and thrust as one and caressed each other into a frenzy, and again the spirits smiled upon them. They were never alone in that room, it was more than the joining of two lovers, of all their sinews and nerves and energies, it was the union of past and present and future, of all their memories and hopes and dreams, of all the good and the bad and the evil, all held in a tender ball of perfect love.
“Ouch!” Sarah had banged her head on the wall. Jacob pulled her down the bed and turned her around. He bit and licked the back of her ears and neck, pulled her to her knees, and spread them. And so it went, till they fell asleep again, taking in deep breaths of each other.
The next morning, the fourth in bed, Jacob wanted to go for a walk. “You must be joking,” Sarah said, holding herself between the legs. “I don’t think I’ll ever walk again.”
“I’m starving, come on, I’ll walk slowly, let’s get something to eat.”
For four days they had lived on cheese and egg sandwiches and apples.
“No, don’t go yet. Later. Come back to bed. Let’s sleep a little.”
Jacob smiled at Sarah, who was lying on her back under the blanket with her legs pulled up and wide apart, her knees like tent poles. Her hair flowed across the pillow; she had one hand under the blanket and her other thrown back. He sat down and tickled her under the arm. She jerked away.
Suddenly he felt sad. “Thank you,” he said.
“Thank you? For what?”
“You know?”
“Ah, of course. For being such an amazing lover.”
“That, too. But you know. Thank you. For being here with me, I suppose. For saving my life. For walking through the door of a complete stranger.”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Well, you can make it sound a bit more romantic than that.”
“Actually, if you have to know, I knew where you lived. I followed you. I had seen you and found you the most attractive man I had ever laid eyes on and knew, just knew, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, and only you.” Jacob’s jaw dropped, he listened with wide eyes. “I knew it as soon as I saw you walking across the square outside the church. So I followed you home. I didn’t have the courage to knock on the door so I waited on the other side of the street and when I saw you go out, and that you had left the door open, I came in and waited for you. I was in love with you from the first moment I saw you.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“You silly!” Jacob said, and fell across her and kissed her and pulled back the blanket to see her naked body, but Sarah pulled the blanket over herself and said, “No, really, not again, I can’t, not yet, please, later … go for your walk already!”
* * *
After two hours and Jacob had still not returned Sarah began to imagine every possible accident that could have befallen him. She was sure he had been beaten by a mob of Nazis. Or slipped into the river. Could he swim? She didn’t know. Could a car have hit him? Was he in the hospital? Should she go there? She had an image so clear it was as if it was happening right now, of Hoppi waving from the door. Why hadn’t she stopped him? Oh, why? Jacob had waved too, a cheerful good-bye, a mirror image of Hoppi. She shouldn’t have let him go. Where was he? What was he doing?
Sarah couldn’t bear it, she had to go out too. She washed and dressed and walked to the remains of the synagogue. She had never been there before it was burned down; her parents were about as religious as their goat. The only time she really felt Jewish was when she was cursed and threatened for being a Jew. And now that all the other Jews were dead, as far as she knew, the carcass of the synagogue held some kind of attraction for her. She just sat, and brooded anxiously, like a hen with no chicks.
Jacob had claimed he needed some fresh air but the truth was that Lookout Point was calling. He shouldn’t have missed a day, let alone four, it was a risk. The Rat might come back for good or he might come back just for a day or two. It never occurred to Jacob that he wouldn’t return at all. Yet as he walked to his table in the café near the Schwartzer Bock hotel, he wasn’t thinking of the Rat but of Sarah.
He walked past the shops of Hauptstrasse and American soldiers by their jeeps and knots of Germans chatting on the benches without looking for a single cigarette butt or noticing any bartering opportunity. He was in a daze, floating on four days of pure fantasy. Part of him thought, If only there was somebody I could tell! Before Sarah there had been a couple of girls, briefly, in his teens; he’d been a late starter, an amateur. But what could he do? Tell who? Go to his old home and knock on the door and say to Schmutzig: “Schmutzig, in a hundred years you’d never guess what I’ve been doing for four days straight.” And with such a beauty.
And what if Frau Berger answered the door? Would she notice something? Flushed skin? Sparkling eyes? His stupid grin? A couple walked by and looked at him. Do I look different? Can they tell? Do they know? Is it so obvious that I’m in love?
How can life change so suddenly? He could still feel Sarah’s skin, her touch, her wetness, he could taste her … “Oh, sorry!” he said as he walked into an old man with a cane. And the way she opened up to him, so easily and freely and yes, to be honest, almost desperately. But not as desperately as he. Their very desperation meant they couldn’t stop. Who knew when it would end? When they would be taken from each other? They made love as if there were no tomorrow, because they didn’t know anything else.
To have nothing, nothing at all, and then have so much, within moments, it didn’t seem possible that life could hold such pleasure and such surprises. On the other hand, he knew what evil it held, what horror, oh yes, this he knew in intimate detail, and yet, even that seemed to be fading. Not Maxie, never, but the cold, the hunger, the desperate thirst, the pain, the sickness, the stink, the fear, the mindless bullying, the endless itching and scratching, the hunting for any scrap of food, for any advantage over the others, for the slightest favor from the guard, anything that would give life the slimmest edge over death. This he knew well. In this he was an expert, no amateur, he was a doctor, a professor.
He waited on the corner of Hauptstrasse and th
e orphan square that had been Adolf Hitler Square. A convoy of American trucks blocked the road and only when the military policeman blew his whistle could the pedestrians cross. Jacob was jostled and nearly tripped but passed over into Bergheimerstrasse. He was thinking of the tingling of his skin and Sarah. How she had brought him to life. Just the thought of her made him have to put his hand in his pocket and rearrange his pants. He had hardly thought of loving a girl for years, or even thought himself capable of fulfilling his role as a man. Everything was too dirty, too evil, he was surrounded by too many sick and dying people. Other inmates had thought of little else, and found ways to meet up with female prisoners, but not him. He just couldn’t.
He smiled as he turned into Kirchstrasse, and an elderly woman walking past him smiled back. Jacob was thinking of Sarah lying on her side and him pressed against her from behind, stroking her. He shivered as he remembered the surprise of her softness among her firm lines, her silky roundness, and the straining hardness of her nipples. It irritated her if he played with them too much, and she had pushed her bottom back into him, which had instantly turned him harder than her nipples. When she turned to touch him there he had said, “It doesn’t irritate me at all.”
He smiled as he pulled out his usual chair at Lookout Point. Sarah had kissed each toe and every centimeter of him, as if worshipping him, and he had done the same to her, only with his tongue, licking and lapping at her skin until she had told him, begged him, to stop, it was too ticklish. He grinned as he remembered where he had been when she cried, “Please, no more,” and then, “Please, no,” until she was moaning, “Please.”
That’s him!
Every nerve in his body screamed, every hair sprung up, every sinew and muscle went taut as steel.
He sat stiff in his chair. That was him. He just went in. That was the Rat. He only saw his back and he wore a hat over his ears. But no mistake. Jacob’s heart thumped, he could feel himself flushing.
“Are you all right, sir?” the waiter asked, bending near Jacob with a tray of drinks balanced on his open palm. Jacob nodded.
“Can I get you something?”
“Coffee.”
“Yes, sir. Something to eat? A sandwich? A salad? We have cucumbers today.”
“No.”
“Very well.”
Jacob never took his eyes from the door. He thought his heart would explode. Was that the Rat? He was sure it was. But was it? He hadn’t seen his face. He put two fingers on his wrist to time his pulse but stopped counting after five seconds. He could hardly count that fast. That’s strange, he thought, why did I do that? Yes, for sure, it was the Rat. He’s come home. Jacob knew he would. Everyone does. Eventually.
PART TWO
TWENTY-ONE
Heidelberg,
May 31, 1945
The next morning, Sarah murmured, “Jacob? Jacob?” Feeling for him, she turned and her arm fell across his side of the bed onto the sheet. “Sweetie? Where are you?” A shiver ran through her … Is he gone? Will he come back? Did they take him?… and she jerked awake. It was the terror, always there, barely suppressed, of losing everything, everyone, in an instant. “Here, darling,” he said. He was sitting on the bed, dressed and putting on his shoes.
She felt herself sink into the sheet in relief. “Sweetie? What are you doing? Come back to bed. Don’t be silly.”
“No, don’t worry, I’ve got to go somewhere.”
“Come back. Look.” She edged back the sheet to reveal her bottom. “Stroke me.”
“No, really, I’ll be back later on.”
“You aren’t still sulking, are you?”
“No, of course not.”
A faint smile came to Sarah’s lips as she drifted back to sleep. It really didn’t matter if he couldn’t do it. Four days was enough anyway, she had waddled to the synagogue like a duck and when she came home again needed a cold compress between her legs. “Come back soon,” she managed to say. Behind her eyelids an outline formed and faded. Oh … Hoppi, I know you don’t mind, I know you’re happy for me. Hoppi came back and smiled and nodded and stretched out his arm; Hoppi, I love Jacob now; I’m so lucky; I was so … unnecessary. And now, I’m so needed. I need him and he needs me. Oh, how lucky we are. She sighed as she drifted and thought of Jacob, her lover, her friend, oh, Jacob … She was almost fast asleep when she heard the door close. “What time is it anyway?” she heard herself whisper from a faraway place.
Jacob reached Adolf’s apartment building at seven in the morning, expecting him to leave for work around seven fifteen.
He walked in fast circles to keep warm, keeping the entrance to Adolf’s house in sight, thinking of Sarah. Last night his body had failed him again. Each time he felt close, the Rat intruded. Was it really him? He’d only seen his back, he could easily be wrong. But he had that feeling, he just knew it was him. Maybe he had come for one night, and he’d be gone, on the run, never to be seen again? But then, where would he run to? No, if it’s him, he’ll stay at home and lie about being in the SS.
He had tossed and turned and squirmed, and when Sarah had wanted him again, he couldn’t get Maxie off his mind. His face, all that blood, the squashed nose and the dent in his skull. Even now, Jacob wanted to puke.
At seven fifteen, as he expected, Adolf came out, dressed in the same coat and hat, walked through the little garden, and turned right along the street. Jacob caught him within a minute.
“Good morning, Adolf, and how are you today? Bit more chilly than usual.”
“I am very well, how are you?” Adolf said with a smile to the stranger.
Jacob fell in step with Adolf as with an old friend. “And how is work at the hotel? How are the Seelers keeping? They are such nice people.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Anything new?”
“No, business as usual.”
“Yes? And how is Hans? It must be nice to have him back.”
“Yes.”
“How is he?”
“He is all right. He was fighting in France and Italy. He is a hero.”
“Yes, I heard that. When did he come?”
Adolf calculated. “Two days ago.”
“How long will he stay?”
“I do not know.”
“What will he do?”
“He will work in the hotel.”
“Where will he live?”
“He is living upstairs in one of the suites.”
“Which one?”
“Number nine.”
“Do you keep the key downstairs? Behind the desk?”
“I have all the keys,” Adolf said proudly.
“Well, have a good day today, Adolf, I’ll see you again soon.”
“Good-bye.” Adolf walked on as Jacob took the next right.
That was easy, Jacob thought.
Now what?
Jacob walked to his café and ordered a coffee. He watched the hotel door and imagined Hans “the Rat” Seeler sniffing around in suite number nine. He’d always been called the Rat, even in school, because of those long, round stick-out ears. It was only in Bergen-Belsen, though, as far as Jacob knew, that he had really earned the nickname. If you’re called the Rat all your life, does that do something to you? What comes first, the nickname or the person? Was Hans always a rat or did he become a rat?
And when did the rat become the Rat? And what’s wrong with rats, anyway, did Hans give rats a bad name? He’d eaten many, they tasted quite good, a bit stringy and tough, although you had to be starving to death to eat one. They had caught them by blowing smoke from a fire, when they could make one, into rat holes and after an hour or two the rats poked their heads out to breathe. As a matter of fact, they’d even boiled the head and ears. It was better than dying of starvation. Protein. Very important.
Hard to catch, though. They’re smart and fast, and when cornered, they stand and fight.
Hans Seeler. Jacob didn’t really remember much about him before the camp. Only that he was about five yea
rs older and went to a different school. He hadn’t had many friends, or belonged to any of the drinking or student clubs. The townies had their own sports and social clubs and bars, no fancy duels and polite scars for them. They mostly involved getting shit-faced and shouting at students and fighting with them in the street. Jacob remembered Hans at the edges but never being a leader or even particularly liked. It was only when he joined the Nazi party that Hans had become a bit of a figure in town, strutting and saluting and conniving, but even then he kept mostly to himself.
He didn’t know Jacob. Jacob was too young to be noticed. That was what had saved him in Bergen-Belsen. He knew Hans but Hans didn’t know him, or Maxie. If he had, it would have been worse, far worse, for Hans wouldn’t have wanted witnesses from home.
Hans was the worst of the worst, he was a sadist and a pig and a maniac. He couldn’t pass a Jew without whipping him, and as there were thousands of Jews, that was a lot of whipping. He had a special whip that he kept in his boot. It had a thick leather handle with eight leather thongs and at the end of each thong were smaller thongs with half a dozen tiny metal balls each. He could eviscerate a man with three lashes. Jacob remembered his harsh laugh when he saw prisoners flinch as he approached. It was a snort, like a pig’s, full of scorn and contempt. Every mealtime he decided who would miss food that day, and taunt them like a dog, leaving a plate of food just out of reach. And then he’d make the victim of the day carry the heaviest loads, stand outside in the ice, try to break them, one by one. They heard the stories about the Rat and his two women. They were his slaves. All the SS officers had sex slaves. But the stories of what the Rat did … who knew what was true? If he was a sexual sadist the same way he was a sadist to everyone, well, then it probably was. Hans the Sadist Rat. He should write a musical one day. Good title.
Jacob's Oath: A Novel Page 17