TWENTY-THREE
Heidelberg,
June 4, 1945
Two men slid tin trays of pastries and bread from the back of their van and carried them into the hotel lobby. On the van’s side was the legend Backerei Eichl. That’s another way, Jacob thought, watching from the café down the road. Poison the bread. Kill them all. I could get a job in the bakery, I did cooking at school, get some poison from somewhere and inject it into the rolls. Or I could poison the water supply. Kill the whole town. He sniggered. No, not really. Although it wasn’t a bad idea.
He had followed Hans three more times, once back to the police station, once when it seemed like he’d taken an aimless stroll alone, and the third to the beer garden. But the times were random. Nothing on which to base a plan. What about taking a room in the hotel, then? Extremely risky, first because the Rat might spot him, and second because he’d leave a trail.
And he didn’t want to get caught. Not now. Not since Sarah. She said she was feeling so much better now that she had told him. It was too much to carry alone. He’d joked, it didn’t matter that she couldn’t have babies because anyway he couldn’t get it up. A fine couple they were. She had laughed. Yes, they could adopt. “No secrets,” she had said. “No more secrets, we tell each other everything, right?” Jacob had nodded and smiled and held her. “Right. No secrets.”
And here he was, with the biggest secret of them all. He was going to kill a man. Or rather, a rat.
But how to do it without getting caught? That made it much, much harder. Jacob was something of a fixture by now, the only Jew in town, apart from Sarah, who was less well known. And if Hans Seeler is murdered and the police work out that he was an SS guard at Bergen-Belsen, and they know that Jacob was a prisoner there, well, they’d soon be knocking at his door.
Every day there seemed to be more people in town. German refugees streamed in and with their identity cards had the right to a room. Buildings had two to three times the number of people they were built for. Families shared rooms. Punches were thrown as refugees who had been given spare bedrooms were thrown out when the boys came home from the war.
The street was getting crowded and Jacob was no longer the café’s sole client. He liked it in the morning when the sun fell onto his side of the street and warmed him in the chilly morning and there was soft music in the background. At eleven o’clock Jacob leaned back in his chair with his legs stretched out and his shirt open to the third button. The sun was soft on his face. Two hours earlier he had already reached his goal of fifteen dollars for the day. Now he was spending a couple. He had a plate of cookies with his coffee. Apricot jam. Every day Karl-Friedrich gave him some of his wife’s latest batch, one to taste, five to buy.
It was all looking pretty damn good. He had lodged a complaint about the Bergers. The Americans had told him that there was no mechanism to return the property of Jews to its rightful owners. Yet. Surely it would come. And when there was a law, Jacob, the first Jew back in town, would be the first to get his home back. They had promised.
All was going so well, in fact, that impure thoughts had entered his mind. Such as, what if he didn’t kill the Rat after all?
Don’t be mad. But he forced himself to think it through. He was in love. He was making money. Babies? They’d adopt. He had something he thought he had lost: a future. The country would have to rebuild, from scratch. There would be endless opportunities for a new business, maybe something to do with construction, Germany would be rebuilding for decades. He could get a business license quickly and get a head start on everyone. Import raw materials. He could be rich within a few years, very few. Then leave Germany. Go live somewhere else. As soon as he could afford it.
Did he really want to throw it all away by murdering one lousy camp guard, when there were tens of thousands of the bastards who nobody cared about? His anger said: Kill. Revenge. His love for Sarah said: No. Move on. It was the past versus the future. Love versus hate. He shook his head to banish the thoughts.
Okay. So I kill Hans Seeler. And I ruin my life. And Sarah’s. Is that really what Maxie would have wanted?
Oh, yes. That’s what Maxie would have wanted. Not the ruining-my-life bit. The killing-the-Rat bit.
So it was simple. Kill the Rat. Don’t get caught.
But how?
There he is. Hans was dressed warmly, a coat, a scarf, and a hat, and he walked with confidence, determination, as if he had a purpose. He turned left and it soon became clear he wasn’t going to the police station. He went there so often, though, he must have friends there. All the more reason to be careful. His direction was taking Hans toward the beer garden. Jacob hurried along a different route and got there first.
The only free table was by the wall, beneath the fresco that had so fascinated him last time. It was a wall-sized painting of a German peasant dressed in green Lederhosen, green jacket, and green hat, wearing long flippers on his feet, hanging on to a naked damsel by the crotch. His gnarled face looked out at the viewer as one huge hand grabbed her between the legs. They seemed to be in a rowboat sinking in a raging sea while a full-maned lion looked on. As Jacob looked up he wondered, yet again, what on earth it all meant. Her left breast swung to the side and appeared to knock his hat off. Her right arm was raised above her head so that her right breast rose pertly, and the other hand gripped the oar. She, too, looked at the viewer, as did the lion.
Altogether very strange, Jacob thought; all German allegories were the same—rude, violent, and pointless. He looked down again to see that the people at the next table had left, a waiter was clearing up, and a waitress was leading three men to it. Jacob’s skin crawled, his pulse raced. Hans and his two friends. He looked down but it was too late to hide. They were walking straight to him. Hans was thanking the waitress. He was smiling. He said she should join them if she had time. She laughed and said she couldn’t drink while working. Later then, possibly? She laughed gaily and took their orders. Three beers and three schnapps.
Jacob tried to calm himself, but his heart was pounding. He moved his hand from the table to his lap. It was trembling. He was supping with the devil.
The beer garden was noisy, alive with chatter and laughter and accordion music that seemed to bounce off the wall, yet Jacob could hear their every word. They were so close he might as well have been sitting with them.
He should leave, not risk being recognized, but he was stuck to the chair.
Hans had removed his hat. He looked exactly the same, apart from the stupid mustache. Slowly Jacob dropped his hand from his face. He couldn’t hide it forever, it would draw attention. Anyway, he looked completely different, or so he hoped. He was clean-shaven and his hair reached his ears. In Bergen-Belsen he had been a different person, miserable and cowed. Unshaven, cropped hair, runny red eyes, bruises or welts or open sores, scratching endlessly, hunched over to avoid drawing attention. Dressed in rags.
He sat up straight as if he didn’t have a care in the world, adjusted the collar of his shirt, and smoothed his woolen jacket. He drank from his beer and when he caught the eye of the waitress ordered a plate of sausage and sauerkraut.
Hans called one of them Kristoff. They were talking about women. Kristoff was eyeing up the waitress, smirking in approval as she brought another round of schnapps. As she walked away they all followed her with their eyes. “Nice haunch,” the third man said. They moved on to the war. Kristoff was clearly an old pal whom Hans hadn’t seen since he was shipped off to the east. The music became louder and a man with a foghorn voice sat nearby, making it harder for Jacob to make out what they were saying. He could understand about every third word. The other man had been some kind of infantry soldier. Lucky to be alive. Sixty percent of his draft had been killed and seventy percent of the survivors wounded. He didn’t have a scratch. They drank to that and ordered more schnapps and beer.
Jacob sat half turned to them, so they could see only his profile. He ordered a second beer. Hans was talking, drawing on the table
with his finger. He moved an empty schnapps glass and then moved two more. He pointed from one to the other and shook his head. Jacob strained to hear. He moved his head closer, stretching from the shoulder. The bastard was telling some war story. Something about tanks and the British. They advanced. We fell back. An ambush. Who ambushed who? Jacob couldn’t quite hear. All three burst into laughter and toasted Hans, who made a joking modest shrug and drew his thumb across his throat.
Oh, yes. Hans, the Wehrmacht war hero. Lying through his teeth. Funny. The whole nation had joined the Nazi party and now you couldn’t find a Nazi if you had a thousand dollars to give away. An SS guard? No such thing.
Jacob felt his anger growing. At first he’d reacted with terror at being so close to the Rat. He’d looked away, hidden his face, hunched his shoulders, had the shakes. But as he listened to his lies, saw him laugh, drink, pound one friend on the shoulder as he told a joke, throw his head back and survey the garden, lick his lips and leer at the waitress, Jacob was filled with contempt and fury.
He thought, I could hit him right now with a jar of beer. He looked away. He was so tempted to stand up and scream at him that he had to bend over and pretend to tie his shoe, to calm down. Calm down, he told himself. This is not the time or the place.
The three men put their heads together and looked around as they spoke. Hans was doing the talking, quieter now. There was an unexpected lull in the noise level while the man with the booming voice chewed his sausage. Jacob made out the words “police station,” and “papers,” and “train,” and as he leaned toward them and strained to hear what Hans was saying he turned his head toward him to hear better with both ears, not just the one, and now he heard quite clearly. Hans said, “In ten days we’ll be ready, I’ll be gone.”
Gone? Where? Ten days? The Rat is leaving in ten days? Now Jacob’s whole body was turned toward the three men, he was looking at the floor, straining to hear what the man called Kristoff was saying; something about meeting other people, a boat, did he say Hamburg?
Ten days? Jacob raised his eyes and saw the Rat staring right at him. Their eyes met. The Rat’s eyes were small and hard and they narrowed and Jacob could see and almost hear the wheels creaking in his mind. Jacob looked away but the Rat was so intense Jacob felt himself drawn back. His heart slammed against his ribs like a hammer and he felt the heat on his skin.
The Rat was looking in his eyes, straining to remember.
Jacob shifted and looked away again. He had been so dirty, unshaven, he must look quite different now. And then he froze. He remembered. The last time the Rat had looked into his eyes he had looked just the same as now. A bit thinner, that was all, less hair. On the metal table in the Human Laundry. Shaven, like now. Clean, like now. Slowly his eyes turned back toward Hans, he couldn’t help himself.
And their eyes met. The Rat slowly nodded. His thin lips turned down in the faintest show of scorn. Jacob was transfixed, he couldn’t take his eyes from the Rat’s and he felt himself break out in a sweat. He smelled his own fear. He felt his heart would explode. The Rat stared at him until his two friends followed his stare and looked at Jacob too. The third man said, “What is it, Hans?”
Hans’s eyes flickered to him and back to Jacob, whose lips were trembling. He felt tears coming, tears of pure terror. He felt his nose quiver, he could hardly breathe.
Hans Seeler turned back toward his two friends. From far away Jacob heard him say, “It’s nothing. It’s nobody.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Heidelberg,
June 4, 1945
Sarah knew something was wrong as soon as Jacob came through the door, closed it with great care, and took too long to take off his jacket. He tried to smile and went to wash his hands.
Sarah said, “You won’t believe it, look on the table.”
“What?” Jacob said over his shoulder as he rubbed his hands under the water. They were still shaking.
“Look.”
“I said what. What is it?”
“Cherries. Fresh cherries. I’d forgotten how delicious they are.”
Jacob held one up to admire and pulled the dark red fruit from its stem. He separated the pulp from the pip and crushed it slowly in his mouth, savoring the rich fresh taste, like sweet meat. He spat the pit onto a plate.
He took the little bag and sat next to Sarah on the bed. Soon the plate was full of pits. Their hands met in the bag, on the plate, grazing each other. Sarah sighed with contentment, but not Jacob.
“So, are you going to tell me?” Sarah said.
“What?” He’d been thinking of this all the way home. Could he tell Sarah? How much could he tell her? Would it help? Did he have to now? No secrets.
“Well?”
“Don’t worry. There’s nothing to tell.”
“Darling, I can feel it. Please don’t lie to me. Remember? No secrets?”
“Really. Nothing.”
“I’ll guess then. You bought a watch that doesn’t work. You found ten Pall Mall cigarette butts and it rained and they got all soggy and are worthless. You wanted to get our bread ration and they ran out just as it was your turn.” She took his hand and laid it on her chest. “Yes? One of those? No! Not all of them?”
Jacob had to smile.
“You know what that smile is?” Sarah said. “The word is ‘bleak.’ It is a bleak smile. What is it, what happened?”
He looked away and chewed on another cherry.
“Be a good boy. Tell Auntie Sarah.”
Jacob rose and went to the toilet. Through the closed door she heard him spraying the bowl.
“Is the seat up?” she shouted. “And put the lid down afterwards. You always forget.”
“Who gives a shit,” he muttered. On the way home he had realized he would have to tell her. He had made a huge mistake. He should never have taken the bait. He was an idiot. Now everyone knew, so he might as well tell Sarah.
But how? What to say? Where to begin?
“Just tell me,” Sarah said as he came out of the toilet. “I felt so much better after I told you. You can tell me anything. Is it something that happened then?”
Then. The Great Unspoken. The Never to Be Mentioned Yet Never to Be Forgotten.
He flinched. That was Maxie’s voice. He swore it was. Calling his name … Jacob. He looked around in alarm, at the window, the door, he could have sworn he heard Maxie call.
But he knew he didn’t. It must have been the wind, or the whispering of the curtains. Or maybe he was just going crazy.
Jacob sat and closed his eyes with a wavering sigh. “Something just happened,” he said. He leaned back against the wall in a dark world of his own.
He couldn’t bear to look at Sarah as he told her about Maxie, how he had been beaten by the crazy SS guard until he had died in Jacob’s arms. As he recounted that moment, in a dull voice, in agonizing detail, she gripped his arm in growing horror. Through clenched eyes he told her the Nazis had thrown Maxie’s body onto a pile of corpses, and he had lain there, in plain sight, going rotten, for weeks. At the end, when they had separated the prisoners in the Sternlager and taken the elite ones away on a forced march, he’d hidden in the pile of firewood in the hut. Because he had seen that the Rat had stayed behind among a last contingent of SS guards. Then he hadn’t seen him for weeks, he thought he’d lost him, until that time in the Human Laundry.
When he told her that Hans Seeler, the Rat, came from Heidelberg too, she gasped so sharply her whole body jerked. And when he told her that he had already seen him, he had to remove her hand from his arm, her grip was so tight it seemed to stop his blood. He opened his eyes and saw her tears.
She was white. Does she know what’s coming? “The thing is…” He hesitated, plucked up courage, there was no holding back now. “The last thing I said to Maxie, the last thing he heard before he died, was my oath. I promised, on his life, to kill the Rat.”
That’s it, it was out. He had sworn never to tell her, to protect her innocence in case he was
caught, but now he had no choice. He had to tell her. Because now everyone else knew. What a fool.
He closed his eyes again, pressed himself against the wall, as if to hide behind a screen. “So this is what happened,” he went on. “Tonight…”
He had sat down, the Rat was at the next table, he could hear them … he told her everything except the Rat’s taunt: “It’s nothing. It’s nobody.”
He had lost it. He had jumped up and pulled the Rat’s arm. Tried to punch him. But the Rat was taller, stronger, quicker. And so were his friends. They had pushed him against the wall, pinned his arms, shouted at him. The biggest one, Kristoff, had pulled back his arm to punch him but the Rat had stopped him. And as two waiters pulled Jacob from the garden, he had turned and yelled, “You bastard, you rat, you Nazi pig, I’ll kill you, so help me God, I’ll kill you.”
Stretched out on the bed, eyes shut, he swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple traveled the length of his throat.
Sitting next to him, Sarah stared blindly into the distance, her mouth open. Finally, she spoke.
“We were too happy.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Heidelberg,
June 4, 1945
It was dark but for the warm glow of a candle that Sarah had bought that day. She had intended a romantic meal by candlelight and a loving romp in bed. Instead she had made tea three hours earlier and they hadn’t stopped talking. Mostly she had listened, sitting on the edge of the bed with her legs drawn up to her chin. Walking in circles, shaking her head. Examining the torn wallpaper in the corner.
Jacob had stretched out on the bed, resting his head in his hands. He had also walked in circles and kicked the bathroom door twice. He had agreed that it didn’t help. He had sat at the table with his head in his hands. He had wanted to punch the wall but thought better of it.
Jacob's Oath: A Novel Page 20