He could not bring himself to unleash his hatred. The terrible fury in his belly only made him want to vomit. He rushed to the sink, but nothing happened.
Jacob looked at his sweaty face in the mirror and down at the club in his hand as if at a mirage, for he was sure of two things. He was not a killer. Yet when the time came, when the Rat passed by, when it was Maxie’s moment, he would do what he had to do. Hell, yes. Jacob hefted the club as he paced in the room, taking himself back to that hateful place, summoning up all the demons that howled for revenge.
When the time comes, he promised them, watch me.
Just in time, he looked out the window to see Sarah approaching. She’s all dolled up, he thought, as he kneeled at the bed and hid the club underneath.
“Why so smart, darling? You look gorgeous.” He kissed her on the cheek and sat down. “Where have you been?”
“A job interview, it went well, I think. I have to go back tomorrow evening.”
“Really? Why? You didn’t tell me. Where?”
“A restaurant in Weststadt. I heard they had a vacancy and I thought, Why not? I can’t depend on you forever.”
“Oh yes, you can. Why would you want to work? We have plenty of money. You should stay at home.”
“And look after you?”
“Exactly. And I’ll look after you, too.”
“Oh, I see. You go out all day and have fun while I stay at home all day and…”
“You can go for a short walk in the morning.”
“… ha ha … and clean, cook, and … I don’t think so. My mother, I am not.”
“What’s the job?”
“Waitress.”
“What do you know about being a waitress?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, you should get it, then.”
“What’s so hard about being a waitress? Anyway, I don’t mind either way, it was a good excuse to put on my best clothes.”
“Well, you look beautiful. Come here.”
“Stop bossing me about. You come here.”
Jacob was half lying on the bed, one leg hanging to the floor. Sarah was standing by the kettle, which was just beginning to whistle. Jacob patted the bed and made a leering face. Sarah turned away, shaking her head.
“You have no right to deny me my conjugal rights,” Jacob said. “You only earn that right after we have been married for six months.”
“Three.”
“Five.”
They settled on four and a half but Sarah had another idea. “Guess what. The cinema’s open again. Let’s go. Guess what the first film is?”
“How should I know? Anyway, we’ll never get tickets. The whole town will want to go.”
Sarah smiled and raised her eyebrows as in, aren’t I a clever girl? She put her hand in her top pocket and came out with two bits of paper. “Two tickets for tonight’s showing of The Gold Rush.” She spoke like an announcer: “The sound version of Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 hit film. And guess what?”
“You keep asking me to guess what. What is there to guess? Come here at once.” He patted the bed furiously.
“The Gold Rush is the only silent film to be nominated for an Oscar for best sound production.”
“What time?”
“Six thirty. At the Schloss Kino. We should leave here at six, we’ll be in plenty of time.”
“So the interview went well?”
“Yes, I think so, the owner was nice. About sixty years old. He needs help because his wife is sick. What have you been doing?”
“Nothing much. The usual.”
They drank tea, chatted over a sandwich, and strolled to the cinema, where they sat in the middle of one of the back rows. When the lights went out they held hands and settled in for the film. Jacob looked at Sarah, at her expectant upturned face, and marveled. She glanced at him and smiled. “I know,” she said, leaning toward him and pecking him on the nose. “We’re so normal.”
They shook with laughter as Charlie Chaplin stuck two forks into two bread rolls like legs and feet and danced them across the table and back, a ballet of bread, kicking their legs and twirling their feet, his eyelashes and mustache twitching in time with the music, and all the while the silent genius smiled and nodded in glee. The audience loved it with more than just a shade of desperation. Weeks could go by in most people’s lives without a smile.
The audience tittered nervously when Charlie began to boil his black leather shoe in the pot for Thanksgiving dinner, and when he said, “We have something to be thankful for,” a knowing murmur passed through the theater. But if there was a damping shudder of recognition among the Germans it passed into hilarity when Charlie twirled the boiled shoelace on his fork like an extralong strand of spaghetti and chewed it with a beatific face.
Sarah laughed so much, Jacob looked at her. Is she hysterical? He looked at the screen and back to Sarah. Is it that funny? Am I missing something? When Charlie said, boiling his shoe, “Not quite done yet. Give it another two minutes,” she went into such a paroxysm that Jacob tried to shush her. When Charlie delicately pulled the leather from the sole, exposing the skeleton of nails, like pulling the meat from a fish, and sucked on the nails as if on fishbones, and held a bent nail in the crook of his little finger as if wanting to pull a wishbone, Sarah seemed to be banging her head on the seat in front.
Jacob looked at her in alarm, although he was chortling himself. But as Charlie took his first tentative bite from the leather sole, and chewed cautiously, as if the shoe might bite him back, Jacob fell silent and stared at the screen. Sarah sensed his tension and stopped giggling. “What is it, Jacob?” she whispered in his ear.
His eyes still fixed on the screen, his hand began to crush hers. She struggled to pull it away, and held his arm. “Darling, what is it? It’s just a film.”
“Maxie and I ate a shoe once,” he said. “You just have to keep chewing.”
Afterward they agreed it was a hilarious film, the little American was a genius, and they hoped the Schloss Kino would stay open. They felt like staying out for a drink but they had to get home to beat the curfew. Most of the way they walked in silence, a loving and companionable quiet. But their thoughts could not have been more opposed.
When Larsen hit Big Jim over the head with a shovel, Jacob sniffed. If only it was so easy. A fight, a shovel, The End. How hard do you have to hit someone, he wondered? How many times? And where is the best place to hit them anyway? On the back of the head? The top? The front? The side? Isn’t the temple the most vulnerable spot? He should have found out. Too late now. All he needed was for the Rat to be found dead, his head caved in, he the prime suspect, and somebody to say, “Oh yes, the Jew was asking just today where is the best place to hit someone on the head.”
As for Sarah, she walked with her arm around Jacob’s waist. Their hips rubbed as they walked, she pulled him to her so tight that their thighs met and they could have been walking on three legs. It was a funny film, but funny sad, and although she had laughed throughout, it was the sadness that remained. It was the sadness that touched her most, for it was her own sadness that was brimming over.
Before they had left the room Jacob couldn’t understand why she had insisted on taking a bath. You’re so perfect, he had said, don’t change a thing, you smell divine. But it was the disgusting smell she had wanted to wipe from her body. She couldn’t kiss Jacob with the Rat’s odor in her pores, she needed to scrub herself clean.
And now as she walked so closely with her lover, she found herself at peace with her choice. To save Jacob from himself, to save their love and their future, she would take the deed upon herself, she would find the strength, she had to, she who couldn’t hurt a mouse. She would do it not from hate or lust for revenge or anything negative, but for something positive, to save themselves. She had talked about something similar with Hoppi. They had discussed the question “When can a good person do a bad thing?” That was when they had to steal food to live, and to steal it from people who already
didn’t have enough. But at least they had ration cards to get more. And they were Nazis who would have reported them to the Gestapo in an instant. Why should they care if the Nazis had enough food? They had agreed: We are good people and we are doing a bad thing for a good reason.
Is murder the same? she wondered as she withdrew her arm from Jacob’s waist and took his hand. Jacob looked down at her and smiled. “Love you,” he said.
Sarah cried that night as they made love, and so did Jacob. Their tears mingled on their hot, damp faces as they kissed and trembled in each other’s arms. It was their tenderest moment: They held each other so tightly they could hardly move, joined at the belly, as if for the last time.
THIRTY-THREE
Heidelberg,
June 12, 1945
Morning light glared through the parted curtain and stung Jacob’s eyes. He turned away and covered his head with the pillow, struggling for sleep after a disturbed night of uneasy racing thoughts and distant images that danced behind his eyelids. Until one sensation erupted so sharply it jolted him awake. He sat up and opened his eyes and jerked his head from the blinding light. It was the Rat. And his thought was: Today’s the day. And it came to him: All night as they slept, the steel club called from beneath the bed.
Still … last night … he closed his eyes in pleasure and lightly kissed Sarah’s arm.
“Good morning,” she murmured. Uuuhmuhhin … “What time is it?” Uuuhtiiissseeet. So much to do today.
“Would you like to go for a walk this morning?” Jacob said, squirming. “The castle gardens are beautiful, everything’s blooming. We can have lunch afterwards.”
A knot had already formed in his stomach and he lay back with his hand on his belly, trying to calm his guts. It would be a long day, he needed to keep busy. If only he could tell Sarah, but she would try to stop him and she’d be right, too. He knew it wasn’t much of a plan but, given that the Rat was leaving within a day or two, it was the best he could do. He felt like crying. He might never see Sarah again. If the Germans arrested him, anything could happen. They could take him to the station and beat him and claim he had resisted arrest, tried to escape. Very unfortunate. Shot attacking an officer.
He shook his head. Stop it. If there was any danger of being caught he knew what to do. Run to the Americans, turn himself in. He’d be safe there. When they heard the story, they’d give him a medal.
Or turn him over to the Germans. No, they couldn’t. Could they?
And also, what is the best way to hit his head, downward or from the side?
Sarah plodded to the bathroom naked. “Nice idea, but can’t. Busy. For the interview this evening.”
“Why this evening? Why so late?”
“Dinnertime, apparently they’re very busy, they want me to help, I think. Something like that. I don’t really know but I said I would come then.”
“Don’t forget the curfew, it’s a long walk from Weststadt.”
“There’s a tram now.”
“Oh, good.”
After breakfast Sarah told him she had to see the chaplain in half an hour. They had arranged to talk about some volunteer work.
“You’re in demand,” Jacob muttered, feeling nauseated again. He hurried into the bathroom while Sarah finished dressing. “Back here this afternoon?”
“Yes, darling, bye.”
He heard the door close and came back to the bed, wiping his brow. He leaned down, searched with his fingers beneath the bed, and found the club. The steel was cold to the touch, so he held it against his forehead.
* * *
Sarah walked along the Neckarstaden above the river until she came to the steep stone steps that led down to the concrete wharf. They hugged the wall with a sheer drop on the outside of about five meters; enough, the townfolk hoped, to prevent the periodic flooding of the Neckar from inundating the lower part of the Old City.
She paused at the top, looking over the side. To the east, upriver, the sun hung above the treeline of the forest and sparkled on the damp roofs of the town, chasing the night chill from the streets. She had to shade her eyes with her hand to see the shadow of the castle against it. She looked away. When the sun set in the west, it would be directly downriver, over the other bank. That would be at about eight o’clock. They would meet at sunset and by nine, earlier even, it should be dark.
She hoped so anyway. She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing his eyes. She was about to do something that would change her forever. That she could never share with Jacob, would always keep a secret … or would she? When they were old and it didn’t matter anymore, would she take Jacob’s wrinkled, veined hand and say, Jacob, I have something to tell you? Remember the Rat? It was me. I did it. To save you. To save us. Would she do that? Could she? Should she?
Sarah sniffed and smiled tightly. Don’t be melodramatic, girl. But it was true. She looked at her hands, turned them around, rubbed her palms together. Tonight, tomorrow morning, she would be a different person. Better? Worse? Did it matter? What mattered was that Jacob would not do it, for he would be caught and their lives would fall apart, again, so soon after the horror from which they had rescued each other.
No. Not again. She wouldn’t let their lives be destroyed again.
What if it didn’t work? What if she was caught? Sarah looked out, across the river, at the woods on the other side, at the low line of homes fitting snugly in the hillside. I’d like to live in one of those homes one day, she thought, with Jacob.
But if they catch me?
She shook her head. They can’t, she thought, they mustn’t. They won’t.
But if they do?
Sarah thought of something Jacob had said to her when they argued. “If I die, what does it matter? How many times can a man die? I died so many times in Bergen-Belsen.” She hadn’t said so at the time, she didn’t want to encourage him, but really, he was right, when he said, anyway, what could they do to him if he killed the Rat? They wouldn’t put him to death. A survivor takes revenge on a notorious SS camp guard. A slap on the wrist. They should give him a reward.
But that wasn’t what frightened Sarah the most. She wasn’t too worried about Jacob getting caught. It would just be a matter of time till they were together again. No, it wasn’t that that scared her. What terrified her, what had made her reach the decision that went against every fiber of her being, was that she didn’t think Jacob could do it. The Rat was a beast, and if Jacob attacked the Rat, she was afraid it would be Jacob who would be killed.
Sarah sighed and sat on one of the benches. There were three, two meters apart. They might not be alone this evening. Probably every young lover in town would be there to watch the sunset. She sighed again. It would have been the perfect place to sit with Jacob.
* * *
Two kilometers away, at that moment, Jacob neared the alley. It was off Bergheimerstrasse, just past the Lutheran church, which was on the other side of the street. He walked with a purposeful step, eyes fixed ahead, and he was thinking that he didn’t care anymore. You can only dither so much. Finally, you have to act.
He felt the reassuring cold of steel against his leg. He had brought it just in case, to get used to the feel and weight of it, and if he had an opportunity he would take it, but his plan was to scout out the area and return in the afternoon.
He had never seen Seeler alone in the mornings. He had always been in the company of friends or one of his parents. But later, when he went to the beer garden, apart from the first couple of days, he was usually alone and he always returned alone at night, around eight o’clock, no doubt before the hotel kitchen closed. He never seemed drunk, but after a few beers he should be slower to react.
Jacob turned into the alley and stopped, facing the street. From here to the left turn into Kirchstrasse and the hotel was about another seventy-five meters up the main street. He stretched out his arms. The alley was about two meters wide. He turned and peered along it. The usual mess and garbage and stray cats. He walked down to s
ee where it went. The farther he walked, the sharper the stink of cat urine until it opened onto what seemed a wasteland, a neglected space among three residential blocks. Perfect. No reason for anybody to walk through. He could wait and not be bothered by anyone. He walked back to the other end and thought it through.
He would see Seeler coming from a distance. As he came opposite the alley he would grab him by the coat and pull him in and hurl him against the wall. Seeler slowed by drink, the element of surprise, the shock of his aggression, all that should give him a second or two of advantage, maybe three. Not more. In that time he had to pull him in, raise the club, and smash his head. But really smash it, a knockout blow right away, and then finish him off on the ground.
What if he missed him and he walked by? You’d have to start on the street and drag him into the alley. Or do it all on the street. A very bad idea. Jacob heard himself saying: Don’t miss him!
But what if he’s on the other side of the street? Let’s hope not. So far he’s always been on this side. But if he is, cross the road, follow him, do it there. No other choice.
Either way, whatever happens, the best place to run is back down the alley. Yes. Jacob walked up and down the street a few times, judging distances, times, wondering how busy the street would be. Most people would be home by then.
He followed his escape route down the alley to the empty space and saw three exits, one through each tall building. He walked to each and realized it was also perfect. To escape, all he had to do was run down the alley, walk quickly across the open ground, not to attract attention, pass through the middle building, and he’d come out on the other side at Alte Eppelheimerstrasse and just stroll away.
If he was lucky nobody would see him. And if they did, they wouldn’t chase him down such a sinister alley. He could soon disappear into the crowd.
With a light step, Jacob walked to University Square for a beer. He almost smiled to himself. Maxie, this could work …
* * *
At the round Stammtisch by the bar, Adolf collected the plates after the Seelers’ breakfast, while Hans sucked and searched for remnants with his tongue. His mother had laid her hand on his and his father heaved a sigh that wobbled the length of his body. Herr Seeler opened his mouth to continue but Hans indicated toward Adolf. When the clattering ended and Adolf walked carefully away, balancing plates and leftovers, Wolfgang Seeler said his piece. Trudi had tears in her eyes. “But it’s so far away.”
Jacob's Oath: A Novel Page 25