Jacob's Oath: A Novel

by Martin Fletcher

  All was quiet. The neighbors were hiding in their homes. Outside, the Russians must have been resting or guarding or whatever they did. Probably this little scene was being played out all across Berlin. She thought: To the victors go the spoils.

  Still on his haunches, from inside his jacket the soldier Viktor pulled out a little bundle and spread it across the stack of bricks that Sarah now realized was a table. The bundle was a towel, and he spread it to reveal a loaf of fresh-smelling bread, a jar of herring, and a large chunk of white cheese. From a side pocket he took a bottle of vodka and set it next to the loaf. From another pocket, a sausage and a red apple. She hadn’t seen so much food for years. I’m being wined and dined, she thought. Does he think I’m his girlfriend?

  She caught a whiff of stale sweat as Viktor took off his jacket and laid it across some bricks. He arranged other bricks into a low stool. He perched on it, took out a deadly-looking knife with a squat serrated edge, and cut a slice of bread, cut more slices of cheese and sausage, which he laid on the bread and offered to Sarah. Her stomach juices churned, her mouth watered as she stared at the offering.

  “Here, enjoy it,” Viktor said in Russian.

  “No, thank you,” Sarah said in German, shaking her head. They communicated by hand movements. He offered it again, waving it, he teased her by holding it under her nose. She was dying to eat it. “Eat, bitch,” he said in Russian. “Eat, get strong, and then I’ll have you.” He laughed at her. Holding out the sandwich, with his other hand he took a long swig from the bottle.

  Sarah pulled her head away. On the wall she saw the shadow of her head jerk back.

  “You need strength,” he said, and pushed the sandwich against Sarah’s mouth, brushing her lips. Again, she pulled back. “So you’re not hungry?” he asked, and put half the sandwich into his own mouth, pushing a few stray bits in with his fingers. As he munched he smiled at her, teasing her again, opening his mouth to show the half-chewed food. He nodded his head, smacked his lips, licked them, rubbed his stomach. He took another long swig of vodka and burped. He took his time cutting some more cheese and sausage. The sausage he ate by itself, the cheese he smeared with his knife over a slice of bread, which he raised to his mouth. He looked at Sarah, looked down at his supplies, mimed surprise as if he had just discovered the jar of herrings, and unscrewed the top. He speared one, crimson and dripping and sweet-smelling, sniffed it, licked it, put it in his mouth, and took a bite of bread and cheese. Sarah, still leaning back against the wall, felt she could faint with hunger. Her mouth was open and she breathed quickly. She stopped her tongue from licking her lips. She looked away.

  But it was too much. When Viktor held out another slice of bread with everything on it, succulent herring, aromatic cheese, and spicy sausage, she fell on it, bit into it, chewing like a crazy woman. She had never tasted anything so good. She had been living on scraps rejected by the neighbors, their leftovers. She drank some water and tried to eat some more; but she couldn’t, her stomach must have shrunk. She lay back, sated, hands on her belly, closed her eyes, and sighed.

  Until terror rose within her and she opened them.

  Viktor was standing, his thick fingers unbuttoning his trousers. His shadow flickered up the wall and across the ceiling. He looked a monster. He slid out his leather belt with its metal buckle, let it hang from one hand, and snapped it like a gunshot. With his other hand he drank from the bottle. He flicked the belt again and pointed at Sarah. Up, he said, with the bottle at his lips.

  Off, he gestured, pointing at her shirt. Off, pointing at her dress. Off, he panted, pointing at her knickers.

  He pointed at her knickers again.

  Off, he said.

  Off, you bitch.

  Off!

  Sarah couldn’t, her strength deserted her. She sank to her knees, covering her bare breasts with her crossed arms. She cried, she begged, tears ran into her mouth. She screamed and screamed again as the leather bit into her bare back. She looked up to beg for mercy and she saw him drinking from the bottle. As the belt came down again she stopped it with her arm. It curled around her wrist and its speed burned her and the buckle caught her in the eye, which went black and starry. With a yelp she stood up and fell against him and bit his hand as hard as she could and scratched his face.

  He roared. And then he roared again, this time in laughter. Another swig, and he hurled the bottle against the wall and it smashed to pieces. The motion made him stumble. He grabbed Sarah by the hair and pulled her around so hard she felt her scalp would be pulled from her head. He twisted her arm until she felt it wrenching from her shoulder. With one tug he tore her knickers from her body. I’m going to die here, her head screamed, I don’t want to die, don’t let me die. She sobbed and whispered, “Don’t hurt me.”

  Sarah sank to the ground. Her jerking limbs were all around her, spreadeagled across the bricks and debris. She had lost control of her body. The soldier kicked her in the stomach and then kicked away the mess to clear a space.

  Her sobbing and shaking ended when an icy hand gripped Sarah from inside and clutched her heart. It froze her senses. She felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing. It was all happening without her. She wanted to live. She would do anything to live.

  FOUR

  Near Bergen-Belsen,

  April 30, 1945

  Jacob stretched in a field of white blossoms at the foot of a giant birch tree on the Lüneburg Heath. His head rested on moss that softened the tangle of knotted roots. A stray nightingale, its ocher tail glinting in the sun, trilled as it perched on a branch over purple lavender. He inhaled the fragrant herbs, sweet and full, and gazed through shimmering leaves at puffs of clouds drifting in from the east across the sharp blue sky.

  And felt free as a bird.

  I’ll take my clothes off and lie in the clear water, he thought. Surely there’s a babbling brook nearby, it’s so perfect here. I’ll lie on the pebbles and let the water run over me. I’ll dip my head and shake my hair like a happy dog. I’ll sit in the water and wash my sorry body.

  He shivered. How often had he gazed at the sky and dreamed of this? They all had. The Nazis had taken everything in the camp, especially their lives. But two things they couldn’t take: their dreams and the sky. He closed his eyes and there, urging themselves across his inner vision, was all he could remember of the faces of Willi, Mordka, Mendel, Zelman, Abela, as much as he could remember of them, and Maxie, poor little Maxie.

  He stroked the earth that held their bones.

  Shading his eyes from the sun, following a little bird that was swooping and plunging after its mate, seeing them come to rest side by side on a branch, Jacob became aware of a dull ache in his head. He closed his eyes and saw Maxie again, clear as a photo, with a slowly spreading smile. Jacob smiled back. It was baby Maxie, not dying Maxie. Little Maxie shrugged his shoulders and his face became old and lined. Jacob’s smile became a frown as Maxie raised the palms of his hands, as if to say, My brother, I’d like to be there with you, under the tree … but, well … you know how it is …

  Hans Seeler. They knew him as Hans the Rat, the lanky camp guard with the rat’s ears whose daily sport was to torment Maxie until finally he beat him to death.

  Just the thought made Jacob retch, but nothing had passed his lips in twenty-four hours. A croaking sound spilled out, as if a hand twisted his belly from inside.

  Jacob sat up suddenly, looked around, and as he began to stand felt the ground sway and rise and fall. He was disoriented, he felt nauseated and lowered himself onto his back. Seconds passed until he remembered where he was.

  When the ground steadied, Jacob pushed himself to his knees again, and rose with care. He breathed deeply and took in the sharp, clear air of the heath, the sweet aroma of the heather.

  I need food, he thought, and water. Urgently.

  He returned to the lane that he had been following. He knew refugees had passed this way, because in his hunger he had wanted to pick the flowers at the side of the
road and eat them, but for kilometers there were no flowers, just torn stems.

  He headed south to Celle and Hanover. At first he walked in the woods to avoid British soldiers, who seemed to be everywhere. Other people he’d met on the way had told him why. Only fifty kilometers from Bergen-Belsen, the northern German army had surrendered to the British field marshal, Bernard Montgomery. Some German units might still be hiding on the heath and might still be hostile. That’s all I need, he thought, survive the camp and get shot when I’m free. So he’d returned to take his chances on the road, heading for the rail station in Hanover, where he had heard the trains may be running. He didn’t have any papers so, like thousands of others, when he saw a British army roadblock he left the road, and walked around it.

  An hour on, cresting a low hill, he saw that at the bottom of a long decline the lane met the main road again, about half a mile away. A mass of people spilled into the field, and as he got closer Jacob saw why. Yet another British roadblock. With no more strength for another detour he decided to walk straight through it. What could they do, shoot him?

  Still, Benno was right, Jacob thought. He should have waited and got some kind of travel document. He didn’t have any identification papers. And he was German. He could have been an SS general as far as the Tommies were concerned. That’s what Benno had said, he’d warned him, that the SS were trying to hide among the population, and without papers he’d always be suspicious.

  But Jacob had been too eager, in too much of a hurry to get back to Heidelberg. How long had it been since he left home, since he went to Berlin? Seven years? And he was looking for someone. It couldn’t wait.

  His head pounded, his throat was parched. He had to eat and drink.

  Jacob joined the lines of people waiting to go through. Most were Germans but he heard Russian and French and any number of languages he didn’t recognize. All of Europe was on the move. Jacob shuffled forward until his turn came.

  “Papers, mate. Papieren,” the soldier said. He didn’t seem too interested. Jacob patted his pockets and looked concerned, but didn’t have the strength to pretend further. He shrugged. “I don’t have any. Sorry. No papers.”

  “Stand over there,” the soldier said. He pointed at a Land Rover where a young officer was drinking from a canteen. “Next.”

  Jacob stood by the lieutenant and looked at him with as much friendliness as he could muster.

  “What’s your story?” the officer said. “What do you want?”

  “A drink?” Jacob said in English. “Please, sir.” He couldn’t take his eyes off the officer’s canteen.

  “You speak English?” the officer said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How come?”

  “My mother was English. From Manchester.”

  “Really? I’m from Sheffield. Where is she?”

  “She died when I was eight. Made me interested in learning the language, though.”

  “You thirsty, you said?”

  “A bit. Yes.”

  The officer leaned into the car and took out another canteen. “We just filled up this morning. Take a swig.”

  Jacob sighed and put it to his mouth. He drained half of it and handed it back with another long sigh.

  “Hungry?” the officer said.

  Jacob sniffed. “Actually, a little, yes.”

  The officer stretched back again and pulled out half a loaf of bread and a sausage. With a smile of thanks Jacob took a big bite of the sausage and chewed, until he felt beads of sweat on his forehead. He wiped them with the back of his hand and leaned for support against the side of the jeep. His hand with the sausage fell to his side as he closed his eyes and waited for the nausea to pass.

  “What is it?” the officer asked. “You okay?”

  Jacob nodded, took in a deep breath.

  “What do you feel?” the officer asked.

  “Sick, headache. I’ve had it for a couple of days. Dizzy sometimes.”

  The officer looked concerned. “Where you from?”

  Jacob began to say Bergen-Belsen but some instinct honed in the camp stopped him. “Bremen.”

  “Near the coast,” the officer said. “Up near Hamburg?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because we’re on the lookout for typhus. There’s concentration camps near here with typhus. It’s hard to stop it from spreading. Those are some of the symptoms. There’s also typhoid.”

  Jacob tried a smile. “Oh, no. Just a cold, maybe. Hunger…”

  “Well, you better stay here while I find our medic, make sure. Don’t want you wandering around if you’re sick. If you’re okay we could use you, you know, if you want. We need translators and your English is quite good. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

  The officer walked up the road to a collection of tents with the red, white, and blue Union Jack flying from the center of the tallest. As soon as he was out of sight, Jacob moved to the back of the Land Rover and stuffed the rest of the sausage and two apples into his pockets, took the rest of the bread as well as a canteen of water, and joined the ragged column of people on the other side of the roadblock walking south. He quickened his pace until he was lost in the crowd.

  Typhus. No, couldn’t be, he thought. Mustn’t be. He felt his forehead. It was warm, not hot, dry, no more sweat. It could be the Bengal Mixture that had made him sick for the last couple of days. Hope that’s it. It was so foul half the people who drank it threw up.

  The British had been trying to help. In India they had fought famine and disease by giving locals a mixture of dried milk, flour, sugar, and molasses. It worked well there, but here most of the inmates found the sweet drink revolting and their stomachs rejected it. Jacob sniggered as he drank from his water. That stuff made them sicker than they were before.

  At dusk, as if at a signal, the refugee column moved off the road like a giant centipede and sank to the ground. For Jacob even the damp earth was a big improvement on the last few years. Curled up in a ditch he shared with two families, he slept like a baby and woke with the first light, to the shrieks of wild pigeons in the trees. He bit from an apple as he walked, while the streaking horizon turned the world pink and orange and day came. He ate the core, including the seeds.

  His clothes, damp from dew, clung to him. From every side road more refugees joined the flood of people, like tributaries joining a mighty river. Some strained against carts loaded with all they owned: chairs, beds, laundry, dishes, and perched on all this, the old and the sick holding babies. Others walked alone or in groups with just the cases they carried. The only sound was coughing and footsteps, the tapping of defeat.

  He was learning who was who. Those with carts were Poles, Czechs, Ukranians, Lithuanians, slave workers from the east, heading home with anything that might be of value, a pane of glass, a chicken, a dirty tablecloth. Those with only small cases were Germans kicked out of their houses by the occupiers. They were heading to their relatives until they could reclaim their homes. Those with nothing were freed prisoners of war.

  As for Jews, there weren’t any.

  Across the wild countryside of the Lüneburg Heath, beyond the refreshing brisk breeze, there had been a thick clogging smell that at times had clung to him like a mask; it had the familiarity of death yet he struggled to distinguish the elements. It unsettled him until he understood: it was putrid corpses mixed with still-smoking pine, beech, and plants in the woods that the British had set ablaze to flush out German snipers. Like moldy rosemary in a sauna. What disturbed Jacob most was how normal it all looked. As he trudged past pretty villages with wooden homes and small farms and little churches, Jacob watched the children playing in the fields. These farm kids barely spared a glance for the ragged aliens who trudged by. They looked strong and well-fed, spared from the monster that had devoured his world. His family.

  He couldn’t look at them, the smug Volk.

  Until at a sharp bend in the road, he saw three men in torn Wehrmacht uniforms walking with their arms linked. When
the road turned they continued straight until one stumbled on the root of a tree and the others followed him straight into a bush. They stopped dead, and the two at the sides probed with sticks that they held in their hands while the middle one stretched a foot, searching like an ant’s antennae for obstacles. The column moved silently by. Jacob noticed the soldiers’ armbands of three black dots on a yellow background. They must be German soldiers blinded in battle. Jacob watched as they floundered into a field. I hope it’s a minefield, he thought, but hurried after them and, taking one by the arm, he said, “This way,” and guided them back to the road.

  He thought, I should have let them get blown up.

  Picking his way through the woods with a thousand shades of green and the fields blossoming with so many colors, Jacob had felt like he was waking from a nightmare. He had left a lunatic asylum, a black-and-white death machine, that had consumed his entire world, that was his entire world, a world of torturers and their victims.

  Yet, what was real? Here, horses grazed, cows chewed, birds sang, church bells rang, couples strolled, children played, men plowed, women worked at their side, dogs wagged their tails, gardens grew, flowers bloomed, trees blossomed, rivers flowed, fish swam. Who knew? How could you know? And what did they know of his world? How could two such worlds share the same earth? And so close?

  It wasn’t till he reached the edge of the town of Hanover that it began to strike him that maybe his life in the camp had been a sanctuary of sorts. As a prisoner in the Sternlager, the Star Camp, he had been spared the worst. Because of his English mother and his relatives in England, he and Maxie had been chosen to live, they were hostages, Jews of some value, if there was such a thing, to be swapped one day for German prisoners of war in British hands. Despite everything, they had been better treated than most, until the Rat had had it in for Maxie.

  Every time they’d heard the drone of warplanes they’d prayed the Americans or the British would bomb the SS guards, and cursed them when they didn’t. Now, in the suburbs of Hanover, as he stepped around jagged metal beams and torn concrete boulders, passed street after street without a house standing, just a sea of rubble, he at last understood why the Allies hadn’t bombed the camps. Killing Germans was more important than saving Jews.