Jacob's Oath: A Novel

by Martin Fletcher

  Sarah looked away. “Don’t include me,” she murmured. “We lost before the war began.”

  Lieutenant Brodsky sighed. “I know.” He pursed his lips and looked at Sarah, as if requesting permission, before the words fell like a hammer. “I was in Auschwitz in February, two weeks after our troops freed the Jews.” He said it as if he needed to get it off his chest.

  Sarah’s mouth fell open. “My family was there,” she whispered. “They were taken from Heidelberg to Gurs in France, in the south, and then to the east. To Auschwitz. About three years ago. That’s all I know.”

  His eyes dropped to his feet. Sarah said, “What was there? Who was there? What did you see?” Brodsky could only answer, “What happened to you? They didn’t take you?”

  “No, I was here, in Berlin. Working. They took the Jews from here to Auschwitz too but I ran, I hid, I’ve been submerged the whole time.”

  Brodsky shook his head, a tear came to his eye. “Such evil things I saw,” he said, and stopped. “I’ve never spoken about this to anyone.”

  She stared at him, took in his face for the first time. He was about thirty years old, with curly black hair and strong features drooping with fatigue. His brown eyes were dark and sunken. His cheeks seemed to hang from his face; his skin, where she could see through his whiskers, was red from the sun and the wind. His youth was gone and he had been aged by war. She took it all in as she thought, A sad man.

  After a minute or two Sarah asked again, “What did you see there? They killed them, didn’t they, I know. Who was left?” As she asked she felt they were the most painful words of her life. Who was left?

  It poured out for an hour and she didn’t say a thing. He needed to talk as much as she needed to hear. She didn’t cry. Everything he said, all he had seen, meant one thing: the stories were true, then. Nobody could live through that for more than a month or two. Not even Hoppi. For three years? They’re dead, she thought. They’re all dead. I knew it. Mutti, Papi: She closed her eyes, seeking their faces. It was hard to summon them up.

  And Hoppi. It was even harder to see his face. She had promised him. He had promised her. Heidelberg. They would go there and wait for each other by the river. And however hopeless, that’s what she would do. That’s where she must go. Nothing would stop her. I made it, she thought. Maybe he did too. Even as she thought it she didn’t believe it.

  Lieutenant Brodsky broke the long silence. He sighed, shifted his legs as if he had said it all.

  “Sarah,” he said, taking her hands. “I am so glad that I could help you. You are safe now. I will assign one of my men to look after you. You will see our doctor.”

  “What?” Sarah said in alarm. “What do you mean? You are leaving?” Her heart felt like it would explode. Finally she had found a good man, a savior, a protector, and he was leaving? “Where are you going?”

  “I am sorry,” he said, still holding her hands. “I am a soldier, after all. I have orders. We leave tonight.”

  Sarah couldn’t believe it. “But he’ll be back, I know it.”

  “No, trust me, he won’t be back and nor will anybody else apart from the soldier I appoint to look after you.”

  “But you, where are you going?” Sarah said, feeling herself sinking into mud. She pulled her arm away. I’m lost.

  “I also speak English, in fact before the war I was a languages instructor. I am going as an interpreter with some of the senior officers to meet the Americans…”

  “The Americans?”

  “Yes, bureaucratic stuff. To coordinate. We’re allies, I’m told.”

  “Where will you meet them?”

  He laughed. “That’s a secret.”

  “But in Berlin?”

  “Oh no, they’re not here. We’re driving overnight. That’s why I must leave. Somewhere in the west. Actually, it can’t do any harm to tell you: Leipzig. To see General Bradley’s Twelfth Army Group. It’s an issue of the Allied occupation zones. They’ve advanced too far, they must pull back.”

  Sarah’s heart beat even faster. She could feel it banging her ribs. Her eyes widened. She squeezed his hands, pulled them to her chest. “Isak,” she said. It was the first time she had said his name. “Isak, please, I beg you, take me with you. Leipzig is on the way to Heidelberg. You’re my only hope. Please. I must leave Berlin. Please.” Holding his hand with her left hand, with her right she covered her mouth, which was trembling. “You could take me to the Americans. Or I could take a bus from Leipzig. Or a train. Walk. Anything. It would get me out of Berlin…”

  As Sarah spoke she was thinking, This is my first stroke of luck in years. Don’t lose it. If he doesn’t take me I will never get out of Berlin. A woman. Alone. Weak. A Jew. I’d have no chance. “Oh, for God’s sake, take me with you.”

  She held his hands so tight he had to pull them away.

  Brodsky looked over her shoulder, at the wall, with such intensity it was as if he were looking through it. His thoughts were in turmoil. He was imagining the consequences. Could I? Thoughts tumbled over each other, half-formed, unfinished: Auschwitz, Jews, fear, rape, borders, war, rape again, her whole family dead, they must be, she’s alone, I have my own car and driver, papers, passes, I can just add her name, do it, it’s now or never, after what she’s been through.

  Sarah watched him thinking, his eyes creased yet far away. She stroked his hand and whispered, “Please. Please. It’s my only chance. Please help me.”

  If she doesn’t leave now, Brodsky thought, it will only get harder. The lines will be drawn, the zones closed, Berlin could be cut off from the west. It’s now or never. Do it. Help her. God knows she’s suffered enough. Isn’t it time for a good deed? In victory?

  It had been a long time for him, too, since he had had a woman, had stroked one, had held one, been held. Since he had even kissed a girl. Made love? Hah! He sighed. He pulled his hand free and cupped her chin, wanting to feel his lips on hers. He thought, She’s so sad. And sweet. His hands were so big and Sarah’s face so small, the tips of his fingers played with her hair, her dry, dirty, matted hair. He took the tip of her ear between his thumb and forefinger, rolled it, played with it, bent to kiss it.

  And stopped himself. What was he thinking? This is a mitzvah, a blessing to help her, not a chance to abuse her. Am I, too, a beast?

  Another great sigh, almost a shudder, and Brodsky smiled, with as much sadness as Sarah had ever seen. His hands felt good, loving and tender and strong. With his hands cradling her face, she felt protected. Would he kiss her? What to do? She pulled back. Yet mostly she felt a deep pain, for herself, and, yes, for him. He didn’t win this war, she thought. We all lost.

  As if in a dream, she heard him say, “If I could, if I could, how soon could you be ready?”

  “How soon?” Sarah said with a slow smile, the first he had seen from her, and it melted his heart. “Let me see. Select my clothes, arrange my affairs, pay my bills … I’m ready now, of course. Can you? Oh, can you take me?”

  SIX

  Frankfurt,

  May 5, 1945

  Jacob woke by a mound of bricks that were scraped, cleaned, and ready for reuse. There were piles like this every fifty meters, and by each were little shelters of brick and wooden planks where ragged people huddled to keep warm. He stretched his arms and legs, rubbed the ache from his joints, and pushed himself to his feet.

  His shoulders were slumped, his eyes were dark, and he had the hangdog expression of exhaustion. He yawned, took a piece of paper from his pocket, unwrapped it, and sighed at the little dark slab. He put the last small piece of chocolate into his mouth and sucked, playing with it with his tongue, trying to print the taste in his memory. It was the last of his food.

  Hanover and Kassel had shocked him but Frankfurt was like a demented Grimm’s fairy tale. It had been devoured and spat out, shapeless in complete defeat. Maybe three houses were left standing in each street. There were mountains of rubble as far as the eye could see, covering every centimeter of ground.
People picked their way across the debris like tightrope walkers.

  But he found the house he had been told about, near the center, one of the few houses fully intact. There wasn’t a scratch on the stone angels in the elegant façade. The Americans had kicked out the owners and given it to the Jews of Frankfurt as their community headquarters.

  “It’ll do for now, till there are more of us,” a bald man with thin round spectacles told Jacob, gesturing to a chair and handing him a cheese sandwich from the box donated daily by the American army chaplain, a rabbi. “We had thirty thousand Jews here before the war. Today, there’s about fifty. We hope more will come back like you.”

  “I’m not from here,” Jacob said. “I want to go to Heidelberg. I was told you could arrange a ride for me. That’s why I came.”

  The man snorted. “Who told you? Manny the comedian? Rolls-Royce or Cadillac?”

  “A bike?”

  “Not even. I can give you another sandwich.”

  Jacob was too tired to be disappointed. He nodded and hunched forward, munching quietly, looking at his feet, and at the legs of the chair. He thought, When did I last sit on a chair? Or eat a cheese sandwich? Or drink water from a glass? I’m like a newborn baby, everything is new.

  As for news of family, friends, neighbors, any confirmation that he was not alone in the world, this too he was denied.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “It’s too soon, I suppose, maybe more will come back. I can find you a place to sleep here in Frankfurt if you like, I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can do. At least you can rest. We’re all staying in the hospital for the time being.”

  “Thank you. But I must get to Heidelberg.” He took four more sandwiches and put them in his pockets.

  He left the building and headed west, counting the steps, as he always did, each step seventy-five centimeters. Each day he knew exactly his progress. Thirteen hundred and thirty-three steps per kilometer. Eighteen hundred and ninety-eight steps later, almost one and a half kilometers, he reached the river and turned south.

  Gray light from the gathering clouds flashed on the dark flowing waters of the Rhine, whose lush green banks exploded with white and purple magnolias and red and crimson azaleas. Steep vineyards that cascaded to the water’s edge were heavy with grapes. Spring was bursting forth in an explosion of color and light along one of Europe’s mightiest rivers.

  For all he saw of it, Jacob might as well have been in a box.

  What he did see was people like himself, in rags, trudging alone or in groups, pulling and pushing all they had in the world. And Americans. Jeeps, trailers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, field guns, and truck after truck carrying doughboys and equipment of the 10th Armored Division. Sometimes they forced him off the road, or he had to wait until soldiers at roadblocks allowed him to continue, but mostly he plodded on, head down, counting his steps, heedless of the river and its beauty, feeling he could walk forever but wondering what was the point.

  The closer he got to Heidelberg, the grimmer his thoughts. The total destruction he had seen in Hanover and Frankfurt, Kassel, and the dozens of burned, gutted villages at crossroads or bridges warned him over and over: Don’t be surprised. There’s nothing left in Heidelberg. What is there to celebrate?

  What caused most pain was that he was glad. Or at least, he thought he was. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know what to think. That town that had spat out his family and their friends, led them to their slaughter, what right did the people there have to live? He hoped they were bombed to bits. Yet what right did he have to live either? Why hadn’t he died along with Maxie and everyone else? Anyway, he was dying inside.

  As he walked, Maxie came to him, a blurred face behind his eyes, beckoning him. Teasing. His image was hazy but his voice was clear. “I told you so,” Maxie was saying, in his deep voice so at odds with his slight body. “You promised you’d look after me … you promised…” Names repeated themselves in his head, like a loop, a tightening noose: Gurs. Auschwitz. Maydanek. Belsen. All he knew was the names that had blotted out the souls of his family. “Told you…” Maxie had the sweetest face, if you ignored the bruising around the eyes and the open wound on the forehead that never healed but became infested with crawling white things that Jacob pulled out one by one in the narrow hut they shared with a hundred others. Maxie never complained. He didn’t dare. One sign of weakness and he could be killed. Auschwitz. Dachau. Maxie again; now he’s crying. Sobbing. “I told you…”

  They hadn’t played together much at home—Jacob was three years older, they had different friends—but when Maxie was bullied at school, he came to Jacob. Not that Jacob could protect him from the braying packs of Hitlerjugend, but at least he could explain to Maxie what Jewish was and why this label, which at home was most commonly used to describe their favorite soup, had suddenly turned them into some kind of Untermensch to be taunted and beaten. Together they could curse the other kids and laugh at their pathetic little swastika armbands, but they couldn’t fight back. He’d always promised Maxie one day he’d beat up the Nazi bastards, but instead the bullying got worse, much worse. As Jacob trudged south, counting the steps, he heard Maxie’s voice trailing off into a warning whistle: “I told you sssssooo…”

  That bastard Hans Seeler. Where is he now?

  After seeing him leave the Human Laundry, Jacob had searched the camp for days, but among thirty thousand people, with the number growing daily as more refugees came seeking food and shelter, he had lost him.

  The sign showed seven kilometers to Mannheim. Seventy-five centimeters a step. That is … nine thousand, three hundred and thirty-three steps to go. Head down, one at a time, one after the other. From Mannheim, a left turn into the Neckar Valley and follow the Neckar along the natural terraces of the Odenwald Hills. To Heidelberg Castle and the old town and home. What was left of it.

  After two days’ walking, and a damp night in a rotting tool shed, he approached Mannheim just as church bells rang out their once-comforting message of welcome; it was six o’clock in the evening. He looked around but could see no steeple. It was a distant, clanging sound, like rocks hitting a tin can. The church must be far away, but with no buildings standing to block the sound, it carried far and wide. The chimes mocked the ruins and the suffering.

  Just as Jacob found a burned door-frame and lowered himself to sit down, an old bent man pulled the timber from under him and loaded it onto his cart. At Jacob’s protest, the man offered him a lift into town. His cart was pulled by the oldest, boniest, and weakest horse Jacob had ever seen. “Your nag,” he told the old peasant carrying timber to barter as firewood in the market square, “looks like how I feel.”

  It was only at daybreak, after an exhausted sleep inside a bombed-out building, that Jacob took in the extent of the damage. If anything, Mannheim’s city center was worse than in Frankfurt. Here, too, glassy-eyed Germans picked their way across the debris, searched for wood to burn and water to drink. Here, too, was the piercing stink of bodies and excrement, vegetal and dank.

  Jacob filled his canteen at an American water truck outside the destroyed city hall. He went straight to the front of the line, and when a German with a mustache and muttonchop sideburns told him to get to the back he told him to lick his ass. That made him feel good.

  Jacob took off his left shoe. It looked fine when I got it at Harrods, he thought. Especially for dancing. He’d wanted the pair, but couldn’t find the other one in the pile. He massaged his heel and pulled up his foot and blew on the blister under his big toe. But for walking three hundred kilometers plus a train ride? He sniffed. What a fool. Lucky he didn’t find the second one, at least his right foot is okay with the hiking boot.

  Nineteen kilometers left to Heidelberg. As he walked, he counted and calculated. Twenty-five thousand, three hundred and thirty-three steps. One second per step. Three thousand, six hundred steps per hour. Seven hours and three minutes.

  The G.I.s wouldn’t let him walk on the Autobahn, so he had t
o use the narrow side roads. Even they were clogged with military traffic, horse-driven carts, and people like him, trudging this way and that.

  As he reached the Neckar and caught a boat ride to the northern bank to avoid a total halt in traffic, his thoughts turned to home. He knew nobody was alive. He’d heard about Auschwitz, he knew about Bergen-Belsen, and he knew he was alive only because he’d been kept in the Sternlager to be swapped for German prisoners of war. Even there, with their extra rations and less work, most had died of exhaustion, illness, and starvation. In the real camp he’d have had no chance to survive so long. Still, where there’s life, there’s hope. Maybe someone is alive. He’ll soon find out. His pace quickened as he thought of Papi, yet when he thought of Maxie, he had to stop. They had been so close in the camp. Looked after each other. He’d washed the wound in Maxie’s head for weeks, and Maxie would smile at him the whole time he held his head and swabbed the sore.

  As he thought of Maxie, he stared at the river, logs and branches floating gently by, birds crowing and swooping, an American tug pulling a giant raft piled high with machinery.

  Jacob’s lips turned into a sneer as he thought: Hans Seeler, you pig, your time will come.

  After walking a couple of kilometers, Jacob began to look at himself as others might see him. I can’t go home like this, he thought.

  He sniggered. His shoes! He sniffed his armpit. Ugh. He’d been walking for ages, his clothes were filthy and his trousers were torn at both knees and the seat. All he carried was his British army water canteen. I’ve got to get some clothes, he thought.

  Maybe Maxie was in heaven after all, putting in a good word for his older brother. For at that moment, just past a hamlet, he saw a clothesline crowded with fluttering men’s clothes. It was behind a hedge at the bottom of the garden of a solitary small house. He looked around: nobody. So what if I take some clothes? Is it thievery if you steal from a thief? They owe me. They must have many more.

  Looking around, he squirmed through a break in the hedge, hid behind a tree for a moment, checked the garden really was clear, and walked straight to the line. His hands fell and rose with the speed of a woodpecker as he grabbed what he wanted. He couldn’t help grinning as he pushed through the same hole in the hedge and almost ran, gripping a bundle of clothes.