Jacob's Oath: A Novel

by Martin Fletcher

  Isak walked back to the jeep, where Sarah stretched in the backseat, her leg hanging over the side. She shook her hair, wishing she had a mirror. Isak looked grim.

  “Where are we?” she asked when he reached her.

  “The brigade headquarters of the American Sixty-ninth Infantry, they’re with the Ninth Armored Division. And I have good news and bad news. The good news is they have a jeep going to Frankfurt right now.”

  Sarah beamed. Her luck was holding. “And they have room for me?”

  “Yes, they have room. But they won’t take you. I’ve tried. All they care about are their orders.” He tried to joke. “What do they think? They’re in the army?” Not the Russian army, he thought. I’d have slipped him a ham or a bottle of vodka and she’d be halfway home by now.

  “But why not?” Sarah said.

  “No papers. You don’t have any papers. You need some travel documents, a laissez-passer, something. Nobody’s allowed to travel without a permit.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. We’ve passed thousands of refugees on the road. Everyone’s going somewhere.”

  “Millions. They say ten million people are on the move in Europe, probably many more, and wait till the war’s over, that’ll double. But they’re walking, if they come across a roadblock they just walk around it, through the fields. Don’t do that, though. People are getting blown up by land mines. They won’t take you in their jeep.”

  The young American officer appeared over Brodsky’s shoulder. He looked clean and fit but his eyes showed exhaustion. He had a fresh white bandage around his neck. “I’m sorry, those are the orders,” he said, leaning down and peering into the jeep. “I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “Tovarich Lieutenant Brodsky told me about you.” Brodsky couldn’t help but smile. The American had even learned the correct form of address for a junior Red Army officer: Comrade Lieutenant.

  Another American soldier, just as young, stopped by the jeep to eye up the girl inside. The first officer was saying, “… and then there’s the no-fraternization order, can’t talk to Germans…”

  The last bit Sarah understood. “But I’m Jewish…”

  The second soldier said, “All Fritz to us, sweetheart, Jewish, not Jewish, all the same.”

  “But I’m not one of them. Look at what happened. What they did to us.”

  “Those are the orders, miss,” the first soldier said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t make them up.”

  Tears welled up in Sarah’s eyes.

  The second American interrupted again. “Come on, John, that ain’t fair. You heard what General Patton said? It ain’t fraternization if you don’t stay for breakfast.” He winked at Sarah and laughed and walked away.

  “I’d like to help, really,” the American said. “But we have orders. No travel papers, no travel.”

  And then it dawned on Brodsky. “Wait a minute, Lieutenant,” he said. “Don’t look now.”

  He went to his front seat and took out a blank sheet of headed notepaper from his intelligence file. Head down, he quickly wrote a few lines, breathed onto a stamp, which he pressed into its ink pad and with a flourish banged down across his own signature. He took another stamp, with the insignia of a hammer and sickle within a five-pointed red star, and stamped the paper in two places, at the top across the Red Army division letterhead and at the bottom partly covering the first stamp and his signature. He stamped it twice more, for good measure, and signed it again.

  He handed the document to Lieutenant Reid Gould from Montclair, New Jersey, whose first encounter this was with Russian military bureaucracy.

  “There,” Brodsky announced. “Signed and approved in the name of Colonel General Nikolai Berzarin, Soviet commander of Berlin, who I have the honor, along with my colleagues, of representing in all matters pertaining to coordination with our esteemed American allies.” He handed Sarah’s new travel document to the surprised American, who read it slowly, shaking his head in wonder. “Especially travel,” Brodsky added.

  There were a few lines in Russian that Gould couldn’t read and below, in English, the words,

  To Whom It May Concern

  This is to introduce Miss Sarah Kaufman, and to request all and each cooperation in the field of transportation, nourishment, accommodations, and medical care befitting a Jewish victim of National Socialism.

  Signed, Lieutenant Isak Brodsky and on behalf of Colonel General Nikolai Berzarin, Order of Lenin, Commander, Soviet Army, Berlin.

  A slow smile spread across Gould’s face. “Looks good to me. That would have taken two weeks with our guys.” He looked up at Sarah, seeing her properly for the first time, and couldn’t help nodding in approval. Cute. “Let me take this to the chief,” he said. “He’ll need to sign off on this.”

  Brodsky put his hand on Gould’s arm. “Is that really necessary?” he asked. “Here’s the travel document, stamped, signed, delivered. She can travel now. Let us not look for further obstacles like a pig looking for cheese.” Gould looked up sharply. “I mean…” Brodsky said. He had translated directly from the Russian and realized that in English it sounded rude. The last thing he wanted. He just didn’t want anyone else to see the paper—the stamp didn’t match the heading. It should have been his division stamp, not a generic Red Army one, but it was all he had. To a Russian bureaucrat it would look like a forgery. On the other hand, so what? With the help of a ham or a bottle of vodka … “Please,” he said, in a beseeching tone, “can we just try to help this young lady, after all she has gone through? Can you imagine how she has suffered, and lost her family, and now all she wants is to go home to Heidelberg…”

  The American took his arm back. “I’d like to help, really I would, but we have our orders. No fraternization with Germans, I don’t care who they are. If my boss okays these papers, then she’s good to go, but otherwise she’ll have to go back to Berlin with you. Can’t leave her here alone.”

  At the mention of Berlin, Sarah looked startled. Back to Berlin? Impossible. She shook her head. She’d rather walk to Heidelberg. Everyone else is walking, why not me? The American lieutenant turned, holding the paper, and began to walk away when he seemed to freeze. When his world changed in an instant, when years were added onto his life, when six months of hard slog across the battlefields of Europe, through France and across the Rhine, where a sniper’s bullet grazed his neck, leaving a burn mark that still seeped, when what seemed like days of being pinned down by murderous mortar fire near Kassel, all suddenly passed from a daily mortal threat to a free ticket home on an ocean liner surrounded by drunken mates. A roar went up among the Americans and Gould roared too. Officers and their Russian comrades pushed out of the tent, hugging each other.

  It was the loudspeaker, whose bass tone boomed across the vast brigade tent camp. An excited voice said over and over, “The war has ended. The war has ended. The war has ended. The war has…”

  “It’s over,” Brodsky yelled, and pulled Sarah from the jeep. He looked at his watch to record the time for posterity. It had stopped. Damn. Shook it. The minute hand fell off. He laughed. He must get an American watch. But he knew the date: May 8, 1945. He danced and hugged Sarah and pulled in Gould and the trio jumped and laughed. Gould tried to withdraw but the Russian had him in a bear hug and kissed his cheek and Brodsky kissed Sarah, too. She looked at Gould, laughed, and grabbed his face between her hot little hands and kissed him on the nose, and gave his cheek a friendly tap. For Gould, it was love at first kiss. It was a kiss he would treasure all his life. The sweetest kiss in the most glorious moment. Now a bottle of vodka appeared. The Russian drivers, who always had a secret and limitless supply, each had a bottle to his lips and passed it around to their officers, who gulped from it and handed it to the Americans. “Oh, no,” one said, “not allowed,” but a Russian poured the vodka over him, shouting, “Drink! To Marshall Stalin! President Truman!” The American took a swig and spat it out. “Ugh, what rotgut!” Another Russian grabbed an American’s steel helmet and threw it into the air and
it clattered to the ground. The same Russian took off his own cap and planted it on the American’s head. Variations of “It’s over” in Russian and English were yelled across the camp. A Russian call for another toast, “Commissar Voroshilov! Secretary of War Stimson!” The Americans pulled a face. “Who?” Through the barbed wire on the street, even the Germans laughed and shouted. They hardly cared who won the war, their leaders had abandoned them months ago.

  Brodsky was relentless. With one hand on his new bosom buddy’s shoulder, he clapped Gould on the chest with his other. “So when is that jeep taking off for Frankfurt, Lieutenant?” he shouted. “Come on, the war’s over, she just wants to go home, be generous, do a good deed and God will reward you. Or Stalin. I will too. I’ll find you a nice big ham.”

  NINE

  Heidelberg,

  May 8, 1945

  The same day, across the Neckar, Jacob jumped off the U.S. army pontoon and scrambled up the slippery stone bank to the main arch of the Old Bridge. A knot of “Amis,” one of the kinder nicknames for the American troops, stood smoking by a group of German men who were pulling bricks and rubble out of the river, debris from the three arches blown up by the Wehrmacht at the end of March when they surrendered the town without a fight.

  Jacob hesitated at the cobbled entrance to Steingasse, which led from the historic bridge to the even more historic market square. To his right and left U.S. army jeeps lined the Neckarstaden along the river. Drivers sat in each jeep while soldiers milled around, enjoying the sunny day, snapping photos, whistling at the girls. Germans walked by as if nothing had ever happened. The hangdog faces of the refugees on the road and the misery of the homeless in the ruined towns were replaced here by what looked to be well-fed, well-dressed citizens untouched by war. They strolled in jackets and ties. Take away the Americans and it seemed as if nothing had changed. The waiter at Café zum Nepomuk on the corner even wore the same pressed black trousers and starched white shirt. Jacob stared at his salt-and-pepper sideburns and extravagant mustache; he might even be the same man. Jacob peered at the Germans walking by, almost expecting to see the swastika lapel pins and to hear their Heil Hitler salutations. Instead, they wore a different lapel pin: Red Cross.

  He understood immediately. The burghers of Heidelberg had switched sides. Now it would be hard to find a man who had ever been a Nazi. They had all been Red Cross workers.

  He suddenly swayed. He sat down heavily on a pile of debris, sending a cloud of plaster flakes into the air. An American soldier pointed with his gun: move on. He tottered to a café chair, feeling giddy, as if he might faint. Don’t tell me I’m sick, he thought. He heard a voice. “What may I offer you, sir?” He looked up, through a haze, and opened his mouth but nothing came out. Jacob gestured with the flat of his hand: just a moment. He hung his head between his knees, breathing deeply and slowly, trying to collect himself.

  Five hundred and fifty kilometers, he thought, in what? Two weeks? And now he couldn’t walk the last five hundred meters.

  Loneliness enveloped him, made him faint with worry. He had longed for this for years, every prisoner he had ever met had yearned for home. Alone among them, he had made it. And now what? What home? It hit him: I have nobody. If I was a German soldier, he thought, I’d have a mother and a father waiting for me, a warm home to go to, food on the table. Tears of joy, hugs and kisses.

  And me? Nobody and nothing. Don’t even know where to go.

  He sucked in air and pushed himself up from the table, which rattled on the uneven cobbled ground. He looked around at the oblivious passersby, waiting for his dizziness to pass. The waiter was observing him with distaste. Jacob tried to smile, made a small dismissive gesture with his hand, and stepped away, with a heavy heart, down the narrow Steingasse, where soldiers sat in the sun, where the Konditorei display window was piled high with fresh loaves and buns and even a tiered wedding cake. He paused at the open door to watch a woman inside filling her shopping bag. He breathed in the sweet aroma of freshly baked bread and felt his mouth water. What would I give for a bun?

  As he turned, a plan began to take shape. First he would go to Marktplatz 7, the Judenhaus where his family had been forced to live in one room after the Nazis had confiscated their home. Nine Jewish families shared eleven rooms. At first it hadn’t seemed too bad, living right on the market square, only a few streets from his stolen home on Dreikönigstrasse. But it also meant that there was always a crowd outside, and in every crowd there was some dolt who would shout or jeer or throw stones at the Jews, especially on market days, and it was worst of all on Sundays, when the burghers came to pray at the neighboring Church of the Holy Spirit.

  He’d see who lived there now, maybe he would recognize somebody, and then go to his real home. Dr. Berger had had the decency to look embarrassed when the Nazis had given him their home. Not so embarrassed, however, as to refuse it. Whenever his father had wanted to sit in the parlor, for old times’ sake, to remember the baking smells of his childhood in the small rooms and the dark stairs, to hear the laughter of his parents, even to summon up the spirit of his late wife, the doctor had been gracious and polite, almost apologetic. He didn’t need to be. Most Nazis would have kicked his father out and maybe beaten him, or more likely, would have cursed him at the door and called the police.

  As he turned left behind the church, Jacob found the market square crowded with more sellers than buyers. Amis in uniform browsed at stalls that sold church trinkets of no value. What they wanted were Leica cameras, gold and jewelry cheap at black market prices. He stared at everyone, searching in vain for the comfort of a familiar face. He noticed a small American flag flying from a jeep outside a side entrance to the church. Two soldiers stood on either side, and another Willys with more soldiers was parked ten meters away, providing cover. A crowd of refugees in rags waited silently in line. Good job I requisitioned these clothes, he thought, or I’d look just like them. He walked over to see what was up.

  Behind a heavy wooden table in the high-ceilinged room a U.S. army officer was speaking to each refugee individually, through an interpreter. They were holding mugs with drinks. Jacob couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but it gave him an idea. This time he joined the back of the line.

  As he neared the front, Jacob noticed the small crosses on the officer’s jacket lapels and on his cap. A good sign. His job was to help. Jacob’s hopes rose. He greeted the chaplain in English with a rehearsed question: “Good afternoon, sir,” Jacob said in his best accent, “I have just arrived in town and I wonder whether you could advise me how to find accommodation. Nazis have stolen my home.” As he expected, this prompted a flood of questions and Jacob gave the barest outline of his story. The chaplain, a bullnecked man with tight cropped hair who looked more like an infantry sergeant than a man of God, listened with growing horror and sympathy, but what Jacob didn’t expect was his response. Basically: Get lost.

  “Nothing we can do about it, not yet anyway,” the chaplain said. “The only government here is military, and there’s no regulation about Jews getting back their property. We just don’t have the power yet. And there’s no mechanism for you to sue to get it back either. You can ask at the mayor’s office, maybe. But don’t hold your breath. Frankly he’s an old Nazi, nothing we can do about that yet either. We will, trust me, but not yet. Other things to worry about.”

  No, he couldn’t help with an ID card. That’s the local police. No, he couldn’t help with a ration card. You only get it with an ID card. No, couldn’t help with transport. “Look, I’ve got Jewish blood myself, believe it or not,” the chaplain said. “I want to help. But I can’t. So far, absent any new regulations, Jews are treated like any other Germans. I’m sure that will change. It has to. We know what you’ve been through. But until we get new orders, that’s the way it is. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.”

  Jacob thought of one more thing. “Sorry,” the chaplain said. “We don’t use native translators. Can’t trust Germans. Don’t take i
t personally.”

  Jacob forced a smile and thanked the chaplain, said he hoped to meet him again, and left, cursing him under his breath. If the Amis didn’t help him, nobody would. Outside, Jacob recognized somebody at last, the postman. He looked the same, his big head on narrow shoulders, that same silly long mustache with vain twirls at the ends as if he were some kind of Hapsburg aristocrat, carrying his bag over one shoulder, hurrying as usual, except when it came to the Jews. He had refused to deliver mail to the Jews’ House. They had to collect it themselves from the post office. He always made them come back at least three times for each letter. Too busy. Lunchtime. Teatime. Jacob stared at the postman’s jacket as he passed and laughed to himself. Yes. In his lapel was a Red Cross pin.

  A thought came to Jacob. He should have left his name and address with the chaplain in case the rules changed. But anyway, he didn’t have an address. All he had was his name, and the chaplain hadn’t asked.

  He stood outside the Jews’ House, which looked like any of the others, tall and narrow with pots of flowers on either side of the entrance door, clothes drying on the railings and a line of grimy yellow plaster cracking where the terraced house joined its neighbor. They still hadn’t fixed it, he thought. Pity it wasn’t bombed.

  The door opened and a lady pushed a pram into the street. She wore a green-and-red dirndl dress and a hat with a flower. He snorted. Didn’t look very Jewish. He had no interest in the house. He wanted to go home.

  He walked past the fish market and along Unterestrasse. The streets were crowded, but with strangers. Probably refugees from Mannheim. He was happy to see that the café where he used to read the Sunday papers, until Jews were banned, was boarded up. He walked on and three minutes later reached the corner of Dreikönigstrasse.

  He looked down the cobbled street, barely four meters wide, with narrow terraced houses in each other’s shade. They had all lived so close they could smell each other’s cooking, hear each other fighting, almost touch each other through the windows. He’d played in this street, and it got bad only when he was about thirteen, when the Nazis took over. He remembered the celebrations when Adolf Hitler, who had been chancellor only a few months, was made an honorary citizen of Heidelberg. There were swastikas hanging across the alley and flowers and street parties. It didn’t take long for the cursing to begin. “Jews Out” quickly turned into “Kill the Jews,” and then—well—then they were rounded up like cattle and that was it.