Jacob's Oath (22 page)

They had walked along the river and held hands like a dozen other young couples that
evening who didn’t need to speak, and as they had kissed, a tug pulling a barge full
of Amis had glided by. They had cheered and applauded the passionate couple, and Jacob
had called back and laughed, and Sarah had curtsied and blown them a kiss, which won
them another roar of approval.

They had laughed and stopped for a glass of beer, which they shared, and a pale stringy
sausage, which Sarah refused to touch, even after Jacob coated it with ersatz mustard.
“What’s in it? It could be anything.”

“I happen to like cow’s toenails,” Jacob had said.

“With eyelids?”

“My favorite.”

It was early the third morning that Sarah woke to feel the sweetness of Jacob’s lips
on hers. He supported himself on one elbow and with his other hand was combing her
hair from her mouth, as he gazed into her eyes in wonder. Pale shadows moved on the
wall and shaded Jacob’s face, which he buried in the crook of Sarah’s neck. His rapid
breathing tickled her and now at last she could feel him against her, growing, probing,
slowly, carefully, opening her legs with his. He put his lips to her ear and whispered,
“I love you, I love you,” as he pushed gently, at the edge of her, around, seeking,
and she said, “I love you, too,” and bit his throat and with her hand felt him, a
miracle, and guided him into her, deep inside her, at last.

Jacob’s tears wet her cheeks as he held her so tightly she had to wriggle free. She
pushed up against him, with him, arching her back until his cry at the end was from
his very soul.

“This is how I want to wake up every day, please,” Sarah said minutes later, as Jacob
entered her again. And the next time he did it she said, “Afternoons, too.”

That third day in bed was a day of wonder for them both, as if they were wiping from
their bodies’ memory the fear and loneliness that had consumed them both for so long.
They emerged from deep holes. They made love with gratitude, they said thank you with
their bodies. They could have been bones in the ground or ashes in the wind instead
of lovers in bed, and they didn’t need to speak a word of it for they were never alone
in the room but were accompanied by the spirits of all their loved ones who were gone,
and they knew they were blessed by their approval. The spirits smiled upon their passion.

“What is that actually on your face?” Sarah said. “Would you call that a smile? A
smirk? A leer? My goodness, you do look smug.”

“All of those. And with good reason.” Jacob pulled back the sheet and looked at himself
in wonder. “I mean, look. I thought I had lost it forever. Now it won’t go away.”

Sarah laughed at Jacob’s pride until a cold shiver shot through her. She closed her
eyes and turned away. Her body went stiff. Hoppi had come to her. He did that sometimes.
She had whole conversations with him, as if he were an invisible presence walking
in the street with her, and she described to him what she saw and how she felt. He
comforted her, but not this time. Now he was looking at her looking at Jacob’s nakedness.
There was no expression on his face. He didn’t look angry, or hurt, or happy for her,
or anything. Just his face, immobile, looking at her. Was he judging her? It isn’t
fair, stop it! She felt like crying. An eternity, an infinity suddenly separated her
from Jacob. She moved away. And then Viktor’s ugly face. The big brute, the disgusting
animal, standing above her, laughing, and just as suddenly Viktor vanished, and Hoppi
slowly faded away, leaving Sarah on her side, and she heard Jacob say, “Sarah, Sarah,
what is it, are you all right? I was only joking. Please, come back here.” And he
had moved to her and held her, and at first she wanted to push him away but slowly
she came back and whispered, so softly that he had to put his ear to her mouth. “Just
hold me, Jacob, please, just hold me quietly,” and he did, and in this manner they
took their breaths together, feeling their chests rise and fall, until sleep took
them both.

She awoke in darkness and felt Jacob beside her and pressing against her, and Sarah
turned and took him in her hands and kissed and licked him. He stroked her head in
his lap and sighed and moaned until he fell back and pulled her up onto him. With
a shrug of her hips he was inside her and again they rolled and shifted and thrust
as one and caressed each other into a frenzy, and again the spirits smiled upon them.
They were never alone in that room, it was more than the joining of two lovers, of
all their sinews and nerves and energies, it was the union of past and present and
future, of all their memories and hopes and dreams, of all the good and the bad and
the evil, all held in a tender ball of perfect love.

“Ouch!” Sarah had banged her head on the wall. Jacob pulled her down the bed and turned
her around. He bit and licked the back of her ears and neck, pulled her to her knees,
and spread them. And so it went, till they fell asleep again, taking in deep breaths
of each other.

The next morning, the fourth in bed, Jacob wanted to go for a walk. “You must be joking,”
Sarah said, holding herself between the legs. “I don’t think I’ll ever walk again.”

“I’m starving, come on, I’ll walk slowly, let’s get something to eat.”

For four days they had lived on cheese and egg sandwiches and apples.

“No, don’t go yet. Later. Come back to bed. Let’s sleep a little.”

Jacob smiled at Sarah, who was lying on her back under the blanket with her legs pulled
up and wide apart, her knees like tent poles. Her hair flowed across the pillow; she
had one hand under the blanket and her other thrown back. He sat down and tickled
her under the arm. She jerked away.

Suddenly he felt sad. “Thank you,” he said.

“Thank you? For what?”

“You know?”

“Ah, of course. For being such an amazing lover.”

“That, too. But you know. Thank you. For being here with me, I suppose. For saving
my life. For walking through the door of a complete stranger.”

“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Well, you can make it sound a bit more romantic than that.”

“Actually, if you have to know, I knew where you lived. I followed you. I had seen
you and found you the most attractive man I had ever laid eyes on and knew, just knew,
that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, and only you.” Jacob’s jaw dropped,
he listened with wide eyes. “I knew it as soon as I saw you walking across the square
outside the church. So I followed you home. I didn’t have the courage to knock on
the door so I waited on the other side of the street and when I saw you go out, and
that you had left the door open, I came in and waited for you. I was in love with
you from the first moment I saw you.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“You silly!” Jacob said, and fell across her and kissed her and pulled back the blanket
to see her naked body, but Sarah pulled the blanket over herself and said, “No, really,
not again, I can’t, not yet, please, later … go for your walk already!”

*   *   *

After two hours and Jacob had still not returned Sarah began to imagine every possible
accident that could have befallen him. She was sure he had been beaten by a mob of
Nazis. Or slipped into the river. Could he swim? She didn’t know. Could a car have
hit him? Was he in the hospital? Should she go there? She had an image so clear it
was as if it was happening right now, of Hoppi waving from the door. Why hadn’t she
stopped him? Oh, why? Jacob had waved too, a cheerful good-bye, a mirror image of
Hoppi. She shouldn’t have let him go. Where was he? What was he doing?

Sarah couldn’t bear it, she had to go out too. She washed and dressed and walked to
the remains of the synagogue. She had never been there before it was burned down;
her parents were about as religious as their goat. The only time she really felt Jewish
was when she was cursed and threatened for being a Jew. And now that all the other
Jews were dead, as far as she knew, the carcass of the synagogue held some kind of
attraction for her. She just sat, and brooded anxiously, like a hen with no chicks.

Jacob had claimed he needed some fresh air but the truth was that Lookout Point was
calling. He shouldn’t have missed a day, let alone four, it was a risk. The Rat might
come back for good or he might come back just for a day or two. It never occurred
to Jacob that he wouldn’t return at all. Yet as he walked to his table in the café
near the Schwartzer Bock hotel, he wasn’t thinking of the Rat but of Sarah.

He walked past the shops of Hauptstrasse and American soldiers by their jeeps and
knots of Germans chatting on the benches without looking for a single cigarette butt
or noticing any bartering opportunity. He was in a daze, floating on four days of
pure fantasy. Part of him thought, If only there was somebody I could tell! Before
Sarah there had been a couple of girls, briefly, in his teens; he’d been a late starter,
an amateur. But what could he do? Tell who? Go to his old home and knock on the door
and say to Schmutzig: “Schmutzig, in a hundred years you’d never guess what I’ve been
doing for four days straight.” And with such a beauty.

And what if Frau Berger answered the door? Would she notice something? Flushed skin?
Sparkling eyes? His stupid grin? A couple walked by and looked at him. Do I look different?
Can they tell? Do they know? Is it so obvious that I’m in love?

How can life change so suddenly? He could still feel Sarah’s skin, her touch, her
wetness, he could taste her … “Oh, sorry!” he said as he walked into an old man with
a cane. And the way she opened up to him, so easily and freely and yes, to be honest,
almost desperately. But not as desperately as he. Their very desperation meant they
couldn’t stop. Who knew when it would end? When they would be taken from each other?
They made love as if there were no tomorrow, because they didn’t know anything else.

To have nothing, nothing at all, and then have so much, within moments, it didn’t
seem possible that life could hold such pleasure and such surprises. On the other
hand, he knew what evil it held, what horror, oh yes, this he knew in intimate detail,
and yet, even that seemed to be fading. Not Maxie, never, but the cold, the hunger,
the desperate thirst, the pain, the sickness, the stink, the fear, the mindless bullying,
the endless itching and scratching, the hunting for any scrap of food, for any advantage
over the others, for the slightest favor from the guard, anything that would give
life the slimmest edge over death. This he knew well. In this he was an expert, no
amateur, he was a doctor, a professor.

He waited on the corner of Hauptstrasse and the orphan square that had been Adolf
Hitler Square. A convoy of American trucks blocked the road and only when the military
policeman blew his whistle could the pedestrians cross. Jacob was jostled and nearly
tripped but passed over into Bergheimerstrasse. He was thinking of the tingling of
his skin and Sarah. How she had brought him to life. Just the thought of her made
him have to put his hand in his pocket and rearrange his pants. He had hardly thought
of loving a girl for years, or even thought himself capable of fulfilling his role
as a man. Everything was too dirty, too evil, he was surrounded by too many sick and
dying people. Other inmates had thought of little else, and found ways to meet up
with female prisoners, but not him. He just couldn’t.

He smiled as he turned into Kirchstrasse, and an elderly woman walking past him smiled
back. Jacob was thinking of Sarah lying on her side and him pressed against her from
behind, stroking her. He shivered as he remembered the surprise of her softness among
her firm lines, her silky roundness, and the straining hardness of her nipples. It
irritated her if he played with them too much, and she had pushed her bottom back
into him, which had instantly turned him harder than her nipples. When she turned
to touch him there he had said, “It doesn’t irritate me at all.”

He smiled as he pulled out his usual chair at Lookout Point. Sarah had kissed each
toe and every centimeter of him, as if worshipping him, and he had done the same to
her, only with his tongue, licking and lapping at her skin until she had told him,
begged him, to stop, it was too ticklish. He grinned as he remembered where he had
been when she cried, “Please, no more,” and then, “Please, no,” until she was moaning,
“Please.”

That’s him!

Every nerve in his body screamed, every hair sprung up, every sinew and muscle went
taut as steel.

He sat stiff in his chair. That was him. He just went in. That was the Rat. He only
saw his back and he wore a hat over his ears. But no mistake. Jacob’s heart thumped,
he could feel himself flushing.

“Are you all right, sir?” the waiter asked, bending near Jacob with a tray of drinks
balanced on his open palm. Jacob nodded.

“Can I get you something?”

“Coffee.”

“Yes, sir. Something to eat? A sandwich? A salad? We have cucumbers today.”

“No.”

“Very well.”

Jacob never took his eyes from the door. He thought his heart would explode. Was that
the Rat? He was sure it was. But was it? He hadn’t seen his face. He put two fingers
on his wrist to time his pulse but stopped counting after five seconds. He could hardly
count that fast. That’s strange, he thought, why did I do that? Yes, for sure, it
was the Rat. He’s come home. Jacob knew he would. Everyone does. Eventually.

PART TWO

TWENTY-ONE

Heidelberg,
May 31, 1945

The next morning, Sarah murmured, “Jacob? Jacob?” Feeling for him, she turned and
her arm fell across his side of the bed onto the sheet. “Sweetie? Where are you?”
A shiver ran through her … Is he gone? Will he come back? Did they take him?… and
she jerked awake. It was the terror, always there, barely suppressed, of losing everything,
everyone, in an instant. “Here, darling,” he said. He was sitting on the bed, dressed
and putting on his shoes.