He took the little bag and sat next to Sarah on the bed. Soon the plate was full of
pits. Their hands met in the bag, on the plate, grazing each other. Sarah sighed with
contentment, but not Jacob.
“So, are you going to tell me?” Sarah said.
“What?” He’d been thinking of this all the way home. Could he tell Sarah? How much
could he tell her? Would it help? Did he have to now? No secrets.
“Well?”
“Don’t worry. There’s nothing to tell.”
“Darling, I can feel it. Please don’t lie to me. Remember? No secrets?”
“Really. Nothing.”
“I’ll guess then. You bought a watch that doesn’t work. You found ten Pall Mall cigarette
butts and it rained and they got all soggy and are worthless. You wanted to get our
bread ration and they ran out just as it was your turn.” She took his hand and laid
it on her chest. “Yes? One of those? No! Not all of them?”
Jacob had to smile.
“You know what that smile is?” Sarah said. “The word is ‘bleak.’ It is a bleak smile.
What is it, what happened?”
He looked away and chewed on another cherry.
“Be a good boy. Tell Auntie Sarah.”
Jacob rose and went to the toilet. Through the closed door she heard him spraying
the bowl.
“Is the seat up?” she shouted. “And put the lid down afterwards. You always forget.”
“Who gives a shit,” he muttered. On the way home he had realized he would have to
tell her. He had made a huge mistake. He should never have taken the bait. He was
an idiot. Now everyone knew, so he might as well tell Sarah.
But how? What to say? Where to begin?
“Just tell me,” Sarah said as he came out of the toilet. “I felt so much better after
I told you. You can tell me anything. Is it something that happened then?”
Then. The Great Unspoken. The Never to Be Mentioned Yet Never to Be Forgotten.
He flinched. That was Maxie’s voice. He swore it was. Calling his name … Jacob. He
looked around in alarm, at the window, the door, he could have sworn he heard Maxie
call.
But he knew he didn’t. It must have been the wind, or the whispering of the curtains.
Or maybe he was just going crazy.
Jacob sat and closed his eyes with a wavering sigh. “Something just happened,” he
said. He leaned back against the wall in a dark world of his own.
He couldn’t bear to look at Sarah as he told her about Maxie, how he had been beaten
by the crazy SS guard until he had died in Jacob’s arms. As he recounted that moment,
in a dull voice, in agonizing detail, she gripped his arm in growing horror. Through
clenched eyes he told her the Nazis had thrown Maxie’s body onto a pile of corpses,
and he had lain there, in plain sight, going rotten, for weeks. At the end, when they
had separated the prisoners in the Sternlager and taken the elite ones away on a forced
march, he’d hidden in the pile of firewood in the hut. Because he had seen that the
Rat had stayed behind among a last contingent of SS guards. Then he hadn’t seen him
for weeks, he thought he’d lost him, until that time in the Human Laundry.
When he told her that Hans Seeler, the Rat, came from Heidelberg too, she gasped so
sharply her whole body jerked. And when he told her that he had already seen him,
he had to remove her hand from his arm, her grip was so tight it seemed to stop his
blood. He opened his eyes and saw her tears.
She was white.
Does she know what’s coming?
“The thing is…” He hesitated, plucked up courage, there was no holding back now.
“The last thing I said to Maxie, the last thing he heard before he died, was my oath.
I promised, on his life, to kill the Rat.”
That’s it, it was out. He had sworn never to tell her, to protect her innocence in
case he was caught, but now he had no choice. He had to tell her. Because now everyone
else knew. What a fool.
He closed his eyes again, pressed himself against the wall, as if to hide behind a
screen. “So this is what happened,” he went on. “Tonight…”
He had sat down, the Rat was at the next table, he could hear them … he told her everything
except the Rat’s taunt: “It’s nothing. It’s nobody.”
He had lost it. He had jumped up and pulled the Rat’s arm. Tried to punch him. But
the Rat was taller, stronger, quicker. And so were his friends. They had pushed him
against the wall, pinned his arms, shouted at him. The biggest one, Kristoff, had
pulled back his arm to punch him but the Rat had stopped him. And as two waiters pulled
Jacob from the garden, he had turned and yelled, “You bastard, you rat, you Nazi pig,
I’ll kill you, so help me God, I’ll kill you.”
Stretched out on the bed, eyes shut, he swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple traveled
the length of his throat.
Sitting next to him, Sarah stared blindly into the distance, her mouth open. Finally,
she spoke.
“We were too happy.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Heidelberg,
June 4, 1945
It was dark but for the warm glow of a candle that Sarah had bought that day. She
had intended a romantic meal by candlelight and a loving romp in bed. Instead she
had made tea three hours earlier and they hadn’t stopped talking. Mostly she had listened,
sitting on the edge of the bed with her legs drawn up to her chin. Walking in circles,
shaking her head. Examining the torn wallpaper in the corner.
Jacob had stretched out on the bed, resting his head in his hands. He had also walked
in circles and kicked the bathroom door twice. He had agreed that it didn’t help.
He had sat at the table with his head in his hands. He had wanted to punch the wall
but thought better of it.
For the tenth time Jacob said he would get a gun and shoot him in the head and for
the tenth time, Sarah had said, “No, you won’t.”
The only light was from the candle, which threw a pool of golden light until it fluttered
and burned out.
They sat in darkness until Sarah said, “It’s getting cold, let’s go to bed.”
“Put the light on,” Jacob said. He turned the switch and the room was flooded with
glaring light. It was quiet.
“What time is it?” Sarah asked. Jacob shrugged. She turned the light off and took
his hand. “Please. Come to bed now.” They undressed as they walked to the bed, and
covered themselves with the sheet and blanket. Jacob turned away from Sarah and she
hugged him from behind. They both sighed at the same time.
“We have to leave,” Sarah said. “Really. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
“Exactly, let’s not talk about it anymore. There’s nowhere to go.”
“We’ll find somewhere. America. Palestine. We’ll get out of this damned country.”
“You go. I’ll come later.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
* * *
He had shouted at her, nearly hit her. It was horrible.
“I promised! Don’t you understand?” He had thrust his face into hers and she had pushed
him away. He had raised his hand and she had jumped backward and he had brought it
down on the table in frustration. “Do you know what that means? My brother died in
my arms, for God’s sake, and I promised. I have to keep that promise. Don’t you understand?”
She had tried to shush him. “People are sleeping, be quiet.” He had shouted louder
until she had put her hand over his mouth and held him like a baby and he had trembled
until he pushed her away.
“The trouble with you,” he said, “is you don’t know how to hate.”
“They’re not all bad. They looked after me. They saved my life.”
“Well, good for you. They didn’t look after me,” he said, his voice rising. “All I
saw was them beating and killing us. Okay, you had a different experience. Good for
you. But don’t speak for me, don’t talk about things you know nothing about.”
“I know nothing about? How dare you.” All those years of hiding and terror, and hunger,
thirst, nightmares. Her baby. Now she was shouting. “Do you have any idea what I went
through? What I had to do to live?”
“No, I don’t, because you won’t tell me and you know what? I don’t want to know. Keep
it to yourself. You think I can’t guess? You filthy whore!”
Sarah went icy cold, her jaw dropped. She slapped him in the face. Hard. She fell
on him and kicked him. Sobbing, she beat him with her fists. He pushed her away. She
threw herself down on the bed and wept in frustration and anger. “You bastard,” she
said between sobs. “You absolute bastard.”
He looked at her, crumpled shadows on the bed. It’s so easy for you, go on, cry.
She didn’t deny it, though. Was it true? Why did he say that? Oh, why?
Jacob knelt by the bed and begged her forgiveness. She pushed him away with her foot.
He tried to stroke her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it…” She kicked out and caught him
in the head. “Ouch!”
“Good,” she said.
“That hurt.”
“Good, it was meant to.”
“I didn’t mean it. I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry, really I am, I know it’s
nonsense,” he said, holding her feet so she couldn’t kick him again. He stroked her
legs. “I’m sorry, really sorry.”
“It was a very stupid thing to say, even if you’re angry. And by the way, you aren’t
angry with me, you’re angry with yourself. So don’t take it out on me.”
“You’re right, I love you.”
“Say you’re sorry.”
“I did.”
“Say it again.”
He held her tight and she held him, too. She had said, “Killing him won’t bring Maxie
back.” She shouldn’t have mentioned Maxie. She felt him grow stiff in her arms, but
she went on. “Killing all the Nazis won’t bring back a single Jew. And hating like
this won’t do you any good. Hatred will destroy you. It will destroy us.”
Jacob had tried to make her understand. He didn’t have a choice. Maxie had died, dozens
of friends had died, many thousands more who he had seen every day—all dead now. Only
he lived. So he should forget them? Like it never happened? Do nothing? What sort
of a man would that make him? Of course killing one man would be like a howl in the
darkness. But not killing him? How could he live with himself?
Sarah kept trying to make him understand. “What, you’ll always hate? Don’t you see,
if you kill him you will destroy yourself, too.”
“No,
you
don’t see,” Jacob had shouted. “It will destroy me if I
don’t
kill him.”
Sarah had run out of arguments, and patience. He was as stubborn as a mule. As he
ranted on and on about his oath to his brother, his debt to his friends, his duty
to mankind, that asshole rat, she whispered her own deepest thought, so low he didn’t
hear: You will destroy me, too.
She saw it slipping away. In three weeks they had done something she could not have
dreamed of: they had built a little paradise, a safe haven in the insane world around
them, and now she realized it was a fool’s paradise. We can’t escape what happened,
it will forever follow us. We can never forget. We can try, we can rebuild, but we
are all damaged goods. We cry out at night, we shiver under the sheets, we wake up
soaked in sweat. There is no escape.
But no. She shook herself. Don’t think like that. We aren’t victims anymore, we can
live our own lives, we are not hostage to the evil people who slaughtered us. Do not
let Jacob kill Hans Seeler. It will ruin him, ruin us, and for nothing, nothing at
all, there are tens of thousands of Rats running around, all trying to hide. Let them.
Who cares? It’s too late now. What counts now is the future, not the past. We have
each other, that is what counts. Our love. Looking at Jacob, lying facedown, his face
molded into the pillow, she said slowly to herself, stressing each syllable:
I will not let him ruin us.
Because if he kills the Rat, he will be caught. Obviously. And they would both lose
everything. Again. Hoppi. Sarah suddenly realized she hadn’t thought of him for days.
If only she hadn’t lost her photos. She hadn’t even thought of the worst time of all,
that night in the cemetery. And that was good. She didn’t want to forget but she didn’t
want to remember all the time, either. She was rebuilding her life, and now Jacob
was threatening to tear it apart, from hatred, from an insane need for so-called revenge,
from, let’s face it, pigheaded male pride. She wouldn’t let him do it.
Hoppi was the same. She’d told him not to go out. And look what happened.
Not again.
* * *
As the very first hint of dawn lent a blue-gray hue to the black gables across the
road, Jacob turned his back to the window and, with a sigh, sat in the chair. Sarah’s
breathing was even and quiet, at rest at last. With her last ounce of consciousness
before drifting to sleep she had murmured, “So that’s decided, then, we’re leaving
Germany. Good night, baby.”
But he still hadn’t been able to shut down. In all the drama, he hadn’t been able
to think about what he most needed to think about.
Ten days.
The Rat was leaving in ten days. Ten days to kill the bastard. But how? That’s what
had kept him awake the last two hours as Sarah slept.
He really wasn’t any closer to a plan. Further, actually. He had made a list in his
head of all the obstacles. The Rat is strong and quick. He’s usually with his two
friends, who are just as big. He’d have no chance against them. He couldn’t take a
room in the hotel, he could too easily be recognized. He had lost his only real weapon:
surprise. And by threatening him in such a public place he would be the first suspect
if the Rat really did turn up dead. He’d never get away with it.
He had looked at the plus side, too. And come up with zero. Absolutely nothing in
his favor. His only way to do it was to buy a gun and shoot him dead, and then be
put to death himself. He realized if he committed murder, however justified in his
own mind, in a public place, there was no way the Americans could get him off the
hook. They would need to show the law applied to everyone or risk anarchy.
And time was running out.
TWENTY-SIX
Heidelberg,
June 5, 1945
At seven o’clock in the morning Sarah was dozing, with fragmented thoughts jumbled
and jumping between lush cherries and being lost in crowded Berlin streets, people
bumping her, forgetting where she lived, Hoppi’s head disappearing in the crowd, looking,
looking for him, and the long jeep ride where there was no room for her legs and Isak
turning around and looking at her, and the hospital, the sickly smell, the awful news.
She wanted to wake but dozed off again and had horrid thoughts about their fight,
she had a bad feeling, she wanted to come out of it, but was sucked back into drowsiness
until, after struggling between sleep and consciousness for what seemed hours, she
finally pulled herself up with a start.