Jacob's Oath (18 page)

“I think I recognize that chicken,” Sarah said. “I’m sure it was mine.”

“Really?” Jacob said.

“No, of course not, city boy.” She told Jacob about the policeman and the stolen chickens.
She forced a laugh but it was too bitter to work. He nodded and they walked a little
closer together. Sarah looked straight ahead. Without Jacob, she thought, she would
never have come. She was born in this house but she had nothing here now. What would
she say if there was anyone there? Jacob had tried to reassure her. “We have to go—maybe
they know something about your family. It’s worth a try.” Too late to back out now.

She had not been expecting to find many people in her hamlet just outside Leimersdorf;
instead, it was crowded, with foreign refugees not permitted to stay in town.

At the end of a lane, Sarah came to a halt. Her eyes fixed on a low house a hundred
meters on, one of three by a giant elm tree, with a garden bursting in color. “It’s
spring, it’s always beautiful in spring,” she said in a wondering voice. “Most of
the year, actually.”

“Which is yours?”

“The middle one.”

Sarah went silent as a couple approached. The strangers walked by without a glance,
but after they passed the man looked over his shoulder at Sarah, who had been studying
the woman. Jacob glared at him.

Jacob set off but Sarah stayed him with a hand. He looked back. “Let’s go and have
a look.”

“No. No.” Sarah’s eyes were red, she seemed about to cry. She shook her head.

“What is it? Are you afraid?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t that. I saw something…” She turned around. “Let’s go. I knew
I shouldn’t have…”

“After coming all this way? Go back now? No way. You stay here, then. I’ll go and
have a look.”

Sarah looked after the couple, and turned back to her house as if it would bite. “Wait
here,” Jacob said.

Jacob walked up to the house and put his hand on the gate. At that moment the front
door opened and a stout blond middle-aged woman in an apron walked out with a trowel
in her hand. She had a square blunt face and thin lips that spread into a smile. “Hello,
can I help you?” she asked. Jacob was taken by surprise and all he could think of
was “It’s a nice garden you have.”

“Thank you. I’m just going to pick some tomatoes. It’s a bit early but some of them
are ripe. They’re delicious. Sweet. Would you like one?”

“What do you want for it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What, for nothing?”

“Of course. We have lots.” She was talking as she bent down to work in the garden.
“I can see you’re not from around here, are you?” She turned the earth around some
plants. “Don’t open the gate, please, we have puppies, they’re always running away.
I’m just moving this cucumber plant to get more sun … it’s strong, my best one.”

Jacob looked up the lane at Sarah, who was watching, sitting at the foot of a tree.

“I was just wondering,” Jacob said. “Do you know Sarah Kaufman?”

The woman was digging a hole for the cucumber and continued for a moment before looking
up. “The people who used to live here?”

“Yes.”

The woman placed the plant into the hole, patted earth around it, watered it from
a pail, stood, put her trowel into her apron pocket, walked into the house, and slammed
the door.

Jacob felt his heart race. What a cow. He turned but couldn’t leave. He opened the
gate and walked up the little path and knocked on the door, gently at first, then
sharply, three times. The door opened slightly. “What do you want? We live here now.
Go away.”

What did he want?

“What about my tomato?”

She pushed the door shut in his face. He banged on it with his fist, trampled her
best cucumber plant, and held the gate open until the puppies ran away.

When Jacob described the woman, all Sarah said was: “Frau Schubert. The cleaner.”

There was no return tram so they walked home. After fifteen minutes of strained silence,
with Leimersdorf well behind them, Sarah said quietly, “Jacob?”

“Yes?”

“You know that couple, the people walking up the lane near my house? When we stopped.”

“Yes?

“Remember the woman?”

“No. Why?”

“She was wearing my mother’s coat.”

*   *   *

When they reached home it was dark. That’s when Jacob found the sheet of paper under
the door, read the few lines of poor German, and handed it to Sarah. “It’s for you.”

It was from Captain Monahan, the chaplain. “I came to find you,” it read. “I waited
thirty minutes. Please come to the church in the morning, I have something important
to tell you.”

Sarah slept poorly that night, thinking about her family. Wondering what happened
to them. Well, that wasn’t new. But what about the chaplain? What could he want? Jacob
thought it was about a job. Maybe someone needed a maid? An American officer? In a
grand house? When she had told the chaplain she was looking for work she hadn’t told
him that she had studied bookkeeping. She should have, but anyway, that was so long
ago, she hardly remembered any of it. She’d liked it, though. She should carry on
with it, as soon as she could. Jacob said the U.S. army base was growing by the day,
he knew that from the soldiers he guided at the castle. The Amis had everything, every
possible comfort, but what they didn’t have were Germans they could trust. Jews should
get preference. It was obvious, Jacob said. First, we suffered most, so morally they
should help us, and second, at least they know we weren’t Nazis.

Yes, it must be about work, they agreed. Or maybe he wants help in something? The
Amis had collected tons of clothes, maybe they needed volunteers to distribute them,
and as she had already been given clothes, maybe they would want her to help?

What could it be? What was so important that the chaplain himself had come to their
room, and even waited half an hour? Maybe he wanted to give her a gold ring? The Nazis
had stolen gold wedding rings from the Jews and the Americans had discovered cases
of them, thousands of wedding bands, and were giving them to women who had lost theirs.
A gold ring? You think? No, Jacob said, the note says he wants to tell you something,
not give you something.

Jacob made tea to calm Sarah and she lay back against the wall, sipping from her cup.
Soon it began to tilt. Jacob took the cup from her, and she wriggled down with a sigh
and closed her eyes, and a few moments later her breathing became gentle and deep
and even and finally she was asleep.

Jacob stood staring out the window, looking at nothing, until he found himself following
the black shadows of the night clouds moving across the top of the dark building opposite.
I wonder what’s happening in my house, he thought. I should go visit Dr. Berger. I’m
going to make a claim to get it back. It’s ours. Or rather, mine. It’s stolen property.
I’ll ask the Americans what to do. So far they think we’re all the same: “Germans,
all same, all nix gut.” But that will change soon.

No sign of the Rat yet. Jacob drained his glass of water. He’ll come. Everyone goes
home. One day. Where else would you go when the war ends? When the camps shut down.
You’ll come home. And I’ll find you. He had been waiting at Lookout Point for an hour
or two every day. Whenever the owners left the hotel he had gone inside and looked
it over. Adolf was slow, to put it kindly, and would never remember him. In his ponderous
voice he told Jacob that he worked from seven thirty in the morning to six in the
evening.

He checked the dining room, the little bar with all the silly hunting trophies, looked
at rooms, checked out the bathrooms, which smelled, and all the while an idea was
forming, the outline of a plan. What to do when the Rat creeps back to his hole.

As the first light turned the rooftops gray, Jacob eased the blanket up and slipped
in next to Sarah, who shifted to make room. He watched Sarah sleeping, the blanket
rising and falling, tracing her curves, her bare shoulder by his chin. His thoughts
winding down: Lucky she didn’t go to her house. One day I’ll go back and sort out
that woman. He chuckled. Glad I ruined her cucumbers. I hope the puppies got lost.
I hope the chaplain has good news, Sarah needs it.

He kissed her hair and fell asleep.

*   *   *

The room was bathed in light when Sarah yawned and rubbed her eyes and remembered.
She jumped up, threw water at her face, brushed her teeth, and eased the door shut,
not to awaken Jacob. Clutching her coat to her throat, she hurried to the church.
In case she would go straight to work somewhere, she wore her good clothes: a burgundy
pleated skirt with a white blouse and a double string of what may or may not have
been genuine pearls, that Jacob had obtained. Over this, a long gray woolen coat,
and a mauve beret. She shrugged off a twinge of guilt at wearing confiscated clothes
and bartered jewelry, loot from the defeated. Well, I’d happily wear my own clothes,
she told herself, if the newly defeated hadn’t stolen them. She still didn’t like
Jacob’s justification, that by exploiting the Germans’ misery he was simply correcting
the wrongs they had done to him—not that it would ever be possible. She had told him,
two wrongs don’t make a right.

He had laughed, said no, but it puts food on the table. A lot. He had several hundred
dollars already, much of it in tens and twenties, which made it easier to hide.

Sarah stopped outside the church and paused to collect her breath. She adjusted her
beret, smoothed down her collar, patted her coat, crossed her fingers, and knocked
on the door of the anteroom facing the street. She waited. No answer. She knocked
again, and still nothing. She tried the heavy metal door handle. It didn’t turn.

Sarah looked around. He isn’t here. She had rushed for nothing. She thought, I could
have been sleeping right now. Now what? A man carrying a heavy bundle pushed by her.
People were setting up stands, opening boxes, placing colorful religious trinkets
and bottles of village wine and jars of jam on tables, bustling and shuffling around,
and Sarah stood among them, desolate. I’ll have to wait, she thought. At that moment
a U.S. army jeep drew up, and Captain Monahan stepped out.

The driver backed the jeep under an awning while the chaplain strode toward Sarah,
his hand outstretched. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” he said, “have you been waiting long?”

“No, not at all, I just arrived,” Sarah said. She seemed even slighter than usual
next to the bulk of the captain, in his army greatcoat.

“Please come in,” he said, unlocking the door and taking off his coat as he spoke.
He took Sarah’s coat and hung it up.

“Coffee, tea, apple juice?”

“Apple juice?”

“Why, surprised?”

“I used to love apple juice. It’s just that I haven’t seen any for so long.”

“Well, this is your lucky…” He stopped himself. “Here, take as much as you like.”
He filled a mug and left the carton next to it. “All yours,” he said.

Sarah sipped and smiled, and sipped again and then took a long slug. “Mmmmm…”

Captain Monahan shuffled some papers and opened and closed a file as if he were looking
for something. His brow was furrowed and he frowned, as if he had mislaid an important
document. “Have you lost something?” Sarah asked, looking around.

“No, no, I have everything right here. Would you like some more juice?” He stood to
reach for the carton but Sarah said, “That’s fine, thank you, that’s enough for now.”

“Tea? Coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

He sat down, inspected his hands, glanced at Sarah, and said, “Thank you for coming.”

“That’s okay.”

“I went to your room yesterday, I was looking for you.”

“Yes, I know, I saw your note.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Well … there’s something I want, something I need, uh, to tell
you.”

Sarah watched him fidget. It didn’t sound like a job.

The chaplain coughed and took some tissues from a drawer. “Sarah, I have received
some information from Rabbi Bohmer in Frankfurt that he has asked me to pass on to
you. It refers to a report he apparently requested from Berlin.” Sarah noticed a difference
in his tone. He had always sounded friendly and informal. Now his voice was deeper.
He sounded as if he were delivering a sermon.

“He would have liked to have given this news to you in person, but as he can’t be
here he asked me to tell you what he has discovered.”

Sarah sat stiffly with her hands folded in her lap, holding her beret. She was beginning
to get the message. A knot was forming in her stomach. She nodded. Yes?

“Well, it’s like this, Sarah.” He cleared his throat. “The occupation authorities
in Berlin have obtained the police and hospital records for the local districts and
the Germans have kept their usual immaculate records. Everything is in perfect order
and cross-referenced according to family names, dates, geographical locations, civil
reports, crime categories, and, in the case of the hospitals, causes of death.”

Sarah squeezed her beret into a ball. Captain Monahan could hear her breathing from
across the table. Her chest was heaving, her eyes fixed on his. It was unnerving.
He took a deep breath and continued. “Sarah, when Rabbi Bohmer asked our people in
Berlin to check the records for your husband, Josef Farber…”

“We never really married. We didn’t have time.”

“… we found his name, with his age and official address, in a police file that was
closed. Now … I’m sorry to have to tell you … that the file shows that Josef Farber
drowned in the Grosser Wannsee lake on…”

Sarah threw her head back, her eyes closed, and she gasped in relief. She beamed with
a smile that could have lit up the room. “That’s it? Let me tell you a story,” she
began. “Hoppi had a wonderful idea that…”

But Captain Monahan silenced her with a wave. He looked grim. “That isn’t all.” He
picked up another sheet of paper.

“The strange thing is,” he went on, looking at the second sheet and then up at Sarah,
“that seven months later, on June sixteenth, 1942, in the hospital records of the
Charité Hospital, Josef Farber, of the same age and address, is shown to have been
admitted suffering from severe head and brain trauma and that the same day he succumbed
to his injuries. It seems the drowning must have been some kind of mistake, because
in the hospital his body was positively identified by two people. It’s conclusive,
I’m afraid. Josef…”