Jacob's Oath Read Online Free PDF Page B

she?”
    “She died when I was eight. Made me interested in learning the language, though.”
    “You thirsty, you said?”
    “A bit. Yes.”
    The officer leaned into the car and took out another canteen. “We just filled up this
     morning. Take a swig.”
    Jacob sighed and put it to his mouth. He drained half of it and handed it back with
     another long sigh.
    “Hungry?” the officer said.
    Jacob sniffed. “Actually, a little, yes.”
    The officer stretched back again and pulled out half a loaf of bread and a sausage.
     With a smile of thanks Jacob took a big bite of the sausage and chewed, until he felt
     beads of sweat on his forehead. He wiped them with the back of his hand and leaned
     for support against the side of the jeep. His hand with the sausage fell to his side
     as he closed his eyes and waited for the nausea to pass.
    “What is it?” the officer asked. “You okay?”
    Jacob nodded, took in a deep breath.
    “What do you feel?” the officer asked.
    “Sick, headache. I’ve had it for a couple of days. Dizzy sometimes.”
    The officer looked concerned. “Where you from?”
    Jacob began to say Bergen-Belsen but some instinct honed in the camp stopped him.
     “Bremen.”
    “Near the coast,” the officer said. “Up near Hamburg?”
    “Yes.”
    “Because we’re on the lookout for typhus. There’s concentration camps near here with
     typhus. It’s hard to stop it from spreading. Those are some of the symptoms. There’s
     also typhoid.”
    Jacob tried a smile. “Oh, no. Just a cold, maybe. Hunger…”
    “Well, you better stay here while I find our medic, make sure. Don’t want you wandering
     around if you’re sick. If you’re okay we could use you, you know, if you want. We
     need translators and your English is quite good. Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
    The officer walked up the road to a collection of tents with the red, white, and blue
     Union Jack flying from the center of the tallest. As soon as he was out of sight,
     Jacob moved to the back of the Land Rover and stuffed the rest of the sausage and
     two apples into his pockets, took the rest of the bread as well as a canteen of water,
     and joined the ragged column of people on the other side of the roadblock walking
     south. He quickened his pace until he was lost in the crowd.
    Typhus. No, couldn’t be, he thought. Mustn’t be. He felt his forehead. It was warm,
     not hot, dry, no more sweat. It could be the Bengal Mixture that had made him sick
     for the last couple of days. Hope that’s it. It was so foul half the people who drank
     it threw up.
    The British had been trying to help. In India they had fought famine and disease by
     giving locals a mixture of dried milk, flour, sugar, and molasses. It worked well
     there, but here most of the inmates found the sweet drink revolting and their stomachs
     rejected it. Jacob sniggered as he drank from his water. That stuff made them sicker
     than they were before.
    At dusk, as if at a signal, the refugee column moved off the road like a giant centipede
     and sank to the ground. For Jacob even the damp earth was a big improvement on the
     last few years. Curled up in a ditch he shared with two families, he slept like a
     baby and woke with the first light, to the shrieks of wild pigeons in the trees. He
     bit from an apple as he walked, while the streaking horizon turned the world pink
     and orange and day came. He ate the core, including the seeds.
    His clothes, damp from dew, clung to him. From every side road more refugees joined
     the flood of people, like tributaries joining a mighty river. Some strained against
     carts loaded with all they owned: chairs, beds, laundry, dishes, and perched on all
     this, the old and the sick holding babies. Others walked alone or in groups with just
     the cases they carried. The only sound was coughing and footsteps, the tapping of
     defeat.
    He was learning who was who. Those with carts were Poles, Czechs, Ukranians, Lithuanians,
     slave