The Plum Tree

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  As she made her way along the sidewalk, she smiled, listening to the comforting noises of the bustling village. The rhythmic scratch of birch tree brooms on stone sidewalks and the flap of clothes in the breeze was accompanied by chickens clucking in dooryards, roosters crowing from their perches on garden gates and Dutch doors, and cows thumping against the inside walls of half-timbered barns. Wagon horses clip-clopped along the cobblestones, while sows and hogs grunted and squealed, rooting in sour-smelling pens built between sidewalks and buildings. The high-pitched clang of metal striking metal and the smoky aroma of hot fires rose from farmyards, where blacksmiths shoed horses and farmers repaired harnesses and tools. Mothers called out back doors for their children, and snippets of laughter and conversation drifted from open windows, along with the smell of baking bread and frying Schnitzel.

  Christine skirted the old and middle-aged women trudging along in front of her, wondering if they could remember the giddy thrill of passion before life had forced them to rush through their days without seeing the world. Wearing dark scarves around their worry-lined faces, they pulled miniature wooden wagons with chapped, calloused hands, wobbly spoke-wheels click-clacking along the cobblestones behind them. Their carts held barrels of cider or tins of fresh milk, burlap bags of cabbage or potatoes, or, if they were lucky, the carcass of a rabbit or a slab of smoked pork.

  She hurried past little girls playing make-believe on front door stoops, their soft curls falling from knitted caps, their thin arms clutching tattered dolls as they poured imaginary tea and nibbled on pretend Lebkuchen and Springerle cookies. A group of shouting, ruddy-cheeked boys ran by, kicking a dented can, their scuffed shoes and short, patched trousers making them look like a band of orphans. She felt sorry for all of them, not just because of their hardship, but because they had to go on with their ordinary, everyday lives while hers had been forever changed.

  It wasn’t their fault the way things were. Opa recounted stories of the devastation and poverty in postwar Germany. In the years following the country’s defeat, people had lived on bread made from rutabagas and sawdust, and typhus and tuberculosis were everywhere. Stores and shops had nothing but empty shelves, but it didn’t matter, because even if they’d had the goods no one could afford to buy a potato, a bar of soap, or a spool of thread. Oma told Christine that they used to take baskets full of paper money to the store to buy a pound of butter, but even then it wasn’t enough. The German mark had been worth little more than dirt, and instead of toys, children were given hundred-Reichsmark coins to play hopscotch and checkers.

  Even now, people were without jobs, without food, frightened and desperate for relief. In these times, nothing went to waste, not a crust of bread, not a snip of cloth. Oma joked that when a farmer in Germany butchered a pig, he used everything but the squeal.

  Almost everyone Christine knew, acquaintances and friends, struggled in the same situation or worse. She’d seen the hardships faced by others less fortunate than her own family, people without backyards for a flock of chickens or a patch for a vegetable garden. While Hitler and the Nazi Party promised freedom and bread, the necessities—bread, flour, sugar, meat, and clothing—were in short supply. A bag of sugar had to last six months, and when rye flour was available, Christine’s mother and Oma baked huge loaves of crusty brown bread and hid them in a cool dresser drawer, like safely guarded treasures.

  Mutti worked almost as hard keeping the chickens and goats alive as she did her children, because she knew how important they were to her family’s survival. Vegetable scraps, fruit seeds, hard rinds of cheese, half-eaten crusts of bread, every leftover morsel was fed to them, especially when the ground was covered with snow or frozen and unyielding to chickens scratching for bugs. Christine and Maria cried when Mutti butchered a baby goat to feed the family, but they ate it anyway, because they never knew when there’d be meat on the table again. On weekends, people came out of the cities to barter with the farmers, trading their prized possessions—clocks, jewelry, furniture—for a dozen eggs, a slab of butter, or a scrawny chicken. Christine had even heard stories about city women being forced to search garbage for leftovers to feed their hungry children.

  Thinking of this, she suddenly remembered how lucky she and her mother were to have steady jobs at the Bauermans’, and a quivering shadow of anxiety passed through her. Her Vater, Dietrich, was forced to search for a new stonemason job every time one was finished, so his income level changed from month to month. In the past few years, there’d been less and less construction. For weeks at a time, he could do little more than hunt for rabbits, or plow a farmer’s field in exchange for a burlap bag of old potatoes or a bushel of sugar beets Christine’s mother could boil down into syrup to use for sweetener. There were more mason jobs in the large cities, but even if he was lucky enough to get the work ahead of a hundred other men, it took nearly all his pay to ride the train there and back.

  This past year, Christine knew that her part-time wages had made a difference in her family’s life, buying a crate of apples or a wheelbarrow full of coal. What if Isaac’s parents let her go just to keep them apart? What if they let her mother go too? She slowed, wondering again if their class difference would be what mattered in the end. But Isaac had promised her that it wasn’t important. More than anything, she wanted to believe him, so she pushed the thought out of her mind and walked faster.

  Now, a block from Kate’s house, she looked down at her shoes, hoping they hadn’t gotten too dirty from her hike in the hills. It’d taken her parents over a year to save enough money to buy them, and she’d only had them for two months. Her mother wouldn’t be happy if they were scuffed up and grimy. Her previous pair had been on her feet since she was thirteen, until her toes hung over the worn sole and the seams gave out. The new shoes she had on now were the same practical, high lace-up style everyone wore, but she loved the feel and look of the shiny black leather. As happy as she was to have them, she still felt bad having to pass down her “worn-down-in-all-the-wrong-places” shoes to fifteen-year-old Maria, who’d have to wear them that way until the shoemaker came to repair them with his miniature hammer and polish-stained hands.

  Realizing that now, along with everything else, she had to clean and polish her shoes too, Christine started to run, remembering that she wanted to tell Maria, at home helping Oma care for six-year-old Heinrich and four-year-old Karl, about Isaac as well. As it was, Christine barely had time to tell Kate about the kiss and the invitation, and she was hoping to ask if she could borrow another dress before rushing home to change and clean up.

  Kate’s three-story house sat at the very edge of the sidewalk, sandwiched between two equally large stone houses, pink-and-red geranium petals from six green window boxes speckling the cobblestones out front. Christine looked up, hoping to shout through an open window, but the red-painted panes were pulled closed. She knocked on the door and stepped back, running her fingers and thumbs over her long braid again and again, like a spinner twisting wool into yarn.

  After what seemed forever, the door opened, and Kate stood there, smiling, in a ruffled peasant blouse and blue dirndl, the bodice and hem embroidered with white edelweiss and purple hearts. Christine thought it odd that she was wearing an outfit usually reserved for weddings and festivals, and wondered where she was going. Then she noticed that Kate’s pale, porcelain complexion was pinked with the easy flush of red-haired girls, and her green eyes looked glassy. She seemed out of breath, and, with one slender arm out to the side, looked like she was holding something out of Christine’s view.

  “What are you doing here?” Kate said, pushing stray pieces of hair from her damp forehead. She stole a glance to the side, then giggled in a high, unnatural squeal.

  “What’s going on?” Christine said. “Who’s in there with you?”

  “I really don’t have time to talk right now,” Kate said. From inside, a male voice mumbled, and Kate giggled again. Then, changing her mind, she said, “Promise you won’t tell? You kno
w Mutti would have the vapors if she knew.”

  Kate was an only child, fussed over by a fragile mother prone to headaches and dizzy spells that could only be cured by long hours in a dark bedroom. Her father, who owned a bakery and was older than Christine’s father by fifteen years, did little more than roll his eyes at his wife’s tendency toward drama and overprotectiveness.

  “You know I won’t,” Christine said, wishing she’d gone straight home.

  Smiling as if she’d won a grand prize, Kate pulled the young man into view, her pale hand gripping the open collar of his white shirt. His light blond hair was tousled, his thick lips red and chafed. Wearing black trousers and a navy vest similar to the outfit Isaac wore to Universität, he wrapped his arms around Kate’s waist, resting his chin on her shoulder, and studied Christine with brackish-blue eyes.

  “This is Stefan Eichmann,” Kate said. “He was in fifth grade when we were in third, remember? He moved to Berlin the summer before sixth grade. But, lucky for me, he just moved back.”

  Christine held out a hand. “Guten Tag,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember you.”

  “I don’t remember you either,” Stefan said, ignoring her outstretched hand. Dreamy-eyed, he pulled Kate closer, nuzzling her ear. Christine buried her hands in her coat pockets and squeezed Isaac’s stone in her fist.

  “Stefan and I ran into each other at the butcher shop yesterday,” Kate said, playfully batting Stefan’s lips away from her ear. “We found out we’ve got a lot in common. He’s teaching me English, and he’s promised to take me to the theater in Berlin!”

  “How lucky for you,” Christine said. “Well, it was nice to meet . . .”

  “He can get free tickets!” Kate interrupted, squealing and practically bouncing up and down. “His father used to run one of the theaters there!”

  “Your father must be an important man,” Christine said, trying to think of an excuse to leave.

  But then, Kate froze and bit her lip. She glanced back at Stefan. “Stefan’s father died last year,” she said, her voice flat. “That’s why he and his mother moved back here.”

  Christine felt her face growing warm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Bitte, accept my sympathy for your loss.”

  Stefan straightened and jerked his head to one side, as if trying to work out a kink in his neck. “He left me and my mother penniless,” he said, screwing up his mouth as if the words were laced with arsenic. “It was no loss.”

  Christine couldn’t think of anything to say. She’d never heard anyone say such things about one of his or her parents, especially a dead parent. “Well,” she said, turning to make her escape. “I really should be going. I’m sorry I dropped by unannounced. It was nice to meet you, Stefan.”

  “Wait,” Kate said. “What did you want?”

  “It was nothing,” Christine said, hurrying down the steps. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “All right,” Kate said. “Auf Weidersehen!”

  Christine ran the four blocks toward home, then hurried around the corner onto the main thoroughfare that intersected the top of her street. Kate was impulsive, so it shouldn’t have surprised Christine to find her kissing a boy she barely knew. But there was something else about Kate’s reckless behavior that bothered her, and, at first, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Then it hit her. Finding Kate alone with Stefan, the two of them acting as if they’d been dating for months, made Christine realize that Kate would never understand how much it had meant when Isaac kissed her for the first time. Maybe I’ll just keep it to myself for now, she thought, turning at the top of Schellergasse Strasse.

  A manure-filled wagon harnessed to a team of oxen filled the steep, narrow street, blocking her way. Christine stopped in her tracks and groaned, thinking about how much time she would lose having to go around the block. The farmer, in overalls and muddy boots, was out of his driver’s seat, pushing against the yoke and thrashing the animals with a leafy branch. The oxen snorted and stomped their hooves, struggling to pull the overloaded wagon up the hill, but they were only able to move it a few inches at a time. To Christine’s relief, the farmer saw her and paused, waiting for her to pass. She nodded her gratitude and hurried forward, worried that her hair was going to stink like manure. She squeezed between the wagon and the weathered barn that abutted her parents’ woodshed at the barn’s back corner, careful to stay as far away from the sour-smelling muck as possible.

  Then she noticed that sometime since she’d left that morning, a poster had been attached to the barn’s dry timbers. “First Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law,” the title said in Gothic letters. After clearing the wagon, she waited for the farmer to inch the oxen forward, then went back to read the black-and-white poster.

  Beneath the title, in bold print: “No Jew can be a Reich Citizen.” The center of the poster showed crude outlines of men, women, and children, below the questions: “Who is a German citizen? Who is a Jew?” The human figures were shaded black for Jew, white for German, and gray for “Mischlinge” or mixed race. Lined diagrams showed family trees, explaining who would be considered German or Jewish by the crossing of blacks, whites, and grays. Beneath that were drawings of banks, post offices, and restaurants, with signs that read: “Verboten!” with black and gray figures standing outside the doors. And then the warning: “Any person who acts contrary to the prohibition of section 1, 2, or 3 will be punished with hard labor, imprisonment, and/or a fine.” Below that was paragraph after paragraph of fine print.

  Isaac had told her that things were changing for Jews, but until now, she hadn’t taken it seriously. Life in their hometown had always been ordinary and peaceful, and she didn’t see how having a new chancellor could change that.

  At first, Isaac’s father and other visiting members of the family—uncles, grandfathers, and cousins—had agreed Hitler was another dirty politician, put into power by President von Hindenburg, Vice Chancellor von Papen, and conservative members of the aristocratic ruling class, along with big bankers and industrialists. These men wanted Hitler in a position to put an end to the republic and to return Germany to the days of the Kaiser. But then the chancellor had become dictator, putting himself and his followers above the law, and now, they were using that power to strip the Jews of their rights. In the past few months, anyone considered a Jew had been required to carry an identity card and register all wealth, property, and businesses. And as a result, in the Bauerman household, the loud exchanges had changed into hushed whispers, because it was too dangerous to discuss such things out loud.

  Christine stared at the poster with clenched teeth, feeling angry pressure beneath her jaw. The manure wagon had crested the hill and turned the corner, so she ran back to the top of the street and looked both ways, searching the length of the main thoroughfare for other flat surfaces: buildings and high fences, any stone, wood, or stucco façade. Then she put her hand over her heart, certain it was turning to lead. Every hundred yards or so was another poster, but she’d been too busy thinking about Kate and Stefan to notice.

  She returned to the announcement on the barn and examined the shaded figures again, trying to clear her mind long enough to remember the lineage of Isaac’s family. According to the notice, a second-degree Mischlinge was a person with one Jewish grandparent. A first-degree Mischlinge had two, but didn’t practice the Jewish faith or wasn’t married to a Jew. Isaac had three Jewish grandparents: a full Jew.

  But Herr Bauerman was an important lawyer. Surely that would matter. Just the other day, Isaac had told her how upset he’d been that his father had no choice but to do legal work for a Nazi officer from Stuttgart. Would these same people tell him that he and his family weren’t allowed in banks and restaurants? Then she remembered Isaac telling her that some of his father’s Jewish friends—doctors, lawyers, and bankers—had already left the country. Icy dread settled in her chest. What if Isaac and his family left too?

  She scanned the wooden fence that surrounded her family’s veg
etable garden. On this side of the road, after the weathered barn and starting with her house, the row of homes and barns sat back from the street, leaving a rectangle of open space that allowed for front courtyards and sidewalk gardens. Her parents’ garden filled the corner created by the end of the weathered barn and the length of their woodshed and house, and took up their entire front yard. It wasn’t a tenth as big as the Bauermans’, and there were no steppingstones, hidden statues, or stone fountains, but it provided the produce necessary for her family’s survival. Besides that, it was a source of pride to her mother, the patches of orange marigolds, yellow strawflowers, and blue snapdragons neatly planted between leafy rows of turnips, beans, potatoes, and leeks. Her father had even built a stone walk down the center and hung a bell on the garden gate, which was directly across from their front door and flanked on either side by plum trees.

  To her relief, there were no warnings hung on their garden fence. She didn’t want ugly posters to spoil her family’s hard work, and she was certain her parents wouldn’t want them either. Her parents’ home was a three-story fieldstone and half-timbered house, handed down through the generations by her mother’s family. Once a week, the stained-glass window in the upper half of the front door was washed and polished, the three hallways and two sets of wooden stairs between each floor brushed and mopped. The sidewalks were always swept, the garden always weeded. Even the winter storage room off the first-floor hallway was impeccable. Empty glass jars, waiting to be filled with produce or homemade jam, and cans filled with homemade liverwurst were neatly arranged on paper-lined shelves. In the small cellar, wooden bins, used to store apples, potatoes, turnips, beets, and carrots, lined the whitewashed walls.