When she got home, she rushed into the kitchen, where her mother was canning the last of the tomatoes for the coming winter, a stained dishtowel over her shoulder, her hands wet with red juice.
“Mutti!” Christine said, breathless. “I went to the Bauermans’ today. . . .”
Her mother’s face snapped up. Before Christine could finish, she dropped her knife and wiped her hands on the towel, moving toward her.
“Why?” she said. “What were you thinking? Do you know what could have happened if you had been caught?”
“I know it was dangerous, but I needed to see Isaac. I wasn’t going to go in, but I did, and they’re being transported. We have to do something! They’re just sitting there, waiting for the Nazis to come and take them away!”
“I’m sorry,” Mutti said, putting her hands on Christine’s shoulders. “I know you want to help, but there’s nothing we can do. They’ve taken Jews from all over the village. We can’t stop them. If we tried, they’d take us too. I know you care for Isaac. I care for him and his family too. But I care more about you, and Maria, and Karl, and Heinrich. My job is to protect my family.”
Christine wilted; her body suddenly felt like lead. “What’s going to happen to them?”
“I’m not sure,” Mutti said. “I’ve heard they’re going to a work camp.”
“Dachau?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“Why?” Christine asked, her voice weak. “What have you heard?”
Mutti looked her in the eye, her forehead furrowed. “I’ve heard that people are dying in Dachau.”
The black space in Christine’s heart expanded with a painful jolt, making her dizzy. She went to the booth and sat down. “I don’t think they’re going there,” she said, staring at the jars of tomatoes, lined up like soldiers on the table. “Isaac said they were going to be put to work in a munitions factory.”
“I hope he’s right,” Mutti said. “Because I don’t know what to believe anymore. The Nazis tell us that the war is being won, and soon we will rule the world. I don’t care about ruling the world. I just want my family to have enough to eat and a roof over their heads. I know you want to save Isaac and his family, but how? We have to worry about our family right now. As long as we do what we’re told, we’ll be fine.”
“That’s what Frau Bauerman said too,” Christine whispered, her eyes filling. “And now look what’s happening to them.”
CHAPTER 15
The next morning broke cold and gray, the streets and buildings and clouds the color of tombstones. Christine’s room was so dark when Mutti shook her shoulder to wake her that she thought it was the middle of the night and she’d slept through the air raid siren. But then she remembered she had to get up early because she’d promised to work in the orchards with her sister. Farmer Erkert had hired them, along with other women from the village, to harvest apples in exchange for two bushels to keep for themselves. He’d lost two sons in the war, and now he and his wife were trying to keep their small farm running by themselves, choosing to do it without the help of a POW or Labor-year girls.
If it had been up to her, Christine would have stayed in bed. By now, Isaac had been taken away, loaded into a truck with the rest of his family and driven who knows where. Thinking she might never see him again, she didn’t care if she ever got out of bed again. But she didn’t have a choice, so she sat up and sighed, rubbing her puffy eyes and nodding at her mother to let her know she was awake. After Mutti left the room, Christine pulled herself from beneath the warm cocoon of her feather bedcover and got dressed, her body responding to her frame of mind with lethargic movements, as if her limbs were not flesh and blood, but water-soaked timber from a long-sunken shipwreck.
By eight o’clock, she and Maria were high on the hillside, picking apples from the same orchard where Isaac had kissed her on that sunny day when she’d thought the world couldn’t be any more perfect. Now, along with everything else, the sheep were long gone, eaten by their owners or stolen by hungry thieves. Instead of sun, there was a light mist, and the clouds hung low and threatening above. Ten other women picked apples that morning, but besides the occasional call of a bird, the orchard was silent. There was no talking, no laughter, no gossip being shared by the young women. Instead, they worked like machines, intent on getting the job done before the air raid sounded or the Tiefflieger appeared.
The burlap bag felt heavy on Christine’s shoulder. It was all she could do to reach up and pull the apples from the branches without collapsing in a helpless pile on the damp ground. Last night, she’d suffered through terrible dreams; there were none that she could remember, but they’d left her with a feeling of prickly apprehension along with a physical burden that made her legs feel like lead and her body move in slow motion. Even the swirling gray sky seemed to weigh her down.
By ten, the mist cleared, but a patchy fog hung over the wet, fallow fields below the orchards, creating the impression that they were looking down on the earth from high in the clouds. Within the hour, they’d worked their way to the last orchard at the base of the hill. Christine could hardly wait until they were finished and she could go home.
When she heard the familiar rumble of a steam train coming toward them, she didn’t even bother to look, her mind intent on picking the last cluster of apples hidden within the damp leaves. But when Maria stopped picking and stared in the direction of the pump and thud of the oncoming locomotive, Christine finally turned to look. When she saw the train, she froze.
The engine was black as pitch, emerging through a patch of fog like a giant beast, its thick, round stack heaving a sooty wave of leaden smoke that collided with the low sky in slow motion, cloaking the cars in a shadowy cape. Nazi flags trembled on flagpoles that stuck out like antennas from the oily sides of the locomotive, and an oversized banner clung to the front of the round-barreled engine, a huge black swastika plowing the way. Behind the locomotive, six cattle cars rattled along the tracks, each painted with white letters reading, “Property of the Third Reich,” and the spread-winged eagle standing atop a swastika inside a wreath of oak leaves. Every car had two small windows covered by barbed wire, and visible through each opening but trapped inside the cars were gray faces, solemn eyes, and human hands clawing for freedom.
Christine thought she heard screaming, but it was hard to tell. All sound was consumed by the thunder of the engine, the mad pumping of the pistons, the clack-clack of iron wheels. The rest of the women in the orchard stood staring from beneath the trees, bags of apples sliding from their shoulders, hands over their mouths.
Christine dumped half the apples from her bag and ran toward the train, hurrying along the footpath beside the tracks.
“Catch this! It’s food!” she yelled, running next to the boxcars and throwing apples toward outstretched palms. Most of the apples fell back down and hit her in the face and head, but a few were caught by hands spotted with dirt and blood, then quickly pulled back through the barbed wire. The thin, pale hands reminded Christine of a picture she’d seen of eels snatching fish from a cave.
Christine tried to keep up, but the train picked up speed, bending around a long, wide curve before being swallowed, car after car, by the dense forest. She collapsed in the dirt on her hands and knees, gasping for breath, apples flying everywhere, the palms of her hands stabbed by rocks. She watched as the last boxcar disappeared into the darkness of the woods, a whirling cloud of leaves spiraling in its wake.
“Christine!” Maria shouted, running up behind her. “What are you doing?”
“Isaac and his family could be on that train!” Christine cried, pounding her fists on the ground. “What are they doing with those poor people?”
Maria helped her up, brushing pebbles and soil from her knees. “Are you all right?”
“I’m not all right! I’m never going to be all right!”
Christine wiped her cheeks, mixing dirt with her tears, trying to make sense of what she’d just seen. She couldn’
t string two thoughts together. Maria picked up the apples and refilled Christine’s bag, watching her closely as she stood staring toward the still-rustling tunnel formed by the trees, the thud of the locomotive growing fainter and fainter. Finally, Christine headed back toward the orchard, her stomach sour and churning.
“Maybe he wasn’t on it,” Maria said.
Christine said nothing and went with Maria into the last row of apple trees. She tried to keep picking, but couldn’t stop crying. Instead, she stood at the bottom of the A-shaped ladder while Maria handed her apples to fill her bag, trying to convince herself that Isaac wasn’t on that train. But her mind wouldn’t stop the image of him there, his arms around his mother and sister, his face jerking up when he recognized her voice yelling outside the barbed-wire window. He can’t be inside one of those boxcars, she thought. He’s too smart and too beautiful to be carted away like an animal. His father is a lawyer, his mother an aristocrat. It doesn’t make sense. No matter how hard she resisted, she imagined Isaac and his family waiting at the train station, suitcases in hand, Nina and Gabriella wearing shawls around their heads and shoulders, thinking they would be riding in a passenger car to an unknown destination, and then, being shoved into a boxcar like so much luggage.
Within the hour, the women had finished the harvest, and Herr Erkert arrived with his oxen and wagon to take them back into town. The exhausted women piled the bags and bushels of apples into the farm cart and then climbed on, their eyes on the clearing horizon. Christine started to pull herself onto the wagon, but changed her mind.
“I’m going to walk home,” she said to Maria. “I need to be alone for a while.”
Maria shook her head. “Nein!” she said, her eyes pleading. “Bitte, come with me! We need your help with the apples, and it’s not safe out here alone!”
“I’ll be all right,” Christine said. The truth was, she really didn’t care if the Tiefflieger came and put an end to her suffering, but she couldn’t say that to her sister. “It’s safe in the woods. I’ll just go for a short walk, then come right home, I promise.”
Maria frowned. “Don’t be long. Mutti will be worried. She’ll be mad at me for letting you go.”
“I’ll be careful. I promise. Tell Mutti I wouldn’t listen to you.”
The oxen moved forward, and Christine stood watching the spoke-wheeled cart, overloaded with apples and tired women, wobbling away along the dirt road. Maria sat at the rear of the farm cart looking back at her, her thin legs dangling over the edge, her face filled with fear.
Christine blew her a kiss, then turned to walk back toward the hills. On the upper edge of the lowest orchard, she followed rutted wagon roads edged by golden leaves until she reached the bench where she and Isaac had sat side-by-side. She sat on the weathered seat for a minute, then decided to move on. Making her way past cords of chopped wood stacked between trees, she climbed faster and faster, until she reached a dirt footpath. The path narrowed into a steep forest trail, winding between bare tree roots covered with matted layers of pine needles. She pushed herself to climb as quickly as she could, going higher still, into the forests of high-skirted spruce, where the fragrant air was quiet and still, the midday sky masked by a canopy of evergreen boughs.
At the highest point in the forest, next to the oldest and tallest trees, a massive ledge of smooth granite thrust out from the hillside like the hump of a giant whale. Christine climbed to the thickest edge of the curved ridge, where she’d always imagined the whale’s blowhole to be, and sat down. To the west, she could see Comburg, the “Castle of the Grail,” a two-thousand-year-old medieval cathedral surrounded by high walls, nestled between the next series of autumn-colored hills like a fairy-tale palace. She was relieved to see that it was still standing. Then, like a flash, a thought came to her. Could the outbuildings and tunnels and hidden rooms of the ancient monastery be filled with hiding Jews? I should have thought of that, she thought. I should have told Isaac to take his family there. I should have done something, anything, instead of just waiting to see what happened.
From up here, the village looked the same, but she knew it wasn’t. Children rarely played in the cobblestone alleys or on the sidewalks. Soldiers and tanks and motorcycles roared through the streets. Entire houses were gone, reduced to rubble. People disappeared after a knock on the door in the middle of the night. She wondered how many were hiding beneath staircases and behind closets, inside hidden rooms and tunnels normally used for storing vegetables. But from this high place, she couldn’t see any of that. All she could see was the steeple of the church across from her house and the sea of orange, clay-tiled rooftops.
She could almost imagine that nothing had changed, but what her eyes recognized as familiar, and what she felt deep within her heart and soul, were two very different things. She took a deep breath, trying to breathe in the fragrance of the pines and the fresh air that used to lift her spirits and make her feel so alive, but it had no effect. She sat there seeing but not feeling, existing but not living. She closed her eyes and tried to picture Isaac’s face.
Just then, the sun came out from behind a cloud, warming her forehead and cheeks. She was grateful to feel something, anything, even just a change in temperature. The only sounds were from the squirrels and birds, and the wind rustling through the tops of the pines, a gentle, shuffling whisper that sounded like distant rolling waves, as if the ocean were on the other side of the hill. But then, in the next instant, she opened her eyes and sat up, cocking her head to one side, listening. The noise was quiet at first, then grew louder and louder. Her heart began to race, the familiar, coppery taste of fear rising in her throat. It was the unmistakable wail of the air raid siren rising up from the village. She sat frozen, unsure of what to do. Then, within minutes, the monotone roar of approaching aircraft filled her ears. She scrambled to her feet. The planes were above the trees, behind her, and she pictured herself being shot and falling off the hillside, crashing into the high-skirted trees below in a shower of bullets and splintered wood. She ran back beneath the cover of evergreens and hid behind a wide spruce. The silhouettes of hundreds of bombers filled the sky, flying overhead in attack formation, like an enormous, layered flock of prehistoric dragonflies.
More and more planes appeared. The trees and the earth trembled. She watched in horror as the lead plane dropped its deadly marker over the air base, and the strong wind blew it back over the village. Within seconds, the silver of hundreds of dropping bombs reflected in the afternoon sun, falling over rooftops and steeples like used bullet casings from the chamber of an automatic gun. It crossed her mind that she might be imagining the bombs, because she didn’t hear the whistle of the shells falling through the air. But then she remembered someone saying that you only heard the screaming sound when the missiles were above you. Here, she was practically even with the airplanes, and she could see their bloated underbellies giving birth to their deadly payload. Suddenly, she remembered the story Herr Weiler’s nephew had told in the shelter about the attack on Hamburg. Her body went rigid. Maybe they were a different kind of bomb. Maybe that was why she couldn’t hear them. Maybe they were the kind of bomb that melted stone buildings and turned humans into ash.
She gripped the tree in her arms as if the earth were going to drop out from beneath her, waiting for the first explosion. The hollow thump-thump of detonation vibrated in her feet, and the blasts made her jump. One repercussion after another echoed through the valley as her village disappeared behind black walls of fire and smoke. Now, the tumbling bombs vanished halfway down, their silver flashes swallowed by churning, rising clouds of destruction. Christine’s legs felt like water, ready to trickle out from beneath her. After the first line of planes turned in the sky and flew away, the next squadron attacked the air base. When a third line of planes appeared and dropped more bombs on the village, Christine sagged to her knees, leaning against the tree for support.
For what felt like hours, she watched bombs fall, staring numbly as the valle
y filled with flames and smoke. The scorched smell of burning houses made her nauseous. She gagged, her empty stomach sending bile up in the back of her throat. Finally, the planes disappeared, their growling roar replaced by the crackle of fire and distant screams.
Dizzy and light-headed, she pried her hands from the tree and stumbled down the hill toward home. Branches and thorns tore at her arms as she crashed through the underbrush, not following the usual path, just headed straight down. Her arms and legs felt detached from her brain, like the long-limbed cloth doll she used to carry around as a young girl, its face nothing but blank cloth. Her mind, reeling from terror, somehow directed her numb, rag-doll body to take her home.
Half an hour later, she entered the fire- and smoke-filled village on trembling legs, her chest heaving, her face covered in dirt and sweat. The charred stench of burning buildings and the acidic, sweet smell of burning human flesh made her gag. She held her hand over her mouth and ran, forced to search for detours around flame-filled streets and collapsed buildings. There were people running, calling for loved ones and digging in piles of rubble with bare hands. Some villagers stood rooted to one spot, mumbling and staring, rivulets of blood running in their hair or down their arms or legs, clothes scorched and torn. Shoeless children wandered aimlessly, the whites of their eyes like bright moons in their soot-covered faces. A man with a scalded face and burnt arms reached out to grab Christine. She nearly fell trying to avoid his grasp.
At last, she found the corner to Schellergasse Strasse and stopped. The road was filled with a thick wall of brownish-black smoke, and she could only see halfway up the hill. Despite the heat from the burning village, she shivered, the icy grip of terror making it difficult to put one foot in front of the other. She took off her apron, wadded it up in her hands, and held it over her nose and mouth. Then she made her way forward, stepping around scattered roof tiles, broken bricks, burnt timbers, and shattered glass. A cat came flying out of the smoke and screeched across her path, its fur seared and steaming. Then, to her left, the smoke started to clear, revealing the front of the church, its steeple a smoldering pile of rubble on the front lawn, two cathedral windows filled with licking flames. Then she could see her neighbor’s barn, caved in and burning. The smoke was being blown in the opposite direction, and the air in the street started to clear. A curtain was being lifted. She held her breath, waiting to see what horror would be revealed. Then, finally, she cried out. Her house was still standing. The front windows were blown out and the upper branches of the plum trees were burnt and shriveled, but the roof was intact, and the walls looked undamaged. Tears streamed down her face. She ran the rest of the way up the hill, through the open front door of her house, and up the steps.
The Plum Tree Page 17