The Plum Tree

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  “I don’t know,” her mother said. “Maybe it’s not worth the risk. . . .”

  Christine put a hand on her mother’s arm. “How will we live with ourselves if we do nothing?”

  Mutti’s eyes filled, and she rested a hand over Christine’s. “You’re right. And maybe, hopefully, someone will show the same kindness to your father.”

  The next morning, after Christine had snuck out under the cover of darkness to leave newspaper-wrapped bread on the steps leading up to the churchyard, she and Mutti left the shutters closed so they could watch without being seen by the guards. When the time came, they peered between the painted wood slats, silent and barely breathing, waiting for the workers to appear in the street. Finally, the first row of pale faces came into view. Mutti placed a hand over her mouth.

  Outside, one of the Jewish prisoners looked over his shoulder, checked the position of the guards, then picked up the package. Christine heard her mother’s sharp intake of air. Her heart hammered in her chest. The prisoner worked fast, unwrapping the bread and tucking the newspaper into his pants. He took a few big bites, chewing quickly, then passed the slice of rye to the next man in line. Christine grabbed her mother’s hand as a guard moved up the ranks on the opposite side, his rifle hung over his shoulder, moving closer and closer to the row of men with the bread. But then, in the next second, the bread was gone, four men having shared it before the guards could see anything. Christine and her mother gave each other weak smiles.

  Within days, Christine heard rumors that other women in the village were putting food along different sections of the prisoners’ route. She prayed it was true. After a while, she and Mutti decided to believe it, because even when the guards saw the prisoners picking up the food from the church steps and eating it, they did nothing to stop them. No announcements were made that the practice was to be stopped, no posters put up warning of punishments for feeding the Jews. Christine wasn’t sure if a bit of humanity still remained in the guards’ hearts or if they knew they couldn’t stop it. After all, they couldn’t arrest the whole village.

  When the weather turned cold and the sky turned winter gray, Christine and Maria, with the help of Mutti and the boys, took the doors off the kitchen cupboards and nailed them over the broken windows on the front of the house, hoping that, between the shutters and a thick layer of blankets, it would be enough to keep out ice and snow.

  Before the war, the first snowfall of winter used to fill Christine with a peaceful solace, the soft drifts blanketing every rooftop and tree branch in the village. It seemed like a time for reflection, a slow, quiet cleansing before the muddy rebirth of spring. But now, this year especially, the snow seemed cold and dry, reflecting the way she felt inside. Now, the icy shroud made everything flat and lifeless, like a charcoal-gray etching of a village where everyone had either vanished or died.

  With no more word from Vater, Mutti’s resilience began to wear thin, and she wasn’t eating again. Christine watched her at every meal, making sure she finished her plate, like a worried mother hovering over a sick child. And poor Oma tried to hide her pain, but it was easy to see her relentless grief, mourning her husband of fifty-seven years. Maria, always strong like her mother, appeared to be tolerating everything better than Christine, but the strain on her face was apparent, especially when she thought no one was looking. Karl and Heinrich seemed to accept things better than everyone, possibly due to the fact that they had been so young when it all started.

  As the winter wore on, the yelling and shouting from the men guarding the Jewish prisoners increased, along with random gunshots that echoed through the narrow streets. When Christine and her family heard the firing, they stopped what they were doing and looked at each other. After working all day at the air base, the prisoners were being forced to shovel snow after every storm, and it seemed as though the guards’ tempers grew shorter according to the weather. The colder it was, the more likely Christine was to see patches of coagulated blood, the white banks along the streets stained a deep maroon by the blood of a man executed for a crime as slight as talking, stumbling, or falling down. It was madness.

  By the end of the winter, the family’s food reserves were running low, and Mutti made the decision that they had to stop feeding the prisoners. In the cellar, they were down to a couple of pounds of potatoes, some scraggly carrots, a bag of dried apples, and two jars of plum jam. No eggs were left in the salt-water jar, and it would be two months before the hens started laying again. Flour and sugar were no longer available, and the bakery had shut down. With nothing to sell, most of the stores had closed. Seeds from the garden had become precious, because no one had sold them in two years. The only seeds would be the ones they’d saved from the previous summer. Coal and wood had been declared national resources, making the fuel to heat and cook scarcer than ever. At the end of March the government cut rations in half. Now, food was all they thought of, it seemed, and all their time and energy was devoted to acquiring it.

  More than ever, Christine wondered about the cities. How were those people surviving without canned and dried vegetables from gardens, pickled eggs, or an aging hen from a backyard flock? Even here, where most people were used to living off the land, rumors flew of villagers foraging the woods, digging up roots and berries, quarreling over mushrooms and nuts. The forests were nearly stripped bare of trees, and deer and rabbits were long gone. There was talk of people eating rodents. And even though the punishment for trading in the black market was death, as the long winter turned into a wet spring, Christine heard of women trading their wedding dresses for sugar, their blankets and pillows for milk and eggs, and, out of desperation, their bodies to the officers, for cigarettes or coffee, which in turn they could barter for a loaf of bread or a tin of milk to keep their children alive.

  While Christine’s family counted the days until planting, the month of April passed in what seemed like a continuous downpour, the streets and sidewalks running with soot and ash-filled water, the garden nothing but mud. On the other hand, the chickens—surviving on worms, insects, weeds, and grass—started laying, and her family was thrilled to have eggs for breakfast. When the hens were up to a dozen and a half a day, enough for everyone in her family to have at least two apiece, Christine went back to leaving boiled eggs on the church steps for the prisoners.

  A month later, the days finally turned sunny, heating and drying the soil in the garden. The perfume of lilacs wafted through the air, alternating with the musty smell of wet ruins. It was perfect crop-growing weather, but other than the fields on the immediate outskirts of the village, hundreds of acres of fertile valley soil remained unplowed. The elderly farmers and soldiers’ wives with POWs for slave labor were reluctant to send them too far into the countryside, unwilling to lose the only help they had to the Tiefflieger. Instead, they kept them close to home, to grow crops and tend animals for their own use. By the end of August, some of the POWs had fled, having heard that the Russians had retaken parts of their country.

  Without telling her mother, Christine decided to visit Frau Klause to see if she could get another rooster, with hopes to replenish her family’s dwindling flock. If she left early enough, she wouldn’t have to worry about air raids, at least for a few hours. Along with giving her family the anticipation that they could have baby chicks as soon as possible, which meant plenty of meat from the aging hens next winter, bringing home a rooster was sure to brighten everyone’s mood. Her heart lifted as she imagined her mother smiling when Christine came back in the door, the big, feathered bird in her arms. For the first time in a long time, she felt a spark of purpose as she made her way to the bottom of her street.

  But her stomach dropped when she saw groups of prisoners coming up the hill. She thought she’d waited long enough for them to have passed, but they were headed straight for her. She scolded herself for not having gotten up earlier. Still, she found it hard to believe that the Nazis were running behind, and wondered if one of the men had given them trouble. She k
new they’d stop the entire procession long enough to take the time to punish the offender with a shot to the back of the head or a beating with the butt of a gun. The thought made her ill.

  Behind the first group of prisoners, an elderly farmer driving a team of oxen pulled a wagon of sugar beets across the intersection. He halted the team on the opposite corner, climbed down from his seat, and entered a wood storage barn, oblivious to the fact that he was blocking the road and cutting off the second group of oncoming prisoners. Two guards stopped and turned, making their way down the hill to tell him to move. Christine thought about running back to her house, but it was too late. The first group of prisoners was on top of her, an SS guard walking straight along her path, heading right for her. She ducked into the landing of a building on her left and leaned against the door, trying to disappear into the framework. She didn’t want to be this close, didn’t want to see them, didn’t want to look into their haunted eyes. Most of all, she didn’t want them to think that, just because she was a citizen in this nation run by madmen, she too was a Jew hater.

  The guard ignored her and walked past, his hands on his rifle, his face set. And then, before she could look away, she was staring, with less than two feet between them, at jutting cheekbones and rotting teeth, at skeletal legs and sore-riddled flesh. The smell of feces and urine overwhelmed her. She clapped a hand over her mouth and dropped her eyes. She wanted to get out of there, wanted to run home, but she couldn’t; she was trapped.

  Then the guard who had passed her was running back, in the opposite direction, yelling, “Halt!”

  The prisoners did as they were told and stopped in front of her, some with heads hanging, others turning to see what was going on. She peered around the corner of the doorframe, trying to see if this was her chance to escape. A handful of the starving men had bolted toward the sugar beets, yanking the plants from the wagon and biting into the raw roots like wild animals. The guards tried to stop them, shoving and beating them with the butts of their guns. Three prisoners fell to the cold street around the wagon, then lay motionless, their heads bleeding, their bony arms skewed at odd angles. Barefoot prisoners removed the dead men’s shoes and put them on, taking their comrades’ misfortune as opportunity to up their own odds of survival.

  A dozen prisoners took a chance and ran. One of the guards lifted his rifle to his shoulder and shot two of the escaping men, missing on the first try but finding his mark on the second. Four guards with semi-automatics began firing, shooting wildly at the prisoners who were running for their lives. Every other fleeing man fell, chest thrust forward and head yanked back, face-first to the ground. The rest ducked into alleys or jumped over fences. Three of the guards went after them.

  Christine put her hands over her ears and crouched in the doorway, trying to make herself as small as possible. Adrenaline had built up in her body, and now it roiled through her shaking arms and legs. Then, all at once, the gunfire stopped. She looked up, noticed the guards were far away, and stood, ready to bolt. But just as she was about to make a run for it, she saw a familiar figure among the prisoners, about fifteen rows away. She froze. He was still in formation with the rest of the men, facing forward and staring at the ground, maintaining the position that was least likely to get him killed. For a second, she thought she might faint. Then she took a deep breath and convinced herself her eyes were playing tricks. She shook it off and readied herself to run, then looked at the pale, haggard prisoner one more time, just to be sure. His hair was shaved close to his scalp, leaving a grimy-looking skullcap of dark stubble, and his features were thin and dirty. But then, her heart stopped. She knew that jawline, those chestnut eyes.

  It was Isaac.

  She gripped the edge of the doorway and looked around, trying to stop herself from rushing to him. The guards were busy, fighting with the disruptive prisoners and chasing those trying to escape. They were all near the bottom of the hill, and she was near the top, close to home. She made a split-second decision, knowing she had to take the chance.

  “Isaac!” she yelled.

  His face snapped up, and he looked in her direction, his forehead furrowed. When he saw who had called to him, his eyes went wide.

  “Go away,” he mouthed. Then he lowered his head, refusing to look at her.

  “Isaac!” she pleaded. “Come with me!” He stayed in formation, ignoring her. “Hurry, they’re not looking!”

  Then, finally, he lifted his head and gazed at her, his lips pressed together as if he was trying not to cry. She felt her heart break, but signaled him to come closer. He glanced around, as if noticing the scuffle and commotion for the first time. She could tell by the change in his face that he’d realized she was right; no one was watching. He took a step forward, making his way into the line ahead and standing there for a long moment, as if he belonged in that spot. Christine’s heart raced and she thought she’d pass out, watching him move forward line by line, closer and closer, both of them stealing backward glances to make sure that the guards hadn’t noticed.

  Finally, he reached her and they ran along the front of the house, then ducked into the alleyway beside it. They raced behind the row of houses, climbing over fences and trampling through gardens, stumbling through backyards and chicken runs. He fell twice, his strength spent, and she helped him up. A picket fence caught on his gray and white uniform and cut his leg, but they didn’t stop. They ran until they reached her backyard, where she pushed him into the chicken coop headfirst.

  “Don’t make a sound,” she ordered, closing the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  She hurried through the back door of her house, then went out the front door toward the street, her knees knocking together like sledgehammers. Checking her dress and shoes, trying to give the impression of a young woman on a leisurely stroll, she headed toward the bottom of the hill. She ignored the prisoners still in formation, hoping they wouldn’t recognize her as the girl who had just helped someone get away. Just then, gunshots rang through the still morning air. She stopped, shoulders jerking at each report. One, two, three, four, five, six shots echoed through the streets. Then she heard the guards yelling.

  “Get back in line or you’re next!”

  “Jewish pig!”

  At the intersection, the guards shoved the rest of the prisoners back in formation. Next to the wagon of sugar beets, six men lay dead in expanding puddles of blood. Another dozen or so lay at varying distances away, face down in the street.

  “We’ll send a truck for these,” one of the soldiers said, kicking a dead prisoner. Christine went back to her house, trying not to run. Safely inside, she raced through the first floor hall and out into the backyard. Isaac jumped when she opened the henhouse door, his face a pale oval overwhelmed by wide, bloodshot eyes.

  “Where did you go?” he said, dropping an empty eggshell on the henhouse floor, a telltale film of yellow yolk on his lips. The chickens scurried over to peck at the hollow shell.

  “I went back to see if they had noticed you were gone,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “I don’t think they did. They shot the men trying to take the beets.” She was shaking and weak-kneed, leaning against the henhouse wall. “And the ones who ran. They didn’t see you get away. They would have shot at us.” She reached beneath a roosting hen, pulled a warm egg out from under the bird’s feathers, and handed it to him. He bit into the shell and greedily drank the raw yolk.

  In the tight confines of the chicken coop, she could smell the cloak of fear and odor of near-death that seemed to radiate from his pores. But it didn’t matter to her. She was so happy to see him he could have been covered in pig manure and she wouldn’t have cared. She moved to hug him, but he backed away.

  “Don’t,” he said. “I’m filthy. And I probably have lice.”

  “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “I thought I’d never see you either,” he said, staring. His face was hard, almost contorted, as if he were in pain. “I was transferred here yesterday. I
had no idea where they were sending me. And this morning, I had no idea we’d be marching past your house.”

  She felt her eyes filling. “I’ve been so worried! I didn’t know what to think. Where’s your family?”

  “My father was killed three months ago,” he said in a flat voice. “I don’t know where my mother and sister are. We were separated the day we arrived at Dachau.”

  Christine felt greasy fear twist in her stomach. “What happened?”

  Isaac’s face filled with grief. “He worked for a while. But they worked us over twelve hours a day.” He sat down hard on the floor, as if he had to sit before he fell. “It was hard labor. My father was a smart man, but his health was never good. Eventually he got sick. Even a healthy person can’t dig, push wheelbarrows, swing a pickax, and lift heavy rocks for long with little food. One day, he just collapsed. I tried to help him up, but it was no use. His strength was gone. When they saw him fall, one of the guards just walked over and shot him in the back of the head. For as long as I live, I’ll never forget that murderer’s face.”

  “Ach Gott,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”

  “There was nothing I could do. I wanted to grab the guard’s gun and shoot him, but even if I’d been able to wrestle it away, the other guards would have wasted no time getting rid of me too. I was standing there, my father’s blood all over my hands and face, and I didn’t do anything. I just kept thinking, I have to survive, my mother and my sister need me.”

  Christine pressed her arms over her stomach to hold herself back. She wanted to hold him, to comfort him, to take away his pain. “I’m glad you did.”

  “It’s not over yet.”

  “I’ll hide you in the attic,” she said. “But we have to wait until tonight when everyone’s asleep.”

  “I don’t know. It’s too dangerous.”