The Plum Tree

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  In Christine’s bedroom, the Gruppenführer snarled playfully at Christine’s aged Steiff teddy bear, squeezing its stomach twice, then hurled it on her bed when it failed to growl back at him. Christine had to stop herself from picking up the bear to make sure Isaac’s note stayed safely tucked inside.

  After ransacking the last bedroom on the third floor, they headed into the hall toward the staircase. Christine was beginning to think she might not fall into a heap on the floor after all. They’re leaving, she thought, finally able to breathe, her palpitating heart beginning to slow. Then the Gruppenführer stopped halfway to the stairs and pointed at the ceiling.

  “What’s up there?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he motioned for the soldier to open the trapdoor.

  “The attic,” Mutti said.

  For a split second, everything went black. Christine was certain that the men could see her sway as she bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, trying to stop the surge of terror that threatened to bring her to her knees. Her mind raced. What can I do to divert them? she thought.

  The soldier opened the trapdoor, pulled down the ladder, and climbed into the attic, one hand still gripping his submachine gun. The Gruppenführer motioned for Mutti and Christine to follow. Christine wasn’t sure if she’d have the strength to pull herself up. For a second, the only diversion she could think of was saying she was scared of ghosts. Then the Gruppenführer smiled at her with fleshy lips and gray teeth, offering his clammy hand in assistance, and she scrambled up the steps into the attic, using both hands to hold the ladder. As soon as she stood, the Gruppenführer rose up through the trapdoor in the floor beside her, like a putrid ghoul rising from an open grave. If I kick him hard enough in the head, she thought for one insane instant, he’ll fall back down, head over heels, blood running from his skull when he hits the floor. Before she could act, the Gruppenführer walked over and stood next to her, his forearm touching hers.

  “What’s this straw all over the floor?” he asked, pointing.

  “It’s for baby chickens,” Mutti said.

  The Gruppenführer gave Christine’s arm one last graze, then he and the soldier walked around the attic, throwing open boxes and looking inside the chest of drawers. He ran a hand over the bookcase in front of the hidden door, looking up at the rafters and dusty beams. Christine tried to keep her eyes on the floor, positive they would read the sheer terror on her face. Finally, convinced that there was nothing up there, the Gruppenführer headed back toward the trapdoor. Christine stepped aside as he brushed past her. He motioned for the soldier to climb down first, then he climbed down after the women.

  “Let us know if you see anything suspicious, Frau Bölz,” he said when they’d reached the bottom floor. “It’s for your own protection.”

  “Ja, Herr Gruppenführer,” Mutti said. “Danke.”

  Before they left, the Gruppenführer ordered one of the soldiers to go back down to the food storage room, to get the two loaves of rye bread from their hiding place in the old dresser drawer. When the soldier brought them up, the Gruppenführer put them under his arm with a satisfied smile, as if he’d just purchased them from the bakery and had every right in the world to take them. The soldiers went outside while he stood in the doorway, looking directly at Christine, his stare intense.

  “It’s your duty to report anything out of the ordinary, remember that,” he said. “If you see or know something and fail to report it, that is a crime against the German state.” Then he pulled his eyes away from Christine and said to Mutti, “You wouldn’t want some filthy Jew to come in here and take advantage of your daughters, would you?”

  “Nein, Herr Gruppenführer,” Mutti said.

  “I’ve been given the authority to offer a reward in return for any Jew. They can hide behind walls, you know, just like rats. You might not even know they’re there until it’s too late.”

  “Danke, Herr Gruppenführer,” Mutti said. “Gott knows we could use the money.”

  “Heil Hitler!” he said, raising his hand. And then he was gone.

  Mutti closed the door and leaned against it. “Are you all right?” she asked Christine. “You’re trembling and white as a sheet.”

  “I’m all right,” Christine said, her knees ready to give out from beneath her. “They scare me, that’s all.”

  “They scare me too. But we have nothing to hide. Why did he act like he knew you?”

  “The day I found out Isaac was being taken away, I ran into him on the sidewalk.”

  “You need to be careful. He’s SS and can do whatever he wants.”

  “I know. That’s why I was so nervous.”

  Christine hated lying, but how could she admit that she’d put the whole family in danger? Since the war had started, every ounce of her mother’s energy had been put toward keeping this family alive. How could she tell her that a split-second decision, which she alone had made, could destroy all that her mother had worked so hard to protect? On the other hand, what choice did Christine have? Was she supposed to just let Isaac die?

  Mutti kissed Christine’s forehead, massaging her shoulders with strong hands. Christine’s teeth chattered as the adrenaline left her system, leaving her weak and crying in her mother’s arms. The soft skin of her mother’s cheek and her faint but familiar scent of egg noodles and milky soap seemed in stark contrast to the jagged fits and starts of Christine’s strained emotions.

  For the rest of the day they worked together, putting clothes back in armoires and remaking beds, trying to erase the intrusion. Christine felt drained, as if she’d gone weeks without sleep. The realization that everyone’s lives now rested on her shoulders was almost too much to bear. She didn’t see Isaac until that night, after everyone was asleep.

  When she entered through the hidden door, he was leaning against the wall, his face a whorl of light and shadow from the glow of the candle and the silhouette of the garden stone she’d given him earlier, going round and round in his fingers.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, sitting beside him. “Could you hear what was going on?”

  “Ja,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “I will be, eventually. I might be able to stop shaking sometime next year.”

  “When I heard shouting and furniture being thrown around, I knew we were in trouble. I lay flat on the floor, trying not to move a muscle. I think I was holding my breath, because I almost passed out. I just closed my eyes and prayed. I hate putting you and your family in danger.”

  “You didn’t do it. I did.” She leaned against his shoulder. “But I’ve thought about it all day, since the soldiers left, and I don’t know what else I could’ve done. I had to save you. I didn’t have a choice. I love you. What good are any of us if we aren’t willing to die to save other people’s lives, especially the people we love?”

  “Not everyone is as brave as you are. Fear is what motivates most people. I should leave. I should get out of here.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.” She sat up on her knees, facing him. “I feel terrible putting everyone in so much danger. And you’d be safer out of Germany. We could leave in the middle of the night, and we’ll only travel when it’s dark. We’ll walk out of this war-torn country.”

  “You’re not going with me.”

  “Ja,” she said, her voice firm. “I am. I’ve risked this much already, and I’ve made up my mind. No matter what you say, you’re not going to talk me out of it. I’ll gather the things we’ll need, some of my father’s warm clothes for you, a little food. I’ll look in Karl and Heinrich’s old schoolbooks for a map, and we’ll figure out which direction to go. If we stick to the woods . . .”

  “Wait a minute, slow down. We need to think about this. We need a plan, or it’ll never work.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about, making a plan. But we should go soon.”

  “I don’t know. I need to think this through. We can’t just go off, on impulse.”

  “Ja, here’s the plan
. You think about it, and I’ll start getting things together.” He shook his head, a weak smile on his face. “I love you,” she said. “Gute Nacht.” Then she kissed him long and hard before going downstairs for the night.

  When the air raid siren began its high, hollow cry at four-thirty in the morning, Christine thought it was part of her dream. In her mind, she and Isaac were in a sun-drenched orchard, picking the biggest plums she’d ever seen. Bees buzzed lazily in the warm afternoon, landing on the white edelweiss and pink lupine that grew wild along the edge of the grass. The buzz of the bees grew louder and louder, an erratic cycling of high and low in her ears, before it evolved into the braying drone of an air raid siren.

  “We have to hide!” she yelled at Isaac in her dream. But he didn’t hear her. He just kept smiling and picking plums.

  Then consciousness erased his face and the sunny orchard dissolved, replaced by the dark walls of her bedroom. She saw the familiar slice of moonlight coming in along the edges of the blackout paper on her window, but it took her a minute to realize that the sound of the siren was real. When she finally did, terror tightened in her chest. She was in her bed, it was the middle of the night, the air raid siren was going off, and Isaac was trapped in the attic. She didn’t have time to go all the way up there to let him out. She had to help her brothers. Besides, where would he go?

  She leapt out of bed, threw her coat over her clothes, and ran into the hallway. Everyone was already headed for the stairs. She grabbed Karl’s hand and followed Maria and Heinrich down the stairs and out the front door. Mutti helped Oma hurry down the steps, and the four siblings ran hand-in-hand into the night. Christine looked over her shoulder, toward the attic of her house, craning her neck to search the black sky above the roofline.

  “What are you doing?” Maria yelled at her. “Come on! Mach schnell!”

  The high-pitched whistle of the first falling bomb screamed through the night just as they entered the shelter. A full minute later, Oma and Mutti finally ducked into the doorway, the sound of explosions propelling them inside. Herr Weiler secured the entrance, and everyone sat frozen, shoulders hunched, waiting. Christine closed her eyes and said a prayer under her breath.

  “Lieber Gott, bitte, bitte. Don’t let any bombs find our house.”

  After a few initial blasts, they heard the growling engines of planes passing over, but no bombs detonated nearby. Over the next hour, they heard sporadic anti-aircraft gunfire and low-flying planes, but the explosions sounded muted and distant, as if the attack was happening on the other end of the valley.

  “Does it sound like they’re far away?” Christine asked Maria. “Like they’ve missed us?”

  “Ja,” Maria answered. “It sounds like they missed the air base too.”

  After another hour, the all clear sounded, and the villagers emerged from the shelter. A light smell of sulfur filled the air. A fire burned outside the village in the direction of the air base, but the streets were clear. As Christine and her family walked up the hill toward their house, she wondered if every person on earth had only a certain number of prayers that would be answered. If so, she was sure she had almost run out.

  CHAPTER 20

  The next morning, Christine pulled herself from bed and looked out her bedroom window, her desperate frame of mind mirrored by the cloud-filled sky and heavy rain. The weather looked like it had settled in for the rest of the day. She thought about crawling back under the covers, but knew her restless mind wouldn’t allow her to go back to sleep.

  Even the prospect of seeing Isaac couldn’t brighten her mood. Last night, running away with him had seemed like the right thing to do. Escaping together had seemed romantic and adventurous, the two of them sleeping in forests and the haylofts of barns, until they were free in another country. But this morning it felt utterly terrifying, and worse yet, downright foolish. The Nazis hadn’t found him in the attic; maybe he should just stay there. If he and Christine left, who knew what would happen? Where would they get food? What if they were caught? They’d be shot or sent to a camp like the one Isaac had told her about.

  Once she got dressed, she felt like she was moving at high speed, her nerves frayed, dried up, and coarse, like the shavings left behind after a person raked their nails across a chalkboard. Panic wound itself around the knot of fear and grief in the pit of her stomach, like something that needed to be thrown up in a toilet.

  No one else was up, and the house was quiet. She thought about looking in her brothers’ schoolbooks for a map, but decided fresh air would do her good. Maybe it would clear her head. Whether escaping seemed like a good idea right now or not, if she was going to run away with Isaac, she needed to be able to think straight.

  She grabbed a basket from the kitchen and went out to the henhouse. By the time she opened the latch on the coop, the downpour had let up, reduced to an intermittent ping-ping on the metal roof from water dripping off the trees. It was past sunrise, but even the chickens didn’t want to come out from their dry roosts. When she reached for their eggs, the birds squawked and stood up, ready to defend themselves from the intrusion. An old, skinny hen pecked at her hand, pinching the skin. Just this slight provocation was enough to make her cry—not that it really hurt, but it took only this minor fracture in the shell of her fragile state to spring the leak that allowed every other pain to find its way to the surface and overflow.

  She left the coop and sat down on the back stoop, setting the basket of eggs at her feet, and let her pent-up emotions take over. A flood spilled from her eyes, and she sobbed out loud, remembering her father and Opa. She wept for Isaac and his lost family, her nose running as she thought about all the people who were dying because of this war. She was tired of feeling helpless and terrified, tired of the air raid sirens and the black cloth over the windows, tired of seeing confusion and fear in her brothers’ eyes, tired of seeing her mother work so hard just to keep everyone alive. But most of all, she was tired of wondering if any of them would even survive.

  After a few minutes of wallowing, she wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. To her relief, the gnawing stress had eased. She could at least function now without feeling as if she were on the edge of a great abyss, waiting to fall and disappear like a pebble dropped in a well on a moonless night. I need to think about my family and Isaac, she told herself. At least he’s safe for now. Oma, my mother, Maria, Karl, and Heinrich are alive. So many others are worse off than I am. The only thing I can do is keep going. If Isaac and I think we can get away safely, so be it. If not, then we’ll wait for things to change. They have to change. For better or worse, they always do.

  Only a few early fruit hung low in the plum trees, but she picked one anyway, just for herself. She sat back on the stoop and ate it slowly, letting the juice run down her chin. When she was finished, she walked over to the corner of the fenced backyard, dug a hole in the loamy soil, and buried the pit. After tamping the dirt down, she closed her eyes and made a wish that the plum pit would take root and grow, and that by the time it was a seedling, the war would be over, her father would be home, and she and Isaac would be together.

  Feeling less jittery and looking forward to taking breakfast to Isaac, she picked up her half-full basket of eggs, stepped into the house, and wiped her feet on the straw mat. Then she froze. At the other end of the hall, the dark silhouette of a soldier appeared against the red and blue glass of the front entrance. He pounded on the door, making the entire house rattle. The egg basket slipped from Christine’s fingers and fell to the floor. For a second, she didn’t budge, her pulse thumping, the eggs leaking yellow into the wicker at her feet.

  “Hallo?” the soldier hollered. “Hallo?”

  Christine stepped to one side, hiding behind the staircase. Her mind raced in unison with her thundering heart. Why did the Gruppenführer come back? Did I give Isaac away somehow? Did he notice something in the attic? We’re dead!

  The soldier knocked and shouted again. “Hallo?”

  The voice s
ounded familiar, but the solid door made it sound as if he were shouting from inside a thick-walled room, the soldier’s words muffled and low. My mind must be playing tricks on me, she thought. It’s no one I know. She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare peek around the corner to look.

  “Rose?” the soldier shouted, louder this time.

  Christine frowned. It couldn’t be him. It was the Gruppenführer; she was sure of it. Of course he knew her mother’s first name. He knew everything.

  “Let me in!” the soldier shouted. “Rose! Christine! Maria! Anyone?”

  And then she knew.

  Christine ran to the entrance, hands trembling as she fumbled with the lock. Finally, she pulled open the door, ready to embrace her long-lost father.

  All at once, she realized her mistake.

  The skeletal, flea-bitten man must have found out their names somehow, and now he was here to steal their food. His uniform was ripped and covered in grease and mud, his shredded boots wrapped in rope and filthy rags. A rifle hung over his back, one scraped and grimy hand holding the strap at his shoulder. Christine grabbed the edge of the door with both hands and started to slam it shut.

  “Christine!” the soldier said. “You don’t recognize your own Vati?”

  She stopped and looked into the man’s sunken eyes, trying to find something familiar behind the patchy beard, the lank hair, the dirt-covered face. Then the soldier took off his cap and smiled. And she knew.

  “Vater!” she cried, throwing her arms around him. Her father lifted her off the ground, squeezing her so tight that she thought he’d break her ribs. He kissed her forehead, her nose, her cheeks.