The Plum Tree

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  “Christine!” her mother called.

  Christine ignored her and headed down the hill. She wanted to be alone, away from all of them. Halfway down the street, she glanced back to see her family crossing the walk in front of their house, heads hanging. The overwhelming feeling of being completely alone hit her with such force that she stopped running and sobbed out loud. She pulled the scarf from her head and stood in the center of the road, wondering what to do and where to go.

  Beneath her sleeve, the number on her wrist began to itch and burn. She pressed her thumb against it, then ran her fingers down the soft strands of hair behind her ear, the bone of her skull hard beneath her skin. She pictured Isaac’s dead body lying in the woods, and yanked out a tuft of hair. The pain was sharp and instant, and for a few blissful seconds, there was nothing else.

  Then she heard her mother screaming.

  CHAPTER 34

  Christine followed her mother’s screams, her legs like stone as she raced toward the open front door. In the foyer, her father was sitting on the floor, sobbing, his head in his hands. Oma leaned against the wall, the boys held to her heaving chest, their faces buried in the folds of her blouse. Mutti was on her knees, howling next to Maria’s crumpled body. Maria’s face was bone white, her thin neck twisted at an odd angle, one stocking foot on the bottom stair.

  Christine’s heart went black. She entered the foyer, the floor pitching beneath her, fear filling the back of her throat like a greasy slick of oil. She fell to her knees beside her sister. Nein! Her mind screamed. Nein! This can’t be! It isn’t real! Her mind raced backwards, to what had just happened in church, wondering if she was being punished for trying to ruin someone’s life, for taking matters into her own hands, for thinking she could make the final judgment on Stefan. Oma’s words rang in her ears: “God makes the final judgment on us all.” I’ll take it back! she thought. Stefan can go free! I’ll take it back!

  “Maria?” she cried. “Maria! Get up!” She took Maria’s hand in hers. It was soft and limp. Christine screamed until her throat was raw, her stomach twisting, the veins in her forehead ready to burst. When her voice gave out, she tasted blood.

  Christine’s beloved sister lay on the tile floor like a discarded rag doll, her red sweater gathered under her arms, her legs and arms splayed at unnatural angles. The blond, feathery lashes beneath her closed eyes were wet with tears, and a drop of maroon blood sat below one nostril. Christine squeezed her eyes shut, hoping the image would be gone when she reopened them. Like a jolt, a memory came to her. A traveling carnival had come to town, and the next day, Christine had walked into the kitchen to find five-year-old Maria next to the woodstove, holding a burning stick over her open mouth, trying to swallow flames, like the fire-eater at the carnival. Seven-year-old Christine froze in place, one hand on the door, panicked and not knowing what to do. Luckily, Mutti came into the kitchen just in time to grab the burning stick from Maria’s hand.

  Even back then, before she had fully understood the finality of death, Christine had wondered how she’d carry on if anything happened to her little sister. For weeks afterward, she followed Maria around, worried she’d try another trick—walking a tightrope or juggling knives—and Christine would, once again, fail to protect her.

  Now, Christine had done just that. She opened her eyes and reached out to touch Maria’s face, holding her breath, as if one touch would shatter it like glass. Her trembling fingers touched her sister’s cheek. Maria’s skin was ice cold. Christine moaned and slumped over, covering her sister’s upper body with her own. She started shaking, her limbs vibrating out of control, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. One after the other, before she could catch her next mouthful of air, violent sobs burst from her throat, each wail wrenching the strength from her body. A block of ice pressed against her heart as guilt replaced the vacuum of shock.

  “I’m so sorry!” she wailed. “I shouldn’t have left you alone! Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  Mutti looked up at Christine, her eyes like bleeding wounds in her skull. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

  Christine lifted her head, and somehow the words came, even as her heart shattered into a million pieces. “She was pregnant! She was pregnant and I couldn’t convince her that everything would be all right!”

  Mutti crushed Maria’s body to hers. “Oh nein!” she screamed. “Nein!”

  With gulping sobs, Vater went to Mutti’s side, and they cradled Maria in their arms, caressing the thin, pale cheeks of their lost child. It was more than Christine could bear. She ran to the threshold and retched on the steps, then crumpled against the open front door, her vision blurring. With what little strength she had left, she crawled the rest of the way outside and lay on the walk, shivering and hoping she’d pass out. It was no use. Her parents’ sobs echoed out of the hall into the still morning air, drowning out the muffled hymn coming from the church across the road, like the dead crying out from beyond the grave.

  The long days following Maria’s funeral were humid and hot, and the white sky hung hazy and low. Every other night, rumbling storms jolted Christine awake, heart hammering, brow beaded with sweat. She’d throw back the covers and jump to her feet, ready to run, before realizing that the double-barreled crashes and echoing booms were rolling thunder, not dropping bombs. Relieved, she’d fall back on her bed, limp and trying to catch her breath, until, in the next instant, realization sent a hollow draft of sorrow through her bones.

  Maria was dead.

  Images flashed in her mind: her sister lying in a coffin; her parents sobbing over the open grave. Then the hot flush of panic would seize her all over again, and she’d stay awake, restless and clammy until morning.

  In the garden beneath a blazing sun, she spent hours digging and weeding, while over and over in her mind, she replayed what had happened, wondering what she could have said or done differently. Wiping the dripping wet sweat from her face, she worked until her legs trembled, punishing herself for not staying home from church that day. When she was done, she’d stagger into the house, her red face smeared with a mixture of dirt and tears, hoping sheer exhaustion would help her forget that Isaac and Maria were dead.

  At the end of the week, Vater went back to work. The family needed the money, and there was nothing more he could do for Mutti, who’d taken to spending her days in bed. On the first day of his return to work, Christine made Vater a lunch of rye bread spread thick with lard, then wrapped it carefully in brown paper. On her way to the construction site, she walked fast, glancing behind her and avoiding the shortcut through the alley.

  At the site, the sounds of hammers and saws filled the air. Four men balanced precariously on the second-floor beams, hammering roof joists into place. Other men mortared stone along each cellar wall, the scrape and slap of their trowels grating at her nerves. She didn’t see Vater anywhere. She held one hand over her eyes, trying to make out a familiar face in the blinding sun.

  “Who’re you looking for?” one of the men called down from the roof.

  “My father,” she yelled. “He just returned to work today.”

  “Some of the workers were sent to clear out the other cellar,” the man told her. “Back where the kitchen and storage building used to be.”

  “Danke,” she said, waving. A square of barren earth stretched to the back of the next block, dappled here and there with thin patches of struggling grass. Near the center of the yard, a rubble-filled cellar fell into the earth like the yawning cavity of an extracted tooth.

  At the edge of the hole, two men reached down to lift out scorched timber and heavy stones, then passed the pieces to the men behind them. Like a fire brigade, the other men hoisted the charred remains toward a waiting horse-drawn wagon.

  Christine edged toward the crumbling perimeter of the cellar and looked down on the men digging through the ashes and dust, the smell of damp, burnt wood drifting out of the hole like the stench of an exhumed grave. A melted jumble of blacken
ed canisters, twisted chairs, and burnt pipes fused with the building ruins to create a gnarled, lifeless landscape.

  Standing on an unstable pile of rubble below the other men, Herr Weiler wiped his face with a bandanna and looked up. He stuffed the rag in his pants pocket and made his way toward her.

  “How’s your father?” he said, squinting up at her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought he was coming back today,” Herr Weiler said. “Is he sick?”

  “Nein,” she said. “I saw him leave for work this morning.”

  Herr Weiler shook his head. “No one’s seen him all day.”

  The blood drained from Christine’s face. Images flashed in her mind: Stefan stabbing her father in a deserted alley; her father lying there, dying and confused, sprawled in a growing puddle of blood.

  She dropped the bagged lunch and ran, racing through the cobblestone streets, calling her father’s name. Everyone around her seemed to move in slow motion, while her own movements felt sped up, every step insect-like and jittery. She stopped everyone she knew, grabbing them by their shirtsleeves, asking if they’d seen him. Some shook their heads, yanking themselves from her grasp as if she had a disease; others said no with fear-filled eyes, as if the war were still going on and she were a member of the Gestapo, ready to throw them in jail if they answered her question incorrectly. Only the shoemaker’s wife bothered to ask what was wrong.

  When she saw an American jeep lumbering in her direction, she stood in the road, putting her hands up to stop it. The Americans were her only hope. They’d want to know about an SS guard in hiding, wouldn’t they? The jeep swerved around her and kept going. As it sped past, she searched the American faces for Jake, but didn’t see him. A second jeep slowed and stopped, a cloud of dirt rolling up behind it as the tires skidded across the cobblestones.

  “Jake?” she said to the four Americans, hoping they might recognize the name. The driver shook his head. The front passenger said something she didn’t understand, then made a motion for the driver to keep going. Two soldiers in the back elbowed each other, smiling and looking Christine up and down. One pulled a Hershey bar from his front pocket and held it out, whistling as if calling a dog. Christine shook her head. The men roared with laughter, and the driver put the vehicle in gear. She hurried around to the front of the jeep and put her hands on the hood, trying to figure out how to make them understand, hoping one of them spoke German.

  “My father,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “The SS have him!” The passenger in the front seat motioned for her to get out of the way. “Help,” she said. The driver gunned the engine and glared at her. She gasped and stood back, her hand over her heart, her mind reeling as she tried to remember the English words she needed. “Father,” she tried in English, her thick German tongue making the word come out “fadder.” “Help” came out “helf.”

  The soldier in the passenger seat lifted his rifle and took aim at her head, staring at her with steady, dangerous eyes. She moved away from the jeep, arms limp, tears streaming down her cheeks. The Americans drove away. Suddenly, she realized that even if she could get them to listen, they probably wouldn’t care about a missing German. We’re still the enemy. Then she remembered the air base outside the village, crowded with American vehicles. Maybe she’d find Jake there, or someone who could speak German, someone who would help her. She stood in the road, trying to remember the shortest way to the base, then, trembling and nauseous, she headed east.

  Five blocks over, she came to the end of town closest to the air base, the ill-fated section that had sustained the heaviest damage during the war. The eastern end of the village was gone, block after block turned into rubble. Burnt, jagged timbers and melted metal pointed skyward, like broken bones. The cobblestone streets, cleared down the center, looked like red, winding rivers flowing between rutted banks of crushed brick and shattered stone. Here and there, she saw chalked messages on the fractured walls of ruined buildings: Greta and Helmut, we are alive, at Tante Helga’s. Beloved daughter, Annelies Nille, Age 4, killed January 13, 1945. Still missing: Ingrid, Rita, and Johann Herzmann, age 32, 12, and 76.

  Christine held the edge of her sweater over her nose as she ran, imagining she could still smell the smoke, burning cinders, and melting flesh of the victims, people she used to see in church, on the sidewalks, and at the grocery store. Over four hundred people from her hometown, including babies and children, had been killed by bombings over the course of the war. She hurried past the scattered heaps of stone and shards of glass from a destroyed church and an old cemetery, where headstones leaned left and right or lay split and shattered on the ground. Along the edges of the road, bomb craters looked like newly dug graves.

  Finally, she was out of the village, in the open fields, where she could see the air base near the mouth of the valley. She hurried toward it.

  When she saw the security checkpoint, she slowed, praying one of the guards could understand enough German to let her pass. From behind her, a convoy of trucks and tanks approached, a column of dust and dirt rolling up like a black thundercloud in their wake. Christine stepped off the road to let the vehicles pass, a pale hand held up in greeting, hoping one of the soldiers would take pity on her, or think she was willing to have sex with him in exchange for a candy bar or stick of gum. She had to get inside, no matter what.

  The engines roared in her ears, the tanks’ massive tracks rattling and tearing at the earth. Groups of American soldiers sat on two trucks, crowded atop the roof and open bed like a swarm of schoolboys playing on a hill. A few glanced at Christine but didn’t react.

  When the first vehicle stopped at the checkpoint, Christine walked the length of the convoy, searching each cab for Jake. No one looked familiar. The driver of the last truck was alone, one arm out the window, a cigarette in his hand, head leaning back against the high seat. She approached the cab and was about to speak, when she noticed the soldier’s eyes were closed. Clearly on edge, he took a long drag from his cigarette and blew out the smoke in a forceful stream, mumbling what sounded like angry words. She hurried toward the rear of the vehicle, praying there weren’t any soldiers in the canvas-covered bed, ready to keep running if she was wrong.

  To her relief, the back of the truck was full of wooden crates. She pulled herself up and threw herself between the tailgate and the canvas flap, her heart like a runaway train in her chest. There was just enough room to lie down sideways between the boxes and the sidewall of the truckbed. She crammed herself into the empty space, banging her elbow and forehead in the process, her nose and eyes stinging with the smell of burning diesel.

  The gears of the engine squealed and caught, and the truck ambled forward, jostling Christine against the boxes like a sack of flour. She put her arms around her head, praying the vehicles wouldn’t be searched before being let inside. At first the truck kept moving, but then, too quickly, it stopped. Over the growling engine, she heard voices, the driver talking, a loud bang, a series of muted clunks. Someone pulled open the canvas and she jumped. She felt rather than saw a soldier inspecting the packed bed. She held her breath, trying not to move.

  Just when she thought the soldier was finished with his inspection, a rough hand seized her by the arm and yanked her up. The soldier yelled, drew his gun, and stepped back. The guards and the agitated driver trained their rifles on her as she climbed over the tailgate and jumped down, knees bent to keep from tumbling forward. A bristle-faced soldier barked an order in her face. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, but she knew she was in trouble.

  After the guards patted her down, the bristle-faced soldier dragged her past the checkpoint and across the compound, into a squat brick structure to the left of the control tower. Inside, an officer sat behind a desk, his balding head bowed over a jumble of maps and paperwork. When the soldier addressed him, he looked up. His cheeks and forehead were pale and lumpy, as if his skin were made of porridge. Surprise registered in his eyes. He stood and came to
ward them, listening as the soldier explained, then sat on the edge of the desk and studied Christine, arms folded across his chest.

  “English?” he said to her. She shook her head. He scrutinized her a moment longer, as if searching her mind for devious motives, then said something to the bristle-faced soldier, who saluted and left the building. The officer pulled a chair away from the wall, metal legs scraping across the concrete floor, and motioned for Christine to sit in it. She did as she was told, legs and arms trembling, wondering if the officer could hear the blood thrashing through her veins. When he went back to his desk, she cleared her throat to get his attention. He looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  She pulled back her sleeve, pointed to the number on her wrist, and said, “SS.” The officer’s face dropped, and he gave her a stiff nod. “Father,” Christine said in English.

  “Father?” he repeated, forehead furrowed in confusion. She nodded, putting a hand over her heart.

  “Jake?” she said, silently berating herself for not knowing his last name, angry that she’d painted all Americans with the same brush. Maybe if she’d been willing to be friends instead of believing the worst, Stefan would already be behind bars.

  Just then, the bristle-faced soldier returned with a blond man dressed in civilian clothing. When the civilian saw Christine, a look of surprise flickered across his face. Then he smiled, his mouth curling into a smug, satisfied grin. Her blood ran cold.

  It was Stefan.

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” he said.

  Christine stared at the porridge-faced officer, hoping to convey her fear and anger with her eyes. She stood, pulled back her sleeve, jabbed her wrist again, and pointed at Stefan. “This man is SS!” she said, her words rattled by fury. “He is from Dachau!”