The Plum Tree

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

  “Bitte,” Christine said. “I need help.”

  The soldiers remained stationary, unfazed by her plea. “You’re not allowed here,” the tall one said. “Go back the way you came.”

  “But I need help. I’ve come a very long way.”

  “This is an American installation,” he said. “Only U.S. military allowed inside.”

  The second soldier watched her with sullen eyes, his face unreadable.

  Christine focused on him, on the uneven patches of stubble on his young face and the purple-gray circles beneath his boyish blue eyes. She tried to smile. He looked tired and sad, as if he too had seen things he wished he’d never seen. She hoped it meant he would be more compassionate, even if he couldn’t understand what she was saying. She gripped the edge of her purse with both hands, trying to decide if she should tell the truth, or wait until she could talk to someone with more authority.

  “I’m looking for someone who was sent here by mistake,” she said.

  The tall soldier rolled his eyes and sniffed. “Ja, that’s what all you Germans say.”

  “But it’s true,” Christine said. “He’s my father. He was a regular soldier, like you. If you’ll just let me speak to someone in charge.” She reached into her purse, feeling around for her father’s Soldbuch. “Here, I can prove it to you.”

  Moving fast, the tall soldier pointed his rifle at her. “Stop!” he shouted, his face a contorted mask of anger and fear. “Drop the purse and put your hands in the air!”

  Christine did as she was told, her heart thundering in her chest. The tall soldier kept his gun on her while the younger one picked up the purse and rummaged through it. He pulled out the wad of German marks, eyeing her suspiciously for the first time.

  Christine’s mind raced, wondering what to say.

  “My American boyfriend gave it to me. It’s the change from my train ticket. He’s a soldier too. His name is Jake.”

  “What division?” the tall one said, glaring at her.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” she said.

  “Maybe we should throw you in with the other women,” the tall soldier said. “Maybe you’re part of the breeding stock for the SS, here trying to save your boyfriend from getting hanged. Maybe you have five little Nazis at home, and you’ve come here trying to get their daddy.”

  “Nein,” Christine said, shaking her head. “The man in the identity book is my father. I’m here to save my father.”

  The young soldier looked through her father’s Soldbuch, his forehead furrowed, then said something to the tall soldier.

  “Was he a member of the Nazi Party?” the tall soldier asked her, scowling.

  “Nein,” Christine said again, still standing with her hands in the air, too afraid to move.

  “You’re lying!” he shouted.

  “Bitte,” Christine pleaded. “I’m telling the truth. I will show you something.” She slowly reached over, her hands still in the air, and pushed down her sleeve. “I was a prisoner here, see?”

  The young soldier glanced up at her numbered wrist, then dropped his eyes for an instant, as if embarrassed. Again, he said something to the tall soldier.

  “We’ll let you inside, and somebody else can figure out what to do with you,” the tall soldier said finally. He stepped aside, his rifle still trained on Christine. The young soldier opened the gate and led her through. Inside, another soldier waited. The young soldier said something to him and handed Christine her purse, giving her a quick nod. She mustered a weak smile to show her gratitude. The waiting soldier led her into the compound, gripping his rifle and watching her out of the corners of his eyes.

  Christine swallowed and held a hand over her churning stomach. She imagined she could still smell the stench of the crematorium fires and hear the shouts and screams of the guards and prisoners. It was all she could do not to turn around and run. In the distance, she saw row after row of low, dark barracks, like coffins for giants lined up as far as the eye could see. She crossed her arms over her middle and kept her eyes straight ahead, praying they wouldn’t have to go past the gas chambers and crematorium.

  Thankfully, as far as she could tell, they were headed in the direction of the former SS training grounds and the guards’ barracks, previously separate sections of the prison she had only heard about. When they rounded the corner of an enormous brick building, Christine stopped in her tracks.

  Before her was a vast, mud-covered field, surrounded by tall electric fences and barbed wire. The fenced-in area was divided into smaller subdivisions by more barbed wire, like pens for livestock. Inside the “cages,” sitting, sleeping, and standing in filth and mud, were tens of thousands of rain-soaked, shivering men, some without boots or coats, all of them without blankets or shelter of any kind. Most still wore what was left of their uniforms—black pants, green jackets, gray trousers—colors from every division and rank of what had been Hitler’s war machine. It looked to Christine as if some of the men were sick and dying, right before her very eyes. All of them looked cold, wet, and miserable. Near the fence, skeletal men reached with careful, trembling fingers through the small space at the bottom of the electric wire, plucking blades of grass from the other side and shoving them into their mouths. Several called out, begging for food and water.

  For a second, Christine felt dizzy, the overwhelming sensation that she was about to fall to her knees making her sway. Convinced she had just been jarred awake from a long dream only to find herself back in the nightmare of being a prisoner in Dachau, she lifted her hand to the tender spot behind her ear, certain she would feel stubble instead of the soft silk of growing hair. To her relief, she felt supple strands and tugged once, just to be sure, tiny needles of pain drawing her inwards, away from what her eyes were seeing. Then the pain disappeared and the sea of prisoners came into focus.

  What is this? Christine thought, scanning the desperate, dirty faces for her father. Are they all SS?

  The soldier barked an order, motioning with his rifle for her to keep moving.

  Next to the enormous brick building stood another, smaller structure made of fieldstone and wide timber. Above the door was a white sign with a large A in the center of a red circle, and below that: War Crimes Branch, Judge Advocate Section, HQ Third United States Army. Outside the open doorway, a haggard line of German prisoners waited. Christine scanned every gaunt face. No one looked familiar. The line of prisoners reached inside, where the men were forced to face a wall with pictures of the camp—starved inmates and piles of corpses—hung at eye level.

  The soldier led Christine down a long, damp hall lined with cells, the doors open for what appeared to be visiting journalists, who were taking pictures and making notes. American soldiers were everywhere, while German prisoners lay inside the chambers, crumpled, moaning, covered with dirt and blood. Christine paused as long as she could in front of each cell, trying to see if one of the men being interrogated was her father. It was impossible to see anything identifiable on the contorted faces.

  At the end of the hall, the soldier held up a hand, signaling for her to wait outside an office door being guarded by another soldier. After the first soldier left, a shirtless man with oily black hair flew out of a cell and landed next to her, where he made an attempt to get to his feet. Christine backed up against the office door, her purse clutched to her chest. Finally, the man managed to stand, then stood there trembling, leaning against the wall for support, arms raised as if waiting to be hit. He wore high black boots and black pants, leather, fabric, skin ripped and torn. Christine searched his face for something she might recognize, but saw nothing. She looked away and found she could see directly into another cell, where an officer had just finished an interrogation.

  “Up!” yelled the officer in German. “Stand up!”

  The man lay in a puddle of blood on the floor, his green uniform jacket unbuttoned and covered in dark splotches. He grabbed the edge of a stool, trying to pull himself up. After a second demand, he succeeded in ge
tting to his feet and blindly reached for the officer.

  “Why don’t you finish me off?” he moaned.

  The American pushed him backwards and slammed the cell door.

  Finally, the office door opened, and Christine was led inside, trembling and nauseous. A soldier took her purse and dumped the contents on the floor, while another pushed her hands in the air and felt beneath her armpits, up and down her entire body, including beneath her breasts and along the insides of both legs. Behind a metal desk with a nameplate that read COLONEL HENSLEY, a gray-haired officer, wearing black-rimmed glasses that overwhelmed his wrinkled face, rifled through a stack of documents. He spoke without looking up, words Christine didn’t understand.

  “I’m looking for my father,” Christine said, trying to keep her voice steady, hoping he would understand German. “He was brought here by mistake.”

  Colonel Hensley looked up then, a sheet of paper in his hand.

  The soldier who’d searched her said something to the colonel, then pushed her arms down and shoved her forward.

  “English?” Colonel Hensley said, holding her gaze.

  She shook her head, her heart dropping. How would she ever get anywhere if no one understood German? She wanted to go back to the gate, to get the German-speaking guard, but it was impossible. “My father,” she said in English, her voice high and tight. “No Nazi.”

  Colonel Hensley put down the paper and sat back in his chair.

  Christine motioned toward the spilled contents of her purse. “Ja?” she said, looking at him, eyebrows raised.

  He nodded.

  She knelt and gathered her things, then presented Colonel Hensley with her father’s identity book. Colonel Hensley took the Soldbuch and rifled through its pages with little interest. When Christine held out the stack of dog-eared letters, he shook his head.

  She tore at the brown twine around the letters, fingers trembling, trying to undo the tight knot. “I will read one to you,” she pleaded, knowing he didn’t understand but hoping he would hear the desperation in her voice. “Then you will see. He was just a regular soldier, praying to return to his family.”

  Colonel Hensley tossed her father’s identity book across the desk. A cold eddy of fear opened up in Christine’s chest. She had to do something to get him to listen. She lifted her sleeve. Colonel Hensley sat forward and looked at her arm, then sighed and shook his head again. He ripped a sheet of paper from a notepad and jotted down her number.

  “Name?” he said, handing her the pen. After she wrote her name below her number, he said something to one of the soldiers. The soldier took Christine by the arm and led her out of the office.

  CHAPTER 36

  Christine waited in a foul-smelling, cement-walled room, a trio of fat black flies buzzing around the bare, dirt-specked bulb hanging from a chain in the ceiling. She sat on the edge of the only seat in the otherwise empty space, a wooden chair with wide arms and thick legs and stained straps used to tie down wrists and ankles. A soldier had locked her in when he left, the sound of the dead bolt falling into place like a gunshot. She stared at the riveted steel door, her heart racing and her knees trembling, wondering if they were just going to throw her in with the other women after all. She dug a thumbnail into her wrist, certain it would drive her mad to be locked up in Dachau again.

  Maybe that was Stefan’s plan. Maybe kidnapping her father was all part of a setup. After all, he’d told her that the Americans were holding women in Dachau. Having the Americans lock her up would be an easy way to get rid of her without getting his hands dirty.

  She busied herself trying to find the most relevant of her father’s letters, hoping the Americans were getting a translator. She scanned the smudged script for paragraphs that told her father’s story of the Russian front. Every now and then, muffled shouts and yelling filtered through the stone walls, as if coming up from the murky depths of the ocean, followed by the howl of a man in agony. She concentrated on her father’s familiar words, trying to block out all sound.

  After she’d decided which sentences would help the most, she left the letters on the chair seat and stood. Well over an hour had passed; she was sure of it. What was going on? She paced the room, trying to ignore the stains on the cement floor. The smell of death and blood was unmistakable, and the longer she was locked up in the tiny space, the stronger the stench grew. What ungodly things had been done in these rooms?

  She wondered if the Americans were looking her name up in the camp records, or summoning the interrogator used to question women. Would she be the next person screaming? And what exactly was going on here, anyway? There had to be other ways the Americans could bring the guilty to justice.

  She sat down again, a lump in her throat. The war is over, she thought. So why do I feel like it’s still going on?

  Then, suddenly, an image of Isaac came to her. Not Isaac as she had last seen him, desperate and starving, but a smiling, ruddy-cheeked Isaac. He was laughing, surrounded by sunlight and the falling, swirling leaves of an oak tree. She tried to use the image to calm herself, but the picture kept getting interrupted, erased, and blocked out by flashes of watchtowers and electric fences, like glaring photos jerking to life in the dark corners of her mind. Everything would have been so different if Isaac had survived. Maybe he would have found a way to turn Stefan in. Isaac is dead, she reminded herself, gone forever and never coming back.

  Finally, she heard a key in the dead bolt. She stood, trembling hands held over her stomach, praying it would be a soldier escorting her father, his weary face relieved and surprised when he saw her. Instead, a man in civilian clothing appeared, a notebook under his arm. He nodded his thanks to the soldier for letting him in, pulled a pen from behind his ear, and started toward her. His thin face was bristly and his short hair was dark, the same shade as his frayed leather jacket. Christine squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, unable to believe what she was seeing, certain her anxious mind was playing tricks on her. But the man was still there, stopped in his tracks, his eyes locked with hers in childlike astonishment. She backed away, bumping into the chair and knocking her father’s letters to the filthy floor.

  “Christine?” the man said.

  Christine’s knees gave out. The voice was unmistakable: the accent, the deep pitch, the way he said her name. She swayed and started to crumple. The man caught her by the elbows, leading her back toward the chair. She reached blindly for the seat and lowered herself into it.

  “You’re alive?” she croaked, her voice scarcely a whisper.

  Isaac knelt and stared at her with those dark, familiar eyes. Light-headed, she drew back. Clearly, the stress of losing Maria, having her father kidnapped, and returning to Dachau was causing hallucinations. Certain if she reached out, her hand would go through him, she wondered again if her brain had finally gone over the edge. But then, the apparition spoke again.

  “It’s me, Christine,” he said in a soft voice. He reached out to touch her face, and she was shocked to feel the warm, soft caress of his hand on her cheek. “What are you doing here?”

  “But they shot you!” she said. “The soldiers took you into the woods, and they shot you! I heard it! You never came out!”

  “You’re right. They shot me. But I didn’t die.”

  “How can this be?” she cried. “I grieved for you! I’ve cried a million tears. All this time, all these weeks. I thought you were dead!”

  “I know,” he said, his voice miserable. “And I’m sorry.”

  She put her hands over her face and tried to breathe normally, struggling to make sense of it all. Then she looked at him again.

  “Where have you been?” she asked, surprised by her anger. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been hiding in the woods,” he said. “There were five of us, waiting and wondering if it would ever be safe to come out. When we saw the American flag go up over Dachau, we came back to see if any of our loved ones had survived.”

  “Why didn’t y
ou come home? Why didn’t you come back to me?”

  “I’ve been trying to, but the Americans need help identifying former guards and officers, and they need translators. I agreed because I didn’t have any other way home. They said after the trials they’d take me wherever I wanted to go, with money in my pocket and clothes on my back. But I also agreed because I want to find the guard who shot my father.”

  Finally, her racing heart slowed as reality slowly sank in. “I can’t believe this,” she said, reaching out to touch his face. “I thought I’d lost you forever.” He closed his eyes and put a hand over hers, turning his mouth to her palm and inhaling deeply, as if relishing the smell of her skin. He kissed her fingers, gazing at her with soft, loving eyes. Then, finally, he groaned and pulled her into his arms.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” he said, his voice choked with tears. He crushed her to his chest, his face buried in her shoulder, his warm, jagged breath on her neck. She closed her eyes, her mouth against the side of his jaw, his skin hot against her lips. Afraid to open her eyes and find she was dreaming, she pressed herself into him, to feel his heart pounding against hers. He held her tighter. Finally, the long weeks of grief melted away beneath his strong arms. Then his lips were on hers, kissing her with a hungry, open mouth. After a few moments, he drew back and looked at her, his eyes glistening with tears.

  “Ach Gott,” he said, a gentle hand on her cheek. “Wondering if you’d survived nearly drove me crazy. It took days to find the courage to look up your name in the camp records. I couldn’t bear the thought of being responsible for your death, and I couldn’t live without you. When I didn’t see the word ‘deceased’ after your number, I fell to my knees and wept.”

  “This whole time you were alive,” she said. “I should have known. I should have felt it.”