The Plum Tree (19 page)

Halfway to the village, Farmer Klause was coming toward them from the opposite direction, his horse-drawn wagon loaded down with hay. To their left, two young boys were walking across the open fields, bags thrown over their shoulders. They met up with Christine, Heinrich, and the Labor-year girl at the edge of the road, eager to show off what they had in their burlap sacks. Christine touched Heinrich’s shoulder, motioning for him to stay beside her as the boys walked ahead, pulling out bullet casings, shrapnel, and hunks of scorched iron from their bags.

Just then, Christine thought she heard a buzzing noise. She looked around, puzzled because the fall nights had been too cold for wasps or bees. Then she noticed a single plane approaching from one end of the valley, headed in their direction, and a cold sense of vulnerability gripped her bowels. At first, she told herself that it was one of their own, because the Allied bombers never came alone. But the closer the plane got, the faster her heart raced. It looked different than any she’d ever seen. She put one hand on Heinrich’s shoulder, feeling the need to tell him to run. But where? They were too far from the village to make it to a shelter. The plane sank in the sky, lower and lower, and then it dove straight at them. She grabbed Heinrich by the shoulders, the rooster’s wings flapping in her face as it escaped from her arms, and shoved him toward the drainage ditch on the side of the road.

“Look out!” she yelled, throwing herself on top of him.

The scream of the fighter’s engine and the rat-tat-tat of strafing guns filled the air. Bullets flew overhead, ripping along the grass and the road, the thud-thud in the dirt like the muted pop of toy guns. The plane growled above their heads, and a whoosh of hot air ruffled her hair and skirt, blowing dirt and grass against her face. Then, as quick as it came, the growl of the engine grew farther and farther away, until it was an angry buzz in the distance. Christine lifted her head to check for more planes, but the sky looked as empty as it had only seconds before. She pushed herself up and felt Heinrich’s shoulders, back, arms, and legs. He wasn’t moving.

“Heinrich!” she screamed.

Heinrich groaned and pushed himself up on his elbows, a smudge of wet dirt on his cheek. “I’m all right,” he said. He felt his torso and limbs, as if to be sure, then made a move to get up. But instead of standing, he froze, his face slack, paralyzed by something behind Christine. She turned to look and put her hand over her mouth, feeling the sudden urge to throw up. She and Heinrich knelt in the ditch, staring at the carnage on the road.

Berta was on her side, her bicycle still between her legs, wheels spinning, one arm splayed on the road in front of her, ribbons of blood running from her temple and one cheek. The two boys were face down, the bags of war iron slumped at their heels, growing puddles of dark maroon staining the earth between them. Farther up the road, Farmer Klause’s draft horse was snorting and struggling to get up, one front leg at an odd angle, the wagon tilting to the right behind its flanks. Farmer Klause lay crumpled in the road, his mouth open as if he were about to shout a warning, blood-covered hands still gripping the horse’s reins.

Christine helped Heinrich to his feet, and they climbed out of the ditch. At the end of the road, soldiers and civilians were running toward them out of the village. Christine wrapped her arm around her brother’s shoulders and led him down the center of the road, between the girl’s body on the left and the two dead boys on the right. The horse had stopped struggling and lay on its side in a puddle of blood, its eyes rolling back, its life blowing out from its nostrils in shuddering, blustery groans.

Christine wanted to go to it, to kneel and stroke its warm, muscular neck, to talk to it and calm it before it died. But she had to get Heinrich out of there, away from the bodies. They moved to the right, to go around Farmer Klause and his dying horse, and then she stopped. A few yards into the brown field, the rooster lay in a scattered explosion of red and black feathers, its head cocked to one side, half its body missing.

The next night, Christine and her mother were sitting on her mother’s bedroom floor getting ready to listen to the Atlantiksender, a blanket around their shoulders. Neither Heinrich nor Karl would leave their mother’s side. They lay on top of her bed, dressed in layers, watching Mutti and Christine with sleepy eyes.

Heinrich hadn’t said a word since yesterday, and tonight he’d sat at the dinner table unwilling to do more than nibble on a slice of rye bread. When they had first come home after the attack, Christine had insisted she was all right, moving through the rest of the day in a disjointed frame of mind. Given everything she’d seen, she should have been crumpled in a ball next to Heinrich, crying until she fell asleep in her mother’s arms. But as Heinrich slept the rest of the day on the couch, she’d insisted on hanging out the laundry, pulling up the last of the leeks, and making dinner, so her mother could stay by his side. She was shocked that she felt a bit giddy, as if the fact that she and her brother had survived had ignited some kind of euphoria at the thought of just being alive. The feeling was short-lived however, and afterward she fell apart, spending the night weeping in her bed.

Earlier that day, the Hitler Youth had delivered a warning of
Tiefflieger,
low-flying enemy planes that shot at everyone and anything. To avoid being shot, the paper read, people should hide and not run.
Maybe if you’d delivered this a day earlier, four people would still be alive,
Christine wanted to say to the young boy at the door.
And I wouldn’t have taken my little brother with me. And his eyes wouldn’t have changed into those of an old man.
She showed the notice to Oma, Opa, Maria, and Mutti, then burnt it in the kitchen fire.

Now, as they sat on the bedroom floor, waiting for the boys to fall asleep, she whispered to her mother, “Will Frau Klause let you have another rooster?”

“She might, but I’m going to wait a while before I ask. I’m not going to raise the subject while she’s grieving her husband.”

Christine crawled toward the bed to turn on the radio, certain that the boys were finally asleep. But then Heinrich spoke. “I thought Vater burned the old radio.” Christine looked up at him, her hand frozen on the dial. He was looking at her over the edge of the bed, his old man’s eyes glassy and red. Mutti got up and sat beside him, stroking his forehead.

“He changed his mind,” Mutti said. “But it’s a secret. And it’s important that you don’t tell anyone. Are you feeling better?”

“You’re listening to the enemy, aren’t you?” he asked. “The ones who shot at us yesterday?”

Mutti’s shoulders dropped, and she looked at Christine, who was now cross-legged on the floor.

“We’re listening to it because we’re trying to find out everything that’s going on,” Christine said. “Because there are two sides to every story.”

“Is that why they’re shooting at us and bombing us?” Heinrich asked. “Because they think we’re doing something wrong, but they don’t know our side of the story?”

“Something like that,” Christine said. “They’re trying to make Hitler put an end to the war.”

“Because he cares what happens to us?” Heinrich asked.

“Hush,” Mutti said, pulling the covers over his shoulders. “Go to sleep now. We’ll keep the radio low.”

“Mutti,” Heinrich said. “Are we bombing them too? The British and the Americans?”

Mutti hesitated, and then she said, “Don’t think about it,
Liebchen;
just go to sleep. I’ll keep you safe.” She kept rubbing his forehead, back and forth, back and forth, until he was asleep. Then, she stood in slow motion, sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, and sighed. “How can I explain it when I don’t understand myself?”

Christine shrugged and shook her head, then turned on the radio. She pulled a blanket over her mother, only half listening to the announcements. “Hitler doesn’t care if we starve. Why would he care if we’re bombed?” she said.

“It won’t do any good to tell Heinrich that,” Mutti said.

“I know. But it’s the truth.”

Then, all of a sudden, her mother’s eyes went wide, and she put a finger over her lips.

“Conditions on the Eastern Front are desperate,” the announcer said. “German troops are running out of ammunition and have no shelter, food, or medical supplies. At last report, the Sixth Army has been trapped by the Russians in Stalingrad.”

Mutti clapped both hands over her mouth and stared at Christine.
The Sixth Army. Vater’s unit. Trapped by the Russians.
For the next hour, they sat frozen, listening to the terrible truth about what was happening in Russia, while the boys slept, blissfully unaware of their father’s fate. Christine hadn’t believed the posters depicting the Russians as barbarians, any more than she’d believed the propaganda against the Jews and Americans, but now, she couldn’t help praying they weren’t true.

C
HAPTER
13

O
ver the winter, fear of the
Tiefflieger
emptied the fields of hungry civilians digging for potatoes beneath the hard earth or searching for coal along the tracks. Inside the village, people still had to stand in ration lines and walk to the farms to barter for butter or eggs, but they all did so with their eyes on the horizon, ready to run and hide at the first sight of a plane.

Most of the
Tiefflieger
attacks were at the air base, but the day before Christmas, another incident of civilians being strafed in the street on the other side of town made everyone nervous. Hitler Youth were positioned in steeples and high rooftops throughout the village, working in shifts to keep watch on the daylight skies. With every report of villagers killed, Christine thought of Isaac and prayed that he was all right.

On the night of January 24, 1943, the Atlantiksender broadcast the news that, despite Hitler’s order to fight to the death, the Sixth Army had surrendered to the Russians. Christine wasn’t sure how to read her mother’s creased face as the announcer said that even before they were trapped, thousands of German soldiers had committed suicide.

“At least they’re done fighting,” Christine whispered. “Maybe now he’s got a better chance.”

“If a prisoner of war has a better chance,” Mutti said, pulling a crumpled handkerchief from her apron pocket and wiping her nose. “If he’s still alive.”

“Of course he’s still alive,” Christine said, wondering again if she was saying the words because she knew it was what she was supposed to say.

It seemed like just yesterday her mother had been reassuring her about Isaac, and now Christine hadn’t seen him in how long? Had it really been years? To her it felt like last week. She hoped it felt the same for him. But now, she didn’t even know if he was still in Germany, let alone still alive. And the longer this insane war went on, the less hope she had that she’d ever see him again. Was this what was going to happen with her father? Was she going to struggle with opposing bouts of grief and optimism, week after week and month after month, only to wear down until she had to say good-bye forever?

To add to her worry, no matter how much Christine encouraged her to eat, since they had found out that the Sixth Army had been trapped in Stalingrad, Mutti had lost more weight. She told Christine that the thought of eating while her husband was freezing and starving on the Russian front, or possibly dead and forgotten beneath the snow, made her stomach turn. Now, since the Sixth Army’s surrender, Christine wondered if Mutti’s lack of appetite was going to get worse.

A few weeks later, Christine found out how skinny her mother really was beneath her layers of winter clothes. As usual, they’d all bathed in the metal tub in the kitchen before Mutti, because, now that wood was being rationed and it was against the law to heat enough water to bathe more than once a week, Mutti always insisted on being last. Christine knew that, besides wanting to give everyone else the hottest water, Mutti cherished the few quiet minutes she had to soak. But that day, what Christine had in her hand couldn’t wait. A letter from Vater had arrived. Christine ran up the stairs and knocked on the kitchen door, fighting the urge to barge in.

“What is it?” Mutti called.

“A letter from Vater!” Christine shouted, her mouth close to the painted door. She heard a loud splash and imagined her mother bolting upright in the tub.

“Bring it in,” Mutti said.

Christine pushed open the door and entered the warm kitchen, the humid air dampening her arms and face. Two pots of water boiled on the woodstove, filling the room with steam. It took a second before it registered, but then Christine realized that Mutti hadn’t added more hot water to her bath. The windows were closed, condensation flowing down the glass in tiny rivers, identical to the tears on her mother’s face, but the steam in the room came from the pots on the stove, not the water in the tub.

“Give me a towel so I can dry off my hands,” Mutti said, her voice shaking. She was facing Christine, knees to her chest, hair pulled high on the top of her head, wet strands clinging to her thin cheeks. The twin lines of her collarbones jutted above her ribs, and her elbows were bony knobs, her legs like spindles on a chair.