The Plum Tree (15 page)

From here, she could see over the roof of city hall and the five-story gabled houses enclosing the village square, toward the succession of green and blue hills that swept over the earth like a vast, rolling sea. Despite the swirling mass of dirt and dust below, the air at the top of the steeple was clear, and she could see for miles. To the west, the forest spilled down from the hills and across the valley until it hit the edge of the village, where it swelled and spread like a green, leafy wave. The wooded land was elevated just enough to see beneath the trees, and Christine could make out soldiers working on airframes, and row after row of wing panels and propellers. They were assembling airplanes beneath the dense camouflage canopy.

To the south, a long line of tanks and military vehicles coiled out toward the open end of the valley, like a trembling black snake surrounded by plumes of grayish-yellow smoke. The tail of the snake disappeared behind the last foothill, but the dark head was moving toward town, a bottleneck building up at Haller Bridge. She could see the old air base in the center of the valley and a line of dark planes along a long swath of flattened green. Insect-sized men unloaded what looked like wooden X’s from tiny trucks and made a fence around the base, like a row of black cross-stitch in the grass.

Down in the square, a group of soldiers used hammers and saws to build a wooden platform off the steps of city hall. Another handful erected metal flagpoles topped by eagles and swastikas, the Ho-heitsabzeichen, the national insignia, along the front of the stage. More stacked piles of wood on either side. The side streets and some sections of the square were cordoned off with ropes and metal barriers. Christine watched for a few more minutes, then raced down the steps and hurried home, her hope that the war had forgotten this quiet village shattered.

She ran along the sidewalks, shocked to see that people were still going about their business, as if tanks and soldiers weren’t overtaking their village.
Don’t they know that bombs and bullets will be next?
Until now, she hadn’t realized that she’d expected panic, people running through the streets, boarding up windows and doors, loading belongings into carts and suitcases and fleeing town.

Then she remembered Heilbronn. She slowed to a walk, every breath burning in her chest.
No one is leaving because there’s nowhere to go,
she thought. Every village and city she’d ever heard of had already been attacked. Heilbronn was the closest town. The day after she and her family had seen the burnt papers falling from the sky, the radio announced that fifty thousand people had been bombed out of their homes and seven thousand had died. She wrapped her arms around herself, her legs shaking as she skirted around others on the sidewalk.

At her house, two soldiers towered above her mother in the open doorway, their broad backs toward the street. Mutti’s face floated between them, a white oval flanked by two pitch-black statues carrying submachine guns and Lugers. Christine moved along the fence until she was close enough to see the tight knit of their black uniforms and the reflection of the sun in their metal helmets and leather boots.

“Frau Bölz,” one of the soldiers said in a firm voice. “When the alarm sounds, you need to find immediate shelter for your family. Keep buckets of sand and water on your staircase, in case your house catches fire. You must cover every window with black cloth, block out any light, so the enemy planes can’t see the village from the sky. Wardens will conduct checks at night, and failure to comply will result in severe punishment. There is a National Socialist rally tonight, and all citizens are required to attend. Soldiers will be in the streets, to make sure all residents come out of their homes. Failure to cooperate will result in your arrest!
Heil
Hitler!” Before Mutti could respond, the soldiers turned on their heels in unison and walked to the next house. Christine hurried toward her mother.

“What else did they say?” Christine asked her.

“They came to warn us,” Mutti said, her eyes glued on the soldiers knocking on their neighbor’s door. “They’re using the old air base behind the village, and it won’t be long before enemy planes start bombing it. We need to find a place to hide when the air raid siren goes off.”

“Where can we go?” Christine asked.
And if Isaac and his family are still here, where will they hide?
she thought.

Mutti stood thinking, forearms crossed limply over her chest, scratching her wrist and staring at the sidewalk. “Our cellar is too small for all of us,” she said in a lifeless voice. “We should talk to the butcher, Herr Weiler. His root cellar is big, and it’s the closest.” She turned into the foyer and hurried toward the bottom of the stairs. “Maria!” she called up the steps. “Christine and I have to run downtown. Be mindful of Heinrich and Karl, will you?”

Christine and her mother rushed toward the shops at the bottom of her street, where people were finally starting to act like things had changed. Outdoor tables and chairs were pulled inside cafés, two old men were boarding up the windows of the bakery, and Frau Nussbaum was taking in her potted geraniums while her husband nailed their shutters closed. Two soldiers were putting up posters while people crowded around to see what they said. Christine and Mutti stopped to look.

In jagged letters, the black and gray poster warned:
Der Feind sieht Dein Licht! Verdunkeln!
“The Enemy sees your light! Black out!” Below the words, a giant skeleton with an evil grin rode an Allied plane through a stormy night, a bomb raised in one bony hand, ready to hurl death and destruction on the German village below. Christine’s stomach lurched. She’d never seen anything so frightening in her life. Mutti grabbed her hand and pulled her away, nearly running as she led her along the sidewalk.

When Christine and her mother reached Herr Weiler’s root cellar in the side of the hill, a few storeowners were already inside, setting up benches and placing mattresses over the potato bins.

“
Grüss
Gott, Frau Bölz and Christine,” Herr Weiler said in a loud voice. He was old and rotund, with a red face that was wide and flat. But he was always in good spirits, and setting up a bomb shelter was no exception. “You and your family are welcome here! There’s plenty of room! We think we can squeeze in quite a number of people, and no one should hide in their house cellars alone. At times like this, we need each other!”

“
Danke,
Herr Weiler,” Mutti said, wringing her hands.

Christine didn’t hear the rest of their exchange. Instead, she was looking toward the back of the shelter, at a piece of cloth that looked like it was starting to slip from its hiding place behind the last potato bin. Her eyes watered, staring at the dusty, wrinkled corner of her and Isaac’s red-and-white tablecloth.

C
HAPTER
10

A
t dusk that evening, four armed SS yelled instructions from the road in front of Christine’s house. More soldiers shouted in the next street over. Bullhorns caused their voices to overlap and echo along the narrow avenues and stone houses, making their terse instructions hard to understand.

“
Achtung,
citizens!” they barked. “Come out of your houses! It is
verboten
to remain in your rooms! You must attend the rally in the town square at precisely eight o’clock.”

At seven-fifty, Christine and her family held each other’s hands and followed their fellow villagers into the town square, everyone looking around, wondering what they were about to see. When they arrived, shouting soldiers herded the throng of old people, women, and children into place behind the metal barriers until the entire populace stood shoulder to shoulder, filling every available space. Maria hooked arms with Oma and Opa, and Mutti picked up Karl, holding him on one hip. Christine lifted Heinrich onto her back, her arms hooked beneath his knees, piggyback style. They struggled to stay together, shoved and jostled by hundreds of confused people who couldn’t hear each other calling out to one another above the pounding of jackboots, drums, and military parade music. A sea of handheld torches cast flickering light on the gathering, while orange flames from two bonfires licked the sky, lighting up the red-and-white Nazi banners that covered the buildings behind the stage.

Once they’d moved forward as far as they could, Christine’s racing heart did double-time as she read the pamphlet they’d each been handed when they entered the square. The black and yellow cover said:
Wenn du dieses Zeichen siehst,
“When you see this symbol,” above the yellow Star of David. Inside, page after page explained that the Jews had unleashed war on the German people and that the Wehrmacht would ensure that world Jewry’s terrible plan would never become reality. It went on to explain that Jewry was an organized criminality, and that the Jewish danger would only be eliminated when Jewry throughout the world had ceased to exist.

“What is it?” Heinrich said in her ear.

“It’s nothing,” Christine said.
It’s a book full of lies,
she thought.
Nothing but Nazi lies.

Her mother had the pamphlet folded in her hand, but she hadn’t looked at it yet, and Maria held hers, along with Oma’s and Opa’s, curled in her fist. Christine glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then twisted the hateful paper in her hands and let it fall to the ground, where she crushed it beneath her heel. She reached for her mother’s, but her hand froze when the music stopped, as if someone had seen what she’d done. She looked around, waiting for one of the soldiers to push his way through the crowd and take her away. But nothing happened. Then, a single toll from a heavy bell rang through the air.

The throng stood in silence, listening to the massive bells of St. Michael’s chime the hour of eight o’clock, each tone echoing across the crowded square. After the last toll sounded, a military band began playing the “Horst-Wessel-Lied,” trumpets blaring, a chorus of men’s voices singing in strong, proud baritones. Thousands of black-helmeted soldiers carrying silver-tipped guns and Nazi flags goose-stepped into the plaza, making the cobblestones throb beneath Christine’s feet, like the hard thump-thump-thump of the planet’s pulse. In perfect precision, they lined up in front of the podium, their chins held high, their arms raised in salute. The tops of their helmets were at the same height, like row after row of identical tin soldiers. Christine wondered if they were a special unit, perfectly proportioned for an impressive display.

Another dozen soldiers walked along the roped-off aisles between the crowds, arms held high in salute, making sure everyone in the audience did the same. Christine clenched her jaw and raised her arm. There was a commotion at the end of her line, and a woman screamed. Christine saw a soldier grab a man by the collar and drag him out of the crowd, a female hand clawing at his sleeve. She couldn’t be sure, but the dainty halo of gray braids on the woman’s head reminded her of poor, heartbroken Frau Schmidt from the café.

After the last note of the Nazi anthem tapered off, four officers and another dozen soldiers in jodhpurs and high boots walked onto the platform. The clusters of medals on the officers’ chests reflected the flames of the bonfires, giving the illusion of thumping, bleeding hearts. They turned on their heels and raised their arms in salute, and then, a squat, hunched figure with a dark mustache walked onto center stage.

“Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”
the throng shouted. The skin on Christine’s arms turned to gooseflesh. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. The man at the podium was Hitler. The crowd roared in a distorted drone that rose and fell like the howl of the wind in a wild storm. Hitler looked shorter than she’d imagined, and even from here, she could see his scowling mouth. The soldiers in the aisles clapped and shouted, encouraging everyone to follow along, their eyes scanning the masses for anyone who didn’t comply. As they made their way along the edge of the crowd, a sea of arms lowered and people applauded, standing on their tiptoes and craning their necks to get a better view of the Führer. Christine thought she heard jeers among the applause and hurrahs. Up on stage, Hitler lowered his head and put his fist over the center of his chest. Then, he stood, motionless, waiting for the crowd to quiet. Only when there was complete silence did he look up and begin to speak.

“My German fellow countrymen and women, my comrades! Now the three great Have-Nots are united, and now we shall see who gains in this struggle, those who have nothing to lose, but everything to gain, or those who have everything to lose and nothing to gain. For what does England want to gain? What does America want to gain?” Hitler shook his fist in the air. “They have so much that they do not know what to do with what they have. We have never done anything to England or France. We have never done anything to America!” Hitler swung his arm over the people in the square. “Nevertheless now there is the declaration of war. Now you must, out of my whole history, understand me. I once said something that foreign countries did not understand. I said: If the war is inevitable, then I should rather be the one to conduct it, not because I thirst after this fame, on the contrary, I renounce that fame, which is in my eyes no fame at all. My fame, if providence preserves my life, will consist in works of peace, which I still intend to create. But I think that if destiny has already disposed that I can do what must be done according to the inscrutable will of fate, then I can at least just ask providence to entrust to me the burden of this war, to load it on me. I
will bear it!
” he shouted, pounding his fist on his chest.

Christine had never been to the opera, but she imagined that this was how the tragedies would be played out. She looked around to examine the faces of those around her, wondering if anyone else could see Hitler’s malevolent soul coming through in his authoritarian words and exaggerated movements. Red and black shadows danced over the sea of upturned faces, making facial features indistinguishable. She had the unsettling image of a horde of lost souls standing at the gates of hell. Hitler went on.