The Plum Tree (50 page)

Two days earlier, Christine had stood on the station platform, the hot smell of burning coal, the black engine, the trembling cars making her want to run away screaming. It was all she could do to climb the stairs and find a seat in the crowded car, her thumbnail digging deep into her wrist. She had tried telling herself she was lucky to find a spot when she did, because more and more passengers kept coming, filling the aisle with bodies and boxes and suitcases, until there wasn’t room to walk or move. Except she didn’t feel lucky; she felt trapped and claustrophobic, wishing more than anything she could get off the train and go home.

She’d waited three days for a train heading in the right direction, and it seemed as if the whole of Germany had been waiting too. When the railroad cars pulled away from the station, hordes of displaced persons still lined the platform, elbowing each other for space, their eyes hollow with desperation. Pleading with the boarded passengers, children held out their last crusts of bread, women offered necklaces and earrings previously hidden inside their clothes, all in exchange for one last spot on the cars. One woman ran alongside the tracks, handed her baby to someone on the moving train, then fell in a heap on the cement, screaming as she watched her child disappear.

Once the train was fully underway, Christine had to remind herself to breathe, watching the green and brown patchwork of the Kocher River valley lumber past her window, every mile revealing the battered countryside full of bombed-out towns and ruined cities. Survivors cooked over open fires in the streets and washed in the streams, living in tent cities made of soot-covered rugs and tattered blankets. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she stopped looking, trying instead to figure out how she was going to save Vater and get the Americans to arrest Stefan. Finally, she fell into a mind-numbing pattern of staring out the window and fitful dozing, jerking awake each time a child cried or someone coughed, her heart hammering in her chest until she realized she wasn’t in a filthy boxcar filled with prisoners.

Now, the train started moving again. She clutched her mother’s purse in her lap, her train tickets, the change from Jake’s ten-dollar bill, Vater’s letters and his
Soldbuch
, identification and service book, stashed inside. Outside, it was pouring, the trees and electric poles smudges of green and brown, blurring past the rain-streaked windows. She closed her eyes and remembered Mutti’s red cheeks, wet with tears as she handed over Vater’s cherished correspondence, a dog-eared stack tied with brown twine like a tattered gift. She remembered the terror in her mother’s eyes when she had first learned her husband had been thrown in jail, and heard Mutti’s words, uneven and high, asking why, what did the Americans think he had done? The look of confusion and helplessness on her mother’s face had burned itself into Christine’s memory.

“It’s my fault,” Christine had said, the words tearing at her throat. “Stefan did this to Vater because of me.” Mutti had begged to go with her, but Christine had insisted she stay home with Oma and the boys. “Besides,” Christine said, “you don’t need to see that awful place. I’ll bring Vater home, I promise.”

She told Mutti to keep the boys home from work, to keep an eye out for Stefan, and, if anyone asked, to say Christine was sick in bed. Because if Stefan found out that Christine was going to Dachau, there was no telling what he might do. Luckily, he had no idea she could afford a train ticket. Jake had understood the words
train
and
money.
Back at the base, she’d tried to tell Jake that his superiors trusted a man who used to be SS, but their language barrier was too great. She was wasting precious time. She needed to get to Dachau, and to Vater, as soon as possible. Because if Dachau was being used as a war crimes enclosure, someone there had to speak fluent German, and maybe he would listen to her. In the end, Jake had given her what she needed without question, his eyes sad, as if he’d never see her again.

Now, outside the train windows, red tile roofs and pockmarked stucco came into view, along with the long, brick building of a crowded station. Christine knew, by asking the elderly woman seated next to her, that the train would stop in the village of Dachau, and, from there, she would have to walk. The woman confirmed that the Americans were keeping POWs at the camp, warning that they chased the locals away, especially if they were trying to bring food to the prisoners. When the passengers from the train disembarked, the old woman put a gnarled hand on Christine’s arm, wishing her luck before disappearing into the crowd.

On the other side of the station, Christine stopped in her tracks, her stomach twisting. The main thoroughfare was crowded, from one direction to the other, with a throng of horses, carts, and people. They were refugees, some of the millions of ethnic Germans expelled by the Allies from centuries-old communities in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, their only crime that they were German. Now, they were trying to find new homes in what was left of Germany. The massive human procession moved slowly west, like a giant, sluggish serpent. A parade of grim-faced women, skeletal children, and the elderly trudged forward in unison, some with white armbands on one sleeve, others with heads down, pulling their possessions in farm wagons, baby carriages, and hand carts. The only sounds were shuffling footsteps and the creak of dry axles and wooden wheels. Even the children were silent. Remnants of the exiled Germans’ flight littered the trampled edges of the dirt road: fragments of broken stoneware, solitary shoes, the scattered contents of a child’s lost suitcase, the splintered, wooden spokes of wagon wheels, the bloated corpse of a horse. Christine heard her father’s voice in her head.

War makes victims all.

She gritted her teeth and joined the procession. The narrow, one-lane road was nothing but mud and manure, its length marred and rutted by wagon wheels and tank tracks. She kept her eyes straight ahead, ignoring the mist that floated around the trees like swirling spirits. She pretended she was in some other town, far away from the oily black forest that edged the green fields, far away from the place where Isaac was murdered. She crossed her arms over her middle, wishing she were invisible and trying to ignore the lines of refugees trudging along beside her.

Despite her surroundings, it was a relief to be on her feet, after the long days and night on the cramped train. Luckily, the rain had stopped, but her stomach growled with hunger and her lips felt parched. The bread and plums hidden inside her coat were for her father, and even if she had intended to eat them herself, she didn’t dare let anyone slogging along beside her know she had food. Initially, the bread and plums had been part of the provisions her mother had packed for her to eat on the train, because they were certain her father, as a POW, was being fed and taken care of by the Americans. But after talking to the old woman, Christine ate only half of what she’d brought, deciding instead to save the rest. If what the old woman said was true, the Red Cross had not been allowed to inspect the camps; the food supplies had been taken from the civilians of Dachau; the U.S. Army had warned the civilians it was a crime punishable by death to feed German prisoners; and the prisoners were being intentionally starved. Her father would need the nourishment more than she did. Still, she felt bad every time she heard a refugee child wail with hunger.

On the outskirts of the village, she left the crowded road, crossed over a dirt path through farmers’ fields, then took a right on a paved thoroughfare with a sign to Konzentrationslagar Dachau. She stopped and stared at the road sign, a thumbnail digging into her wrist, her breath shallow.

She bit her lip and trudged forward, every now and then stopping to remind herself to breathe, to regain her equilibrium, the wet tarmac and gray sky reeling in front of her. When the watchtowers and barbed wire came into view, she kept her eyes on the road, putting one foot in front of the other, until she came to a wide cobblestone turnoff. There, she stopped, steeled herself, and looked up. At the end of the long driveway, edged on both sides by rows of tall evergreens, was the main entrance to Dachau, a massive cement building the color of gravestones, with a center tower and broad gate.

It looked exactly as it had the day she left, minus the giant eagle and swastika above the entry. Nausea stirred in her stomach. Jeeps and tanks sat on each side of the entrance, and two soldiers smoking cigarettes, their rifles slung over their shoulders, walked slowly back and forth in front of the closed gate. Christine took a deep breath and started toward them, stepping over the train tracks that ran through the wet cobblestones, as if touching them would pull her backwards in time.

When the guards saw her, they tossed their cigarettes on the ground, took their rifles from their shoulders, and blocked her way. One of them, a tall, dark-eyed man with pockmarked cheeks, held up a hand. “Halt!” he said. Then, in German, “Turn around and go back the way you came.” His pronunciation was rough, his words a mixture of high German and some other language, perhaps Dutch or Norwegian, but at least they’d be able to understand each other.

“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.