The Plum Tree (20 page)

Trying not to stare, Christine handed her a towel, then felt the cold, filmy water in the tub. “This water is almost freezing!” she said.

“I forgot to add more after Karl was done,” Mutti said, reaching for the letter. Christine went to the stove and lifted one of the steaming pots.

“Why didn’t you get out and add the hot water?” Christine said, unable to hide her anger. “Do you want to make yourself sick?” She poured the hot water in the tub, careful to avoid her mother’s legs. Her mother ripped open the envelope.

“I was just going to wash up in a hurry,” Mutti said, her teeth chattering now. “Besides, I have laundry to do, and it would have saved me from using more wood.” Shivering, she unfolded the letter with trembling hands. Christine got the second kettle of water and poured it in the tub, then watched her mother read the letter to herself. In slow motion, her mother’s face fell, and Christine’s stomach knotted, waiting for her to read it out loud. Finally, she did.

Dearest Rose and family,

I pray that you are well. I think of our house and beautiful children often, and look forward to the day when I can see all of you again. The enemy is shooting from the woods nearby, and I often wonder if those men think of their wives and children day after day, just as I do. I don’t know what I look like, but the other men in my unit look terrible, their hands and faces a smear of stubble, dirt, and insect bites.

I hope you had a peaceful Christmas. At the front every Christmas is sad. On Christmas Eve we tried to keep our spirits up by singing songs and telling jokes around the fire. After that, we told our favorite memories of Christmas at home. We recalled snow-covered villages and rooms filled with laughter and joy. Every now and then a soldier would get up and leave, and we would find him alone, weeping beneath the cold Russian moon.

The insignificance of everyday life pales against this. Here, we have nothing but the idea and memory of family and home. With that, we are men who can bear everything. Don’t worry, nothing can happen to me any longer. I want you to know how much I love you all. And, if it is within my power, I will do everything I can to see you again.

Heil Hitler,

Dietrich

Mutti looked up at Christine, her eyes flooding. “He’s given up,” she whispered.

“Nein,”
Christine said, taking the letter. “He said at the end he’ll do everything in his power to see us again.”

“But so many men have died . . .” Mutti said.

“We can only hope that the situation isn’t as bad as the radio says,” Christine said. “The enemy is bound to exaggerate. At least we know he’s alive!”

Then, out of the blue, Mutti perked up. “He talked about Christmas,” she said. “If things were so terrible, how could he have gotten a letter out since then?”

“That’s right,” Christine said. “See, it’s good news.” Christine moved the envelope to one side and looked at the postmark. January 10, 1942. The letter was a year old. She swallowed the sour taste at the back of her throat, shoved the letter back in the envelope, and slipped it into her apron pocket.

“I’m sorry,” her mother said. “You’re right. He sent it after the Russians captured them, so that means they’re letting them send letters. Which means they’re probably giving them food and clothes too.”

“That’s right,” Christine said, fighting back tears. She turned toward the breakfast nook and started to pull silverware out of the drawer.
Even though the letter is a year old,
she told herself,
that doesn’t mean he’s dead. What would be the point of telling her, especially if it means she won’t eat? I’ll just smudge out the date with a piece of coal, and she’ll never know.
“He’s probably getting more to eat than we are,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even. “So, now that you know Vater is all right, how about finishing your bath and letting me make you lunch?”

“Ja,”
her mother said. “Let’s celebrate. Get everyone together, and we’ll open the last jar of plum jam.”

In February, the government finally made the official announcement that the Sixth Army had surrendered. Flags were flown at half-mast, and women wept in the ration lines. At first, Christine thought they were worried about their husbands on the Russian front. But then she found out that men as old as sixty-five and boys as young as sixteen were being drafted into a newly formed division of the army called the Volkssturm, without uniforms. Twelve- to fifteen-year-olds were being sent to man anti-aircraft guns in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and Berlin. She thanked God that her brothers were still too young.

A few weeks later, the papers announced that the German troops were consolidating and realigning on the Eastern Front, but Opa said that it really meant they were retreating and that Ivan was headed their way. Herr Weiler had informed him that
Volksdeutsche,
or ethnic Germans, were abandoning homes in Prussia and the Ukraine, and now those refugees were heading toward Germany. Christine overheard Opa telling her mother that Russian soldiers were slaughtering and raping German women and children. At first, she didn’t believe it, but when, with their ration cards, leaflets were handed out that showed Russian soldiers standing over the bodies of dead German women and children, Christine felt the cold fear of another threat forming in her stomach. The message was clear: This is what will happen to our women and children if we do not protect our fatherland. Christine couldn’t imagine the point of handing the flyers out in the village, because there was no one left to defend them; the men were gone. She burnt the leaflets in the woodstove so her brothers wouldn’t see them.

In the middle of the night on the first day of March, Heinrich fell in his rush down the stairs during an air raid. Unlike the old, stoic Heinrich, he limped and wailed all the way to the shelter, certain he was going to die. His injuries consisted only of a bruised elbow and scraped knee, but it just added to everyone’s sense of trauma at having to run for their lives. To make matters worse, they were stuck in the shelter for three days, because every time they thought the raid was finally over, the bombs started dropping again. The potato bins and wine barrels were long empty, and only a few people, including Christine’s mother, had had the foresight to bring food when the sirens went off. Mutti always kept a replenished bag sitting by the front door, and this time it held a jar of pickled eggs and a loaf of rye bread.

The occupants of the shelter put all their food together and divided the bread, jam, eggs, jarred herring, bits of goat cheese, and dried apples into minuscule meals for thirty-plus people. The men broke a hole in the cement wall of the shelter and dug a tunnel to the outside, so the smallest boy could crawl through to collect water from the creek. At the end of the third day, when the all clear finally sounded, they emerged filthy and hungry, certain the village had been reduced to rubble. To everyone’s disbelief, the immediate area was still standing.

The next few months went by in repetitive days filled with planting the garden, pulling weeds, standing in ration lines, cleaning, scrounging for food, and running to the bomb shelter. Christine was beginning to wonder how long they could keep it up before losing their minds.
Is this the way it’s going to be for the rest of my life?
she wondered.
How long can a person live in fear of dying before it becomes too much? How long before I find out if my father is dead or alive? How long before Isaac gives up on our relationship?
Tired of feeling helpless, she decided she’d give it until fall, until the same day in late September when he’d kissed her for the first time. Then, no matter what, she was going to his house again, to see if he was still there.

At the end of July, they were in the shelter again, sweating in the middle of the night as they waited for the all clear. It’d been a hot summer, and the air in the cellar was humid and dense. There was a new person in the shelter, a nephew of Herr Weiler’s, a skinny soldier who’d come home from the war missing an eye and part of his left hand. He’d come to Hessental from Hamburg, where his family had been killed in an air raid two weeks earlier. Everyone sat in a semicircle listening to him, silent and looking at each other with worried eyes.

“Eight-story apartment buildings, cathedrals, museums, schools, shops, theaters, and vehicles,” he said, sweat beading up on his forehead. “All incinerated in a rain of fire. They dropped regular bombs on the most densely populated neighborhoods, Hamburg, Bill-werder, Ausschlag, and Barmbek, to bust open the buildings. Then they dropped the firebombs. In the end, four square miles of the city just disappeared. I was crossing the bridge over the Elbe, coming home from a late night with friends. The bombs the Allies were dropping were like nothing I’d ever seen. When they exploded, chemicals splashed over everything, turning entire neighborhoods into a sea of fire.”

“Bitte,”
a woman said. “The children might hear.”

The soldier shared a rolled cigarette with his uncle, passing it to him with the remaining fingers of his left hand, the bitter-smelling smoke making him squint. Christine edged closer so she could hear.

“All the fires joined together, forming pyres that grew hotter and hotter and roared upward for thousands of feet, sucking in the surrounding air. Suddenly there was an awful howling, and the firestorm sucked everything in, including people trying to run away. The fire liquefied stone, and people’s feet were trapped in the melting streets. I saw burning bodies jumping into the river, only to ignite again when they crawled out. I saw women running with children in their arms, then burning, falling and not getting back up. My friends and I ran inside a building and went down to the cellar. The people inside told us they could usually tell what kind of bombs were being dropped by listening to the different sounds they made—a rustling flock of landing birds was incendiaries, a sudden crack a firebomb, a loud splash was a bomb filled with liquid rubber and benzene—but they’d never heard anything like these.”

“So they’re using a new kind of bomb?” someone asked.

“That’s what he said,” Herr Weiler said.

“I can’t believe it,” a woman said. “You’re making it up.”

“I assure you,” the soldier said. “I’m not making it up.”

“Then why haven’t they used them here?”

“I don’t know,” the soldier said. “Maybe they only use them in the big cities because there are more people. Maybe after they saw how terrible they were, they decided not to use them again. Maybe it was a test. It was only two weeks ago, so maybe they’re making more. I don’t know what their strategies are!”

“I’ve heard enough,” the woman who had accused him of lying said. She retreated toward the back of the cellar, and several other women followed.

“Tell them what happened next,” Herr Weiler said, giving the cigarette back to him.

“After a while the temperature in the cellar started to rise. The air was filling with smoke. We could hear buildings crashing all around us. I decided to get out, even though everyone told me not to go. I pushed open the shelter door, and everything was red, like the inside of a furnace. A dry wind blew in my face, so hot it burned my windpipe. The air was on fire, but I could see a clear path back to the bridge, so I ran. Halfway there, a wall of fire was headed toward me, so I ducked into an underground bunker and pried open the door. The bunker was packed, and injured people were lying all over the floor, screaming for water. Then there was a hit, and the bunker rocked back and forth. One wall started falling in, and liquid phosphorous flowed through the cracks. People became hysterical, and I turned and ran out. I don’t know how, but I made it to the edge of the city, and just stood there, watching it burn. The next day, I went back to see if my family was still alive. The survivors were burning huge piles of dead bodies in the streets.”

“Why would they do that?” someone asked.

“What else could they do?” Herr Weiler said. “Bury them one by one?”

“They had to burn them,” a man said. “To stop the spread of disease.”

“That’s right,” the soldier said.

“Finish your story,” Herr Weiler said.

“The building where I’d hidden was gone. The streets were filled with charred bodies, their hands outstretched, their jaws opened in silent screams. Some were burnt so badly it was hard to tell if they were adults or children. People were walking around with buckets and sacks, picking up body parts. In the cellars they found shriveled, burnt corpses, or nothing but ash. Sometimes they found the victims lined up on benches, leaning against each other as if asleep, suffocated because the fires had pulled the air out of the shelters. When I was looking for my parents’ house, I couldn’t even tell where I was. Nothing looked familiar to me.” He paused and hung his head. After a minute, he cleared his throat and looked up, his eye wet. “Then I saw the charred corner of the library at the end of my block, and I went in the direction of our building. But everything was gone. I never found my parents or my sisters. Yesterday, I heard that over a hundred and twenty miles away, people could see Hamburg burning.”

“Was there a weapons factory there?” someone asked.

“Not on that side of the city. There was no air base, no factories, nothing military.”

“Do you think it was a mistake?” Herr Weiler asked.

“It wasn’t a mistake. It lasted three hours. Then they came back and did it again two nights later, and again three nights after that. They’re estimating over forty-five thousand dead. Hamburg was home to millions of civilians. Now it’s three-quarters erased from the face of the earth.”

Wrapping her arms around herself, Christine turned away and made her way toward the back of the shelter, a block of ice forming in her gut. Maria and her little brothers were sleeping in an empty potato bin. The adults had learned that giving the children cloth or cotton to put in their ears helped them relax, sometimes enough so they could sleep. Christine wondered if they were used to the explosions, or if it was easier to deal with the unending grip of fear by just going to sleep. That way, if a bomb burst through the ceiling and killed them all, they’d never know. Sleep was an escape, and she wished she could join them. Then she remembered that once in a while, someone brought homemade schnapps for the children to sip, to calm them down. Right now, Christine wished she had a whole bottle, because she’d drink it all, until she could forget what she’d just heard.