The Plum Tree (36 page)

“Put your hand down!” someone whispered beside her. “Don’t draw attention to yourself!”

The woman next to her had uneven tufts of dark hair on her head, enormous brown eyes, peeling lips, and a bruise near one temple. It was hard to tell with her pronounced cheekbones and gray skin, but Christine thought they were around the same age. Christine looked forward.

“I’m Hanna,” the woman whispered.

Christine nodded, her eyes fixed on the
Rapportführer
and guards.

“I can find out what happened to your friends. Nina Bauerman,
ja?
And Gabriella?”

Christine nodded again. Then, when the guards weren’t looking, she whispered, “And Isaac. Isaac Bauerman.”

“Only the women.”

After the head count, the women were led off to their various labors. Hanna gave her a small wave as she plodded away with a large group. Christine was left standing there, shaking in the cold, not sure if she was supposed to go to the
Lagerkommandant
’s house on her own. Besides, it’d been dark last night when she had been led to the barracks; she couldn’t be certain she knew how to find her way back. A guard came over to her.

“Go to work!” he screamed, then slapped her across the face.

Christine reeled sideways. Then she recovered and hurried in the direction of the house, her hand to the right side of her face. To her left, a high barbed wire fence split the camp in two. On the other side, there was block after block of identical wooden barracks, and male prisoners standing in formation. A
Rapportführer
walked back and forth in front of them. Christine looked at the sea of pale faces. There were thousands of them; it would have been impossible to spot Isaac. As she neared the house, she saw great waves of dark smoke rising from somewhere deep within the camp. The
Lagerkommandant
was standing on the front porch, smoking a cigar.

“Guten Morgen, Fräulein,”
he said.

“
Guten Morgen,
Herr Lagerkommandant. Is there anything specific you would like done today, Herr Lagerkommandant?”

“Just breakfast for now, and anything else you see that might need doing.”

She put a hand on the door handle, ready to go inside. But she had to take the chance. “Excuse me, Herr Lagerkommandant?” she said, her voice shaking.

“Ja?”
He turned to face her and leaned against the porch railing, the cigar sticking from one corner of his lips.

“I came here with someone.”

His brow furrowed. He pulled the cigar from his mouth and flicked the ash over the edge of the porch. “And you want me to find out what happened to him,” he said, his eyes hard to read.

“I’m sorry, Herr Lagerkommandant. I know I shouldn’t have asked, but . . .”

Then he was in front of her, grabbing her, his fingers digging into her upper arm. “You’re right. You shouldn’t have! What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you listen to a word I said?”

“I’m sorry, Herr Lagerkommandant. It won’t happen again, Herr Lagerkommandant.”

He shoved her away, his temples pulsing. She waited, legs trembling, until he had turned and moved to the other side of the porch to stand at the top of the steps, like a mad king surveying his nightmarish kingdom, before she went into the house.

In the kitchen, she made coffee, boiled an egg, and sliced brown bread for his breakfast, her own stomach rumbling. The
Lagerkommandant
drank his coffee and ate the bread, but didn’t touch the egg. After he left, she watched out the front window and wolfed down the egg. She felt like an animal, chewing and swallowing as fast as she could without choking. The fear of being discovered, coupled with the guilt of having food while so many others were starving, rendered the food tasteless. She wondered if Isaac had had anything to eat since they’d arrived.

After washing the dishes, she went out the back door to find and inspect the garden. A wide rectangle of poorly tended, weed-choked earth, the vegetable patch ran the length of the fence and took up nearly the entire backyard. She walked to the rear of the overgrown plot, trying to decide where to begin. Standing next to a yellowing row of parsnips, she could see part of the compound she hadn’t seen before.

In the center of the camp stood two brick buildings, one with solid, windowless walls, the other with a mammoth red chimney. Waves of smoke billowed out from the flue. Army trucks idled next to the first building, their exhaust pipes connected to makeshift ducts in the building wall. Trapped in a corridor made of high barbed wire, long lines of people were being driven into the building by the leather whips of the SS: old men, young women, children, entire families. In between the two buildings, prisoners used wooden carts to transfer lifeless cargo from the first building into the one with the billowing chimney.

Christine fell to her knees and vomited into the dirt. She’d recognized the smell of burning flesh when they had arrived, but hadn’t realized it was part of the procedure, part of the operation, part of what she now knew for certain was a deliberate slaughter. She’d thought the smell was coming from a crematorium for those who had died from starvation or disease, or who had been shot like that poor woman this morning. But the people headed into the buildings were still dressed! They hadn’t even been put through the selection process. They’d just been taken off the trains and sent to their deaths. Her chest constricted as she strained to stop heaving, staring at the crabgrass and dandelions spreading between garden rows.

“Is there a problem?” the
Lagerkommandant
said behind her.

Christine stood and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “
Nein,
Herr Lagerkommandant,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. He glanced past her, toward the waves of rolling smoke in the sky.

“Oh,” he said. “I see. You saw the crematorium.” She was surprised to hear a trace of pity in his voice. “I told them that the last shipment of Zyklon-B was spoiled, and ordered them to bury it. I thought it would slow them down. But they won’t stop, not even for a day. That’s why they’re using the trucks. That’s how it started, you know, using the exhaust from the trucks.” He scratched his chin with his thumb, looking at her as if he needed her to understand. “The first time I saw the crematorium, I wanted to enter the chambers with them. But then I realized I’m a witness to their murders. If I’m alive when this is over, I’ll be able to tell the world what really happened here.”

She didn’t know how, or even if, she should respond. He had to be lying; otherwise, how could he stand there and let this happen? She wanted to go back to the barracks, longed to lie down, to be swept away by sleep. She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to think about what was going on here. She’d come out to start working on the garden, but now she couldn’t. She needed to go back in the house, to get as far away as possible from what she’d just seen. She walked past him, hoping he wouldn’t stop her, the acidic tang of bile stinging the back of her throat. The egg she’d eaten earlier tasted chalky and rancid on her tongue.

She spent the rest of the day straightening, sweeping, and preparing the
Lagerkommandant
’s meals. She’d have to go into the garden sooner or later, but she wasn’t going to do it today. Instead, she worked like a machine, trying not to think. Every so often, her mind assaulted her with images of the line of people walking into the building. She saw them coming out the other side, naked and lifeless, their bodies thrown on a cart like piles of livestock after the slaughter, arms and legs entwined and dangling in awkward, unnatural positions. She tried not to think about the pain and agony experienced by the thousands of people who were dying here, but she couldn’t help but carry it with her, like a heavy, black chain around her heart.

The black chain occasionally came loose. Overcome by grief, fear, and homesickness, she reached for her hair, for the comfort she used to find running it through her fingers, but there was nothing there. Several times throughout the day, reality hit, forcing her to stop what she was doing and sit down, with her head between her legs to keep from fainting, until finally, she pulled herself together enough to get back to work.

By the time she went back to her quarters, night had fallen, and she was thankful for the darkness that hid the crematorium, like a shroud pulled over a decaying corpse. When she stepped inside the barracks, someone grabbed her wrist and tried pulling her down the aisle. She dug in her heels and shouted, fighting back. Then the person drew close.

“Shush . . . it’s me,” Hanna said in a low voice. “Come on.”

Hanna pulled her into a bottom bunk, where Christine lay on her side, squinting in the dark. Hanna’s face was inches from hers, a ghost mask in the gloom.

“We have to whisper,” Hanna said. “Remember that woman who warned you about
Selektion?
She’s the
Blockältester,
the lead prisoner of the block. She gets double rations for reporting everything she sees and hears to the
Blockführer.
The green triangle on her uniform means she was a professional criminal before she came here. In Dachau, the professional criminals will do anything to survive, and the SS know it. Watch out for her. You don’t want to get on her bad side.”

“Danke,”
Christine whispered.

“That’s not all I want to warn you about. You need to know that most of the other women aren’t going to trust you either.”

“Why not?” Christine said, a little too loudly. “What did I do?”

“You’re not Jewish, and you work for the
Lagerkommandant.
They’ll be afraid you’ll tell him everything you see.”

“But I’d never . . .”

“Listen. People are fighting for their lives, and that changes everything. You’d be surprised what people are capable of when it comes to saving their own skin.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Ja.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because you just got here and you’re not that desperate yet, or maybe because one of the first things you did was ask about your boyfriend’s mother and sister.”

“You said you could find out where they are.”

“
Ja.
And I’m sorry. There’s no easy way to tell you this. Gabriella was gassed and cremated shortly after she arrived.”

Christine felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I work in the records department. I type and file prisoner information.”

Christine turned on her back and pressed the heels of her hands into her flooding eyes.
She was just a child,
she thought. “And Nina?” she said, her voice catching.

“Typhus, three months ago.”

“
Ach
Gott.”

Hanna shifted on the bunk. “Welcome to Dachau.” Christine felt Hanna’s hand on her shoulder. “Listen,” Hanna said. “If I get a chance, I’ll try to find out about your boyfriend, but I can’t promise anything. I used to be able to look up the male prisoners’ records, but the new
Blockschreiber,
barracks clerk, watches over the files like a hawk. He’ll know I’m up to something. Before he came, I found out my twin brother was still alive, working in the munitions factory. But that was over a year ago. Now, well. I don’t know if he’s . . .” She paused. After a moment, she continued. “Anyway, I also found out that the former chancellor of Austria is here, and the former premier of France. The Germans are meticulous about their bookkeeping. They keep records of everyone who enters, including every person they’ve murdered.”

Christine tried to find her voice. “How long have you been here?”

“Two years. Give or take a month or two. We were hiding with nine others in a tiny room in an apartment house in Berlin. We were safe for about six months. The neighbor turned us in to the Gestapo, in exchange for two loaves of bread.”

Christine groaned. “And the rest of your family?”

“My mother and younger sisters went straight to the gas chambers. The guards hanged my father outside the gates, beside the mayor of the village of Dachau and ten other men. They left their bodies hanging for three weeks.”

“I’m so sorry,” Christine said.

“Ja,”
Hanna continued, her voice flat. “The only reason they let me live was because I was a secretary and knew how to type. Imagine that. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t told them.” Christine felt Hanna press something hard and dry into her hand. “Here, I saved a piece of bread for you. You missed mealtime.”

“Nein, danke,”
Christine said, putting the crust back in Hanna’s hand. “You need it more than I do. Besides, I’m not hungry.”

“Are you sure?” Hanna said, already chewing.

“I’m sure. I’ve lost my appetite.”

C
HAPTER
25

O
n her daily walks to the
Lagerkommandant
’s, Christine realized how lucky she was to be working in his house. Some of the women prisoners were sent to work in armaments factories outside the camp, or to the Bayerische Motoren Werke factory to build engines for planes. Some, like Hanna, had jobs inside the camp, working in the records department, cooking for prisoners and guards, sorting piles of the incoming prisoners’ belongings, or filling the hundreds of other labor positions needed to keep the camp operating. Most of the men worked on construction, outside in any weather, digging, pushing wheelbarrows, moving rocks, building roads and barracks. Guards would beat prisoners for no reason, women and men, and shoot them for even less. It was a normal occurrence for prisoners to drop to the ground, from being shot or succumbing to exhaustion, starvation, or disease. Flies, typhus, cholera, and death were ever-present companions. Every night, fewer women in her sector returned to the barracks. Every day, more women replaced them.

Night after night, Christine repeated the same prayer on her way back to the barracks, that Hanna would have news of Isaac. But it was always the same. She hadn’t had an opportunity to look at the men’s files without getting caught. Whenever Christine was outside, she looked for him on the other side of the fence. On her way to and from work, she walked as close as possible to the barrier that split the camp in two. There were thousands of men over there, lining up, working, falling, marching. From this distance, they all looked the same: striped uniforms, thin bodies, bald heads, dirty faces.