The Plum Tree (6 page)

But today it was impossible to find relief. Christine stood and looked out the window.

“Where is everyone?”

“Maria and the boys went to the railroad tracks to look for coal. And I sent Opa to the fields to find dandelion greens for one last salad before winter.”

Christine pictured Opa in the countryside wearing his green Tyrolean hat, his hands shaking as he leaned on his hiking pole to pull edible weeds from the cold fall ground. He was probably talking to himself, or singing like he did in the kitchen whenever he fixed a chair or loose cupboard door just so he could be near Oma while she cooked and baked. By the time he finished his repair, there’d be flour on his shirt and nose and cheeks, left there by Oma shooing him out of her way.

“Should I go look for him?” Christine asked.

“Maria and the boys will bring him back in time for
Mittag Essen,
” Oma said, dropping the wooden darning egg into a tattered sock.

Christine recognized the sock as her own, one of a thick wool pair she wore to bed in the winter, when she had to wear layers to bed because there was never enough coal to burn through the night. Her
Deckbed,
bedcover, was getting thin, and would stay that way until they had enough money to buy another bag of goose feathers from Farmer Klause. And if she had to run down the hall in the middle of the night to use the toilet, the frigid floorboards seeped through her socks like ice, making her shiver until she was tucked back beneath her covers. Food was scarcer in the winter too, with no fresh vegetables from the garden, milk from the goats, or eggs from the chickens. Now, without the extra income from their jobs, not only would she be waking up cold, she’d be waking up hungry too.

She bit her lip and turned away from the window, then went to the sideboard and pulled out eight dinner plates, wondering how long it would be before Isaac read her note. Today at least there
was
food.

C
HAPTER
3

C
hristine took a deep breath and backed up to the dining room door, the oval serving platter full of browned onions and sizzling
Bratwurst
balanced in her hands. She pressed the handle down with her elbow and entered the noisy room, hoping her mother would be there, home from the Bauermans’ and waiting at the table with the rest of the family.

In the back of her mind, she knew that Mutti would have come into the kitchen first, to put on her apron and help with the food. But today, she couldn’t be sure of anything. Her thoughts were scattered, and the simplest tasks—setting out silverware, washing the field dandelions Opa had picked, mixing oil and vinegar for the dressing, reheating the meat on the stove—had taken all her concentration. Mutti had been gone twice as long as Christine had expected. What if her mother had changed her mind about giving Isaac the note? What if he wasn’t home? What if he didn’t write back? What if the Gestapo had arrested Mutti for going to his house? What if they found the note, arrested Isaac, and were on their way to arrest her?

On shaky legs, she carried the serving platter to the dining table. The jumbled clamor of Opa’s deep laugh, Oma and Maria’s banter, Heinrich and Karl’s teasing, and her father’s monotone droned like the chaos of a hundred kindergartners stuck inside on a rainy day. She tripped over Opa’s hiking pole, which he’d propped against the corner of the table, sending it to the wooden floor in a clatter. Clenching her jaw, she set the platter on the table, the din from her family going on and on, as if she were invisible, then she set the hiking pole in the corner and went to the window to check for her mother. Heinrich and Karl were laughing and poking each other, and it was all she could do not to pound on the table and yell at them to be quiet.

“Come sit down, Christine,” her father said. “Your mother will be home soon enough.”

Christine did as she was told. She glanced at Vater, searching his black hair for the gray tint of cement dust, the telltale sign that he’d found a job. But his strong, tanned face and calloused hands were clean, his brown eyes hard with anxiety.

Unlike Mutti’s family, who could trace their German roots back for centuries, Vater was originally from Italy, which explained his and Heinrich’s dark features. The freckle-faced baby of the family, Karl, like Christine, had blond hair and blue eyes, as Oma and Opa used to, before age and hardship had turned them gray. It was a mystery to everyone where Mutti had inherited her red mane, but she had passed the reddish tint to Maria, whose waist-length hair was a shiny strawberry blond.

“Heinrich, Karl, it’s time to be still,” her father said. “Oma needs to say
Danksagung
.”

The boys stopped wiggling and turned to face the table, obediently folding their palms on their laps. Maria had spent a good half hour scrubbing their hands and faces, but their fingernails were still black around the edges, with only six jagged pieces of coal to show for their efforts. Vater waited in silence, watching until they settled, then gave Oma a nod. Christine lowered her head. She dug a thumbnail into the hollow space between her knuckles, listening for the sound of her mother’s footsteps on the stairs.

“Der Herr,”
Oma began.

A heavy thud-thud on the front door made Christine jump and Oma stop mid-prayer. Everyone had the same wide-eyed look of surprise, because even though they were late having lunch, it was unusual for anyone to come to the door at this hour. All across Germany, the hours between noon and two were set aside for the most important meal of the day,
Mittag Essen.
Shops and businesses wouldn’t reopen even one minute before two o’clock. Christine and her father stood at the same time.

“I’ll see who it is,” Vater said. “Stay here, Christine. Everyone start eating. We’ve delayed long enough.”

Christine sat back down and tried to breathe normally, wondering if the Gestapo would bother to knock. Maria dished a hot
Bratwurst
and a forkful of onions onto Oma’s and Opa’s plates. Christine picked up the dandelion salad and passed it to Oma, keeping her eyes on her father. As soon as he was out of the room, she went to the window.

A black army truck was parked on the street, gray columns of smoke spewing from the shuddering upright pipes behind the high cab, the white outline of the Iron Cross painted on the doors, a red flag with a black
Hakenkreuz,
or swastika, draped over the covered truck bed. Two men in Barbarossa helmets and black uniforms were unloading dark cubes from the back of the truck, handing them out to four other soldiers. Christine recognized them as SS, or Schutzstaffel, Hitler’s Nazi security, and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the Gestapo. She pushed open the window and looked down at the walkway between the garden and the front of her house. One of the men was at their door, talking to her father. From where she was, she could see that the dark cube in the SS man’s hands was a radio.

“Nein,”
she heard her father say. Then she saw him take the radio.
“Danke schön,”
he said.

“
Heil
Hitler,” the soldier said, raising his arm in salute. She wasn’t surprised that she didn’t hear her father reply. The SS man took long, purposeful strides back to the truck.

Christine watched the other SS going door-to-door, identical radios in hand. Three of the men came back to the truck with old radios, just like the one her family had sitting on a white doily on the end table next to the couch. After a few minutes, all the men converged on the armored vehicle like rats to a hunk of Limburger cheese, disappearing into the passenger-side door and the canvas-covered back. The driver gunned the engine and started up the hill, thick-treaded tires gripping the cobblestones like oversized caterpillars inching their way along the street.

Just then, Mutti came around the corner of the weathered barn, purse hooked over her arm, eyes glued to the unfamiliar vehicle in the road. As quickly as it had arrived, the truck left, and Christine pulled the window closed. Should she just sit down and try to eat, or go and meet her mother at the door? Vater was aware of the new rules and regulations. It was his belief that if they just did as they were told, they’d be left alone. He’d be angry if he found out Christine had written a note to Isaac, and he’d be even more upset that Mutti had agreed to take it.

“Christine,” Maria said. “Your food is getting cold.”

Christine pulled out her chair and sat, certain that everyone could see her heart thumping beneath her dress. She looked around the table, wondering why, all of a sudden, everyone was so quiet. Opa sat with his head bent over his plate and gummed his food. Oma was cutting Karl’s meat, while both boys swung their socked feet under their chairs and nibbled on fried
Bratwurst.
Maria was the only one looking in her direction, brows lowered as she chewed on a mouthful of dandelion leaves.

Maria wiped her lips with her napkin and whispered, “What’s wrong with you?”

Before Christine could answer, her father came into the room, the new walnut-brown radio in his hands. He stood at the end of the table, shaking his head. Everyone stopped eating and waited.

“Unplug the radio, Christine,” he said. He set the new radio on the table.

“What’s going on?” Oma said.

Christine got up and unplugged the old radio. Then Vater lifted it off the end table and set it on the couch.

“Read this for us,” Vater told her. He held out the bright orange tag that had been tied to one of the new radio’s dials.

“The People’s Radio,” Christine read out loud. “Think about this. Listening to foreign broadcasts is a crime against the National Security of our people. Disobeying the Führer’s order is punishable by prison and hard labor.” She looked at her father, waiting for him to comment, but he said nothing, his face set in hard anger.

“What does it mean?” Maria said.

Just then, Mutti burst into the room, tying the strings of her apron around her back. Her face was flushed, her eyes watery and red, but she smiled at her family.

“Can I get anyone a cup of hot tea?” she said. When she saw her husband and Christine standing on the other side of the table, she stopped. “Is something wrong? What were the SS doing outside?”

“Come sit down,” Vater said. “We have everything we need.”

“Did you get out of work early today?” Maria said.

“We’ll talk about that in a minute,” Mutti said, running a hand over Karl’s head.

Christine stared at her mother, hoping for some kind of sign that she’d given Isaac the note, that he’d written back, anything to let her know that Mutti had seen him. Their eyes met for a split second, but her mother looked away, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

“We’ve had a visit from some of Hitler’s puppets,” Vater said. “They were handing out these radios. The old shortwave can be tuned to stations from all over Europe. But this one can only be tuned to two channels, both run by the Nazi Party. They asked if we had any other radios. I told them no.” He turned to face Heinrich and Karl. “Do you know why I told them no?” The boys shook their heads. “I told them no because we can use this old radio for firewood. We’re not allowed to have it anymore. If they find out we still have it, they’ll put us in jail. I’ll go burn it in the kitchen stove right now, to heat the water for the dirty dishes.” He picked up the old radio and left the room.

Christine knew what he was doing: What Heinrich and Karl didn’t know couldn’t hurt them or their family. They were too young to keep a secret. Vater was taking the radio to hide it. The idea made her light-headed. She picked up the platter of
Bratwurst.

“Would you like me to reheat this for you?” she asked her mother, hoping she could get her into the kitchen alone.

“Nein, danke,”
Mutti said, taking the serving dish. “I’m sure it’s fine.” She pierced the sausage with her fork and scraped the rest of the onions onto her plate, her pinched face a curious struggle between misery and an attempt to put on a happy smile for her family.

“Did you have any trouble?” Oma asked in a quiet voice.

“Nein,”
Mutti said. “Herr Bauerman was having problems getting our paychecks organized, that’s all. And Frau Bauerman is beside herself. All but three servants have been let go. She asked me to make lists of what was in the root cellar and the pantry, that kind of thing. Everything took longer than I’d thought.” She finally made eye contact with Christine. “Isaac was there, helping bring all the paperwork in from his father’s office.”

Christine braced herself. “Did you talk to him?”

Mutti opened her mouth to answer, but Vater came back in the room. She picked up her silverware and began to eat instead. Her father sat down, face red, shoulders hunched in frustration.

“If the other parties hadn’t been so busy fighting,” he said, “and if the country hadn’t been in such economic turmoil, we wouldn’t be in this mess! Hindenburg was too old and tired to put up a fight, otherwise he would have never appointed Hitler chancellor. That madman wasn’t elected by the people! And now that he’s arrested or murdered the opposition, he’s selling National Socialism like a preacher sells religion. You do not question. You obey. If not, then they’ll just get rid of you!” He slammed his fist on the table, and everyone jumped. The plates and dishes rattled, and Oma put a hand over her heart. Christine’s mother put her arm around Karl, who started to cry.

“We just have to hope for the best and keep going,” she said.

“But he allows the Gestapo to arrest anyone who criticizes him. Soon they’ll control everything! They already control what we read, and now, they want to control what we hear. There are no newspapers but the Nazi newspapers, and now they control the radio too!”

Mutti cleared her throat and frowned at him. “Right now it’s time to be together, share a meal, and be grateful for our family.”

“And they’ll throw you in jail for talking like that,” Opa said, gesturing with his gnarled, blue-veined hands.

Opa’s warning reminded Christine of the notice she’d read in the Nazi newspaper,
Völkischer Beobachter,
The People’s Observer: “Let everyone be aware that whoever dares to raise his hand against the State is sure to die.”