The Plum Tree by Ellen Marie Wiseman

trying to read his face. Would he be offended if she said yes? “At first, I felt ridiculous and refused. But now, after hearing Vater’s story . . .”
    “You’d better do it,” he said. “You don’t want to draw attention.”
     
    Within two months, they’d relocated their secret meetings closer to her house, to a wine and root cellar tunneled into the side of a hill. The tree- and shrub-covered mound ran behind a row of shops and cafés on the other side of the road that intersected the bottom of her street, in a rutted, woodsy area cut by a creek used to power the local grain mill. The cellar belonged to Herr Weiler, the butcher, but he shared the storage space with the other restaurants and cafés. A rusty padlock that Isaac opened without struggle, or evidence of their break-in, secured the recessed, moss-covered door. Inside the stone room, oak wine barrels and timber shelves lined with dusty bottles ran the length of one curved wall. The back of the long, narrow space was filled with crates full of turnips and potatoes.
    As tempting as it was to open the spigot of a wine barrel and have their fill, they touched nothing, simply grateful to have a hidden place, protected from the cold winds of the approaching winter, where they could talk and kiss without worrying about being seen. Christine brought a short candle that, when lit, let off a thin trail of gray smoke that drifted up toward the square airhole in the curved ceiling, where it disappeared into the night. Sometimes Isaac brought cheese and fruit, or slices of his mother’s famous Pflaumenkuchen. They tipped over an empty wine barrel, covered it with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, and turned the root cellar into a romantic, isolated hideaway.
    While the world outside churned in chaos, they talked and laughed, swaying to the music he softly hummed, dry and hidden in the dirt-floored tunnel. They made plans for a time when the world would be sane again, praying it wouldn’t be too long. But as the weeks went by, they began to wonder if it would ever happen.
    “They said it was a spontaneous reaction to the murder of a German Embassy official by a Polish Jew,” Isaac told her in late November, during their discussion of the past few weeks. “But my father and I agree that it was planned and deliberate. It wasn’t civilians angry about what happened. It was the SS dressed in civilian clothing. They’re the ones who looted Jewish-owned businesses and beat Jews in the streets.”
    They were sitting on their coats, leaning against the potato crates, her legs folded beneath her skirt to avoid the chill radiating out of the dirt floor. He had his arm around her shoulders, his chin resting on top of her head.
    “The paper showed pictures of synagogues on fire in Berlin,” she said.
    “They’re calling it Kristallnacht, because of all the broken glass. Ninety-one Jews killed and twenty thousand thrown in jail.”
    She looked up at him in surprise. “For what? Fighting back?”
    “Who knows? The SS don’t need a reason.” He clenched his jaw and scraped the heel of his shoe along the dark, packed earth, as if he wanted to kick or punch someone. “If Hitler had his way, he’d run the Jews out of Europe. My parents had to pull Gabriella from school because now it’s illegal for Jewish children to attend non-Jewish schools. Jews will have nothing,” he said, his voice at once angry and sad. “I’ve had to stop attending Universität. My parents are using their savings just to keep food on the table. I feel like I’m being watched when I go to the grocery store. I can’t fight back. I can’t do anything. I’m not going to have a job, or money, or an education. I’m not going to have anything. I love you, Christine, but how will you ever make a life with me?”
    She put her hand on his cheek. “You’re forgetting something. I don’t have anything now. My parents are poor, but they’re together. And I’ve never been happier in my life.