Roses by the Rhine River

Chapter 2: The First Thorn

On May 10, 1940, the Battle of Holland broke out at 4:47 a.m.

Isabella buried the last handful of rye flour deep in the cellar, the smell of dirt and rust seeping through the cracks of her fingernails. Twelve gunshots rang out overhead, as Nazi stormtroopers executed farmers from neighboring villages who refused to hand over their grain. Leah huddled in a cradle between the casks, the six-month-old baby grinding his teeth with grapes left by Carl, the patina on the blade glowing in the moonlight.

"Mom, Dad's letter." Leah suddenly pointed to the vent, the baby's babble mixed with Morse code rhyme. Isabella's heart tightened sharply - the code she had only taught her before her daughter could speak. She grabbed a pickaxe and tore open the disguised vines to find German military kettles wrapped in oil paper embedded in the cracks of the wall.

Carr's handwriting was engraved on the bottom of the kettle: "The vines on the Eastern Front take three years to bear fruit." Isabella scratched the surface with her fingernails to reveal a second layer of ciphertext: "I will wait for you on the frozen Volga River in Moscow in 1941." She pressed the kettle to her chest, felt the residual body temperature on the metal surface, and suddenly heard neat footsteps on the ground.

"Madame Hoffmann!" The SS major's leather boots crushed the roses at the entrance to the cellar. "According to the Imperial Grain Collection Law, you must surrender all your grain reserves."

Isabella hides Leah in the fermentation tank, and when she turns around, she deliberately knocks over the entire row of 1938 Rieslings. At the sound of the wine bottle breaking, she sees the major's riding boots sinking into the sticky liquor, and suddenly remembers Carl: "The best wine corrodes steel."

"My husband served the Führer on the Eastern Front," she said, lifting her robe to reveal the Ruger pistol at her waist. "And I will use these vines to brew my last hope for victory."

June 22, 1941, the first day of Operation Barbarossa, noon

Leah chased butterflies under the grape trellis, a three-year-old whose skirt was covered in grape juice and dirt. Isabella stood on the watchtower, with the German supply ship floating on the Rhine in the telescope, its iron cross in the sun like a scar in her pupils. Suddenly, she heard the familiar three short and one long whistle - the code for Carl's pre-war training of carrier pigeons.

A gray dove had fallen on the lookout, its left flank in a blood-stained bandage. Isabella unwrapped the gauze and found it wrapped in half a piece of frozen black bread, with microfilm hidden in the crumbs. She held the film close to the sun and saw a picture of Karl on the Stalingrad front: a grape vine tattoo torn from shrapnel on his military uniform, his left eye bandaged but still smiling.

"Mom, Dad's letter." Leah ran up with dewy roses, the petals of which read in German and Russian: "When the wild roses bloom again, we will meet again in Moscow's Red Square." Isabella took her daughter into her arms and smelled the roses mixed with gunpowder and vodka - the scent of Carl forever.

That night, Radio Berlin announced that the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union. Isabella marked the location of Moscow on the map of the manor and drew a winding red line on the glass with grape juice. Leah suddenly pointed out the window: "Mother, the roses are bleeding!" She turned to see the "Queen of Thorns" rose in the moonlight oozing crimson sap, as if crying for the coming winter.

November 19, 1942, the turning point of the Battle of Stalingrad, midnight

The sour smell of rotting grapes wafted in the cellar. Isabella flipped through the Economics of War with her frozen fingers, a manuscript left by her father. One page was circled in red pen: "Food is the weapon, and the vineyard is the last line of defense." Leah curled up in the corner, breaking the frozen bread into small pieces, imitating her mother's winemaking movements.

"Mama, I'm going to write to Papa." Four-year-olds doodled charcoal on burlap. "I drew grapevines around tanks and flying wild roses." Isabella kissed her daughter's forehead when she heard digging coming from the ground. She grabbed the explosives hidden in oak barrels - made from alcohol distilled from wine - to die with the Nazis.

Karl's blue eyes suddenly appeared at the entrance of the tunnel. Isabella thought it was a hallucination until her husband's prosthetic arm grabbed her wrist: "Eastern Front POW Camp, code name'Grapevine '." He took the 1941 ice wine wrapped in oil paper from the interlayer of his uniform, and the frost on the bottle turned into Moscow snow in the candlelight.

"Lia, this is Dad." Isabella shuddered and pushed her daughter towards the strange and familiar man. Carl got down on one knee and pulled out a rattle made of tank parts with his perfect right hand. "Daddy taught you about the vine, okay?" Lia suddenly threw herself into his arms and pressed her frozen cheek to the vine tattoo on her father's chest.

As the first rays of morning light reddened the horizon, Karl's boots crushed the Nazi soldier's Adam's apple. Isabella poured blood-stained ice wine into her glass and saw fragments of her father's suicide note floating in the liquor. Leah hummed "Wild Rose" in her cradle, her tender voice piercing the cellar and startling the German reconnaissance planes foraging outside the window.

[Wine Tasting Notes]

Icewine of 1941: The wine is a solidified blood color, and the ice crystals shimmer with metallic luster. The first smell is the cold of gunpowder smoke and pine needles, but the entrance is sweet with honey roasted by war. Hidden in the aftertaste is the cold of vodka - this is made of Stalingrad snow. Wait, when the wine bursts on the tip of your tongue, you will hear the roar of tanks on the outskirts of Moscow, and you will see rose petals condense into blood in the cold of minus 40 degrees.