Skeletons at the Feast (2008)

by Chris Bohjalian

  "She looks better, doesn't she?" her mother was saying to him. He feared he'd been staring and quickly glanced back toward the cemetery. There he noticed that the angel on one of the nearest tombstones had lost a wing and the marble at the break was almost albino white. The rest of the statue was ash-colored with age. He looked more closely now at the gravestones and saw other angels-- as well as granite women and men, their robes and sandals seemingly inadequate even for stone in winters this brutal--that had lost their arms and their heads as well as their wings. There were decapitated rock cherubs and sheep. He presumed at some point there had been shell fire here, and under the rolling mantle of snow the ground had been chewed up by the explosions, the caskets splintered, and whatever was left of the bodies scattered like dust along the earth. There probably were other tombstones that had been obliterated completely, the remnants--pebbles and slabs and chunks--buried as well beneath the fresh snow.

  "How long was I sleeping?" Anna was saying. Suddenly she was beside him, wrapping her head in a shawl as she spoke.

  "Two hours. Maybe three," Callum said from the wagon. "We didn't realize you were in such a deep slumber."

  "I was dreaming."

  "What of?" This was Theo.

  She sniffed at the air, wrinkling her nose in a way that made Uri think of a rabbit. "Werner and Helmut," she told her brother. "But you were in the dream, too."

  "What were we doing?"

  She smiled at the boy. "We were all at the sea. At that beach you love east of Danzig, and we were all on a holiday. There was a boat in the distance. A big one. Helmut and Werner were dunking you in the waves."

  "I'm too old for that," Theo said, clearly disappointed that even in Anna's dreams he was deemed a small child. Meanwhile, Uri was left wondering at the way his big sister had taken the nightmarish story they had all heard about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and somehow in her sleep generated images that left her content.

  "You are indeed, my little love. You are indeed."

  "Where were you? It doesn't sound like you were in the water with us."

  She paused. "I was sitting on a blanket on the beach. Watching. And the sun? Glorious. Hotter than it ever is in reality, I think. Scorching. The sand was almost too hot for my toes. But I was very happy."

  "You weren't alone, were you?"

  Anna rolled her eyes at her brother, but Uri could tell that the boy had hit a nerve. "Tell me who!" the child insisted. "Who was on the blanket with you!"

  "No one. I was alone."

  "You're lying, I can tell."

  Uri saw her glance at him briefly, almost against her will. Then she squeezed her brother's shoulders through his coat, pulling him against her. "Big sisters are allowed their secrets," she said into Theo's ear, and--though Uri knew it was exactly the wrong thing to do--he glanced up at Callum in the wagon. The paratrooper's gaze was darting back and forth between Anna and him, and the fact that Anna had looked fleetingly in his direction--rather than in Callum's--hadn't been lost on the Scot. Uri could see the hurt in his eyes. And now, he realized, by glimpsing up at Callum he had made it clear to this other soldier that he, too, was aware of who had been on the blanket beside Anna in her dream.

  The moment was broken abruptly when somewhere in the woods in the distance, somewhere behind the SS soldiers, they heard a single shot. "Russians?" Mutti asked him.

  "No," he told her. "Most likely a deserter. The SS simply taking care of someone without the proper papers." He sensed Callum was continuing to stare at him as he said this, and when he turned, he saw he was correct. Only when they heard the SS soldiers signaling for the line to move along did the paratrooper finally disappear beneath the feed. Uri decided that when he rejoined this crowd in Stettin, he would have to be careful not to antagonize this Scotsman. He would have to watch what he said, and he would have to stay the hell out of this Anna girl's dreams. Besides, he liked Callum. But he couldn't focus on any of that right now. He handed Anna his pistol and told her that she should not be afraid to use it. Then he asked Mutti for the address of her cousin in Stettin and, once he had it, started to march with authority back down the road. Against the current, against this boundless stream of refugees. Their good-byes had been brief and, in his mind, completely unsatisfactory. But he had to move fast and he had to move as if he had a purpose, at least until he was far, far from those SS goons.

  Then, when he had some distance on the checkpoint, he would figure out how, once again, to reinvent himself.

  despite the cold, the ground was spongy and soft at the checkpoint, a mix of mud and motor oil and horse manure. Off to one side of the road, opposite the SS soldiers' truck, Anna saw four strong horses tied to the wrought-iron fence that surrounded this edge of the cemetery. Two had their mouths and noses hidden by army feed bags, and two were looking on testily. On the other side of the intersection there was a large mound of debris, clothes and toys and suitcases that families were discarding here. She guessed the suitcases belonged to the men in the truck. But that hairless doll in the torn smock? Or the chipped wooden sword and its matching scabbard? There were certainly no coats or capes, but she saw linens and spring bonnets and picture frames--large ones for paintings and small ones for photographs--with the images removed. Someone had left behind a box that must once have held fine silver, and while the utensils were long gone, the container was still here, the felt lining filling now with snow and clods of mud churned up by people's boots as they passed.

  Anna thought the SS soldiers actually looked more tired than menacing, perhaps even a little bored. Still, two of them were coldly pulling almost every male they found from the line and herding them into the back of the vehicle, where the recruits were listening to the music and propaganda--offered at the moment in equal parts--on the Volksempfanger radio that was resting on the truck's cab. The other soldiers, the pair who had been smoking cigarettes, had taken a half-dozen of the men with them to the edge of the forest, and briefly Anna feared they were going to execute the group right here and now. Much to her relief, however, she understood after a moment that instead the soldiers were about to give them an impromptu lesson on how to fire a panzerfaust. One of the soldiers was leaning a ratty piece of barn board with a hand-drawn Russian star against a dead chestnut tree at the edge of the cemetery, while the other was showing them how to rest the small cannon on their shoulders. He was warning them to avoid the flame that would exit the rear of the weapon and spurt easily two meters behind them.

  Some of those men, she thought, didn't look fit to work on her family's farm, much less try to stop Russian tanks. They were more likely to kill themselves than slow Ivan's advance. She wondered: Weeks ago had one of those men been her father? An aging veteran of the First World War expected now to do what men half his age--with better weapons and better training--had been incapable of accomplishing? It was pathetic, just pathetic, and she was at once mortified and embarrassed and angry.

  One of the soldiers who was reviewing her family's papers looked up at her. "Something bothering you?" he asked.

  She focused on him, at the shadowy stubble and the deep bags under his disturbingly boyish green eyes, at the pencil-point-thin scar that ran along his jaw from his earlobe to his chin, and tried to erase the frown from her face. Still, the absurdity of his question astonished her. Was something bothering her? She was a refugee. She had been sleeping in the homes of strangers or in barns or outside in the snow for weeks. She was hungry; she was cold. Of course something was bothering her. But she held her tongue and said--trying to sound pleasant--"I've been sick."

  "With what?"

  "I don't know. Not typhus. I'm getting better."

  He nodded. "I'm glad," he said, and his relief sounded oddly genuine. "It seems you have two brothers in the army, yes?"

  For a moment she was curious why he was asking her this and not Mutti--the head of their household. But then she got it. He simply wanted to talk to her. A young woman.

  "Yes. My older brother is fi
ghting outside of Budapest. That's Werner. I'm not sure where Helmut is. He's my twin. But he's east of here, with our father. The last we heard, they were part of the counterattack on the Kulm bridgehead."

  "That was weeks ago," he said.

  "I know."

  "No word since then?"

  She shook her head and quickly he looked down from her to the papers in his gloved hands. "And your father is Rolf," he said, trying to fill in the silence before it grew awkward. "My father is named Rolf, too. I haven't seen him in months, either."

  "I'm sorry," she murmured, assuming she had to say something.

  "He's fine. He trains teenagers to fire antiaircraft guns in the west. They're boys practically--not much older than this young fellow," the soldier continued, motioning toward Theo. "He travels between the factories and sets up the batteries. I'm sure your father is fine, too."

  Her first thought was to tell him, You don't believe that. Once more, however, she restrained herself and said simply, "I hope so. We all do."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Stettin."

  "Do you have family there? Or friends who are expecting you?"

  "My mother's cousin lives there."

  "It's just the four of you?"

  "Yes," she said, wondering why he would even ask such a thing. She thought instantly of Callum, buried beneath the feed, and Manfred, behind them now somewhere amid the long columns of refugees.

  "It's awfully dangerous for women and children to travel alone," he said.

  She felt a small eddy of resentment: If they actually had a man with them right now, he would be taken away from them and asked to stop a tank with a slingshot. She considered telling him the story of the pair of Russian scouts in the barn, perhaps omitting the small detail that they really did have two males traveling with them at the time and each of those men had shot one of the enemy soldiers. She was awed at the rage that was festering inside her and wondered if it stemmed from the fact that Manfred was gone. Did she actually feel more vulnerable now that he had left them? "I know," she said evenly.

  "Do you have anything you can use to defend yourself?"

  She reached under her cape and revealed the pistol Manfred had given her. She wanted to give him no reason to search her or the wagons. In addition to Callum, she recalled that the rifles they had taken from the Russian soldiers were in the cart, too.

  He looked at it, and despite the fact she had shared the gun with him willingly, his tone changed from one of vague solicitude to suspicion. "Where did you get this?"

  "It was Werner's," she said quickly, reflexively.

  "Werner is your brother in Budapest?"

  "That's right."

  "And why doesn't Werner-your-brother-in-Budapest have it?"

  She shrugged, hoping her breathing sounded normal, her voice natural. "When he was home on leave, he gave it to me. He knew we were going to have to evacuate soon."

  "Rather defeatist of him, don't you think?"

  "No."

  "When did your brother return to his company?"

  "I don't recall the exact date. But it was early January," she lied.

  He turned his attention toward Mutti for the first time.

  "Do you love your son? This Werner in Budapest?" he asked.

  Sonje was huddling against Mutti, and Theo was standing beside them. The boy, for reasons Anna couldn't fathom, was standing on a single foot like a stork, and she wanted to ask her brother what in heaven's name he was doing, if only to divert this SS soldier's attention away from their mother. Already, however, her mother was releasing Sonje and rising up to her full height. "Yes, of course I do," she replied.

  "Do you worry about him in Budapest?"

  "I don't know what you're implying, young man, and I don't believe I want to know. But, obviously, I worry about my son in Budapest. I'm a mother and I'm a wife. That means I also worry about my son and my husband who are fighting somewhere to the east. And, if you are desirous of a complete litany, I will also tell you that I worry about my brother-in-law who is defending our country on the western front," she continued, as if she were speaking with an inattentive and slightly annoying schoolboy. "And while my older son wanted his sister to have a way to protect herself and her family, his attitude is anything but defeatist. If you had a sister, wouldn't you want her to have a way to protect herself? For goodness' sake, you just said yourself that it's dangerous out here."

  The soldier actually smiled at her and seemed slightly and appropriately abashed. For goodness' sake. Anna chastised herself inwardly for fretting for even a moment about what her mother might say.

  "As a matter of fact, I do have sisters. Two," he said. "And, yes, if they weren't safely at home right now painting plates, I expect I would want them to carry handguns, too."

  Nearby there was a small explosion, and almost as one she and Theo winced and turned toward the sound, her brother finally dropping that other foot for balance. One of the older men had just fired the panzerfaust. The red star was completely untouched, but she thought one of the tombstones--easily twenty meters to the right of the target--had been obliterated. When she looked back at the SS soldier before her, he was rolling his eyes in disgust.

  "And that's what's going to save the Fatherland. Please. Heaven protect us all," he said, and he placed Manfred's pistol back in her palm and returned to her both the Emmerichs' and Sonje's papers. Then he looked at their wagons, his hands on his hips, and paused.

  "May we continue?" she asked him.

  He ignored her as if he had a sudden, more pressing thought, and marched over to Waldau. Waldau and Ragnit were leading one cart--the one in which Callum was hidden--and Balga the other. He ran his fingers along the animal's velvetine cannon of a shoulder. "I see you have two wagons and three horses. I hate to do this to you, but I don't have a choice: I'm going to have to confiscate one of your animals. But they look like good, strong pullers: You'll still have a horse for each wagon," he said, and then he motioned for the soldier beside him--a studious-looking fellow with round eyeglasses who was no older than Werner, Anna guessed, but with an oddly weathered face for a man so young--to remove the harness linking the horse nearest him from the wagon. Instantly her mother and Sonje glanced at her, and she could see the alarm in their faces. It wasn't, she sensed, merely the reality that they were about to lose a second horse that was troubling them. Certainly Mutti had to know that Ragnit was capable of pulling the wagon away from this checkpoint on his own, even with the added weight of the paratrooper buried beneath the bags of oats. She looked back at them, trying to understand what, suddenly, had them so unnerved.

  "That's Waldau," Theo was saying to the men. "He's named for a castle." Her brother's voice had a quiver to it that Anna recognized. This was his favorite horse, other than that pony of his they had left behind at Kaminheim, and he was trying hard to keep from crying.

  "I know the castle," the soldier with the spectacles was saying patiently, and something about the tenderness in his tone made her wonder if it was possible that he was old enough to have children of his own. He pulled off his gloves so he could more easily manage the buckles on the bridle and the reins and the leather suspenders that fell across the animal's neck and chest. "I know precisely where it is in Prussia."

  "We've already lost Labiau," Theo continued, as he watched the soldier begin to unhitch the horse.

  "Ah, another castle," he remarked.

  "He was killed by a plane that strafed our column," the boy added, and Anna found herself mesmerized by her brother's resilience, by the way he was holding back his tears even now. And so before she knew quite what she was going to say or do, she was pointing at Balga and suggesting to the soldier, "Would you please take this animal instead?"

  The soldier paused and shrugged. His partner, the one who had examined their papers, went over to Balga and eyed him more closely. "You realize, don't you, that I could take all three of your horses," he said, a statement, not a question.

  "I do k
now, yes."

  "Well, then: Why this one?" he asked. "Is there a problem with him I'm missing? If he's dragging this wagon on his own, he must be quite some animal."

  "He's my horse," she said simply. "That's why. The first one you picked is a favorite of my little brother. He's already had to leave his pony behind. If possible, I'd like him to keep this animal in his life. He's lost so much else."

  He eyed her deliberatively and once more studied the horse, his gaze resting a long moment on the coronet above each of the animal's hooves and then up and down Balga's legs. He looked at the animal's mouth and finally shrugged. "I really have no idea what I'm supposed to look for in a horse's mouth. Do you? Teeth, gums? I've just no idea at all. I've never owned horses; I grew up around streetcars in the city. All I know is I'm supposed to round some more up. This one seems as good as the others," he mused, pushing an unruly forelock of dark hair off his forehead and instructing the other soldier to take Balga instead.