Skeletons at the Feast (2008)

by Chris Bohjalian

  "Me either. In Scotland, we call them the merry dancers. Sometimes I've seen them more colorful than this. Some violet, some red. But I've never seen them look quite so much like bloody torches."

  She burrowed against his shoulder. "Bloody," she repeated.

  "Yes. Bloody torches."

  "Would you do something for me?" she asked.

  "Anything. You know that."

  "Never use that word again. Bloody. I know what you mean. But lately there has just been too much real blood."

  "I'm sorry, I only--"

  "Shhhhh," she said, as the lights shimmered to the north and that wolf she had heard back in the village bayed once again at the sky. "I know what you meant." Then she turned toward him and stood on her toes to kiss him. He tasted like one of the old peppermints they had found in a tin by the fireplace on the first floor of the town house, and she guessed that she probably tasted like sleep. But she didn't care and she had the sense that he didn't either. When they parted she started to nestle back into his coat, pressing her elbows and her arms against her ribs, but he was already pulling his pack off his shoulder and unbuckling it.

  "Watch," he said proudly. He removed a blanket that had been rolled into a tube, and as if he were a magician with a cape he whisked it flat like a sail and allowed it to float to the ground. Then he reached inside the bag and removed a bottle of schnapps and a single tall water glass.

  "I couldn't fit a second glass in here," he said apologetically. "And there didn't seem to be any crystal in the house."

  "Do you really think you're going to take advantage of me in this cold--with the ground as a bed?" she asked him, raising her eyebrows in mock horror, but she knew she was just being coy.

  It wasn't that cold, not after all they'd endured. And she was, suddenly, hungry for him in a way that she hadn't been in a very long time--perhaps ever--and she felt a warm quiver between her legs.

  "True, no bed," he said, but then he motioned up at the golden fires in the sky. "Still, I can't think of a better canopy, can you?"

  She tried once more to nuzzle against him, and this time he wasn't preoccupied with his pack and he wrapped his arms around her. Kissed her. The truth was, she thought, beds were overrated: When they had used her bed back at Kaminheim, she had seen around her the accrual of her childhood self--dolls and clothing and books--and she had found the sheer quaintness of the silt to be antithetical to her idea of herself as a woman. As a lover. On other occasions, including their last night at Kaminheim, they had used his bed in the maid's room, and that had been infinitely more fulfilling. She considered herself fortunate that so many of the other times when they had made love, it had been on the oriental rugs in the living room at Kaminheim--thick and sumptuous and romantic--or on the divan in the ballroom, or, yes, outside in the apple orchard. There had been beds in Elfi's house in Stettin, of course, but the quarters were close and Theo was dying and it hadn't crossed their minds to avail themselves of them. At least, she knew, it hadn't crossed her mind.

  The thought of her little brother momentarily made her reassess what they were doing, but she felt Callum's hand working its way beneath her coat and her sweater, finding her breasts and stroking and cupping them, and the sensations there became her focus. At some point he had taken off his leather gloves and the palms of his hands were warm and her nipples were growing hard against them. She massaged the back of his head as they kissed, her fingers deep in that red, red hair and along that long and elegant cleft at the base of his skull, and then she allowed her neck to fall back so she could stare up at the lights that were dancing low and high and everywhere in between in the sky. Then she felt him lifting her up and off the ground and laying her softly on the blanket. He knelt beside her and kissed her some more, his tongue-- blunt, serpentine, hot--moving down her neck and then jumping over her clothes to the flesh at her waist. He tugged at her skirt, unfastened the two hooks along the side, and started to pull it down. She arched her hips to make it easier for him to slip it off her legs and over her boots, and then she spread wide her thighs. The air was more invigorating than cold and she felt ripples of goose bumps rising up along her flesh. A moment later he was inside her and the sky above them was alive with color, great flaxen plumes of light that were illuminating the horizon as far as she could see. She recalled what the Vikings had named the phenomenon: the reflections of the dead maidens. Typically Nordic, she decided, with its implausible beautification of death. She had seen enough of death to know it was never beautiful. It was delusional to think otherwise. Henceforth, she resolved, she would refer to them in her mind the way Callum had: They would be the merry dancers.

  She could feel him gazing down at her, watching her.

  "Good?" he asked, a wrinkle of worry creeping into his voice in even that one syllable. Clearly he sensed that her mind was wandering tonight. "Are you warm enough?"

  "I'm fine," she reassured him, her voice a purr for his benefit, and she smiled. She hadn't felt this alive since they had left Kaminheim. "I'm just fine," she murmured, and then she gave herself over completely to the swelling rush inside her that would build and build till she came.

  the sun was higher and hotter than it had been on any day since they had started west months ago, and there were rumors that to the south of them the western Allies were nearing the Elbe. They had the sense that they themselves were close to the Americans and the Brits.

  Now they rested at the edge of a shallow river that ran parallel to the dirt farm road and allowed the horses to browse upon the moist spring grass. Anna and her mother were in the knee-deep water, bathing, shielded from the two men by the wagon.

  Uri sat down on a stone the size of a footstool at the side of the road and stretched his legs out before him. Callum collapsed flat in the grass and for a moment lay on his back with his eyes closed against the sun. Then, when he had caught his breath, he sat up and pulled off his boots and stared at his socks. They were ash gray now, but once they had been white. He had two more pairs in his pack, but he knew they were even worse: They smelled unbearable and were riddled with holes.

  "When I'm home," he said, "I am never going to wear boots again."

  "Nonsense," Uri told him. "You'll be wearing boots again by November. You'll have forgotten your blisters by then."

  "I doubt that."

  Uri took the tobacco and two sheets of cigarette paper from his pouch and started to roll a cigarette for the Scot. "You forget pain. We all do. We tell ourselves we remember the specifics, but it's all just a lot of pictures and words in our heads. No sensations. I think we actually remember life's humiliations much better. The degradations. The cruelties. But the pain? We seem to forget what pain actually feels like. It's a cloud after the sky has cleared."

  "You are awfully philosophic this morning."

  "I can finally see the end."

  "Well, I will never forget how much my feet hurt."

  In the river behind them they heard Anna shrieking cheerfully because the water was so cold. Uri handed Callum the cigarette and rolled one for himself. "You won't even be thinking about your feet in a couple of months," he continued. "You will be married to that girl back there and you will be home in your beloved Scotland."

  "There were times when I didn't think I'd ever hear her laugh again," Callum said, and he motioned his head in the direction of the women. "Her or her mother."

  "I know what you mean."

  "Tell me: What are you looking forward to most when you get to America? If you get there. What's the one thing?"

  "Oh, I'll get there. I've no doubts. The one thing? Mass transportation. The subways and the buses they have in New York City. Like you, I don't ever want to walk again. I am going to ride everywhere."

  "And where will everywhere be?"

  "I want to go to school."

  Callum nodded and seemed to think about this. "I usually see you as so much older than me."

  "Six years. Not so much."

  "And so I usually think of you
as having finished school. I keep forgetting they didn't let you."

  "Of all the things they took from me--other, of course, than my family--that's what I want back the most. An education."

  "I must confess, I don't think much about that. I guess I will enroll in university. But when I'm done? I honestly don't know. I really don't. After all this . . . after the last year . . . well, I just can't imagine what God has in store for me. I can't conceive of what possibly could come next."

  Uri took a long drag on his cigarette and decided his throat was too sore. He really wasn't enjoying it much, and so he licked his thumb and forefinger and squeezed the smoldering tip. When he was sure it was extinguished, he placed it back in his pouch.

  "What about you?" Callum was asking. "When you finish school, then what?"

  "I've lived my entire adult life just trying to get through the present. Today. I have never for a moment thought much about what I will be doing tomorrow." He stared up into the sky, savoring the warmth against his eyelids. "And I certainly don't think there's a God in heaven who has a plan for me. Or, for that matter, for anyone."

  "No?"

  "No."

  "No plan or no God?"

  "Either." Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. It always surprised Uri when he recalled a prayer. Was this, he tried to remember now, what he was supposed to say when he was dying? Was this the incantation that would ensure that he didn't die alone--that would link his passing with the passing of all other Jews? He thought so, but it had been so long. Still, he wondered if Rebekah had whispered this prayer when she'd been killed. If she had, he hoped it had given her comfort. In all likelihood, it had given his parents some consolation; perhaps it had helped his sister in some fashion, too.

  He heard Callum taking another long drag on the cigarette, but he didn't open his eyes. Then he heard a songbird. The water as it rolled through the channel on the other side of the wagon. Anna and Mutti, giggling once again in that river. One of the horses snorting. A fly. Finally he said to Callum, "If my sister were alive, I might view tomorrow differently. But there's no one now. Just me. And so I don't. I just try to keep myself alive. But even that seems less important than it once did."

  "It's plenty important."

  "No, not really. I'm not the last Jew left in Germany."

  "What?"

  "There are others. I know that now. I didn't always. But I swear to you, there were moments when the only thing that kept me going was my determination to live so I could someday tell people what the Germans were doing."

  "That was a lot of pressure to put on yourself."

  "It seemed to matter."

  "You know . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "You could always come to Scotland."

  "Excuse me? I couldn't possibly have heard you correctly," Uri said, turning from the sun to the paratrooper and smiling at him.

  "Oh, I'm sure America is a terrific place. I liked most of the Yankees I met. Not all. But most. Anyway, it was just a thought."

  "Ah, yes. I could just move in with you and Anna. Is that what you had in mind?"

  "Well, as a matter of fact, you could. My mother has plenty of room. I'm sure we'll live there when we first arrive."

  "And what would I do in Scotland?"

  "Same as you'd do in America. Go to school. Meet a nice girl. Fall in love."

  "Huh."

  "Think about it."

  Behind him, Uri could hear Anna and Mutti emerging from the water and starting to get dressed. He didn't precisely view Mutti as anyone's mother but Anna's; likewise, he didn't see Anna as a sister. But his own mother and his own sister were long dead. So, certainly, was his father. His whole family. He didn't know the details--would never know the details--of how they had perished, and on some level he was relieved. But there was still a part of him that craved the specifics: where and when and who was responsible. Who held the angry, barking dogs on their leashes? Who raised high the truncheons, who marched them into the pits? Who fired the machine guns? Or, perhaps, switched on the gas? These were Germans and Poles and Ukrainians with faces and names, men and women who before the war had had families and ran streetcars and bars and butcher shops--people he and his sister and his parents might have seen on any sidewalk and hardly given a second look.

  "Uri?"

  "Yes?"

  "I'm serious."

  No, he wanted out of Europe. He wanted away from those streetcars, those bars, those butcher shops.

  But then there were these few survivors of what had once been a family named Emmerich. There was this Scot. The reality was, these people were the closest thing he had to a family now. They were all that he had in the world. With this thought--one he found at once oddly and uncharacteristically hopeful--he stood up and hollered good-naturedly at the women. Asked them if they were decent, and whether the men might actually get a chance to bathe, too.

  for another week they walked and they slept and, on occasion, Mutti or Anna rode atop the wagon. Every other day, it seemed, there had also been moments when the men--both of them now--would need to crawl quickly beneath the feed because they were nearing diehard SS troopers who, even though it was clear that not even the fuhrer's wonder weapons or the death of an American president could possibly roll back the tide, were either commandeering deserters or shooting them outright. Whole truck- loads of teen boys passed them, the vehicles heading toward the Oder or the outskirts of Berlin, where the young men would be expected either to repulse the final Soviet advance or to die trying. Many looked as if they were Theo's age, their cheeks in some cases rosy and round, in others hollowed out by hunger and dread. One day there were snow flurries and on another it rained, but frequently the sun was so warm that they all tossed their jackets and capes onto the wagon and walked for hours in only their blouses and shirts.

  They were no longer a part of a lengthy column. There were still plenty of other refugees on the roads: They passed mothers with children, exhausted old people, and men of all ages who had lost all manner of limbs. But the tragic and interminable parade that had started west from East Prussia and what once had been Poland had all but dissipated. Some elements had simply given up and allowed themselves to fall prey to the Russians, while others had reached whatever destination they had originally had in mind. Still others--many, many thousands, it seemed, based on the bodies and the debris that littered the roads that spring--had died in the cold of January and February and March. One afternoon they learned a pair of Wehrmacht battle groups were counterattacking a Russian spearhead no more than ten or twelve kilometers to the southeast, and that particular Soviet column was now moving away from them toward the southwest. Other days, their footsteps would be energized when they heard how the British and the Americans were moving in great numbers into the heart of the country, encountering only the most token resistance virtually everywhere. The four of them knew that the distance separating them from their western saviors (and that was how all of them viewed the Brits and the Americans that April) was narrowing.

  Still, the walking was hard. The ground was often sloshy and soft, and though pilots were less likely to waste time strafing them since they weren't part of a caravan easily seen from the sky, occasionally an aircraft would swoop down from the clouds and fire a missile or two in their direction. A wagon no more than fifty meters ahead of them was blown up one afternoon by a British plane, slaughtering a sweet young mother and her two little boys: The Emmerichs and Callum and Uri had rested with them for thirty minutes in the middle of the day, only hours before the woman and her sons would be killed. Another time, they passed through the smoldering remains of yet one more town that recently had been bombed, and in the rubble of what had been the stone schoolhouse they saw the bodies of students. There were easily a dozen of them, perhaps a few more, all girls, and at first they assumed that the children had been brought there to protect them. Then, however, when Callum and Uri went to pull some of the stones an
d fallen timbers away to examine the corpses--make sure that none of the girls were still breathing--they realized that the bodies were largely unscathed. Moreover, there was very little bruising or blood, even on the parts of their bodies that had been crushed by debris from the crumbling structure. They understood then that the girls had probably been poisoned, their lives taken from them by adults who feared a far worse death awaited them when the Russians arrived.

  No one in the group was precisely sure anymore where they were going. At one point Anna suggested they consider Schwein- furt, since it was far to the west and Uri might know people there. But it was also far to the south--so far that the distance, even after the hundreds of kilometers they had trekked, seemed prohibitive. Moreover, Uri wanted nothing to do with the city: He was quite certain that all of his family and friends were dead, and anyone still there had been all too happy to see the city's Jewish population degraded, deported, and, in the end, exterminated.

  Consequently, their plan was simply to continue west, trying to avoid the major cities with their desperate, inevitable congestion-- and, at night, the air raids that continued to pulverize the metropolitan areas even now. They would steer clear of Berlin at all costs, given the desperate battle that loomed there. When they heard cannonade to the east, they walked briskly; when they heard only bird- song, they allowed themselves the opportunity to shamble.

  it was uri who spotted the woeful column first. Their road was almost converging upon the one the column was on, separated from it at the moment by an expanse of triangular field cratered by shell fire and filled with the remnants of charred and blackened Wehrmacht vehicles--wagons, motorcycles, half-tracks, and what Uri alone recognized as the remains of two or three small, turretless Bushwhacker tanks. The soldiers had probably been encamped there when they had been spotted by an enemy pilot and attacked from the air. It must have been at least a day or two earlier, however, because there were no signs of soldiers either wounded or deceased, and the dead horses had started to smell.