Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

The child stared back at her, but said nothing. He was as shy as his two older brothers and Anna were extroverted, the sort of boy who was picked to play the enemy-the Russian or the American, usually-when the children played their loud, exuberant war games in the school yard. One night, in a moment of weakness before bed, he had let down his guard and confessed to her how most of the time he was just cast aside by the other boys and sent to the corner of the gymnasium or the field they had cordoned off as the POW camp. He would sit there, all alone, while the other children-even the girls as the army nurses with their pretend bandages made from white paper-ran and screamed and played.

“Icing?” she asked again when he remained silent.

Finally he shook his head no, and abruptly turned and dashed from the house. A moment later, through the kitchen window, Mutti saw him racing like a colt on his deceptively long legs-thin and sticklike, even in his wool trousers-along the manicured grass in the yard and then off into the apple orchard where the real POWs were at work.

THEO NO LONGER pretended to be one of Anna's horses when he ran-even when he was very little, he had never imagined he was his own pony, Bogdana, because that animal was too sweet and good-natured to fly across Kaminheim the way the stallions who had been named after castles would-but he did see the stallion Balga in his mind now as he raced away from the house and the kitchen and that witch of a cook. He ran past the elderly guard who more times than not seemed to have his ancient eyes closed, past the English schoolteacher and mason, and past the young men who he guessed hadn't done anything at all before they'd become soldiers. He was vaguely aware they were watching him, their hands full of apples, but he didn't care. He was just running, he was running fast. It was, in his opinion-and in the opinion of his schoolteachers and the women and old men who ran the youth camps where he spent so much of each summer-what he did best. He wanted to be as far as he could from the idea that his father might be about to be stolen from him, too. His father seemed to Theo to be the only grown man in the world who didn't seem to be lecturing him all the time about German honor and German bravery and German posture (what posture and bravery had to do with one another was inexplicable to Theo, but apparently they were related), or didn't find reasons to rap his knuckles with birch rods. Some days at school he would be so lost in a daydream that he wouldn't even be aware that his teacher, Fraulein Grolsch, was standing beside his desk until he would hear the whoosh of the rod and feel its sting on the bones of his knuckles. Of all the children in the school, there was no one whom Fraulein Grolsch-the niece of the district's gauleiter and someone who clearly cared passionately about all that Nazi marching and singing and flag-waving-seemed to dislike more than him. One day she made him march around the courtyard for two hours with a Nazi flag on a shaft so tall and heavy that he could barely lift it. If it fell, she warned him, she would beat him worse than she had beaten any child ever. His sin this time? He'd forgotten his pencil box at home.

Only when he had reached the edge of the orchard did he stop running and place his hands on his knees, catching his breath. As he gulped down great puffs of air, he looked up. There he saw two of the wicker baskets that were used to harvest the apples, and on the ground beside one was his big sister's navy cardigan sweater.

ANNA LEANED AGAINST one of the trees in the arbored apple orchard and felt the bark scratch her back through her blouse. She wondered how angry her parents or Helmut or Werner would be if they knew that just this moment she had kissed a Scotsman. She tried to envision the faces of the girls from her school or her summer camps if she were to tell them. Imagine: Her first kiss-soft, serious, mouths open and probing-and it had come from a prisoner of war. One moment they had been harmlessly flirting, as they did often, and the next they were kissing.

“Of all the places you've lived, which is your favorite?” she asked him now. It was not a subject that actually interested her this very second, but she felt she had to say something to fill the quiet that suddenly was enveloping them like a tent.

“Elgin,” he said simply.

“And that's in Scotland?”

“It is. Moray Scotland. North. On the ocean. But a very hospitable climate. That's where we lived when we returned from India.”

“Are your parents still there?”

He bowed toward her and she thought he was going to kiss her once more, and so she closed her eyes as a lock of his unruly hair fell away from his forehead and she parted her lips. But he didn't kiss her, and-embarrassed and angry-she opened her eyes. He was smiling, his face close to her, one arm straight against the tree behind her.

“You know,” he murmured, “I am sure someone could shoot me for kissing you. They wouldn't shoot you, of course. At least I hope they wouldn't. But me? It wouldn't be pretty, Anna.”

“Then why did you do it? Has it been that long since you kissed a girl?”

“Well, let's see. There were all those girls while I was being interrogated in France. And then there were the ones the guards brought into the prison camp for us. And, of course, there are just girls everywhere here on your estate. So, not all that long, really.”

She ducked beneath his elbow and gave herself some distance from him. She wished he had simply kissed her.

“You didn't tell me: Do your parents still live in…”

“Elgin.”

“Yes. That place. On the ocean.”

“My mother does. My father died.”

“How?”

“He drowned.”

The violence of his death jolted her, and she wasn't sure what to say. Then, after a moment, she told him honestly, “I'm sorry. I don't know what I'd do if something happened to my father-or to Mutti. Was he near the beach?”

“No. Nowhere near it, actually. Middle of the ocean.”

She saw behind him a dark red apple at the end of a spindly branch. It was enfolded by leaves and swaying ever so slightly in the wind. She understood she should leave this line of questioning alone, but she couldn't. And then, perhaps because it was better for her to speak aloud her conjecture than allow it to wallow inside her, she said, “It was a U-boat, wasn't it?”

“It was.”

“You must hate us.”

“I just kissed you.”

“Still. You must…”

“I try not to generalize with my hate. Certainly my father never did.”

“Your mother?”

“She's another story, a very interesting woman. Very complicated. She is quite capable of generalizing hate. As the wife of a colonial administrator, I gather, she started out rather well. But she managed to see slights everywhere. Especially when we were in India. I was just a boy, but even I could tell that she wasn't happy there. Didn't like being an outsider. Couldn't abide the heat. Still, she's resourceful-a bit like your Mutti. These days, she's a very tough war widow. Bitter. But, in all fairness, she is also extremely capable.”

“I presume she hates us.”

“Well, in her opinion you killed her husband and now you've taken her only son prisoner. So, yes, I'd say she doesn't have particularly generous feelings toward the Germans these days. But if she knew you, Anna, I think she might be slightly more forgiving. Not a lot, mind you. But you, I think, would at least give her pause.”

He leaned toward her again, but this time she kept her eyes open until she saw Callum close his and she felt his lips pressing gently against hers.

THE NAVAL OFFICERS left the Emmerichs' once they had finished gouging the long, painful-looking slices from the skin of the earth at Kaminheim, and Helmut went to the parlor in the manor house that night a little unmoored. Everyone felt that way: Suddenly, the very soil in which the family had grown sugar beets and apples and corn had been upended. And for what purpose? An antitank trench. And as deep as those great, sluicing grooves were, they were mere runnels compared to the chasms the naval officers said would replace them. Imagine, the captain had explained, the difference between a toddler's little dig at the seashore and an actual moat. After all, he'd added ruefully, these would have to stop tanks.