Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

Helmut knew that he wasn't alone in his unease. Everyone felt a little anxious. But he also surmised that he was, justifiably, more anxious than the rest of his family-with the exception, no doubt, of poor Mutti-because he was the one who was leaving the next morning to join a Volkssturm unit in Bromberg. The reality was starting to sink in: He would no longer be a boy in short pants with a Hitler Youth dagger. He was about to become a soldier. And then, assuming he survived the next few months, he would graduate from the Volkssturm to the Wehrmacht. From a mere armband to a full uniform. To real training.

He thought it interesting that his mother had responded to the reality that her second son was now a man by baking him a cake and decorating it with lingonberries and candles-as if he were still a boy. Of course, those lingonberries had been delicious. Nevertheless, he felt as if the seriousness of what loomed before him had been diminished. It was as if Mutti didn't want to accept the fact that he, too, was about to become a soldier.

Alone now, he leaned over the table with the family's maps in the parlor. For over three years he had tracked the progress of the armies in the east, as they had neared Moscow and Leningrad and almost (but not quite) conquered Stalingrad. With toothpicks and colored paper he had made small flags denoting the divisions whose victories he would hear about on the radio, and whose defeats he would glean from rumor and innuendo and the simple fact that (suddenly) they seemed to be fifty or seventy-five kilometers west of where he had understood them to be. Occasionally, the German broadcasters would explain casually that the army was straightening its line or consolidating its front, but Helmut understood that was just a euphemism for withdrawal or outright retreat. It was clear that the Germans were not simply losing-Lord, that had been apparent for at least a year and a half-but that the end was near. The Russians were just east of Warsaw, and that summer there had been some sort of uprising inside the city itself. The Polish Home Army and Communists attempting to retake it block by block, he gathered. And while the rebellion was being successfully quashed-for all he knew, it was over now-the fact remained that the Germans there had their backs to the very same river that he had grown up with: the Vistula. Warsaw was a mere 180 kilometers to the southeast.

Only last year, nineteen months ago, the fighting had been as much as two thousand kilometers to the east. Of course, nineteen months ago they had also been fighting in North Africa. And France was a part of the Reich. As was Italy-the whole boot. Now Paris and Rome were gone, and eventually Warsaw would be, too.

He thought of his brother near Budapest-another of the great cities that would, he imagine, fall into the Allies' hands soon enough. Werner would have great scars on both of his legs for the rest of his life, a result of the burns he had endured when the tank on which he had been riding had been shelled and caught fire. Helmut didn't like the idea of Werner in a prison camp somewhere, but it crossed his mind that it wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to his brother at this point in the war if he was captured. Look at the way his own family was treating the Englishmen the stalag had sent them: They were more like houseguests than POWs. Surely the British or the Americans would treat his brother that kindly. Unfortunately, unless Werner's division was transferred to the Siegfried Line or Holland or Italy, that wasn't likely. If Werner was captured, it would be by the Russians, and that meant a prison camp in Siberia-if he didn't die first on the way there. Besides, it was almost inconceivable that his brother would ever wind up a POW: Werner would die fighting.

Helmut hoped he would die that way, too.

If, of course, he had to die.

In a perfect world, they would somehow find a way to repel the Russians and, just maybe, he himself would do something heroic in a great, final battle. Even though the Russians were on the verge of capturing Warsaw, it still didn't seem quite possible to him that these barbarians eventually would brutalize all of Europe.

From the ballroom on the other side of the house he heard the sound of music: Mutti was playing the piano and the Scotsman was playing the accordion. His uncle's accordion. If the naval officers hadn't left, there would be dancing, and he would have had to polka and waltz with one of Anna's friends: Frieda or Gudrun. Here, at least, was one small consolation to their departure: He thought Anna's friends were juvenile and frivolous-insufficiently committed to the war effort-and he didn't much like them (though lately, he had to admit, he did see the appeal of having a girl as pretty as Gudrun in your arms when you danced, and feeling her beautiful, small hands in yours).

He found it interesting that his father was allowing this Callum so much latitude. The other POWs had gone back to the bunkhouse for the night, where they belonged. Even their captain, that school-teacher, didn't seem to want Callum spending so much time in the house. It was, in the schoolteacher's opinion, fraternizing with the enemy.

Well, yes.

Perhaps that was precisely why his father was not simply allowing it, but was actually condoning it. Encouraging it. Maybe he was, in some way, trying to drive a wedge between Callum and his fellow POWs. Create a rift. Give them something to talk about other than, Helmut guessed, escaping.

Or, he wondered, did his parents actually like Callum? Clearly Anna did.

Helmut understood that his family didn't know the party leader well in their district, and had only met the governor once. This was farm country and the area was vast. But he knew that his father had never been impressed with either the party leader or the governor in their few face-to-face encounters. Nor did he approve of the way the district was being managed. Both officials had been brought in from Bavaria, the party leader actually taking control of a farm that previously had been owned by an officer in the Polish army, and running it about as poorly as humanly possible. His father had once called the two of them “real Nazis,” and he had meant this as an insult: In his opinion, they were uneducated and vulgar and coarse, and they didn't know how to handle an agrarian landscape at all. They didn't understand farmers at all. It was an insult to the region.

And they certainly wouldn't approve of the way a Scot POW was ingratiating himself into the Emmerich family.

One time, Helmut recalled, almost a year ago now, his teacher had pulled him aside and asked him all sorts of questions about his father. The teacher was an older man who took his party membership very seriously, and thought Rolf Emmerich did not treat his own with sufficient gravity. The teacher couldn't fight anymore, but he sure could march-and demand that his students march. Apparently, he felt that Rolf Emmerich had greeted him on the street with an insincere Heil Hitler. Had felt the salute was halfhearted at best, and downright condescending at worst. As if his father thought the very greeting had become a joke. This was what he had told Helmut, anyway. But it was also painfully clear to Helmut that the fellow had heard or overheard a lot more about his father's attitudes toward the party. Toward some of Hitler's lieutenants. Father was usually careful about what he said in public, and the truth was that he was of two minds about National Socialism. Certainly things had gotten better for most Germans. At least at the beginning. And while he wished that Poland and Germany had been able to negotiate a peaceful return of the German lands to the Fatherland instead of having to resort to war, he was as grateful as Mutti that Kaminheim was back where it belonged. But there was also an awful lot about National Socialism that he considered either ripe for ridicule or deeply troubling. The replacement of the old Christmas carols with those ridiculous songs about the solstice and motherhood? Absurd. The fixation on the Jews? Inexplicable at first. Then alarming. It was evident by the teacher's line of questioning that at some point his father had been indiscreet-perhaps made fun of those new song lyrics or the way one of the district's little Hitlers had been screaming at some rally-and the word had gotten back to this teacher. The salute, Helmut guessed, was only the last straw.