Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

For a moment Helmut had paused in thought with the teacher, as they had sat alone in the classroom. It wasn't that he was contemplating actually validating the teacher's concerns or turning his own father in-even though there were moments when he considered his father's ambivalence about their government and their führer disloyal. It seemed to Helmut that the world had always been against Germany: jealous of its people and its culture, and determined to crush both. The country was fighting now for its very survival, and the last thing the führer needed was Rolf Emmerich badmouthing the party or party officials. Still, the primary reason that Helmut had sat there silently for seconds was the sheer unreality of the moment, the idea that here before him was an honest-to-God informant. Someone who ratted people out to the Gestapo. Perhaps there were those who needed ratting out. Shirkers and spies and people who really did want to undermine the regime. But not his father. And so Helmut had taken a breath and composed himself and, with as simple and unrevealing a face as he could assume, told his teacher that his father must have been distracted that day on the street when he saluted, and that his father cared deeply about the government and about the führer. Fearful that he hadn't said enough, he added quickly that they even had their signed photograph of the führer matted with red silk and framed, and it hung on the wall of their parlor. This was the truth. What he would have said if he were going to be scrupulously honest was that it hung there because his father was rarely in the parlor: He was more likely to be in the den or the dining room or the ballroom. Greeting a guest or a business associate in his office. It was Mutti who had cherished that image of Adolf Hitler-his mother had once had the sort of crush on the führer that was not uncommon among her middle-aged female friends-and it was Mutti who savored the light in the parlor. Still, he had said enough. The teacher let him go, and suggested they could speak again if Helmut had anything new to report: If he had heard or seen anything-heard or seen anything about anyone, not merely his father-that the teacher should know about.

As Helmut studied the placement of the flags of the German and Soviet armies on the map and the way the Reich was narrowing in its old age, he took some comfort from the reality that the party leader and the governor-his own teachers, even-clearly had far more pressing issues before them right now than the way the Allied prisoners were being treated at Kaminheim, or whether his father saluted people on the street with ample enthusiasm.

BEFORE BREAKFAST, when the sun had barely risen and the fog was only beginning to burn off the fields, Anna took Theo with her to the horse barn and together they saddled Balga and Theo's small pony, Bogdana. Anna honestly wasn't sure she had been as happy in years as she was in those final days of that harvest, and she felt almost flighty that morning. The two siblings rode past the fields where any moment the men would begin pulling the last of the sugar beets from the soil, past the orchards where Anna would join them in the afternoon, and past the pond where in August she had swum with her friends and her brothers those hot, steaming days when they hadn't been hiking or away at their summer camps. Anna was wearing a white linen shirt that she had ironed before going to bed last night, and the jodhpurs in which she thought she looked prettiest from behind. Never before had she worried about what she was wearing when she and her little brother had gone riding, but never before had there been a man at Kaminheim who had interested her in quite the way Callum had. She hoped she might see him-and, yes, he would see her-when they returned to the barn.

As they were riding through the marsh on the far side of the pond, Theo pulled his pony to a stop and called out to her.

“Yes, Theo?” she said, reining in Balga. The horse was dying to run-she could feel his muscles tensing beneath his satin coat-and Anna had the sense that when they had cleared the marsh she was going to have to let the animal air it out. Theo would be fine for a few minutes on his own.

“What will happen if the Russians get here?”

“The Russians won't get here,” she said reflexively. She wasn't sure she believed this, but she could hear the fear in her little brother's voice and felt the need to reassure him.

“But how do you know? How can you be so sure?”

Anna watched the pony, more plump than was probably healthy, snitch at a clump of high grass.

“I guess I don't know. Not for certain. But…”

“Tell me.”

“Well, it's one thing for them to take back the land we had conquered. It's quite another to take our land from us. Just imagine how fiercely Werner would be fighting if he were defending this country right here.”

Theo nodded and seemed to be taking this in. Then: “They might take Father, you know.”

For a moment Anna wasn't sure who they were. Did Theo mean the Russians? She must have looked puzzled, because Theo continued, “The army. Maybe the Volkssturm, but maybe the Wehrmacht.”

“Father? He's already done his duty-and that was a very long time ago. He's… old,” she said, and as that last word formed on her lips she couldn't help but smile in bemusement. Their father? In the army? He was strong and disciplined and smart, but these days he was a businessman and farmer. He ran the estate. She couldn't see him enduring the sorts of misery that had seemed to dog Werner. She didn't see why he should have to. “Why would you ever think such a thing?” she added.

“Yesterday I heard Mutti and Basha talking.”

“About Father leaving for the army?”

“Yes!”

She felt Balga once more straining beneath her and motioned to Theo that they needed to keep moving. When they reached the drier land on the far side of the marsh they began to trot, and over the sound of the horses' hooves she called back to her brother, “I'm sure if they did take him, it would just be for desk work. Right here, maybe. Or in Kulm. But he wouldn't be fighting like Werner.”

“Or Helmut soon,” Theo muttered.

“Yes.”

“But if Father does leave, there will hardly be any grown-up men left here at all. And that means I…”

“Go on.”

“It means I would have to be the man of the house. And I'm not ready for that. I know I'm not.”

“Oh, Theo, sweetie, you don't have to worry about such things!” she told him, working hard to suppress a small smile so he wouldn't think she was laughing at his expense when all she was feeling was affection for him. To her relief, he was still young enough to allow his vulnerabilities and his fears a small voice. All the other males-even the boys Theo's age-were already growing into blustering strongmen. Powerful Aryans who didn't dare admit to anyone that they just might be scared. “Everyone loves you as you are,” she went on. “No one expects you suddenly to be older than ten.”

“But I could be if I had to be. Don't you think so?”

“Of course I think so.”

“I just don't want to if I don't have to.”

“No, I agree. Who would? Besides, there will always be the prisoners,” she said, only half-serious, hoping to get a small laugh out of Theo.

Instead, however, her brother told her in a voice that was completely earnest, “No, they're leaving the day after tomorrow. I heard Father on the phone yesterday!”

Instantly she pulled her horse to a stop and turned to face the boy. “What?”

“They're being sent back to their prison camp.”

“No, that's not possible-”

“Yes, it is possible,” he said, his tone growing defensive because she hadn't believed him. “Even…”

“Tell me!”