Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

BOYS, IT SEEMED to Anna, grew up faster than girls. They were sent off to war and vastly more was expected of them. She and Helmut were the same age, and yet he was treated as more of an adult than she was. Apparently this wasn't the case everywhere. She had the distinct sense that women had more responsibilities in the cities-and in other countries, even the Soviet Union. And, of course, there was no place in the world more barbaric than Russia.

“Here, look at this one,” her mother was saying to her now as she sat at the edge of her parents' bed, a small mountain of her mother's old clothes rising beside her. Her mother's voice was filled with mirth as she showed her another of her dresses from the 1920s. “I wore it when your father and I went to Berlin. Once I wore it to the opera in Danzig, but I felt completely out of place.”

Anna couldn't imagine her mother wearing a dress like this: It was a sheath of silk and it must have barely reached her knees. The straps were thin and the hem was trimmed with sequins and fringe. It was a crimson more lush than the red on the Nazi flag.

“It's very pretty,” she told Mutti. “You must have turned everyone's head.”

“Well, I certainly turned your grandmother's head. She gave me one of her dubious sniffs when she saw me wearing it. Couldn't believe I would appear in public in such a thing. But it was what many of us wore in those days when we wanted to look like we belonged with the city girls.”

They were taking her mother's old clothes from her dressing room closet and deciding which ones could be ripped apart and the fabric refashioned into something more appropriate. They had decided spontaneously that they were sick of their old dresses and would have to sew new ones.

“I don't know if there's enough material here for another dress,” she told Mutti, running her fingertips lightly over the frock.

“I agree. Perhaps we can turn it into a skirt for you-minus, of course, those ridiculous sequins,” she said. After a brief moment she added, “I have very fond memories of this dress. Your grandmother thought it looked like a slip, but your father certainly liked it. Those were fun days.”

“And nights, apparently.”

“Anna!” her mother said, feigning embarrassment, but Anna could tell that she was far more delighted by the memories than she was scandalized by her daughter's innuendo.

“I only meant those years must have been a lovely period. Better days than now.”

“Yes, they were.”

“Were you ever jealous of those city girls?”

“Sometimes. They all seemed so glamorous if you came from a community such as ours.”

“If I ever said I wanted to go to Berlin to be, I don't know, a secretary, what would you say?”

“I would say no,” Mutti said, but she sat down beside Anna on the bed and turned her attention squarely from the dresses to her daughter. “No sane parent these days would send her child to Berlin-or to any city. Parents who live in the cities are trying to send their children away. Get them as far away from the bombs as they can.”

“But after the war? Would you mind if I went to work in a city after the war?”

Mutti seemed to think about this. “I would. Your father would. We would miss you. But whether we would or we could prevent you? That would be something else. Now, you tell me: Why would you want to? This is the first I've heard of such a thing.”

“Well, it's the first time I've contemplated such an idea. I'm not sure if, in the end, I ever would want to.”

“Is there something particular behind this notion?”

She sighed. “Maybe it was the naval officers. And the POWs. And Callum. They have all seen so much of the world, they have all been to so many places. They all seem so sophisticated compared to me. And it's not merely that I feel sheltered. It's that I feel frivolous.”

“Do you think I have led a frivolous life?”

“Not at all. It just seems…”

“Go on.”

“It just seems there is a very big world beyond Kaminheim.”

Mutti looked at her with uncharacteristic intensity, and Anna couldn't decide whether her mother's eyes had grown wide because she was anxious or defensive. “There is, my dear. There is. But let us hope you don't have to see it any sooner than necessary.”

“I DON'T FEEL disloyal precisely,” Callum was saying to Anna another afternoon, when Mutti and Theo had gone to Uncle Karl's estate twenty-five kilometers to the east and once again left them alone at Kaminheim. They had just thrown another log into the fireplace, and the ice that was pelting the windowpanes seemed very far away. “I feel guilty. Horribly guilty. I am eating as well as you and your family and-”

“You think we are eating well?” she asked him, incredulous. They were on the floor before the fire, and she was leaning against his chest, her body between his legs. She knew they would have to get dressed soon, but she couldn't bear the idea that their time alone was just about over. She felt a little giddy. Mature, too. But still blissfully dizzy. Her hands rested upon his bent, oddly hairless knees, and she imagined for a brief second they were the oarlocks on the small rowboat the family owned for their pond.

“Well, perhaps you don't eat like you did before the war-”

“We don't eat like we did even a year ago.”

“But you still eat considerably better than a POW. And so I am eating dramatically better than I would have if your father hadn't finagled a way for me to remain here. Plus, I am sleeping in a bunkhouse, not the barracks of a prison camp-”

“And that will change. Any day now it will get much, much colder, and that bunkhouse was never meant to be used in the winter. Besides, it's absurd for you to sleep out there alone when we have nothing but bedrooms here in the house. I'll talk to Mutti tonight.”

“That's not exactly my point. My accommodations are fine.”

“But you will move into the house. I'll see to that.”

“My point,” he said, wrapping her more tightly in his arms, “is that your family may need me, but nothing I've done here has been especially onerous. A little heavy lifting. Cleaning some farm machinery. A bit of carpentry. And so a part of me feels as if I've deserted my mates-that I should be enduring their trials with them.”

“You didn't desert them. That would mean you had a choice. You didn't. Father wanted someone here and you were picked.”

“Still…”

She turned and craned her neck to face him. “I think I should be angry that you're not more grateful,” she said playfully. “I doubt most POWs had an afternoon like you just had.”

He moved out from behind her. Gazed at her. Pushed her bangs off her forehead, still a little slick with perspiration. “Oh, I doubt any did.”

“And so?”

He was, much to her surprise, blushing. When he didn't say anything, she added, “Maybe you'll protect us from the Russians. Maybe that's why you're here.”

“The Russians are British allies, my dear. It's one thing for me to replace the spark plugs on a tractor; it would be quite another for me to take up arms against my comrades. There's a word for that, you know: treason. And armies, mine included, frown upon it.”

“The Russians are not your comrades.”

“You know they are.”

“The Russians are the comrades of no civilized person. And you are very civilized-even if you do take advantage of German farm girls while their mothers are away for the day.” She tried to add a cosmopolitan pout to her voice when she spoke; she hoped she sounded like a flirtatious adult. But then she saw the look of trepidation on Callum's face, and she realized that inadvertently she had hit a nerve: He honestly did feel guilty. He really did have misgivings.