Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

Helmut knew that his father thought Uncle Karl's optimism was completely unwarranted-that the man was dangerously sanguine about the prospects for his house and his farm and his family. His wife had succumbed to cancer two years earlier and his children were grown: His younger son had died in Stalingrad (and still, still, Karl harbored the delusion that the Russians and Germans would get along if they came from a certain class) and his older son was a staff officer with a Volksgrenadier division in the west. But his older son's wife lived with him now. Karl's one daughter did, too, returning home after her husband was captured in France, and bringing with her Karl's first grandson, a robust toddler with blond spit curls who was built like a beer keg. Neither Helmut nor his father liked the idea of two young women being left to the mercy of the Russians, but throughout the whole month of January Karl had rebuffed his brother-in-law's entreaties to join the Emmerichs if they went west.

When Helmut and his father reached the gates of the estate, the shelling had momentarily subsided. But there were great potholes in the driveway and the splinters from one of Karl's favorite oaks-as well as pieces of trunk the size of railroad ties-littered the road to the manor house. They finally gave up and parked in the snow a hundred meters from the front entrance.

Karl's daughter, Jutta, greeted them, her son swaying uncertainly beside her, despite the fleshy Doric columns that passed for his legs. Her lips were the pink of cooked fish, and thin as paper. But her eyes were wide and darting around her-out into the yard, up into the sky-and though she was standing still there was a frenzied quality about her that reminded Helmut of the way boars twitched when they were cornered at the end of a long hunt. Jutta was a decade older than Helmut, and once-before she had become a mother, before her husband had been captured, before the Russians had retaken most of Poland-he had thought she was among the most glamorous women he had ever seen outside of Danzig or Berlin. No longer.

She brought them into the den, where Karl was having a glass of schnapps and staring out the mullioned windows toward the east. It was a flat white vista, the snow having long smothered even the foot-high remnants of the corn, with the edge of a silvery birch forest in the distance. Karl was wearing a paisley dressing gown made of silk, his bulbous cheeks were covered with white stubble, and Helmut found himself growing embarrassed for the man. Helmut had never viewed his uncle as especially slothful (though he did feel that Uncle Karl indeed lacked Rolf Emmerich's tireless discipline), but he had never before seen the man in a dressing gown at lunchtime. He had never before seen him drinking at lunchtime. Then he grew more than embarrassed: He grew angry. The idea that he and his father were in their uniforms-that they had risked their lives to come here, that they were using precious hours of leave when they should have been packing their own estate-started to rankle him.

The man pulled the drapes, instantly darkening the room. All of the furniture-the desk, the sofa, the cherry bookshelves that climbed along two of the walls from the floor to the ceiling-was cumbersome and heavy. He offered them both a drink, cavalierly waving the crystal decanter in their direction. Helmut listened as his father politely declined, then watched as Rolf sat down on the arm of the sofa, hooking his thumbs inside his wide black officer's belt. Helmut took this as an indication that he could sit, too. His cousin and her son watched from the doorway, standing. Then the child clicked the heels of his feet together, imitating other soldiers he had seen. Quickly Helmut stood and clicked his heels together in response, and the chubby boy grinned. For a moment he wondered how he could have missed how beautiful this tiny boy's smile was. Then he recognized it: It was the lively smile he remembered from his cousin before her life had started to come apart.

“I'm not going, Rolf,” his uncle was saying. “I grew up here and I plan to die here-though not, I assure you, anytime soon. But I stayed back in thirty-nine when our troops crossed the border and everyone said the Poles were going to kill us. You did, too. And it was all a great disturbance, great chaos. And for what? The Poles were fine-”

“The Poles are not the Russians. And things were different in 1939.”

Karl poured yet more schnapps into his glass, and finally put the decanter down on the blotter on a corner of his desk. Helmut saw there were three stacked cardboard boxes beside it, and for a moment thought that while his uncle was insisting he was going to stay, he was nonetheless gathering up those items he would take with him in the event he did decide to evacuate. Then, however, he saw the note his uncle had scribbled on the top of the highest of the cartons: Karl was instructing one of the servants who remained to burn it. To burn them all. To, it seems, burn these three boxes along with the other papers that already had been gathered and left in the shed.

“Yes,” his uncle said, “things were different. We were younger. But otherwise, war is war and-”

“Things happened in Russia. You know that. For them, this is revenge. Retribution.”

“Oh, please, don't talk to me about revenge and retribution. My son died in Stalingrad. If anyone should feel there are scores to be settled, it's me. It's us. It's the Germans, who at the moment are getting hammered on all sides.”

“You've talked to Felix,” Rolf said, referring to his own brother who had served in Russia before being transferred to the western front. “And I know you've talked to my son. I know what Werner has told you.”

“So? This was war. War is never pretty.”

“This was beyond war.”

“SS brutes and thugs,” he said, shaking his head dismissively. “Neither of my boys-and neither of yours-was responsible. My sons were soldiers, nothing more. No axes to grind. Same with Werner, and young Helmut here. I'm a farmer, Rolf, and so are you-despite that fancy uniform you've put on. The fact is, we grow food, and whether you're a National Socialist or a Bolshevik, you have to eat.”

“The Russians are not going to distinguish between the SS and the rest of us. We're all just Germans to them. Don't forget Nemmersdorf.”

Karl seemed to contemplate this for a moment, and then motioned for his daughter and grandson to leave the doorway where they'd been listening, waving his hand without the glass as if he were brushing a fly away from his nose. Almost instantly Jutta retreated, taking her son by his fingertips. Briefly the boy resisted her, but Helmut smiled, again clicked the heels of his boots, and the child went, too.

“I am sure ghastly things happened there,” he said finally. “Ghastly. But I am also sure that Nemmersdorf was an aberration, and the Russian officers have since reined their men in. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if our illustrious Ministry of Propaganda hasn't exaggerated things a bit. They do have a tendency to scream when a whisper would suffice.”

“We did worse.”

“Not my son. And not your brother. My son told me a great deal before he died, and so I understand it was vicious. But, more times than not, we were simply defending-”

“And as for the work camps-”

“You believe those stories? My God, Rolf, we're a civilized people!”

His father rose from the arm of the sofa. “Mutti would like you to come with us,” he said, his voice verging on stern. “And even if you refuse, I must insist that we take your grandson and the girls.”

“You are referring to my daughter and my daughter-in-law. I believe the role of father trumps uncle. You are in no position to insist upon anything, Rolf. I'm sorry.”