Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

Now his hands were massaging her thighs and his head was between her legs, his mouth moist and warm and insistent. In a moment, she knew, he would gently part her pubic hair and stiffen his tongue, and he would be brushing it against her so rapidly that the sensations would swell till she came, and then, when her legs might still be shaking, almost abruptly he would be holding his body up on his arms and sliding inside her-which, now, gave her a pang of apprehension. They had always used the condoms she had found in Werner's bedroom, and she wondered if they had one left. She had given him the box soon after she had discovered it, because she didn't think it was right that such things should reside in her bedroom. What if Mutti discovered them there? But she didn't know if they had any remaining. Still, it seemed impossible at first to open her mouth and ask him. To stop him. She couldn't get pregnant, however, she simply couldn't-not by him, not now. Perhaps not ever. And so she found the resolve within her to reach down for his head, to get his attention. At first he thought she was merely urging him on, massaging his scalp as he lapped at her vagina. But then she asked him, put the question out there. He stopped what he was doing and rose up from beneath her, and he smiled. “Oh, I wish we'd had the time to be such bunnies that we'd gone through Werner's whole stash.”

“We've one left?”

“Actually, I believe we have two,” he reassured her, and then he disappeared once more between her thighs, and she gave herself over to the feelings there, closing her eyes to the ice and the snow and the death: to the reality that somewhere, not very far away, their army was trying desperately to slow a juggernaut of Russian barbarians. For the moment, all that mattered was that she was with Callum, her Callum, and their bodies were warm and electric and very much alive.

IT WAS STILL DARK when Helmut awoke, and even in the midst of the spring planting or the autumn harvest no one would have been up for another hour and a half. Even today, the morning of their departure, he knew his mother and father wouldn't be rising for a short while. They'd done most of their packing yesterday, and the house was now without power and there was only so much more they could do in the cold and the dark. And so he considered going back to sleep, but once more he saw in his mind the fear in the eyes of his cousin Jutta. The oblivious, happy smile on her son. His uncle's irresponsible complacency in the face of the Bolsheviks.

But mostly he saw Jutta's eyes.

He knew his father was right: Karl and his family had to evacuate, and they had to leave now. If Karl refused, then at the very least he should allow his daughter, his daughter-in-law, and his grandson to join the exodus working its way west. And so Helmut rose and dressed as quickly as he could by the light of a candle, climbing into his new winter uniform and his snow boots, and wrapping his wide belt around him with its weighty, holstered Luger. Then he scribbled a short note for his parents. He didn't believe the roads would be crowded at this hour of the night-it couldn't possibly be as bad as it was yesterday morning-and so he guessed he would be at his uncle's by sunrise. And either he would convince his uncle to gather his family and join him, or he would simply take the two women and the boy.

He grabbed an apple as he passed through the kitchen and found himself glowering at the door to the maid's room. He wasn't sure what he thought of his parents' decision to bring the Scot with them when they went west. He liked the idea of another man on the trek-especially a man as large and physically intimidating as Callum. But, in truth, how helpful would this particular fellow be? Half the time he'd probably be hidden beneath bags of grain and apples and sugar. And when he wasn't? He was a soldier who'd never even fired his gun at the enemy before surrendering. Besides, the last thing his family should do was encourage whatever inappropriate feelings already existed between the prisoner and his twin sister. His parents already gave the man far too many liberties and extended to him far too many kindnesses.

When he reached the barn, he saw there was just enough petrol in the BMW to reach his uncle's estate; he would refill the tank there to get home. His family wouldn't approve of this excursion, but if he brought Mutti's brother and the rest of the clan back, he would be a hero. And right now the Reich needed heroes. It needed them desperately. He had yet to see any fighting-he'd only finished his training last week-and a part of him longed for the respect that his older brother received when he was on leave. To accomplish the things his brother had on the battlefield. To be taken seriously as a soldier.

He didn't expect he would actually see any Russians, and that gave him confidence; at the same time, it diminished in his opinion the scope of the task before him. How heroic was he really if the most difficult parts of his endeavor were battling a river of refugees moving in the opposite direction, and then cajoling his fat, stubborn uncle to come with him?

Then, however, he remembered the shells that were already falling on his uncle's estate, and he stood a little straighter. Yes, the Reich needed heroes, even if they were only eighteen and their mission was to rescue their families.

URI DROVE THE two women and the three children as far as the Vistula, and then he gave them the Russian jeep. They'd spoken little as they had driven through the night, partly because the women were so shaken and partly because the children actually slept in the back of the vehicle. But he learned the women were sisters, and the three children all belonged to the older of the siblings. The younger sister hadn't married yet. They both insisted they had never joined the party, though these days, Uri knew, anyone who bragged about being a party member was either an idiot or a fanatic. Still, he found it revealing how many people were so quick to tell strangers they'd never been Nazis.

“I wasn't in the party either,” he informed them, appreciating the irony. “I don't think they would have had a lot of use for a person like me.”

The pair implored him to stay with them when they reached the frozen river, to continue to protect them as they went west. But he told them that wasn't possible. He said that he needed to return to his unit. The truth was, of course, that he didn't have a unit, and among the critical lessons he had learned in his different guises in the Wehrmacht was that no one was going to question him so long as he was near the front. It was only when he was in the theoretic safety of the rear that he was in danger of being found out or-and this would have been a bizarre turn of events-shot as a deserter. Yes, he would get west: He had to. But he would have to move judiciously.

In the headlights from another vehicle parked now along the bank of the river, he saw a couple of green Volkssturm teens and a captain with one arm attempting to manage the horde trying to cross this stretch of ice. He climbed from the jeep and started toward them. As he walked a little closer, he recognized that the fellow was, much to his surprise, Captain Hanke-his commanding officer as recently as October. Then the man had gone home to Dortmund on leave and there, Uri had heard, been wounded in an air raid. Apparently he had lost an arm.

Uri had liked Hanke, and Hanke had seemed to like him. The Hanke men had been soldiers for generations-long before there had been a Nazi regime and a world war to compel them into the service.

Already Uri saw that an old couple with a wheelbarrow were descending upon the Russian jeep, begging to put their bags of clothing in the back with the children. Begging to somehow squeeze onto the vehicle themselves. One of the young women looked back at Uri, pleading with him with her eyes to try to solve this problem, too. Rescue them as he had at the castle. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head, shrugging his shoulders. There wasn't anything he could do. There wasn't anything anyone could do. There really wasn't room for the old couple and the meager remnants of their lives, but you really couldn't leave them behind either. Still, this man was persistent and loud, and he beseeched them that if nothing else the family had to find room in the vehicle for his wife. They had to. He said she had a bad heart and she desperately needed to sit. And so, finally, Uri strolled back to them, rested his hand on the warm hood of the jeep, and suggested to the woman in the front passenger seat that she climb into the back and allow the old lady into the vehicle. He reminded her that this was where she had been when he had been driving.