Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

Nevertheless, for another moment she allowed herself to drowse and to wonder, almost as if she were witnessing this happen to somebody else, at the idea that she was sleeping in a barn and she might be coming down with a fever. Might? No, not might. It all came back to her now. Yesterday she had started to grow ill and had nearly passed out. They had stopped here because she simply had to rest. And now it was just so much easier to remain curled in a ball under these quilts, to allow her fever-if, indeed, she had one-to run its course, than to rise from the hay and begin the hard work of continuing west. Melting the snow so she could wash. Feeding the horses. Rummaging for a piece of bread they had scavenged or a small handful of the muesli they had bought with a bracelet. When she'd been younger, there had actually been a servant girl who had laid out her clothes for her in the morning and then had her breakfast waiting. A Polish girl. Jadwiga. She guessed the servant had been with them through 1941. Then? Deported somewhere. The girl's parents were taken, too. Mutti had been devastated. Her father had made phone calls. Sent telegrams. But there had been nothing that either of her parents had been able to do. It seemed that Jadwiga's father had been involved with the Communists. Perhaps even the resistance.

Anna was just beginning to wonder where the rest of her family was-Mutti and Theo-when she was pulled abruptly from her torpor by the distinctive, full-throated whinny of her horse. Balga was, it sounded, just outside the barn. And he sounded furious. She sat up now, imagining that Manfred or Callum was mishandling the animal in some fashion, antagonizing him inadvertently. Instead, however, she saw Balga silhouetted in the massive barn doors, rearing up on his hind legs while two men she didn't recognize were trying (and failing) to convince the horse to remain still so they could place a saddle upon him. These, she realized, had been the voices she had heard.

She rose, pushing her quilts off her, and stormed toward the pair. The cold struck her like a slap, but she didn't care, because these fellows were trying to steal her horse-and she wasn't going to stand for that. Her family had already lost Labiau; they couldn't afford to lose Balga, too. They simply couldn't. She didn't know where the rest of her family was, but she didn't hesitate. She would simply insist that these other refugees leave her horse alone. Steal someone else's. When she was halfway across the barn, however, she stopped, realizing in an instant how ill-advised it was for her to have even considered confronting these men. Because they weren't mere horse thieves; they weren't pathetic refugees like her and her family. They were Russian soldiers-perhaps even Cossacks-working in fur hats and long uniform coats, with bandoliers of bullets draped over their shoulders like scarves. She started to crouch, but it was too late: They had seen her. And they started to laugh, despite the reality that one was straining desperately to hold Balga in place by the reins, and the other was holding on to a heavy-looking saddle with both hands.

The soldier nearer to her dropped the saddle into the snow, said something to the other soldier, and started toward her. He had a long, drooping mustache and perhaps two days' growth of beard, and he had an exasperated smile on his face as he sauntered across the barn: First the horse, she imagined him thinking, now this. Meanwhile his partner let go of Balga's reins and then fell against an exterior wall of the barn so he wouldn't be kicked by the animal's wildly flailing front hooves as the creature scurried a dozen meters away before stopping. From there the horse eyed them warily, snorting, and raised his nose high into the air. She started to call for him, but the words caught in her throat. She realized the only place she could run was further into the barn, and that would do her as little good as standing her ground. Perhaps she could try to dash past the Russians and jump atop Balga, but the horse was probably far too riled to allow her to climb upon him with neither a saddle nor stirrups. Besides, it seemed unlikely that she would get past the two soldiers. They'd simply grab her like a small chicken. And so she remained where she was, in a half-crouch beside head-high bales of hay, telling herself that she was unmoving now because she was feverish and there was nothing she could do. Suddenly she felt so sick and fatigued that she almost didn't care if they raped and killed her right here. In this barn outside of some village she'd never heard of. Fine. Let it all end this morning. And then, in little more than a heartbeat, the soldiers were surrounding her. She realized that neither was especially tall, and she could look them both in the eye.

“Do you speak Polish?” the one with the mustache asked her, his own Polish marked by an eastern-sounding accent she didn't recognize.

She nodded. She smelled, she thought, chocolate-delicious, real chocolate-on his breath. She wondered if she was a little delirious, or whether they really had eaten chocolate for breakfast.

“She speaks Polish,” he said to his comrade, as if this were a great revelation. Then to her he continued, “Your horse-and I'm presuming that is your horse-is a demon.” He looked back over his shoulder toward the open barn doors. Balga had inched a few meters closer and was peering inside.

She glanced down at her boots, wrapped her arms around her chest. She wasn't sure what she should say-if she should even say anything. She realized her teeth were chattering.

“I am Lieutenant Vassily Kuptchenko. This is Corporal Rostropovich. And you are?”

“Anna,” she said, the word elongated by the clacking of her teeth.

They both bowed slightly, gallantly, as if they were noblemen. The lieutenant pointed at the piles of quilts and her cape in the mound of straw behind her. “Go get your coat. Or at least one of those quilts. You're trembling.” She took a fleeting peek behind her, but she couldn't bring herself to turn her back on the men. When she remained riveted in place, the lieutenant said something to the corporal in a language she didn't understand, and the soldier went and brought her cape to her. Gently he draped it over her shoulders.

“Where… where… is my family?” she said, the short sentence again punctuated by her shivers.

“We saw the wagons and the horses. But no one else.”

“They're gone?”

“They didn't leave you, I'm sure. Your army set up a field kitchen a few kilometers from here, back toward the road. They're probably getting breakfast,” he told her.

The corporal rolled his eyes and murmured something under his breath that caused the lieutenant to smile.

“Forgive me: There was a field kitchen. Now there's just a field. Your army left rather quickly.”

“We've been overrun?”

He brushed the idea away. “Not yet. But you will be. It's all chaos right now. But you should go. Not everyone is as tolerant of nice German girls as I am. I assume that demon of a horse will let you climb upon him?”

“But my family? What about my family?”

“Child-”

“I'm not a child!” she said, blurting the words out. She feared the moment she had spoken that she had made an egregious mistake. She should have just gotten on Balga and ridden off to find Mutti and Theo. Tracked down Callum and Manfred. Given the two of them-the two of them and her mother and brother-a piece of her mind for leaving her here all alone. What in the name of God were they thinking? But the Russian lieutenant didn't seem to have been angered by her remark.

“Fine, you're not a child. More the reason to run,” he said, and he held up his hands as if he were balancing a plate on each palm. The corporal was nodding his head earnestly. “Maybe if you're with us, that monster will let us get a saddle on him for you.”