Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

“That doesn't look like his saddle.”

“It isn't.”

“There's a saddle he knows in one of the wagons.”

“The one with all that feed?”

“The other one.”

“Fine. You take the saddle, if that's the only one he'll allow on his back. But we'll keep the rest. You really are getting a bargain, you know.”

She was still shaking, and she wasn't even sure she was capable of riding Balga right now. But she guessed she hadn't a choice. These two soldiers were gentlemen. Or, at least, decent human beings. It was unlikely the next Russians would be as well. And so she started past them toward the entrance to the barn, walking with her head held high-but she hoped, not haughtily-experiencing at once fury over the way she had been abandoned by her family and gratitude toward these two Bolsheviks for sparing her life.

As she passed through the open doors, squinting slightly against the daylight, she saw poised on either side were Callum and Manfred, their backs flat against the barn board. Callum was to her right and Manfred was to her left, and they were both holding guns: The paratrooper was grasping the antique pistol her mother usually concealed under her cape-it had been her husband's during the First World War-and the Wehrmacht corporal had his rifle in his hands. She realized they knew the Russians were a couple of steps behind her and were going to ambush them, and the thought was just beginning to formulate in her head that she should tell Callum and Manfred that these soldiers were kind-that they hadn't harmed her, that they were actually sending her on her way. But the notion was still germinating, finding a warm spot in her mind to put down roots, when the two men spun and were firing. She spun with them, heard a voice-was it her own?-actually screaming No! Don't shoot!, the words running together, but she was an instant too late. As she turned, she saw from the corners of her eyes that one of the Russians was being lifted up and off the ground by the force of the bullet- was this the one named Vassily? -and the other, the corporal, was simply buckling at the knees and collapsing silently into the straw as if he were one of the elk that were shot each year in the park behind Kaminheim.

For a long moment her ears were ringing the way they had on that first day of their trek, when the Russian shell had exploded beside them as they had approached the Vistula, and so she was only dimly aware of the echoes from the two gunshots. Or of the cries of the birds that had disappeared abruptly from the nearby trees. Initially, she didn't even realize that with careful, tentative steps, Balga had inched closer to her. Mutti, too. And Theo. All she was cognizant of was the smell from the gunshots and the way these Russian soldiers had been only steps behind her just a few seconds ago, and now they were dead in the straw at her feet. They each looked as if their last thought had been only surprise. Not terror, not fear. Not even anger. They had both been shot in the chest, though the almost point-blank wound inflicted by the rifle had created a black, bowl-like chasm in Vassily's coat, and long wisps of steam were rising up from it into the barn. The hole in the corporal's coat was smaller, but no less fatal.

She felt Callum beside her, and she could tell that he wanted to hold her. To comfort her. But she didn't care. She was angry at him. She was angry at Manfred, too. Furious.

“They didn't hurt me!” she said finally, and she could hear the harshness in her voice. “They didn't mean any harm!”

Callum knelt before the corporal he had killed, staring almost aimlessly at the body before him. He seemed numb.

“Do you hear me!” she said, shrieking. “You didn't have to kill them!”

Manfred squatted beside Callum and pulled the bandolier of bullets up and over the corpse's head. He laid it out flat on the ground beside him. Then he removed the man's holster and pistol and started emptying the pockets in the fellow's pants and coat, extracting papers and maps and tobacco. A photograph in an envelope. Yet more bullets. Dried meat in wax paper. A little cheese. Chocolate. Stubs of pencils. A pair of field glasses. A knife in a leather sheath. A canteen. A small bottle of vodka.

“This is good,” Manfred said to no one in particular. “All helpful.” He took a bite of the cheese and seemed far more interested in the weapons and the food than he was in the papers. He handed the meat to Callum, but the Scot shook his head no. Literally turned away.

“Aren't you listening to me?” Anna shouted at them both. “You killed them and you didn't have to!”

Callum seemed to hear her for the first time. He sat down in the hay and tossed the pistol onto the ground. “I've never killed anyone,” he said simply. He looked a little woozy.

“I still find that almost inconceivable,” Manfred said, putting the tobacco in a pouch in his own overcoat.

“I told you, the drop was a complete boondoggle. We were captured almost instantly.”

“Well, you've killed someone now,” he said, rising to his feet and clapping Callum on the shoulder. “It's not so hard, is it?”

“It wasn't. But it is now.”

“Of course, you did shoot a pair of your allies,” Manfred added, slinging his rifle back over his shoulder. “That can't be good.”

“That's not funny.”

“Perhaps not. But it is ironic. Prost! ”

“Are you completely insane? Do you feel nothing?”

“I did the first time I killed someone. I actually sobbed.”

“Well, then. Leave me be.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. Was prost the wrong toast for a Scotsman? Should I have said cheerio ? Slàinte, perhaps? What are the proper remarks? You tell me.”

“L'chaim,” Callum muttered.

“Come again?”

“I said l'chaim. But that would be absurd, wouldn't it? Even if I were Jewish, I would never say l'chaim around here. Oh, no. You'd pin a star on my coat and ship me off to God alone knows where.”

For a brief moment Anna thought Manfred was going to hit Callum, despite the reality that the POW must have had forty or fifty pounds on him. His eyes widened ominously and his breathing seemed to stop. But then he inhaled deeply and blew the hot air in a stream into his hands. She looked back and forth between the two men. She felt invisible, despite the way she had yelled at them, because they were so absorbed in each other. And so she reached out for Manfred's arm and spun him toward her, since clearly he was the one who had initiated this needless slaughter. “Don't you understand?” she hissed at him. “You didn't have to kill them! They were leading me back to Balga!”

He seemed to think about this. Then: “Very nice. They were letting you keep your horse. And the two wagons? And the other horses? What were their plans for them?”

“They-”

He waved her off. “They were Russian soldiers. The people trying to kill us, remember? Look, I know what they were doing, I heard them. I was just outside the barn. Fine, they didn't rape you. You were lucky-”

“I was lucky?” she asked, her voice an uncharacteristic snarl. “Lucky? Where were you?” She turned to face her mother and her brother. “Where were all of you? How could you have left me alone like this? I'm sick, I'm tired. I have a fever!”

Mutti tried to enfold her inside her arms, but she pushed her mother away.

“Yes, you might have a fever, sweetie, I know,” her mother murmured, and then her eyes welled up and she stood there helplessly. “We were just getting some breakfast. Getting you some breakfast. We thought we might even find a doctor among the other trekkers. We were only gone a few minutes, and we thought you would be fine for a moment. We wanted you to rest. We didn't know there were Russians so close. We just didn't know…”