Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

With that he lifted her hands off his head and then pushed his way to his feet. “If you'll excuse me,” he said, “I'm going to go get some water.” He was no longer trying to hide the exasperation in his voice, and it was with great, purposeful strides that he started in toward the kitchen.

MANFRED STOOD ALONE with Sonje in the pantry, mesmerized by the plenty at his fingertips, helping the girl decide what they all would eat for dinner. The two of them hadn't spoken more than a dozen words to each other here when abruptly she turned to him, grabbed at the fabric of his uniform shirt with one hand, awkwardly reached around the back of his neck with the other, and started to pull him toward her. Into her. For a split second he thought this stranger was going to try to kill him and he was about to throw her aside, when he realized that she was, clumsily, trying to bring his lips down to hers. She was about to kiss him. Then she was kissing him. Her tongue was trying to force its way through his own lips and teeth, and she was using her hand to push his skull so hard into hers that he feared she would chip off the top of one of his incisors.

He pulled away and reached behind him to take her hand off the back of his head, but the fingers on her other hand were grasping his shirt with such tenacity-such ferocity-that he allowed them to retain their leechlike hold.

“Take me with you,” she begged, speaking so quickly that at first he didn't quite understand what she was saying. “I will be your whore. I will be your army whore and do whatever you want. Anything, anything at all. Better to be an army whore for a German hero than to be left behind here for Ivan.”

“Oh, I agree,” he told her.

“Gabi's mother has lost her mind. It's gone, completely gone. She's insisting we stay. But we can't; you know we can't. You know we'll be raped and killed if we do.”

He rested a hand upon her fingers. He could feel her nails against his chest through the layers of fabric from his shirt and his undershirt.

“Of course you can come with us,” he said. “And my sense is, if you put your foot down and say you're coming with us-that's all there is to it-Gabi and her mother will come, too. At least they might. Either way, please, let's have no more talk about army whores. Okay?”

She lowered her gawking eyes in a manner that she must have thought was flirtatious and nodded. But then she took her free hand and-though Gabi's mother and the guests were nearby, either through one door that led to the kitchen or through another that led to the dining room-surprised him by grabbing at his crotch. He presumed she had meant this as a bit of erotic foreplay, a taste of the carnal delights that awaited him, but her fingers and her palm, if they reminded him of anything, struck him as only the mouth of a snake.

CALLUM OFFERED TO help Klara set the table in the formal dining room, but she insisted that he rest with the others. And so he went exploring, wandering aimlessly through the conservatory and the living room and the two small rooms that served as maids' quarters. The house was darker than Kaminheim-and not simply because the electricity was out and it was illuminated entirely by candles and whatever oil lamps they were carrying with them-but he guessed it was at least as big. In the library he ran into Manfred. He was sitting on the arm of a leather easy chair, with a book open on a round table beside him, three candles surrounding it. He was hunched over the text and so his face was in shadow.

“What have you got there?” Callum asked.

“A biography of Richard Wagner.”

“Ah, a favorite of your führer.”

“Apparently.” The corporal flipped it shut. Beside it was a second, thinner volume. “How much German do you read?”

“A little,” he said. “Not enough to make much sense of your Wagner biography. But it wouldn't be my choice in bedtime reading, anyway. I don't mind biographies, but he didn't write much for the accordion.”

Manfred smiled. “How come you didn't bring the instrument? You brought whole wagonloads of stuff. But not the accordion.”

“Wasn't mine to bring. Belonged to Anna's uncle.”

“Think it was an oversight?”

“Probably.”

He smiled: “Sure they weren't just sick of your playing?”

“No one gets sick of my playing.”

He shook his head. “I guess I'm just not a fan of the accordion.”

“Well, that's because you've never heard me play.”

“You're that good?”

“I am.”

“In that case, maybe it's just a problem of association. I always associate the accordion with bullies and beer.”

“Oh, it's much more elegant than that. It has its earliest roots in Berlin, but it evolved in Vienna and London, too. A hundred years ago, folks were fiddling with bellows and reeds all across Europe. You play an instrument?”

“No.”

“Go on!”

“Really, I don't.”

“I'm shocked. A cultured German like you?”

“I worked in a ball-bearing factory, remember?”

“Nevertheless,” Callum murmured. He was honestly surprised.

“Here. This will show you how cultured Germans really are,” Manfred said, and he opened the second book on the table to a specific page and handed it to him. “Even you should be able to get the gist of this. Small words. Big pictures.”

He put his oil lamp down on the desk. “A children's book?”

“Believe it or not, yes.”

“Oh, good. Now we're motoring along at my speed,” he said happily, but instantly the sense of mirth that had been welling up inside him evaporated. He saw that the illustrations were watercolor paintings of noses. The noses were grotesquely large and wart-covered, and said to typify those of the Jew. There were five of them on the two pages. And then there was a separate nose that was elegant and small and presented as typical of the Aryan countenance.

“Clearly you don't believe this rubbish,” he said, unable to hide the indignation in his voice.

“Clearly.”

“A few minutes ago, Gabi was trying to analyze my head. God…”

Down one of the long corridors they heard a bell ringing: It was the sound that Klara had said would signal that dinner was being served. When Callum turned back to Manfred, he saw the other soldier had blown out the candles on the table and his face was lost to the darkness.

MUTTI RECALLED WHAT had happened to her brother and his family when the Russians had reached his estate and decided she would tell Klara what she knew-what Helmut had seen. It might convince the woman to bring Gabi and Sonje and join her group as they trekked west. Yet there was a part of her that wondered if even with that knowledge Klara would reconsider. The woman seemed a little daft now. Certainly Klara had always been eccentric-an artistic temperament without any artistic talent-but this evening her behavior was verging on the peculiar. The girls' behavior, too.

Still, she was astounded at their energy. At everyone's energy. The young people's in particular. Anna was continuing to rest and, hopefully, recover, but after feasting on canned asparagus and spaetzle and pot-roasted boar, the other young folks hadn't stopped dancing. They had even executed with precision an exquisite gavotte. Klara had a lovely, light touch at the piano, and Mutti was reminded of those delightful evenings in the autumn when Anna and her friends had danced with those handsome naval officers who had come to Kaminheim to design the antitank trenches. Moreover, Manfred and Callum were such gentlemen: Not only were they waltzing with Klara's sadly unattractive daughter and her friend, they were also showing Theo how to dance with the girls. Her little boy was indeed growing up. She wished that Anna felt well enough to dance, too, but it was heartening just to see her warm and content and sipping a glass of red wine on the love seat. Her cheeks, once again, had some color.