Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

“Watch,” he said proudly. He removed a blanket that had been rolled into a tube, and as if he were a magician with a cape he whisked it flat like a sail and allowed it to float to the ground. Then he reached inside the bag and removed a bottle of schnapps and a single tall water glass.

“I couldn't fit a second glass in here,” he said apologetically. “And there didn't seem to be any crystal in the house.”

“Do you really think you're going to take advantage of me in this cold-with the ground as a bed?” she asked him, raising her eyebrows in mock horror, but she knew she was just being coy.

It wasn't that cold, not after all they'd endured. And she was, suddenly, hungry for him in a way that she hadn't been in a very long time-perhaps ever-and she felt a warm quiver between her legs.

“True, no bed,” he said, but then he motioned up at the golden fires in the sky. “Still, I can't think of a better canopy, can you?”

She tried once more to nuzzle against him, and this time he wasn't preoccupied with his pack and he wrapped his arms around her. Kissed her. The truth was, she thought, beds were overrated: When they had used her bed back at Kaminheim, she had seen around her the accrual of her childhood self-dolls and clothing and books-and she had found the sheer quaintness of the silt to be antithetical to her idea of herself as a woman. As a lover. On other occasions, including their last night at Kaminheim, they had used his bed in the maid's room, and that had been infinitely more fulfilling. She considered herself fortunate that so many of the other times when they had made love, it had been on the oriental rugs in the living room at Kaminheim-thick and sumptuous and romantic-or on the divan in the ballroom, or, yes, outside in the apple orchard. There had been beds in Elfi's house in Stettin, of course, but the quarters were close and Theo was dying and it hadn't crossed their minds to avail themselves of them. At least, she knew, it hadn't crossed her mind.

The thought of her little brother momentarily made her reassess what they were doing, but she felt Callum's hand working its way beneath her coat and her sweater, finding her breasts and stroking and cupping them, and the sensations there became her focus. At some point he had taken off his leather gloves and the palms of his hands were warm and her nipples were growing hard against them. She massaged the back of his head as they kissed, her fingers deep in that red, red hair and along that long and elegant cleft at the base of his skull, and then she allowed her neck to fall back so she could stare up at the lights that were dancing low and high and everywhere in between in the sky. Then she felt him lifting her up and off the ground and laying her softly on the blanket. He knelt beside her and kissed her some more, his tongue-blunt, serpentine, hot-moving down her neck and then jumping over her clothes to the flesh at her waist. He tugged at her skirt, unfastened the two hooks along the side, and started to pull it down. She arched her hips to make it easier for him to slip it off her legs and over her boots, and then she spread wide her thighs. The air was more invigorating than cold and she felt ripples of goose bumps rising up along her flesh. A moment later he was inside her and the sky above them was alive with color, great flaxen plumes of light that were illuminating the horizon as far as she could see. She recalled what the Vikings had named the phenomenon: the reflections of the dead maidens. Typically Nordic, she decided, with its implausible beautification of death. She had seen enough of death to know it was never beautiful. It was delusional to think otherwise. Henceforth, she resolved, she would refer to them in her mind the way Callum had: They would be the merry dancers.

She could feel him gazing down at her, watching her.

“Good?” he asked, a wrinkle of worry creeping into his voice in even that one syllable. Clearly he sensed that her mind was wandering tonight. “Are you warm enough?”

“I'm fine,” she reassured him, her voice a purr for his benefit, and she smiled. She hadn't felt this alive since they had left Kaminheim. “I'm just fine,” she murmured, and then she gave herself over completely to the swelling rush inside her that would build and build till she came.

THE SUN WAS higher and hotter than it had been on any day since they had started west months ago, and there were rumors that to the south of them the western Allies were nearing the Elbe. They had the sense that they themselves were close to the Americans and the Brits.

Now they rested at the edge of a shallow river that ran parallel to the dirt farm road and allowed the horses to browse upon the moist spring grass. Anna and her mother were in the knee-deep water, bathing, shielded from the two men by the wagon.

Uri sat down on a stone the size of a footstool at the side of the road and stretched his legs out before him. Callum collapsed flat in the grass and for a moment lay on his back with his eyes closed against the sun. Then, when he had caught his breath, he sat up and pulled off his boots and stared at his socks. They were ash gray now, but once they had been white. He had two more pairs in his pack, but he knew they were even worse: They smelled unbearable and were riddled with holes.

“When I'm home,” he said, “I am never going to wear boots again.”

“Nonsense,” Uri told him. “You'll be wearing boots again by November. You'll have forgotten your blisters by then.”

“I doubt that.”

Uri took the tobacco and two sheets of cigarette paper from his pouch and started to roll a cigarette for the Scot. “You forget pain. We all do. We tell ourselves we remember the specifics, but it's all just a lot of pictures and words in our heads. No sensations. I think we actually remember life's humiliations much better. The degradations. The cruelties. But the pain? We seem to forget what pain actually feels like. It's a cloud after the sky has cleared.”

“You are awfully philosophic this morning.”

“I can finally see the end.”

“Well, I will never forget how much my feet hurt.”

In the river behind them they heard Anna shrieking cheerfully because the water was so cold. Uri handed Callum the cigarette and rolled one for himself. “You won't even be thinking about your feet in a couple of months,” he continued. “You will be married to that girl back there and you will be home in your beloved Scotland.”

“There were times when I didn't think I'd ever hear her laugh again,” Callum said, and he motioned his head in the direction of the women. “Her or her mother.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Tell me: What are you looking forward to most when you get to America? If you get there. What's the one thing?”

“Oh, I'll get there. I've no doubts. The one thing? Mass transportation. The subways and the buses they have in New York City. Like you, I don't ever want to walk again. I am going to ride everywhere.”

“And where will everywhere be?”

“I want to go to school.”

Callum nodded and seemed to think about this. “I usually see you as so much older than me.”

“Six years. Not so much.”

“And so I usually think of you as having finished school. I keep forgetting they didn't let you.”

“Of all the things they took from me-other, of course, than my family-that's what I want back the most. An education.”

“I must confess, I don't think much about that. I guess I will enroll in university. But when I'm done? I honestly don't know. I really don't. After all this… after the last year… well, I just can't imagine what God has in store for me. I can't conceive of what possibly could come next.”

Uri took a long drag on his cigarette and decided his throat was too sore. He really wasn't enjoying it much, and so he licked his thumb and forefinger and squeezed the smoldering tip. When he was sure it was extinguished, he placed it back in his pouch.