Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

She looked up and saw a woman with a mane of yellow hair protruding from beneath her dirty kerchief wandering through the field toward the prisoners. She had worn but elegant leather riding boots on her feet, and Cecile thought she appeared to be a few years younger than she was. Near her an older woman in a coat with a tired-looking fur collar was already starting to kneel before two other prisoners and hand them… something. Bread, perhaps. And there was that German soldier offering his canteen to a prisoner, and that tall fellow with terra-cotta red hair literally lifting another prisoner off the road and carrying her to a patch of earth in the field where there was sun and the ground was warm. She noticed that the crows had flown back and resumed their lunch on the entrails of the dead horses.

Some of the other girls started to follow the redheaded man onto the grass. Others looked around nervously, wondering whether even this-this apparent rescue-was a mere trap of some kind. An ambush. A trick. They glanced down the road to the east and to the west; they peered apprehensively at the woods. Some even scanned the sky.

Then one of the girls walked over to Pusch, leaned over his body, and spat. She glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, her eyes mischievous and childlike. And then, with the suddenness of lightning, she kicked the dead guard in the ribs, using her clog like a bludgeon. She kicked him in the face, too, slamming the front of her clog into his nose and mouth with such force that the head seemed almost to lift away from its neck.

Other prisoners watched for a moment-but only for a moment. Within seconds the girls were kicking and stomping on the corpses of all the dead guards, battering them with their feet, and when that wasn't sufficiently satisfying, using the butts of the guards' rifles to smash the bones in their faces and pummel their skulls into the earth. They cheered as they worked and, like that first girl, spat on the bodies. Then they turned on the Hungarian guard-the woman still hadn't died-and they drilled their clogs into her wherever they could and walloped her with the rifles, swinging them like axes in some cases and in others like plungers, until she grew completely silent and her body moved only in response to the way it was kicked or beaten or shoved.

Cecile wasn't sure how long she had been watching when the German soldier came over and squatted on his haunches beside her. She knew enough not to be scared of him, despite the uniform. Hadn't he just killed or driven off their guards? He asked her if she spoke German and she said that she did, though she was French. He asked her if the girl in her arms was a friend.

“I didn't really know her,” she answered.

He ran his hand gingerly along the line where the girl's hair was growing back along her forehead. “What was her name?”

“Vivienne. I never got to know her last name.”

“And what's your name?”

“Cecile Fournier.”

“I'm Uri. Uri Singer.”

“That sounds-” she said, but she stopped herself before she could finish the sentence.

“I know what it sounds like,” he said. Then he smiled slightly and added, “And, yes, it is.”

“Jewish.”

He nodded.

“I thought we were all going to die.”

“You and the other prisoners?”

“No. The Jews. All of us. I tried to keep my hopes up, but these last weeks… it was gone, all gone. I thought they were going to exterminate us all.”

“I thought so, too. There were times when I wondered if I was the only one left.”

She offered him the smallest of smiles. “Your name should be Adam.”

He chuckled, but the sound was rueful and she thought he was just being polite. “No, not me,” he said. “I am not the beginning of anything. If anything, I am the end of everything.” Then he cradled Vivienne's head in the palms of his hands and laid it gently on the ground so Cecile could stand.

“Tell me…” he said.

“Yes?”

“Did you know any Jews from Schweinfurt?”

“Is that where you're from?”

He nodded.

“I may have. I don't know. Were you looking for someone special? Your wife? Your parents?”

“My sister.”

“What is her name?”

“ Was her name, I suppose. It was Rebekah.”

She had probably known girls named Rebekah; she had probably known German girls named Rebekah. But none came to mind now. She shook her head. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“Don't be. It would have been a miracle if you had,” he told her. Then he added quickly, “Well, we have to get you some food,” and he motioned his arm at the prisoners in the fields and the prisoners still pummeling the Hungarian guard and the prisoners staring wide-eyed into the sun. “We have a little in the wagon, but not nearly enough for all of you. But we'll find some.”

“How?”

“There's a village up ahead. We may be able to wait there for the Americans. At the very least, we'll be able to rest for a bit and scare up something to eat.”

“Is…”

“Go on.”

“Is the war over?”

“Not yet,” he told her. “But soon. Very soon. And I believe, at the very least, it's over for you.”

THE VILLAGE WAS no more than three kilometers distant, but even that seemed too far to expect some of the women to walk. Still, Uri didn't think they could possibly bring back enough food and water-assuming they could even scare up provisions there-for the whole group with a single horse and a single wagon. Waldau was strong, but he was weary. He guessed that the women who felt up to it could come with him to the village, and those who didn't could stay where they were. Callum and Anna and Mutti could wait with them.

When he told Anna his idea, she looked up at him and said, “Bring back a doctor, too. They need a doctor badly. All of them.” Her voice sounded very small. She was sitting on the grass, rubbing the blackened and mangled feet of a woman who seemed unconscious.

“I imagine the village will be mostly deserted,” he said. “If there's a doctor anywhere near here, I'm sure whatever's left of the army has pressed him into service. But I'll try to find out how close we are to the Americans and the British.”

“They must be near,” said Mutti.

“One would think so,” he agreed. He didn't want to get their hopes up, including his own, but when he looked at the map he guessed the western Allies might be as close as fifteen or twenty kilometers. It could be more. They'd heard that the British and Americans had paused, as if they had reached an agreement with the Soviets to be sure that each side received an equitable share of the remains of the Reich. Nevertheless, their armies were within reach-though, of course, so were the Soviets. It was possible that by remaining with the prisoners, the four of them would be overrun by the Russians. But these women were viewing the Russians as their liberators. And for the prisoners they would be. But for the four of them-especially for Anna and Mutti? The Soviets might be merciless.

And so a different idea began to formulate in Uri's head: He would tell the Emmerichs that they should leave the horse and the wagon behind and proceed ahead without them. The two of them should just walk west as quickly as they could. For all he knew, they might reach the Americans or the British by tomorrow. Meanwhile, he and Callum and the women who could walk would bring back whatever food and water and medicine they could find. But Anna and Mutti should leave now-make one last dash for the west.

He decided he liked this plan; he liked it a lot. He would strip off his German uniform, climb into some of Werner's ragged old clothes they had in the wagon, and allow his circumcised penis to vouch for his identity. And Callum? For God's sake, he was a POW. The two of them would be fine. He didn't completely believe this, but he reiterated the idea in his mind. They'd be fine. He shared his plan with Callum, and then he squatted beside Anna and told her what he thought they should do. And then he climbed atop the charred metal husk of a tank and clapped his hands together and shouted to get the attention of the women around him. He was just starting to speak-just beginning to open his mouth in earnest-when he heard the rifle shot and then, before he could even turn in its general direction, felt himself being punched ferociously hard in the chest. He fell backward off the tank, the wind, it seemed, knocked completely out of him. He was aware that Anna was shrieking-he thought she might have been saying no, but already her voice sounded to him as if he were underwater-and he felt the back of his head hitting the ground. Then he was staring up into the bluest sky he had ever seen. For a split second he felt crushing pain and experienced a pang of frustration at the realization that he had come so far only to die now. He wondered who had shot him, and he wondered at the way the myth he had concocted of his indestructibility was so easily shattered. One bullet: That was all it took. Apparently, his soul was negligible, after all. But this recognition lasted just the briefest of moments, because then he was, much to his surprise, in the dining room of his childhood home in Schweinfurt, once again a teenage boy, and he and little Rebekah were using long, slender spoons to scoop the mascarpone cream from the tops of parfait glasses, and their mother and father were chatting casually about nothing. At least nothing of consequence. Then they were laughing. And the sky was blue there, too, more blue than even this Anna girl's eyes, and the sun was streaming in through the gauzy curtains. He was warm and content and his stomach was comfortably full. And then: Nothing.