Chris Bohjalian - Skeletons at the Feast

Even the German naval officers were more interesting than any of the country boys-or men-she had met in her district. They, too, had seen places in Europe and Africa she'd only read about in books.

Initially, she had worried that there might be unpleasant sparks when the Germans and the Brits crossed paths, especially on the first morning when the naval officers would be marking out a segment of the antitank trench in the very same beet fields where the POWs were working. But the two groups of men had largely ignored each other.

It was the next day, when she was working alongside the prisoners in the apple orchard, that one of the POWs-that exuberant young giant named Callum-segued from the usual flirtatious banter to which she had grown accustomed and had come to expect from him, to guarded innuendos about Adolf Hitler and then (even more problematic, in some ways) to questions about the work camps.

“You're such a nice girl, Anna, and so sharp,” he said, as the two of them stood together beside a particularly wiry tree, resting for a moment midmorning. There was a military policeman who must have been somebody's grandfather standing guard a hundred meters away, but he was so old he probably wouldn't have heard a word they were saying if they had been standing directly beside him. “And your family is much more hospitable than necessary-given the circumstances and all.” The POWs were sleeping in the bunkhouse that the farmhands had used before they had either run off or been commandeered by the Reich for work in the mines and the munitions factories.

“Thank you,” she said simply. She was unsure where this conversation was going, but that opening, that apparent surprise that she was such a nice girl, had her slightly wary. She'd been laughing with Callum for days, and the thought crossed her mind that perhaps she had misjudged him. Grown too comfortable-too friendly-with him. With all the POWs.

“So, I was wondering,” he continued, his voice nonchalant. “What do you think your Hitler is doing with the Jews?”

“ My Hitler? You make him sound like one of my horses,” she said, aware that she was not answering his question.

“I didn't mean that. I meant…”

“What did you mean?”

“I had a mate in Scotland who was Jewish, a chum I played soccer with. We were friends, our parents were friends. He had family somewhere in Germany. And they just disappeared. There was talk of them trying to come to Edinburgh, but they couldn't get out. Eventually, the letters just dried up. Stopped coming. Then, at the stalag this summer, I met two chaps from Wales who had been in intelligence. And they said-”

She cut him off: “At school, they told me not to ask when I inquired. They told me I didn't know what I was talking about.”

“But you asked?”

Aware that she couldn't help but sound oversensitive, she answered, “Maybe it would surprise you, but I do have a brain behind my eyes. Yes, I asked.”

“It wouldn't surprise me a bit,” he said, smiling.

“I asked them where the Jews were going,” she continued. “Before the war, my parents had friends in Danzig who were Jewish. That's where my father went to university: Danzig. He grew up on a farm in another part of Prussia, but for a time he considered becoming a lawyer. But he's a very scientific man. And he likes working the earth too much. Anyway, he has never understood the Nazis' obsession with Jews. Never. My mother? It's different for her: She's lived her whole life here. She, too, thinks it's ridiculous, but she has always been a little oblivious of anything that doesn't involve the farm or this corner of the country.”

“They're both party members, right?”

She nodded. “My father wouldn't have the contracts he has if he weren't a member of the party. Even I know that.”

“Tell me, then: These friends. Your parents' Jewish friends. Where are they now?”

“One, I know, was my father's banker. I don't know his name, but he took very good care of Father and Mutti on their honeymoon. The inflation was so horrible that suddenly they couldn't pay their bills and Father's stocks were worth nothing. Somehow, the banker solved everything for them and they had a perfectly lovely holiday after that.”

“What do you think became of him?”

“He and Father lost touch. But I can tell you this: My father wrote letters on his family's behalf to different people. I don't know who or what the letters were supposed to accomplish. But he wrote letters for other friends, too. And for a few weeks in the summer of 1940, my parents had some Jewish friends who lived with us: a younger couple and their baby. A little baby girl. She was adorable. They had lost their apartment in Danzig. I was thirteen and I always wanted to babysit, but the mother wouldn't let the child out of her sight.” She could have gone on, but it was a memory she tried not to think about. There had been some talk about hiding the family-and hiding was indeed the word her parents had used-but so many people in the village had been aware of the Emmerichs' visitors from Danzig that the couple had refused her mother and father's offer of sanctuary and simply disappeared into the fog one August morning.

“I'm badgering you,” he said. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I have a habit of talking too much. You might have noticed.”

“You're inquisitive,” she said, unable to mask the small tremor she heard in her voice. The truth was, she didn't want to be having this conversation. She knew she wouldn't dare discuss these sorts of things on one of the streets in the village or in a city. One never knew who might be listening or how they might be connected to the party. And, suddenly, she felt an odd spike of defensiveness. “But you tell me: How am I supposed to know where everyone is in the midst of a war?”

“Well,” he said evenly. “You can keep track of the Jews because of the stars on their clothes. You've seen them.”

“Yes, of course I have. I've seen them in Danzig and I've seen them in Berlin.”

“Lately?”

“I haven't been to Berlin lately. Or Danzig.”

He used a handkerchief to wipe the perspiration away from his temples. The hair there was a bay that reminded her of Balga, her favorite horse. “The folks who will be coming to build the antitank trench,” he began, and she could tell that he was choosing his words with great care. “You know, actually digging where those navy blokes are leaving the plow marks? They're the lucky ones.”

“They'll be more prisoners like you.”

“Maybe. But I think they're going to come instead from those work camps. Not the prison camps. It will take hundreds of people just to dig through your farm. And, besides, it's one thing to put a group of us soldiers to work harvesting apples and corn and sugar beets. Trust me, this is luxurious compared to life in the stalag, and we are all deeply appreciative of your family's kindness. But it's quite another to make us dig antitank trenches. The Red Cross and the folks who penned the Geneva convention wouldn't exactly approve.”

“So, the workers will be the criminals from the camps? Communists and Gypsies. Why should that trouble me?”

“And Jews. That's my point, Anna. They're in those camps for no other reason than because they're Jewish.”

“What?”

“The Jews have been sent to the camps.”

“No,” she said. “No. That's not true.”

“I'm sorry, Anna. But it is.”

“The Jews have just been resettled,” she continued, repeating what she had been told at school and at her meetings with other teen girls in the Bund Deutscher Mädel whenever she had asked the question, but until that moment had never said aloud herself. Somehow, verbalizing the idea made it seem ludicrous. She certainly didn't add what so many of her teachers or BDM leaders had added over the years: They have to be resettled because they are not Aryan. They are inferior in every imaginable way, they are worse than the Russians and the Poles. Most have nothing that resembles an Aryan conscience, and they are interested in nothing but their money and mezuzahs and diamonds. Many are evil; all are conniving.