She rose, pushing her quilts off her, and stormed toward the pair. The cold struck her like a slap, but she didn't care, because these fellows were trying to steal her horse--and she wasn't going to stand for that. Her family had already lost Labiau; they couldn't afford to lose Balga, too. They simply couldn't. She didn't know where the rest of her family was, but she didn't hesitate. She would simply insist that these other refugees leave her horse alone. Steal someone else's. When she was halfway across the barn, however, she stopped, realizing in an instant how ill-advised it was for her to have even considered confronting these men. Because they weren't mere horse thieves; they weren't pathetic refugees like her and her family. They were Russian soldiers--perhaps even Cossacks-- working in fur hats and long uniform coats, with bandoliers of bullets draped over their shoulders like scarves. She started to crouch, but it was too late: They had seen her. And they started to laugh, despite the reality that one was straining desperately to hold Balga in place by the reins, and the other was holding on to a heavy- looking saddle with both hands.
The soldier nearer to her dropped the saddle into the snow, said something to the other soldier, and started toward her. He had a long, drooping mustache and perhaps two days' growth of beard, and he had an exasperated smile on his face as he sauntered across the barn: First the horse, she imagined him thinking, now this. Meanwhile his partner let go of Balga's reins and then fell against an exterior wall of the barn so he wouldn't be kicked by the animal's wildly flailing front hooves as the creature scurried a dozen meters away before stopping. From there the horse eyed them warily, snorting, and raised his nose high into the air. She started to call for him, but the words caught in her throat. She realized the only place she could run was further into the barn, and that would do her as little good as standing her ground. Perhaps she could try to dash past the Russians and jump atop Balga, but the horse was probably far too riled to allow her to climb upon him with neither a saddle nor stirrups. Besides, it seemed unlikely that she would get past the two soldiers. They'd simply grab her like a small chicken. And so she remained where she was, in a half-crouch beside head-high bales of hay, telling herself that she was unmoving now because she was feverish and there was nothing she could do. Suddenly she felt so sick and fatigued that she almost didn't care if they raped and killed her right here. In this barn outside of some village she'd never heard of. Fine. Let it all end this morning. And then, in little more than a heartbeat, the soldiers were surrounding her. She realized that neither was especially tall, and she could look them both in the eye.
"Do you speak Polish?" the one with the mustache asked her, his own Polish marked by an eastern-sounding accent she didn't recognize.
She nodded. She smelled, she thought, chocolate--delicious, real chocolate--on his breath. She wondered if she was a little delirious, or whether they really had eaten chocolate for breakfast.
"She speaks Polish," he said to his comrade, as if this were a great revelation. Then to her he continued, "Your horse--and I'm presuming that is your horse--is a demon." He looked back over his shoulder toward the open barn doors. Balga had inched a few meters closer and was peering inside.
She glanced down at her boots, wrapped her arms around her chest. She wasn't sure what she should say--if she should even say anything. She realized her teeth were chattering.
"I am Lieutenant Vassily Kuptchenko. This is Corporal Ros- tropovich. And you are?"
"Anna," she said, the word elongated by the clacking of her teeth.
They both bowed slightly, gallantly, as if they were noblemen. The lieutenant pointed at the piles of quilts and her cape in the mound of straw behind her. "Go get your coat. Or at least one of those quilts. You're trembling." She took a fleeting peek behind her, but she couldn't bring herself to turn her back on the men. When she remained riveted in place, the lieutenant said something to the corporal in a language she didn't understand, and the soldier went and brought her cape to her. Gently he draped it over her shoulders.
"Where . . . where . . . is my family?" she said, the short sentence again punctuated by her shivers.
"We saw the wagons and the horses. But no one else."
"They're gone?"
"They didn't leave you, I'm sure. Your army set up a field kitchen a few kilometers from here, back toward the road. They're probably getting breakfast," he told her.
The corporal rolled his eyes and murmured something under his breath that caused the lieutenant to smile.
"Forgive me: There was a field kitchen. Now there's just a field. Your army left rather quickly."
"We've been overrun?"
He brushed the idea away. "Not yet. But you will be. It's all chaos right now. But you should go. Not everyone is as tolerant of nice German girls as I am. I assume that demon of a horse will let you climb upon him?"
"But my family? What about my family?"
"Child--"
"I'm not a child!" she said, blurting the words out. She feared the moment she had spoken that she had made an egregious mistake. She should have just gotten on Balga and ridden off to find Mutti and Theo. Tracked down Callum and Manfred. Given the two of them--the two of them and her mother and brother--a piece of her mind for leaving her here all alone. What in the name of God were they thinking? But the Russian lieutenant didn't seem to have been angered by her remark.
"Fine, you're not a child. More the reason to run," he said, and he held up his hands as if he were balancing a plate on each palm. The corporal was nodding his head earnestly. "Maybe if you're with us, that monster will let us get a saddle on him for you."
"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 tr
ees. 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? Slainte, perhaps? What are the proper remarks? You tell me."
"L'chaim," Callum muttered.
"Come again?"
"I said I'chaim. But that would be absurd, wouldn't it? Even if I were Jewish, I would never say I'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 . . ."
Anna noticed that Theo was holding a wicker basket with a couple of biscuits in it and a porcelain mug filled with soup. It looked like it was beans with a little fatty meat floating on top. Theo started to hand it to her, but she brushed her brother aside.
"These two were probably scouts. Or artillery spotters," Manfred said, motioning at the bodies in the straw. "Doesn't matter. We should join everybody else and get moving. Ivan isn't far behind." He looked down at Callum. "You should take the rifle-- and one of those bandoliers. And . . ."
"Yes?"
"And I'm sorry if I seemed a little callous just now. I've seen a lot and sometimes I forget myself."
The Scot nodded, grabbed the firearm, and pushed himself to his feet. Manfred took Balga's reins in his hands and started to lead the animal back toward the wagons.
"How do you feel?" her mother asked her. "Can you travel?"
"Of course I can travel. I don't have a choice now, do I?"
"Would you eat something then? Please?"
She shook her head. "Later, maybe."
"And you really must drink something."
"Oh, no, none of you need to help me," Manfred was saying. "I'll get the feed bags on the horses, I'll get them harnessed to the wagons. I'll throw the blankets and quilts in the back. You all: Just keep chatting and dawdling."
"I'm coming," Callum yelled out to him, and then he went to assist the German soldier, passing by her without saying a word.
"What should we do with those men?" Mutti asked, and with just a small twitch of her head she motioned down at the ground. "We can't just leave them here." Theo was staring at the bodies, too. A small, thin rivulet of blood had begun to trickle across the frozen ground beneath the corporal; a stain the color of rotting cherries-- more black than red--was waxing imperceptibly into a moon around the crater in the lieutenant's chest.
"What, you want to bury them, Mutti? Like your Luftwaffe pilot?"
"Is there time? You said they weren't going to harm you."
She was still shivering, and she honestly didn't know anymore whether it was because of the cold or because she was sick or because she had been surprised as she woke by these two enemy soldiers. But she didn't care. She knew only that she was miserable. Still, she reminded herself that her mother was miserable, too. Her mother was losing, in essence, a lifetime's worth of work--her home, the farm, and everything there. Meanwhile, two of her three sons and her husband were off fighting the Russians somewhere.
She glanced over at Callum and Manfred and saw that it was going to take them a few minutes to attach the animals to the wagons. She was more proficient than either man with the horses and so she went to them. She told them that she and Theo could finish harnessing the horses if they could dig a grave for the Russians. She reminded them that they had brought a shovel from Kaminheim.
"I know I would want my husband and my sons to have decent burials if they were killed somewhere far from home," Mutti added.
<
br /> Manfred dropped the reins to his sides and folded his arms across his chest. "You would?" he asked.
"Yes, absolutely."
"No, I don't think so. Forgive me. But if we bury those two, their wives and mothers--whoever--will never have any idea what happened to them. At least not for a very, very long time. But if we leave them where they are, someone will find them."
"Besides, do you know how bloody hard the ground is?" Callum said. "Burying them would be no picnic, I promise you. It might not even be possible."
From the road they heard an explosion, then another. Anna glanced reflexively in that direction--all the humans did--but the horses were already growing accustomed to the sound and barely looked up. She guessed the bodies would grow cold and then freeze before night. Or wolves might drag them away. Or crows might peck at the exposed flesh until it was gone.
"We could put markers where we've buried them," Mutti said, and Anna wondered if her mother was envisioning precisely the same things that she was.
Manfred looked at Callum and then shook his head. He seemed beyond annoyed to Anna: He seemed downright disgusted. Nevertheless, he went to the back of the wagon and grabbed both the shovel and the pitchfork.
"Fine," he mumbled, tossing the pitchfork like a baton to the POW. "We'll try to bury the damn Ivans. And then we are getting the hell out of here. Okay?"
Skeletons at the Feast (2008) Page 19