Skeletons at the Feast (2008)

by Chris Bohjalian

  Nevertheless, it was completely dark when they saw a dim glow before them, and then, in a brief moment when the moon peered out from the clouds and illuminated the earth, they saw a house at least the size of Kaminheim. The glow was from windows along the first floor, and Theo imagined there must have been dozens of candles burning inside since there couldn't possibly be electricity left here.

  "Whose house is this?" Manfred was asking Mutti.

  "Friends of Rolf's and mine since, well, forever. Eckhard and Klara. We lost touch with them once the war started. But it looks like they're still here."

  "Or someone is," Callum muttered.

  "Well, it's a roof," Manfred said. "And beds."

  "When I realized where we were this afternoon, I thought instantly of my old friends. Then, when I recognized the road, I decided to bring us in the back entrance," she continued, her voice almost gleeful--a little girl who has pulled off a great surprise. "I didn't want to bring a thousand people with us."

  They found that a path had been carved between the horse barn and the manor house, and Theo saw that Balga was sniffing the air with interest, tensing and then rolling his massive head nervously.

  "Balga must smell the barn," Mutti told them, and tenderly she stroked the animal along his forehead and cheek. "They used to have as many animals as we had."

  Callum handed the reins to Anna and turned toward Mutti. "I'll see who's there. What do these people look like? How big is the family?"

  "They have a daughter and two sons. But I wouldn't expect the boys to be here. Surely they're in the army. Probably only Gabi will be there."

  "And how old is Gabi?"

  "Twenty or twenty-one. Just a little older than Anna."

  "Okay. I'll go peer in one of those windows. See who's inside."

  "What, you don't think it will just be my friends? Looters, maybe?"

  He shrugged. "Or Russians."

  "I'll go with you," Manfred said, and Theo watched as the two men shuffled through the snow up to the windows with the softly flickering lights.

  there weren't looters and there weren't Russians. There weren't even other refugees. When Anna had heard Manfred and Callum conjecturing that the house might have been commandeered by criminals or Bolsheviks, her heart had sunk. Now, however, as her mother's friend Klara was heating tea for her in a kettle over the fireplace in the living room and their wet cloaks and capes and quilts were drying on wooden racks before the hearth, she was almost giddy. She was exhausted and she knew she was ill. But she was clean. She had soaked in an elegant porcelain tub for nearly an hour, savoring the hot water and rose-scented bubble bath, allowing herself to doze in solitude amid the steam and the aroma of the flowers. After her, Mutti and Theo--her brother normally no fan of baths--had bathed, too, and their spirits had risen accordingly as well.

  They rejoined Anna downstairs now. She smiled at them and then burrowed even deeper into a thickly cushioned love seat, warm and content, while her eyes wandered aimlessly over the heads of the dead animals with antlers that adorned some of the walls, resting occasionally on the tapestries of unicorns and crusaders from the Middle Ages that hung on the others. There was also a line of stuffed wolfhounds--six of them in various poses, their mouths and marble eyes always open, in one case a tongue thrust out like a snake--serving as an honor guard into the room. At first Anna had found them a little disturbing. They also smelled of something unrecognizable but distasteful, and she feared that the taxidermist had been sloppy. But they were on the other side of the love seat from her and she had, for now, put them out of her mind. She was putting almost everything out of her mind. She was only half-listening as Mutti shared the story of their ordeal with Klara, while her old acquaintance's daughter, Gabi, and a friend of hers seemed to be hanging on every word. Gabi's friend was named Sonje, and like Gabi she was pathetically homely. They were fairy-tale stepsisters, Anna imagined, and she felt bad for them. Sonje was tall and gangly with a skeletal stalk linking her collarbone with a chin as sharp as a goatee and eyes that bulged out like a bug's. Gabi, the privations they had endured notwithstanding, was plump beyond the help of a corset and had a nose that looked a bit like an acorn with nostrils. Moreover, despite the reality that the Russians might be here in days if the army didn't find a way to stop them, they were insisting that they were going to remain in this house. The servants were long gone, as were the men and the horses, but before setting off to join a Volkssturm unit Eckhard had used his party connections to fill the larder and make sure they had plenty of wood and oil for the lamps. He had taught Klara and Gabi and Sonje how to shoot, and left them each a pistol--which, in Sonje's case, she kept with her in a holster she had decorated with red and black ribbons and wore around her dress like a sash. And, if the very worst occurred and the Russians appeared suddenly down their long driveway, he had shown them how they should slash their wrists, assuring them that this was a largely painless way to go--and infinitely preferable to their fate if they didn't.

  Still, they were viewing their home as if it were an island sanctuary. They weren't maintaining the driveways, and Klara, at least, actually believed that no one--neither Russians nor refugees-- would even know they were here.

  "But I found you," Mutti was saying. "You simply have to come with us. You simply can't stay here."

  "But would you have turned down that path if you hadn't known this house was here?" Klara asked. "Of course not. You knew to take it because you're an old friend and you've been here before. And the main entrance is even more deeply buried in snow, and-- you might remember--all uphill from there to the house. No one would even think there's anything worth looking for at the other end. You're the first people we've seen in over a week."

  "It's a cocoon," said Sonje.

  "And in the spring we'll be butterflies," said Gabi.

  "Butterflies with guns," Sonje added pleasantly.

  Behind them the door opened, and Manfred and Callum returned from bedding down the horses for the night in the barn.

  "Or," Klara said, "you girls can be butterflies right now! Why wait till the spring! Come, gentlemen, I'll play the piano and you two can dance with my daughter and Sonje!"

  "now, i am no expert," Gabi was telling Callum a little later, though it was evident from the tone in her voice that she was quite confident that she was, "but we had a wonderful professor come to one of our BDM meetings, and he taught us all about physiognomy. It was fascinating." She was running the tips of her fingers along the top and the sides of Callum's head as he sat in the massive easy chair that was upholstered with a scene from a forest that looked positively primeval. The treatment didn't look precisely like a scalp massage, but Anna thought Callum might have enjoyed the physical sensations if Gabi weren't running her hands along his head for the purpose of a lesson in Aryan physical superiority. As it was, he was fidgeting uncomfortably and looked like a cat that wanted to bolt from a stranger's arms.

  "Now, it seems to me that people from England have far more in common with Germans than--for example--the Slavs. Your skull is much more like mine than those of many of my neighbors," she went on.

  "That's only because my skull is still here. Most of your neighbors' skulls had the common sense to get out of here and head west."

  "I am serious. This is science. You map the brain by the bumps on the skull. It's a known fact, for instance, that the Aryan cranium differs from the Slavic cranium or the Jewish cranium. It is far more regal, and it has fewer bulges and ugly swellings. And compare the line of your jaw to the line of mine," she continued. "Though I will say this: For a large man and a Celtic, your jaw is not especially apelike."

  "And the jaws of most Celts are?"

  "Don't be insulted. It's simply that the jawlines of all races are more apelike than ours."

  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 fuhrer."

  "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 water- color 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.

  "I wonder if you'll come back when the war is over," she heard Gabi saying to Callum, while Klara was skimming through the sheet music on the piano in search of another song. Certainly no one here seemed to care that he was Scottish. She watched him glance at Anna, who raised her eyebrows behind Gabi's back and smiled at him. Imagine: Did Anna really think that her own mother was born yesterday? That her own mother didn't know what was going on between her daughter and this foreign paratrooper? She remembered when she and Rolf had been courting; it wasn't all that many years ago that she had first flirted with the man who would eventually become her hu
sband.

  "Oh, I think there's a pretty good chance," he said, and it was clear to Mutti that he was speaking more to Anna than to Gabi.

  "Good. I will expect you. I will hang a glass ornament in the guest bedroom window here where you will stay," she said, and Mutti wondered if the girl was getting tipsy.

  "A glass butterfly," Sonje added. "Because by then we will all be out of our cocoons. So, a butterfly for Callum and a . . ." She paused, looking deeply into Manfred's eyes. "And what would you like, Corporal? What kind of glass ornament should await your return?"

  "Oh, I will be flattered by whatever you suggest," he said. He looked away from her and briefly his eyes rested on Anna. Mutti couldn't decide what he was thinking, but when Anna looked up--perhaps sensing the corporal's attention--he quickly turned toward the portrait of Eckhard on the far wall. Her daughter, she thought, seemed slightly troubled by the corporal's gaze. Almost as if she were changing the subject, she reached into the tin on the table beside her for one of the florentines and took a small bite.