Skeletons at the Feast

  One of the soldiers who was reviewing her family's papers looked up at her. "Something bothering you?" he asked.

  She focused on him, at the shadowy stubble and the deep bags under his disturbingly boyish green eyes, at the pencil-point-thin scar that ran along his jaw from his earlobe to his chin, and tried to erase the frown from her face. Still, the absurdity of his question astonished her. Was something bothering her? She was a refugee. She had been sleeping in the homes of strangers or in barns or outside in the snow for weeks. She was hungry; she was cold. Of course something was bothering her. But she held her tongue and said--trying to sound pleasant--"I've been sick."

  "With what?"

  "I don't know. Not typhus. I'm getting better."

  He nodded. "I'm glad," he said, and his relief sounded oddly genuine. "It seems you have two brothers in the army, yes?"

  For a moment she was curious why he was asking her this and not Mutti--the head of their household. But then she got it. He simply wanted to talk to her. A young woman.

  "Yes. My older brother is fighting outside of Budapest. That's Werner. I'm not sure where Helmut is. He's my twin. But he's east of here, with our father. The last we heard, they were part of the counterattack on the Kulm bridgehead."

  "That was weeks ago," he said.

  "I know."

  "No word since then?"

  She shook her head and quickly he looked down from her to the papers in his gloved hands. "And your father is Rolf," he said, trying to fill in the silence before it grew awkward. "My father is named Rolf, too. I haven't seen him in months, either."

  "I'm sorry," she murmured, assuming she had to say something.

  "He's fine. He trains teenagers to fire antiaircraft guns in the west. They're boys practically--not much older than this young fellow," the soldier continued, motioning toward Theo. "He travels between the factories and sets up the batteries. I'm sure your father is fine, too."

  Her first thought was to tell him, You don't believe that. Once more, however, she restrained herself and said simply, "I hope so. We all do."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Stettin."

  "Do you have family there? Or friends who are expecting you?"

  "My mother's cousin lives there."

  "It's just the four of you?"

  "Yes," she said, wondering why he would even ask such a thing. She thought instantly of Callum, buried beneath the feed, and Manfred, behind them now somewhere amid the long columns of refugees.

  "It's awfully dangerous for women and children to travel alone," he said.

  She felt a small eddy of resentment: If they actually had a man with them right now, he would be taken away from them and asked to stop a tank with a slingshot. She considered telling him the story of the pair of Russian scouts in the barn, perhaps omitting the small detail that they really did have two males traveling with them at the time and each of those men had shot one of the enemy soldiers. She was awed at the rage that was festering inside her and wondered if it stemmed from the fact that Manfred was gone. Did she actually feel more vulnerable now that he had left them? "I know," she said evenly.

  "Do you have anything you can use to defend yourself?"

  She reached under her cape and revealed the pistol Manfred had given her. She wanted to give him no reason to search her or the wagons. In addition to Callum, she recalled that the rifles they had taken from the Russian soldiers were in the cart, too.

  He looked at it, and despite the fact she had shared the gun with him willingly, his tone changed from one of vague solicitude to suspicion. "Where did you get this?"

  "It was Werner's," she said quickly, reflexively.

  "Werner is your brother in Budapest?"

  "That's right."

  "And why doesn't Werner-your-brother-in-Budapest have it?"

  She shrugged, hoping her breathing sounded normal, her voice natural. "When he was home on leave, he gave it to me. He knew we were going to have to evacuate soon."

  "Rather defeatist of him, don't you think?"

  "No."

  "When did your brother return to his company?"

  "I don't recall the exact date. But it was early January," she lied.

  He turned his attention toward Mutti for the first time.

  "Do you love your son? This Werner in Budapest?" he asked.

  Sonje was huddling against Mutti, and Theo was standing beside them. The boy, for reasons Anna couldn't fathom, was standing on a single foot like a stork, and she wanted to ask her brother what in heaven's name he was doing, if only to divert this SS soldier's attention away from their mother. Already, however, her mother was releasing Sonje and rising up to her full height. "Yes, of course I do," she replied.

  "Do you worry about him in Budapest?"

  "I don't know what you're implying, young man, and I don't believe I want to know. But, obviously, I worry about my son in Budapest. I'm a mother and I'm a wife. That means I also worry about my son and my husband who are fighting somewhere to the east. And, if you are desirous of a complete litany, I will also tell you that I worry about my brother-in-law who is defending our country on the western front," she continued, as if she were speaking with an inattentive and slightly annoying schoolboy. "And while my older son wanted his sister to have a way to protect herself and her family, his attitude is anything but defeatist. If you had a sister, wouldn't you want her to have a way to protect herself? For goodness' sake, you just said yourself that it's dangerous out here."

  The soldier actually smiled at her and seemed slightly and appropriately abashed. For goodness' sake. Anna chastised herself inwardly for fretting for even a moment about what her mother might say.

  "As a matter of fact, I do have sisters. Two," he said. "And, yes, if they weren't safely at home right now painting plates, I expect I would want them to carry handguns, too."

  Nearby there was a small explosion, and almost as one she and Theo winced and turned toward the sound, her brother finally dropping that other foot for balance. One of the older men had just fired the panzerfaust. The red star was completely untouched, but she thought one of the tombstones--easily twenty meters to the right of the target--had been obliterated. When she looked back at the SS soldier before her, he was rolling his eyes in disgust.

  "And that's what's going to save the Fatherland. Please. Heaven protect us all," he said, and he placed Manfred's pistol back in her palm and returned to her both the Emmerichs' and Sonje's papers. Then he looked at their wagons, his hands on his hips, and paused.

  "May we continue?" she asked him.

  He ignored her as if he had a sudden, more pressing thought, and marched over to Waldau. Waldau and Ragnit were leading one cart--the one in which Callum was hidden--and Balga the other. He ran his fingers along the animal's velvetine cannon of a shoulder. "I see you have two wagons and three horses. I hate to do this to you, but I don't have a choice: I'm going to have to confiscate one of your animals. But they look like good, strong pullers: You'll still have a horse for each wagon," he said, and then he motioned for the soldier beside him--a studious-looking fellow with round eyeglasses who was no older than Werner, Anna guessed, but with an oddly weathered face for a man so young--to remove the harness linking the horse nearest him from the wagon. Instantly her mother and Sonje glanced at her, and she could see the alarm in their faces. It wasn't, she sensed, merely the reality that they were about to lose a second horse that was troubling them. Certainly Mutti had to know that Ragnit was capable of pulling the wagon away from this checkpoint on his own, even with the added weight of the paratrooper buried beneath the bags of oats. She looked back at them, trying to understand what, suddenly, had them so unnerved.

  "That's Waldau," Theo was saying to the men. "He's named for a castle." Her brother's voice had a quiver to it that Anna recognized. This was his favorite horse, other than that pony of his they had left behind at Kaminheim, and he was trying hard to keep from crying.

  "I know the castle," the soldier with the s
pectacles was saying patiently, and something about the tenderness in his tone made her wonder if it was possible that he was old enough to have children of his own. He pulled off his gloves so he could more easily manage the buckles on the bridle and the reins and the leather suspenders that fell across the animal's neck and chest. "I know precisely where it is in Prussia."

  "We've already lost Labiau," Theo continued, as he watched the soldier begin to unhitch the horse.

  "Ah, another castle," he remarked.

  "He was killed by a plane that strafed our column," the boy added, and Anna found herself mesmerized by her brother's resilience, by the way he was holding back his tears even now. And so before she knew quite what she was going to say or do, she was pointing at Balga and suggesting to the soldier, "Would you please take this animal instead?"

  The soldier paused and shrugged. His partner, the one who had examined their papers, went over to Balga and eyed him more closely. "You realize, don't you, that I could take all three of your horses," he said, a statement, not a question.

  "I do know, yes."

  "Well, then: Why this one?" he asked. "Is there a problem with him I'm missing? If he's dragging this wagon on his own, he must be quite some animal."

  "He's my horse," she said simply. "That's why. The first one you picked is a favorite of my little brother. He's already had to leave his pony behind. If possible, I'd like him to keep this animal in his life. He's lost so much else."

  He eyed her deliberatively and once more studied the horse, his gaze resting a long moment on the coronet above each of the animal's hooves and then up and down Balga's legs. He looked at the animal's mouth and finally shrugged. "I really have no idea what I'm supposed to look for in a horse's mouth. Do you? Teeth, gums? I've just no idea at all. I've never owned horses; I grew up around streetcars in the city. All I know is I'm supposed to round some more up. This one seems as good as the others," he mused, pushing an unruly forelock of dark hair off his forehead and instructing the other soldier to take Balga instead.

  "You don't have to do that," Theo told her.

  "I do, sweetie. I do," she said to her brother. Then, with a sickening flutter in her chest, she noticed the boots. Callum's boots. Both of them. Clearly this was what her mother and Sonje had seen a moment ago, this was what had caused their eyes to widen in fear. She could see the thick rubber soles, and as high on one leg as his ankle. His feet were actually sticking out. The SS soldiers were so focused on the horses, however, that they hadn't looked back yet. But, eventually, they would. They would. How could they not? Eventually their eyes would roam casually in that direction, and there would be the two shoes. They stood out against the canvas bags like lit candles on a Christmas tree.

  "Here, let me do that," she offered quickly, struggling to make the words sound normal when she felt as if she were trying to speak with a giant popover in her mouth. She realized that she needed an excuse to stand between the soldier and the incriminating side of the wagon. Once there, perhaps she might be able to drape something atop Callum's feet. Her cape, maybe. But why? Why in this cold would she do such a thing? Still, as she began to work the complicated series of straps and buckles that linked the animal with the wagon she wondered if it would seem suspicious to either of these SS troopers if she were to go and rearrange the bags of feed behind her. She decided, however, that she hadn't a choice, and she was just starting in that direction when the soldier without the eyeglasses, the one in charge, suddenly ordered her to halt, to stop whatever it was she was doing. He snapped at the old men in the truck behind him to be silent. To shut their mouths. He commanded his partner to cease work on the harness. His face grew into an elongated mask with a rictus of rage in the middle, but otherwise he, too, stood perfectly still. She didn't dare venture a glimpse back at the boots, those awful, incriminating boots that were about to get them all-- even her poor, young, innocent little brother--killed, and instead kept her eyes fixed upon this suddenly furious soldier. And then she understood that his anger had nothing to do with the boots, nothing at all. It had nothing to do with anything he had seen. It was what he had heard. Was hearing. Abruptly he jumped up onto the hood of the truck and reached with both hands for the Volks- empfanger radio on the cab. She had been so focused on his questions about her brother and Manfred's pistol and where they were going that she hadn't been listening to the broadcast. She had been aware that some particularly somber music had been playing, nothing more. Now she realized that the music had been replaced by an announcer, and in tones even more solemn than whatever song had been on the radio he was describing an air raid on Dresden. For a brief moment she felt only relief: This wasn't about the paratrooper in their wagon. It was only about an air raid. And air raids were, unfortunately, common these days. But then she understood this was a raid of a very different sort, a very different magnitude. Apparently Dresden was gone, all but burned off the map in the night, the once lovely city bombed in mere hours into ruins. The British, the announcer was saying, may have used a new, more deadly sort of explosive: The firestorm that engulfed the city seemed to have melted even the stone buildings that were two and three hundred years old, and there were reports that the Elbe itself was ablaze. He said the casualties were well into the tens--perhaps even hundreds--of thousands, and this attack represented an escalation in the RAF's medieval brutality: After all, Dresden was known for porcelain, not munitions. It was almost completely undefended. Even the Art Academy and the Belvedere, with all of their paintings and pottery and sculpture, had been bombed, an indication that the western Allies were as shameless and savage as the Russians. Still, he vowed that the fuhrer's new wonder rockets would exact revenge on the United Kingdom from London to Glasgow, and this sort of vicious- ness would only stiffen the German resistance. It would never, he insisted, encourage capitulation. Then, after a drumroll, the grave music resumed.

  The SS soldier was still holding the radio before his face, and Anna wondered if he might raise it aloft and hurl it from the roof of the truck like a boulder. But he didn't. He had merely been trying to hear every detail the announcer was offering. Now that no more news was forthcoming, he put the Volksempfanger down on the cab and jumped to the ground from his perch atop the vehicle. "Wonder rockets. That's horseshit," he said, a little calmer now, his rage having been subsumed by disgust.

  His partner murmured a pair of female names to him, and Anna presumed the fellow was referring to the soldier's two sisters--the ones who were home somewhere painting plates. She watched him place his hands on the man's shoulders, squeezing them firmly and saying something more that she couldn't hear. But she understood: Those poor girls lived in Dresden. That's where the family was from. The two men were both envisioning those sisters in the firestorm.

  Then the soldier with the eyeglasses returned to them, but only to take Balga away. He was going to lead the stallion to the wrought- iron fence with the other horses at the edge of the cemetery. Briefly the animal looked at Anna, those big, dark eyes uncomprehending and curious. A little wary. He snorted once at the stranger, and it was clear that he was being led away under duress. But it looked to Anna as if he was going to be stubborn only, not vicious. She saw Theo already was walking Waldau to the second wagon.

  "Don't bring him too close to those other animals," Anna called out to the soldier, just in case, and Balga's ears twitched at the sound of her voice.

  "He might kick them?" he asked.

  "Or you."

  "And you said he was your horse?" the soldier asked.

  She nodded.

  "Come then," the soldier said. "Say good-bye to him. And then you had better get on your way." Quickly she went to the animal. For a moment she ran her hand along his mane and heavy winter coat, pressing and warming her palm against him. Then she brought her fingers to her lips, inhaling one last time his scent, and pressed them against his cheek. When she pulled them away he brought his nose almost to hers, and exhaled from those great, gaping nostrils a puff of steam that smelled
perfectly sweet and struck her as the gust from a fairy-tale dragon. He didn't take his eyes off her, and she decided that what she had initially supposed was wariness in her animal's intense countenance was actually more akin to despair.

  when the ss checkpoint was well behind them, Sonje grew animated: She unleashed a frenzied, fist-pounding assault on the sacks of feed underneath which Callum was hiding. Mutti realized that the girl's sudden, violent anger at the paratrooper was unreasonable: It wasn't he, after all, who had bombed Dresden. He wasn't a pilot. He'd never even fired a bullet at a German before surrendering. Besides, it was growing increasingly evident to Mutti that her people had asked for this. She, with her blind eye, had asked for this. Hitler, that man whom she had once viewed as the fuhrer-- as her fuhrer--had tried to bomb most of Europe into submission. He and that pompous fop Goring. She recalled Manfred's story of that train full of Jews, and she shuddered. What else had they done? What else?