Skeletons at the Feast (22 page)

"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.

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?"

"Thank you," she said. "I know it must seem ridiculous."

"The ground will be softer inside the barn," he said to Anna. "We'll bury them there. As your mother suggested, we'll put their IDs on the marker," he added, his tone softening slightly, his face losing its severe cast. "You're . . ."

"Yes?"

He clasped his hands behind his back as if, she thought, he were a boy pretending to be a man. Or, maybe, because otherwise he would have reached out to touch her when he spoke. "It is ridiculous. But you and your mother are kind to want to do this. And kindness is in short supply these days."

Then he walked into the barn, muttering something to Callum, and she heard only the very tail end. It didn't make sense to her, at least not completely. It was something about her and her family as Germans. As those people. As something other than him, as if he weren't a German himself--or, possibly, as if he no longer wanted to define himself as one. She kept thinking about this as she wrestled the horses into their harnesses, wondering what he had meant. She made a mental note to ask him about it at some point, perhaps when they had once again put some distance between themselves and the Russians.

THE sKY WAs As RED As HOT cOALs, AN UNDULATING river of crimson, and Cecile was confused. For a brief moment she thought it was the end of the day and the sun merely was setting. But as she staggered half-awake through the front doors of the train station she realized it was still dark to the west and it was the eastern sky that was alight. Yet clearly it wasn't morning, either. And, besides, when had she seen a sky like this at daybreak?

"That must be Berent. The whole village must be on fire," Jeanne was murmuring, and she sounded more awed than frightened. Berent was no more than eight kilometers behind them. Around Jeanne the female prisoners were starting to form into lines.

Cecile vaguely recalled encouraging her friend to curl against her for warmth when they had gone to sleep a few hours earlier on the cement floor of the train station. When the guard had kicked her awake just now, it had taken her a moment to realize that Jeanne already was gone. Up and about. Apparently they were not going to wait any longer for the train to arrive that--the guards had told them--was going to take them to their new destination. And so the prisoners were being assembled outside in the cold, and once more they would resume their trek west on foot.

"I wonder if there was an ammunition dump in Berent, or an arsenal, maybe," Jeanne was continuing. "So many of the buildings there were stone. Otherwise, I don't think the town would go up like that."

Cecile nodded and took her place in line with the other women in the road before the train station. There were two streetlights and she was surprised they were on. Usually in the night the Germans dimmed everything to protect themselves from air attacks. She saw that one of their male guards, that bastard walrus named Pusch, was speaking to a pair of young German soldiers she'd never seen before who were sitting atop motorcycles. The three of them were using a flashlight to study a map, evidently deciding which roads were safest.

"There was an SS company back there," Jeanne said. "In Berent. I just heard. I wouldn't be surprised if they set the whole town on fire themselves. You know, leave nothing for the Russians? Or maybe they're just going to fight to the death." She spat on the ground and then rubbed her hands vigorously over her arms. "Well, good riddance to them. Good riddance to them all."

"You're feisty tonight," Cecile told her.

"Well . . ."

"You can tell me."

"When you were asleep, Vera found mess kits under one of the benches. Three of them. Soldiers must have forgotten they were there. And when the lights were out, we feasted."

She felt a pang in her stomach, part hunger and part hurt. "And you didn't wake me?"

"You sleep so little. We didn't think you would want to be disturbed."

She realized she was experiencing more than hurt: This was outright betrayal. Jeanne and Vera hadn't wanted to share this unexpected bounty. And after all she had done for Jeanne. For all of them. She was absolutely positive that if it weren't for her, Jeanne would be dead now.

"What was in them?" she asked, unsure why she was tormenting herself this way by inquiring. Did she really need to know? But in the same way one can't resist picking at a scab, she was unable to prevent herself from asking.

Already, however, Jeanne understood her mistake. "Really, not that much," she said sheepishly.

"Not that much?" This was Vera. Incredulous. "We gorged! There were tins of meat and tomatoes and canned milk! There was knackebrot, and the crackers were still crisp--which meant that mostly we broke them into pieces and sucked on them," she said, offering them all an ironic, toothless grin. "There was even hard candy!"

Jeanne was gazing down at the ground, her guilt a dark halo behind the prickly hair on her head. Cecile imagined them silently unwrapping the crackers and opening the tins with one of those small can openers that came with the kits. In her mind she saw them using their fingers like spoons to extract the meat, then licking the lids from the cans to get the last drops of tomatoes and milk. And then she willed those images away. She reminded herself that all she had left was her attitude. Her mind. They could take everything else from her: In the end, they might even take her life. But they couldn't take away what she thought. They couldn't take away hope. Perhaps Jeanne and Vera simply needed that food more than she did. Fine. Perhaps the two of them wouldn't get through this without that unexpected discovery. Well, that was fine, too. She would.

She reached over to Jeanne with her hand and tenderly lifted her face by her chin. "It's okay," she whispered. "I want you this spirited. I need you this spirited. It's how we'll survive."

Her friend looked into her eyes and Cecile wasn't sure how she was going to respond. What she was going to say. Then, like the wind that precedes a thunderstorm, the air between them grew charged and Jeanne was shaking her head and her bony shoulders and starting to sob. She gave in to long, eaglelike ululations of despair--loud, heaving wails of remorse that merged with self-recrimination and self-loathing. Cecile and Vera together tried to embrace her, Cecile cooing softly into her ear that it was all right, to let go of the guilt, but Jeanne continued to cry, her eyes shut tight like a child's, as the tears streamed down the wrinkles in her gaunt, emaciated face. "No, I am horrible," she howled suddenly. "I am as bad as they are!"

She was shrieking in French, but it didn't matter. Pusch had heard her--everyone at the train station had heard her, the prisoners were glancing at them from their places in line--and he was marching over to them now. The last thing he was going to endure in the middle of the night was a scene from a hysterical Jew. One of the female guards was joining him, an unattractive woman with a broad forehead and elflike eyes. The two young soldiers on their motorcycles looked at them idly, not nearly as interested at the moment as the other prisoners or the guards, and then one of them started to fold up the map.

"Shhhh," Cecile was whispering, "you must settle down. It's all right." But already it was too late. She felt Pusch's hands on her shoulders; he was pulling her away from Jeanne. The female guard--was her name Sigi?--was trying to wrench Vera away. But Vera was holding on tightly to Jeanne, her dirty, gnarled fingers grasping the front of poor Jeanne's striped prison shirt and ragged jacket, begging Jeanne so desperately to calm down that she, too, was sounding half-crazed. Suddenly Pusch took his rifle off his shoulder and slammed the butt into Vera's back, holding the gun as if it were a battering ram. Vera let go of Jeanne's clothing and collapsed onto the road, one hand reaching instinctively back for her kidney.

"And you," he hissed at Jeanne, his eyes half-closed in anger. "And you," he repeated. Sigi pushed Jeanne to the ground so she was on her hands and knees like a cow, still shaking her head and bawling. Pusch turned his rifle around in his arms and aimed it at the back of her head. So this, Cecile thought, is how it will end for my Jeanne--and, she realized, she really did view Jeanne as hers, a possession and a pet and a totem of sorts, a good-luck charm that she had to keep alive to assure herself that she, too, was still breathing--shot on a road outside a train station in the middle of the night. Now she was sniveling as well, but her cries were almost silent, certainly not loud enough to be heard over Jeanne's frenzied wailing or Vera's elongated moans.

And yet when Pusch pulled the trigger and the blast was still reverberating in her ears, Cecile realized that he hadn't shot Jeanne. He'd killed Vera. He had meant to execute her friend, but in the second that he was aiming his rifle down at the back of Jeanne's skull, Vera had rolled into Jeanne and taken the bullet instead. In, it appeared, her neck. Now she was flat on her back, still alive but clearly dying fast, choking on the blood that was seeming to run from spigots in her mouth and the gaping hole by her larynx. Cecile wondered: Had Vera rolled into Jeanne on purpose? Or had she been spasming from the blow to her kidney and simply had the misfortune of twisting her body in that direction? The wrong direction?

To their right she heard the two soldiers starting up their motorcycles. One seemed to be shaking his head in annoyance, exasperated either by the wailing Jew or by the way Pusch had shot one of the prisoners. She couldn't decide. And then they sped off, their motorcycles leaving behind trails of blue smoke in the frigid night air.

"You," Sigi was saying, "you Jew pig," and Cecile choked back her tears and stood at attention because she realized that Sigi was speaking to her. "Get that body out of here. I don't want to soil my gloves with Jew blood."

She averted her eyes and bowed her head, a slight, obedient nod. Jeanne was only whimpering now; her cries had grown soft.

Pusch murmured something to Sigi that she couldn't quite hear and then he was shouting to the women behind them, commanding them to get back in line, telling them there was nothing that interesting to see. They were going to set off once again within minutes. He and Sigi glanced over at the spot where the two regular soldiers on motorcycles had been; they seemed surprised the two men were gone.

"Pigs, too," Pusch mumbled, spitting on the road and narrowly missing Vera.

"Do you know which roads are still open?" Sigi asked him. There was just a trace of nervousness in her voice. "Did they tell you?"

"They did," Pusch said. "The commandant and I know which way to go. We'll be fine." Then he looked down at Vera, whose desperate, labored breathing was starting to slow. "At least we'll be fine if we hurry up and get out of here. You heard us," he barked at Cecile. "Get this pig shit off the road!"

Instantly she bent over Vera, whispering into her ear--lying into her ear--that she would be fine, and lifting her shoulders off the ground and cradling the back of her injured neck in her hands. The bullet, she realized, must have passed right through, because she felt her palm growing moist with the woman's blood. She wasn't sure how to move her without causing her yet more pain, but she didn't have to worry long. Vera's eyes rolled up toward her forehead, there was one last convulsion somewhere deep inside her chest, and then she was gone. Jeanne crawled over to them, still sniffing back tears, and said, "I can help."

Cecile wasn't sure Jeanne really could, at least all that much, but she nodded. They each took one of Vera's arms at the shoulder and together were able to drag her off into the snow on the side of the road.

"We can't bury her," Cecile said, kneeling beside the body. "I wish we could. But we can't."

Jeanne looked at her, wide-eyed, and Cecile was afraid that Jeanne, despite her despair, was going to snap at her for saying something so obvious and dull. But mostly she had just been talking to herself. She did wish they could bury Vera. But they hadn't the time, the ground was rock solid, and even if Pusch had given them shovels she doubted they had the strength left to dig.

She was wrong about Jeanne, however; the woman's eyes, she understood, had grown wide because she was about to be sick. Her friend turned away from Vera's body and, suddenly, she was spewing into the grimy snow the meat and tomatoes and the knackebrot she had consumed, the vomit tinged with white from the canned milk. When she was done, when all that was left was a long tendril of spit linking her lips to the icy ground, she murmured, "I had forgotten what it was like to be full. I had completely forgotten."

Behind them Pusch was screaming, "Move, move!" And so Cecile bent over and pulled down Vera's eyelids and kissed the woman good-bye on her sore-ridden scalp. Then she and Jeanne stood, and with the little energy they could muster they rejoined the other prisoners as they trudged their way west in the night.