Skeletons at the Feast (13 page)

Only then did Uri stand from his firing position in the tower and work his way down the stone steps to the family. He figured they should get that child dressed and take advantage of the fact they now had a jeep, and drive as far west as they could.

in his crisp, freshly tailored uniform as a Wehrmacht private, Helmut accompanied his father east to Uncle Karl's estate. The drive usually took less than an hour, but today they had to battle against the crush of evacuees who were clogging the roads, and the trip took most of the morning. They weren't completely sure what they would find when they arrived at the home of Mutti's garrulous, indefatigably good-natured older brother, because the day before the phone service that far east had been cut. But when Mutti had called Karl two days earlier, the last time the siblings had spoken, shells had been falling sporadically in the corners of his property and the outbuilding where he stored the tractors in the winter had been damaged. Nonetheless, Karl had been adamant about staying.

As far back as Christmas Day he had told the Emmerichs, "I will greet the Russian commander as one civilized man to another. Maybe their soldiers are peasants, but I've heard their leaders are well educated. Some grew up before the revolution with the sort of reasonable privilege one expects from officers. On occasion, you know, class means more than country. Really, that's often the case. And so I wouldn't be surprised if we have more in common than any of us realizes. Of course, that presumes it ever comes to that and they actually reach this part of the Vistula. But who's to say they will? War is all about tides, and the tide should be with us again soon."

Helmut knew that his father thought Uncle Karl's optimism was completely unwarranted--that the man was dangerously sanguine about the prospects for his house and his farm and his family. His wife had succumbed to cancer two years earlier and his children were grown: His younger son had died in Stalingrad (and still, still, Karl harbored the delusion that the Russians and Germans would get along if they came from a certain class) and his older son was a staff officer with a Volksgrenadier division in the west. But his older son's wife lived with him now. Karl's one daughter did, too, returning home after her husband was captured in France, and bringing with her Karl's first grandson, a robust toddler with blond spit curls who was built like a beer keg. Neither Helmut nor his father liked the idea of two young women being left to the mercy of the Russians, but throughout the whole month of January Karl had rebuffed his brother-in-law's entreaties to join the Emmerichs if they went west.

When Helmut and his father reached the gates of the estate, the shelling had momentarily subsided. But there were great potholes in the driveway and the splinters from one of Karl's favorite oaks-- as well as pieces of trunk the size of railroad ties--littered the road to the manor house. They finally gave up and parked in the snow a hundred meters from the front entrance.

Karl's daughter, Jutta, greeted them, her son swaying uncertainly beside her, despite the fleshy Doric columns that passed for his legs. Her lips were the pink of cooked fish, and thin as paper. But her eyes were wide and darting around her--out into the yard, up into the sky--and though she was standing still there was a frenzied quality about her that reminded Helmut of the way boars twitched when they were cornered at the end of a long hunt. Jutta was a decade older than Helmut, and once--before she had become a mother, before her husband had been captured, before the Russians had retaken most of Poland--he had thought she was among the most glamorous women he had ever seen outside of Danzig or Berlin. No longer.

She brought them into the den, where Karl was having a glass of schnapps and staring out the mullioned windows toward the east. It was a flat white vista, the snow having long smothered even the foot-high remnants of the corn, with the edge of a silvery birch forest in the distance. Karl was wearing a paisley dressing gown made of silk, his bulbous cheeks were covered with white stubble, and Helmut found himself growing embarrassed for the man. Helmut had never viewed his uncle as especially slothful (though he did feel that Uncle Karl indeed lacked Rolf Emmerich's tireless discipline), but he had never before seen the man in a dressing gown at lunchtime. He had never before seen him drinking at lunchtime. Then he grew more than embarrassed: He grew angry. The idea that he and his father were in their uniforms--that they had risked their lives to come here, that they were using precious hours of leave when they should have been packing their own estate-- started to rankle him.

The man pulled the drapes, instantly darkening the room. All of the furniture--the desk, the sofa, the cherry bookshelves that climbed along two of the walls from the floor to the ceiling--was cumbersome and heavy. He offered them both a drink, cavalierly waving the crystal decanter in their direction. Helmut listened as his father politely declined, then watched as Rolf sat down on the arm of the sofa, hooking his thumbs inside his wide black officer's belt. Helmut took this as an indication that he could sit, too. His cousin and her son watched from the doorway, standing. Then the child clicked the heels of his feet together, imitating other soldiers he had seen. Quickly Helmut stood and clicked his heels together in response, and the chubby boy grinned. For a moment he wondered how he could have missed how beautiful this tiny boy's smile was. Then he recognized it: It was the lively smile he remembered from his cousin before her life had started to come apart.

"I'm not going, Rolf," his uncle was saying. "I grew up here and I plan to die here--though not, I assure you, anytime soon. But I stayed back in thirty-nine when our troops crossed the border and everyone said the Poles were going to kill us. You did, too. And it was all a great disturbance, great chaos. And for what? The Poles were fine--"

"The Poles are not the Russians. And things were different in 1939."

Karl poured yet more schnapps into his glass, and finally put the decanter down on the blotter on a corner of his desk. Helmut saw there were three stacked cardboard boxes beside it, and for a moment thought that while his uncle was insisting he was going to stay, he was nonetheless gathering up those items he would take with him in the event he did decide to evacuate. Then, however, he saw the note his uncle had scribbled on the top of the highest of the cartons: Karl was instructing one of the servants who remained to burn it. To burn them all. To, it seems, burn these three boxes along with the other papers that already had been gathered and left in the shed.

"Yes," his uncle said, "things were different. We were younger. But otherwise, war is war and--"

"Things happened in Russia. You know that. For them, this is revenge. Retribution."

"Oh, please, don't talk to me about revenge and retribution. My son died in Stalingrad. If anyone should feel there are scores to be settled, it's me. It's us. It's the Germans, who at the moment are getting hammered on all sides."

"You've talked to Felix," Rolf said, referring to his own brother who had served in Russia before being transferred to the western front. "And I know you've talked to my son. I know what Werner has told you."

"So? This was war. War is never pretty."

"This was beyond war."

"SS brutes and thugs," he said, shaking his head dismissively. "Neither of my boys--and neither of yours--was responsible. My sons were soldiers, nothing more. No axes to grind. Same with Werner, and young Helmut here. I'm a farmer, Rolf, and so are you--despite that fancy uniform you've put on. The fact is, we grow food, and whether you're a National Socialist or a Bolshevik, you have to eat."

"The Russians are not going to distinguish between the SS and the rest of us. We're all just Germans to them. Don't forget Nemmersdorf."

Karl seemed to contemplate this for a moment, and then motioned for his daughter and grandson to leave the doorway where they'd been listening, waving his hand without the glass as if he were brushing a fly away from his nose. Almost instantly Jutta retreated, taking her son by his fingertips. Briefly the boy resisted her, but Helmut smiled, again clicked the heels of his boots, and the child went, too.

"I am sure ghastly things happened there," he said finally. "Ghastly. But I am also sure that Nemmersdorf was an aberration, and the Russian officers have since reined their men in. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if our illustrious Ministry of Propaganda hasn't exaggerated things a bit. They do have a tendency to scream when a whisper would suffice."

"We did worse."

"Not my son. And not your brother. My son told me a great deal before he died, and so I understand it was vicious. But, more times than not, we were simply defending--"

"And as for the work camps--"

"You believe those stories? My God, Rolf, we're a civilized people!"

His father rose from the arm of the sofa. "Mutti would like you to come with us," he said, his voice verging on stern. "And even if you refuse, I must insist that we take your grandson and the girls."

"You are referring to my daughter and my daughter-in-law. I believe the role of father trumps uncle. You are in no position to insist upon anything, Rolf. I'm sorry."

"You're being ridiculous."

"And you're panicking. When it's time to leave, the authorities will tell us."

"No, they won't. That would mean admitting defeat. The Russians will be at your door before anyone official will tell you to go."

"Fine. Then I will greet Commander Ivan with"--and here he pointed at the decanter of schnapps on the desk--"Commander Berentzen, and we'll get along famously. Let's face it: These days, you and I--our families, our world--are nothing more than skeletons at the feast anyway."

Helmut didn't think his uncle was drunk, but he recalled how the man was known for an almost superhuman ability to hold his liquor. He wondered now if his uncle had been drinking all morning.

"Karl--"

"No. There is nothing more to discuss."

When they left, Jutta and the boy were there in the front hallway, and this time Helmut saw real fear in the poor woman's eyes.

anna and her father stared for a long moment at the silver and crystal and china they had left in the snow in the hunting park, and neither said a word. Both, however, were thinking the same thing: The platters and salvers looked like headstones, and the park now resembled a graveyard. But the ground was rock solid, and they hadn't the time to bury anything properly. They had tried, but it was just impossible.

Now her father put his gloved hand upon her shoulder and murmured, "Don't tell Mutti." He was sweating from his exertions, despite the cold, despite the way their breath rose like steam in the still air. "We'll tell her it's safely hidden."

She nodded. "She thinks we're coming back," Anna said simply.

"And we might, sweetheart. We might."

"But you don't really believe that."

He paused, and in the silence the rumble of the distant artillery seemed to grow closer. Then: "No. But I've been wrong before in my life. And I will be again."

"We're still leaving tomorrow?"

"That's the plan," he said, and then he changed the subject. "We got a long letter from Werner this morning. I haven't read it yet, but Mutti says he sounded good--better, even, than one might expect."

"How . . ."

"Yes?"

"How will he find us if we're not here?"

"Mutti's writing him. We'll find each other."

His answer wasn't at all satisfying, but Anna didn't want to burden him further by pressing the issue. He was, she realized, about to leave his life's work. This farm, the estate. He had grown up on a farm, but for a time had left that world behind when he had contemplated becoming a lawyer. But he had missed it too much, and as a young man had married a country girl and thus wound up a farmer after all. An excellent farmer, it would turn out, as well as an exceptional businessman. He had been a quick study and a hard worker. He had also been profoundly intuitive, always, and now, as if he sensed what she was thinking, he went on, "We'll wire Werner from Stettin. It'll be fine."

"We're going that far?"

"We might have to."

Mutti had a cousin in Stettin. Once they had visited the family, detouring there after an excursion to Berlin, but that had been years ago. In the first months of the war. She had been twelve, and this cousin was older than Mutti and her children had already left home. Anna's principal memories of the visit were the hours she spent entertaining young Theo while the grownups reminisced for hours in a light and cheerful room that looked out upon a lake that fed into the Baltic.