Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian Read Free Book Online Page A

expect from him, to guarded innuendos about Adolf Hitler and then (even more problematic, in some ways) to questions about the work camps.
    "You're such a nice girl, Anna, and so sharp," he said, as the two of them stood together beside a particularly wiry tree, resting for a moment midmorning. There was a military policeman who must have been somebody's grandfather standing guard a hundred meters away, but he was so old he probably wouldn't have heard a word they were saying if they had been standing directly beside him. "And your family is much more hospitable than necessary-- given the circumstances and all." The POWs were sleeping in the bunkhouse that the farmhands had used before they had either run off or been commandeered by the Reich for work in the mines and the munitions factories.
    "Thank you," she said simply. She was unsure where this conversation was going, but that opening, that apparent surprise that she was such a nice girl, had her slightly wary. She'd been laughing with Callum for days, and the thought crossed her mind that perhaps she had misjudged him. Grown too comfortable--too friendly--with him. With all the POWs.
    "So, I was wondering," he continued, his voice nonchalant. "What do you think your Hitler is doing with the Jews?"
    "My Hitler? You make him sound like one of my horses," she said, aware that she was not answering his question.
    "I didn't mean that. I meant . . ."
    "What did you mean?"
    "I had a mate in Scotland who was Jewish, a chum I played soccer with. We were friends, our parents were friends. He had family somewhere in Germany. And they just disappeared. There was talk of them trying to come to Edinburgh, but they couldn't get out. Eventually, the letters just dried up. Stopped coming. Then, at the stalag this summer, I met two chaps from Wales who had been in intelligence. And they said--"
    She cut him off: "At school, they told me not to ask when I inquired. They told me I didn't know what I was talking about."
    "But you asked?"
    Aware that she couldn't help but sound oversensitive, she answered, "Maybe it would surprise you, but I do have a brain behind my eyes. Yes, I asked."
    "It wouldn't surprise me a bit," he said, smiling.
    "I asked them where the Jews were going," she continued. "Before the war, my parents had friends in Danzig who were Jewish. That's where my father went to university: Danzig. He grew up on a farm in another part of Prussia, but for a time he considered becoming a lawyer. But he's a very scientific man. And he likes working the earth too much. Anyway, he has never understood the Nazis' obsession with Jews. Never. My mother? It's different for her: She's lived her whole life here. She, too, thinks it's ridiculous, but she has always been a little oblivious of anything that doesn't involve the farm or this corner of the country."
    "They're both party members, right?"
    She nodded. "My father wouldn't have the contracts he has if he weren't a member of the party. Even I know that."
    "Tell me, then: These friends. Your parents' Jewish friends. Where are they now?"
    "One, I know, was my father's banker. I don't know his name, but he took very good care of Father and Mutti on their honeymoon. The inflation was so horrible that suddenly they couldn't pay their bills and Father's stocks were worth nothing. Somehow, the banker solved everything for them and they had a perfectly lovely holiday after that."
    "What do you think became of him?"
    "He and Father lost touch. But I can tell you this: My father wrote letters on his family's behalf to different people. I don't know who or what the letters were supposed to accomplish. But he wrote letters for other friends, too. And for a few weeks in the summer of 1940, my parents had some Jewish friends who lived with us: a younger couple and their baby. A little baby girl. She was adorable. They had lost their apartment in Danzig. I was thirteen and I always wanted to babysit, but the mother wouldn't let the child out of her