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

sight." She could have gone on, but it was a memory she tried not to think about. There had been some talk about hiding the family--and hiding was indeed the word her parents had used--but so many people in the village had been aware of the Emmerichs' visitors from Danzig that the couple had refused her mother and father's offer of sanctuary and simply disappeared into the fog one August morning.
    "I'm badgering you," he said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I have a habit of talking too much. You might have noticed."
    "You're inquisitive," she said, unable to mask the small tremor she heard in her voice. The truth was, she didn't want to be having this conversation. She knew she wouldn't dare discuss these sorts of things on one of the streets in the village or in a city. One never knew who might be listening or how they might be connected to the party. And, suddenly, she felt an odd spike of defensiveness. "But you tell me: How am I supposed to know where everyone is in the midst of a war?"
    "Well," he said evenly. "You can keep track of the Jews because of the stars on their clothes. You've seen them."
    "Yes, of course I have. I've seen them in Danzig and I've seen them in Berlin."
    "Lately?"
    "I haven't been to Berlin lately. Or Danzig."
    He used a handkerchief to wipe the perspiration away from his temples. The hair there was a bay that reminded her of Balga, her favorite horse. "The folks who will be coming to build the antitank trench," he began, and she could tell that he was choosing his words with great care. "You know, actually digging where those navy blokes are leaving the plow marks? They're the lucky ones."
    "They'll be more prisoners like you."
    "Maybe. But I think they're going to come instead from those work camps. Not the prison camps. It will take hundreds of people just to dig through your farm. And, besides, it's one thing to put a group of us soldiers to work harvesting apples and corn and sugar beets. Trust me, this is luxurious compared to life in the stalag, and we are all deeply appreciative of your family's kindness. But it's quite another to make us dig antitank trenches. The Red Cross and the folks who penned the Geneva convention wouldn't exactly approve."
    "So, the workers will be the criminals from the camps? Communists and Gypsies. Why should that trouble me?"
    "And Jews. That's my point, Anna. They're in those camps for no other reason than because they're Jewish."
    "What?"
    "The Jews have been sent to the camps."
    "No," she said. "No. That's not true."
    "I'm sorry, Anna. But it is."
    "The Jews have just been resettled," she continued, repeating what she had been told at school and at her meetings with other teen girls in the Bund Deutscher Madel whenever she had asked the question, but until that moment had never said aloud herself. Somehow, verbalizing the idea made it seem ludicrous. She certainly didn't add what so many of her teachers or BDM leaders had added over the years: They have to be resettled because they are not Aryan. They are inferior in every imaginable way, they are worse than the Russians and the Poles. Most have nothing that resembles an Aryan conscience, and they are interested in nothing but their money and mezuzahs and diamonds. Many are evil; all are conniving.
    "And doesn't even resettlement seem, I don't know, a trifle uncivilized--even if it really is what's occurring?" he went on. "Think of that little family that was with you when you were thirteen. Why do you think there was talk of hiding them? I mean, suppose my government in England just decided to 'resettle' the Catholics--to take away their homes, their animals, their possessions, and then just send them away?"
    Another prisoner, the balding mason named Wally, passed by with one of the wicker baskets they used for the apples and gave Callum a look that Anna recognized instantly as the universal sign to shut up. His head was cocked slightly and his eyes were wide. Callum ignored him and continued, "Those