The True Story of Hansel and Gretel Page 19

  “We’re too old for that sort of work, brother. And then?”

  “We went to the rail line. There was a boxcar they wanted to use for wounded Germans. The Germans were laid around fires to keep them warm, waiting for the train, but first we had to free the boxcar.”

  “From ice?”

  “No. From people.”

  Magda frowned and rocked slowly. Hansel heard the words as if he were dreaming them, and Gretel was nearly asleep.

  “Magda?” Gretel spoke suddenly, and the priest jumped at her voice.

  “Yes, child?”

  “Will I dream my name?”

  “What do you mean, Gretel?”

  “I can’t remember it, Magda. But when I dream, I’m that girl again. The one before the fat little girl in the picture.”

  “What does she mean?” Father Piotr whispered.

  “You will remember your name when God wills, Gretel.”

  “But I want him to will it now.” Gretel fell asleep and didn’t hear Magda’s answer.

  “He is keeping you safe, child. Go to sleep.”

  They sat in silence for a time, and then Magda’s brother began again.

  “We were given axes and crowbars to force the doors open because of the ice. Inside there were people. Standing. Lying. Stepped on. Crushed against the walls. We had to use the axes to chop them out of the boxcar. They were frozen solid. Stuck together.”

  “Who were they?”

  The priest nodded his head toward the children. Magda silently mouthed the word, Jews, and he nodded again and went on with the telling.

  “Finally, there were only two left stuck to the walls. Two little ones. They made me chop them out. The ground was too frozen to bury them. And we couldn’t have found enough dry wood to burn them. We threw them in a ditch and covered them with snow and rocks. Then we cleaned the boxcar as best we could and loaded the wounded soldiers. We heard the train coming as we got back on the truck.”

  Magda sat in silence and rocked gently. Her brother put his head down on the table again and for a while they sat. Then he spoke again, and he didn’t lift his head so she couldn’t see his face.

  “There’s more. I’ve hurt the girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “Nelka. I couldn’t stay away from her grandmother. She became pregnant, and I hoped people would think she’d gone to the city and gotten pregnant there.”

  “Villages are like families, brother. You can’t fool them for long.”

  “I pretended it was nothing to do with me. She never married, and then she died. And my daughter died too. After her death, Nelka came to me. She told me that she knew everything. Her mother was barely in the ground. She just wanted to love me—to know me—to have me as family. I drove her off with platitudes. I lied and said that we weren’t related. I’ll never be able to speak of it to her. She thinks I have no feeling for her.”

  Magda stood and went behind him. She put her arms around his shoulders and pressed close to him. The magnificent golden head, now white-haired and aged, pressed back against her.

  “Come and sit with me sometimes, brother. Our differences are not so large anymore. I don’t curse your church much now, and you don’t tell me how wicked I am.”

  He sat and sipped the tea, and Hansel thought of what the priest had said. He could picture the bodies frozen together. It was like in the ghetto, when the bodies piled up in the street froze and had to be torn apart to be carried away. Some of the tougher boys who lived alone on the streets had made walls of the bodies and thrown snowballs at each other from behind them.

  “Come and sit with me, Piotr. The winter is waning. Then springtime.”

  He nodded, and Magda stood behind him for a long time, holding him and sighing deeply. Winter was going, but the sun was still covered by dense clouds and the hut was dim. She began to croon and hum, and the fire fell to coals in the stove.

  “Come now, my little boy,” Magda said to Hansel early one morning. She took his hand and led him through the giant trees. They walked for a long while beside the creek until it broadened and became a river, and still Magda walked, stopping only to pant for breath occasionally.

  “Gretel will miss us, Magda. She won’t know where we are.”

  “Gretel mustn’t know about this. Telek and Nelka know, but no one else can know.”

  He nodded and took her hand. They walked on, both of them beginning to feel the cold all the way to their bones. They walked until Magda stopped and turned him to face her.

  “Listen to me, Hansel. We followed the creek to the river. You know how to do that?”

  “I can get to the river.”

  “Good. Then we turned directly into the sun and walked until we came to this rock. Now we turn south and walk until we come to what you must never tell anyone about.” Magda stared into the boy’s face. He must understand how serious it was, and he was so young. If only the girl hadn’t lost her mind.

  “You will never speak of this? Not to anyone for any reason. Not to Gretel.”

  “I won’t tell, Magda. Not anybody.”

  “Good boy.” She turned and moved south for about a hundred feet. Then she stopped and pointed. There was a small grove of saplings in front of them.

  “I made this years and years ago, boy. When the villagers were angry with me and threatened to get me and kill me. When they were sure that I was a witch.”

  Hansel nodded. There were many reasons to kill people.

  “So I made this.” She knelt in the snow and began to brush it away.

  “Magda! It’s boards. What is it?”

  “I never used it. The pigs stayed here when the Russians stole our food. Go down.”

  He dropped into the pit. It was just big enough for five or six people, and in the corner were rocks with sacks on them. He opened a sack and saw frozen potatoes and turnips. The sack next to it had bread, flat and hard. Two buckets sat on the dirt floor.

  “One bucket to piss and shit in, one bucket to hold snow and let it melt so you have water to drink if you have to stay in the pit for very long. You can’t eat snow. You have to melt it.”

  Hansel looked quickly at her face above him and then lowered his eyes. He shivered.

  “Hansel, can you bring Gretel here and stay inside and be very quiet if you have to?”

  “I can find it, Magda.”

  “And can you stay in this hole to be safe? Maybe for weeks?”

  “You’d be here. Not just me and Gretel.”

  “But if you didn’t have me. Can you do it?”

  Hansel wanted to cry, but his chest was too tight for it to heave. “I can do it,” he whispered.

  Magda stared down at the boy. “All right. Now come out.”

  He climbed out and the two of them pulled the boards back into place.

  “Look,” she said.

  Hidden between the thin trunks of three saplings that grew close was a small piece of pipe. It rose barely three inches above the snow.

  “For air. It’s dark inside, and it won’t smell good when it thaws, but there is food and it’s as safe as anything in Poland now.”

  Hansel nodded. He helped push snow over the boards. His face was very white and his eyes almost as dark as Magda’s. It was smaller than the grease pit outside the ghetto walls.

  “When, Magda?”

  “Soon, I think.” Magda looked in his eyes. She knew if she shut her eyelids she would feel the darkness coming down on her.

  “I know things. I don’t know why. Don’t forget the way.” She shivered and took his hand.

  They walked back to the river and began to struggle through the snow which was now soaking their legs almost to Magda’s hips.

  Father Piotr arrived at the hut before noon, and only the girl sat on the platform, singing.

  “Hello, Father Piotr.”

  “Hello, child.” He stood and looked at her. She smiled at him the way children used to smile, her mind blocking out the war and all the dark days they were caught in.<
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  He looked at the girl and began to cry. He coughed and blew his nose.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, frowning.

  “I am sad, child. I’ve become a slave, and God is gone. The winter is dark, and I’m tired of being cold.” You fool, he thought. You childish old man.

  Gretel’s face brightened. She jumped off the platform and went to the floor where Magda kept her baskets. Kneeling, she lifted the boards and groped in a basket. Carefully she took out something and put it in a sack. She put the boards back and went to the stove. She lifted the iron top and took out a few red coals with the tongs, placing them in a small bucket. Then she pulled on her coat and opened the door.

  “It’s cold outside.”

  “Come on.” She pulled him by the hand and he followed her.

  They walked between the trees, and the child paused occasionally, looking around. She would shake her head and walk deeper into the woods. “Here,” she said finally.

  They were in a circle of tall trees. The snow was unmarked, and the only sound was the water of the creek smothered by ice. Gretel brushed a circle large enough for them to sit. She rounded the edges of the circle and then turned to him. “Sit down. It’s nice now.”

  He felt such pity that he sat on the snow and watched the child. She was playing some game. He would sit awhile. It might quiet her. Then he could take her back to the hut.

  Opening the sack, Gretel took out eight pieces of candle. All different sizes, most of them only stubs, and began to arrange them. “All in a straight row. None higher than the others. Not in a circle. Far enough apart so the flames don’t touch,” she chanted.

  The child worked hard. It wasn’t easy getting the odd-sized candles level, but she packed snow to hold them until they stood in a ragged line between her and the priest. “Now the shamash.” She drew the last candle from the bag.

  The priest winced at the foreign word. It was a dangerous word from her past, he knew.

  Taking a twig, she lit it on the coals in the bucket and then lit the ninth candle. She used it to light the other eight. “Candles right to left, light them left to right,” she chanted.

  All the candles were lit, and she set the ninth candle beside the others in the snow.

  “And what is this, girl?” He knew what it must be, but he wondered if she remembered.

  “It makes the stars come out at night,” she said, and then she shook her head. “The first star—” she whispered and shook her head again.

  They sat in silence and watched the flames so golden against the whiteness around them.

  “I know,” Gretel said. “It means that God is here. God loves us. And all of it”—she made a sweeping gesture with her arm—“is a miracle.”

  The priest began to cry. His body was chilling, but the tears were warm on his skin.

  “Don’t cry. I made God be here for you, and now we’re free.”

  “I’m not free, child. I’m a sinner. I need to confess, but it would take until summer.” He began anyway. “I never took care of my daughter. I took no responsibility for her—for her mother. I haven’t helped Nelka, and now she has a baby.” He groaned and rocked back and forth in the snow. “I’ve never helped any of them. Oh God, help me. Let me not die so sinful.”

  Gretel remembered now. When the candles were lit it meant that they would live. It was lovely, and she began to sing one of the Christmas carols that Nelka had taught her.

  The voice of the child reached to the tops of the trees and drowned out the mutter of the creek. The priest sat crying before the menorah, listening to a Christmas carol sung by a Jewish child driven into madness.

  It was cold and he ached but suddenly he felt happy. The trees were solid and lifted to the sky where the sun tried to break through the clouds which moved quickly above them.

  “I am happy,” he said to the cold air. And he wished he could do something, some act that would prove his joy, allow it to shine forth to the world and make up for the past.

  Magda and Hansel found them sitting beside the candles guttering in the snow, the old man and the girl, smiling into the bright air of high noon.

  Bones

  “You wife’s gone a long time,” Lydka said to him.

  The Mechanik nodded absentmindedly. It had been a crazy idea. She suddenly wanted to go to the burnt-out farm and see if any of the horses or cattle had wandered back after the fire.

  “We can’t feed a horse,” he’d told her.

  “But the cows. They ran during the fire, but cows always come back. If one came back, I could drive it here. It’d be a feast.”

  It hadn’t been like her to think about food so much. She always said that thinking about food was weakness. The next morning she was gone.

  “Can’t keep your woman under control?” the Russian joked. “Get a stick, Mechanik. A good beating is what she needs. I bet she finds a cow. I bet she finds three cows.”

  After two days, the Mechanik set out toward the farm. He was stronger now, but he only found the farm because of the standing walls of the stone barn and the chimney of the house. He sat in the woods and watched for an hour. She wasn’t there. He waited until he was sure that no one guarded the place, and then went to the ruins and walked around them. There were no other footprints in the snow. The stone walls of the barn stood blackened with the sky over them.

  He stood in the ruin of the barn and tried to think logically, but his heart was breaking. He tried to be quiet in his sobbing, but the sobs tore out of his body, and finally he cried out with each gasping sob so loudly that the ravens flew over the barn and called back to him in curiosity.

  He waited until noon the next day, and then gave up and walked back to where the Russian and his men waited. With every step he hoped that she would be there, the Russian making fun of her for thinking she could find a cow. He groaned when he saw them step out of hiding. No dark head, smooth and round, streaked with silver. No small hands to take his when the others weren’t looking. No sidelong look and smile to give him heart.

  No one asked anything when he rejoined them. They all knew. Somewhere out there she’d been killed. The Russian made the decision.

  “We have to move. We aren’t safe anymore.”

  So they moved. They walked for days until they were close to another road on the other side of the river. They crossed the river by walking on the patches of ice. Sometimes the ice gave under their boots in the middle, but they reached the other side.

  The Mechanik almost stayed behind, but the Russian persuaded him gently. “Go with us. If she’s alive, you’ll find her someday. After it’s over.”

  “When it’s over,” the Mechanik said. He tried to have hope. She would have despised him if he became depressed and lost heart. So he thought of what he would do after the Russian army came. He pictured the map of Poland in his mind as they walked and sectioned it off neatly into parts where he would search for her and the children.

  At night he talked to her in his head as he lay next to the others, trying to get warm, trying to go to sleep. First it was as if she was alive and lying beside him. He would tell her about the day and what they had done. Then he noticed that the talking to her had become like a prayer, so he stopped doing it and lay staring at the cold sky until he fell asleep. You only prayed to dead people. Or God. And he didn’t believe in God and couldn’t accept that she was dead. He was left lying on the frozen earth with the dark sky above and his heart unable to take comfort from anything.

  “At least I don’t believe in God,” he told the Russian one morning.

  “And if you did believe, Mechanik, what then?”

  “Then I’d kill myself. Because if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, he must have no pity. He looks down and sees everything and doesn’t bring the evil to an end. I wouldn’t live if I thought a God could end the pain and didn’t.”

  “And what good would your death do?”

  “It would teach God a lesson.” The Mechanik walked on and didn’t care that the
Russian laughed. He knew it was true, and he was glad that he didn’t believe. It saved his life every day.

  “We keep going east,” the Russian said. “The Soviet army must be just ahead of us. We’ll thread our way through the Germans, link with my people, and fight our way to Germany. You’ll make a good Soviet, Mechanik. We don’t give a damn about religion, and you don’t believe in God anyway. We’ll make a Communist of you.”

  When the Russian paused for breath, they heard the voices.

  “Fix the damn thing! What use are you? This goddamn country.”

  The words were German. They dove into the woods. Using the trees for cover, they moved parallel to the road until they saw the truck. Two German soldiers had the hood up. Another soldier stood guard beside the truck holding a rifle, watching the woods. A man in civilian clothes paced on the road beside the truck. He was the one talking so loudly.

  “I’ll take the guard.” The Mechanik pressed his rifle against the tree trunk to steady it.

  “I’ll get the one whose butt is hanging out of the engine. You—” The Russian pointed to two others. “Take the other guy near the hood, and you take the little jerk in the suit.”

  “No.” The Mechanik whispered. “The man in the suit doesn’t show a gun. Shoot the other three, and then we take the one in the suit and get information.”

  “Don’t get killed trying to take the bastard,” the Russian warned. “When I count three.”

  The guns fired and the crows flew up in a panic of fluttering wings and loud cries. Two of the soldiers dropped and lay still. The man who had been bending into the engine was hit in his buttocks and screamed. The Russian fired another bullet, but he still moaned.

  The man in the suit broke into a run and kept slipping on the ice and giving little shrieks as he fought for balance.

  The Russian was roaring with laughter. “Catch the bastard.”

  The Mechanik went to the moaning soldier and shot him in the head. The road was quiet except for the crows and the cries of the man in city shoes who ran up the road. They brought him back, searched him, and stood him before the Russian. The German’s teeth chattered so hard the Mechanik wondered if he would crack them.