The True Story of Hansel and Gretel Read online

  “Nelka, you’ll have another one following you. Telek will have to drown him like a kitten.”

  The water was changed again, and Gretel was washed as thoroughly as Hansel until finally all three of them were sitting in smoky blankets on the sleeping platform.

  “We’ll heat your clothes in a pan and drive out the rest of the lice.”

  Nelka patted Magda on the head like she was a child, and Gretel saw that Magda liked it. The three of them sat in a row while their clothes were heated and then they dressed one by one.

  “Now the rest of this pig sty.”

  Telek had been bringing wood and water and carrying steaming buckets until he sweated. He had taken his coat off, and Gretel saw his muscles under the thin shirt. Telek lifted heavy pails of boiling water that had been reheated and had had kerosene and soap mixed into it with the dirt of their bodies and more kerosene added to make it deadly.

  “It isn’t what I’d do if it was warmer, but we have to finish. The sun will go down and freeze us all.” Nelka started to pick up a bucket and Telek laid his hand on her arm.

  “No.”

  He spoke so softly that Gretel barely heard, but Nelka stopped.

  “Then you have to do it all, my hero.”

  Telek picked up the bucket and tossed the boiling water at the walls. It hit with a splash and went in the chinks between the wood.

  “Get them, Nelka!” Hansel screamed. The lice were coming out of the walls and washing down to the floor. “Get the dirty things!”

  Nelka, with skirts pulled up and her boots getting wet, ran into the puddles and dripped the rest of the kerosene onto the lice. They lay dead in pools of water and kerosene. The floor was soaked and the walls steamed.

  Nelka took the broom and swept with such vigor that water and dead bugs and dirt flew in drops and splashes outside onto the mud.

  “Wood, Telek. We have to dry it. And the snow is coming. We’ll sleep here tonight.”

  Even the sun and the clouds mind her, Hansel thought, for as Nelka spoke, the clouds covered the sun and it began to feel colder.

  “We’ll steam for a while and then go to sleep like loaves laid on the stove.”

  “That was fun, Nelka.” Gretel smiled and turned so that Nelka could braid her hair. Gretel lifted her arms and wanted to dance. She had forgotten what it was to be able to stand perfectly still and not have the crawling in her hair and on her body, not have to scratch until the skin bled.

  Nelka took what was left of the kerosene and dabbed it on Gretel’s wrists and neck and ankles. “Polish perfume.” She grinned at Gretel, and Gretel blinked back the tears that the fumes of kerosene stung from her eyes.

  Telek stacked up as much wood as Hansel and Gretel gathered in six days. They ate potatoes and bread and drank hot water with ground rye in it.

  Telek pulled out a flask and Magda and Nelka took sips.

  “Where do you get it, Telek?” Magda’s cheeks were red. But Telek didn’t say a word. Gretel knew it was vodka. Where would a ragged man like Telek get vodka? He didn’t look like any of them. He wasn’t afraid or angry. He just looked hard.

  “Magda? Why do you have such a big stove?” Hansel asked.

  “Because the baker’s wife had to go and have twins and I got them out of her. He gave me his old stove when he brought a new one from the city.”

  “It’s awfully big.”

  “Too big,” Magda agreed.

  They lay on the sleeping platform, Magda in the middle where it was warmest. Then Gretel and then Nelka. Hansel was on the other side of Magda and Telek slept on the floor.

  In the middle of the night, Gretel woke and saw that Magda lay wide-eyed.

  “Magda?” she whispered. “Priests don’t have children do they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes they do, or yes, I am right and they don’t?” But she was so warm that she fell back asleep and didn’t feel Hansel when he crawled over Magda and her and under the blankets next to Nelka.

  “I love you, Nelka,” he whispered. “I’m going to marry you.”

  She didn’t say a word but gathered him in her arms and pressed her warmth against him. He lay next to her, the rhythmic kicking of the baby bumping against his backbone and keeping him awake until it blended with his own heart thumping in his chest, and Hansel knew no longer what was his flesh, what the baby’s, and what Nelka’s as he fell asleep.

  Pictures

  “I told them that you needed it for a wound. Said you cut your leg chopping wood.” Father Piotr was out of breath.

  “I’ll need a bottle every three weeks.”

  “The Germans must not want peroxide because I can still get it. But that may not last.” He looked at the boy. “Cut his hair short first. That’ll get rid of the curls.”

  “And the papers?”

  “In a week. The children can’t be seen until their baptismal certificates are done. Don’t go to the village until then. The less you’re in the village, the better.”

  When he’d gone, Magda called Hansel inside.

  “Help me, boy.”

  She went to the corner of the hut and lifted a board in the floor. Under the floor were baskets of potatoes and onions and another basketful of odd metal instruments. Hansel sat on the table so Magda could reach him easily, and she cut off all his hair. Gretel picked up each curl as it fell and held them in her skirt. When he was shorn so closely that not a curl could show, Gretel took the hair to the stove and opened the heavy door. With a flick of her skirt, she threw the dark curls onto the coals where they lay for a moment and then vaporized, leaving threads of red until the threads disintegrated and became invisible.

  “We’re burning you up inch by inch.” Gretel grinned at Hansel. “All the parts that are no good are going in the stove.”

  He put his hands over his penis and frowned, and Gretel giggled. “I’m joking, silly. Just your hair.”

  “I’ll never get in the oven,” the boy said.

  “No one asked you to. Sit still, child.” The witch had to use both bottles to get his hair the proper color. When she was done, it was a golden yellow, darker than Gretel’s but believable next to the pallor of his face. Hansel’s eyes looked even darker next to the hair. Unusual but possible.

  “It looks really Polish, Hansel.”

  “I want to look like the soldiers. They have blond hair.”

  “What soldiers?” Magda held his shoulder as he tried to squirm down from the table.

  “You know.”

  “Don’t ever say you want to look like the Devil.”

  “They have guns.”

  “They’re the Devil. They get out of bed and say, ‘Where is someone to kill this morning?’”

  “Nobody tells them what to do.”

  “Come outside, Hansel. We have to get wood.” Gretel didn’t want Hansel to make Magda angry. He had to stop.

  “Don’t go far, and if you see anyone, run back here.”

  And so began a stretch of days that lasted over a week. Each day it was the same. The children and Magda ate kasha for breakfast. There were wooden bowls for the food, but there were metal spoons. They drank hot water or shared Magda’s hot drink of rye and acorns. Then they looked for wood. The stove was voracious.

  At noon they ate cabbage soup and bread with beet marmalade on it. “It tastes like dirt,” Hansel told Magda.

  “There’s no sugar in it, but when did you eat dirt?”

  He had never eaten dirt, but he knew he was right. After lunch he sat on the snow and scraped until he had a clean patch of earth. He pinched up a lump of dirt and placed it on his tongue. It filled his mouth with the mold of long dead tree leaves and something else, something indescribable.

  “I’m right,” he shouted to Magda, running into the hut where she sat in the rocker. “Beet marmalade tastes like dirt.”

  Magda smiled but didn’t move. Her bones hurt while the weather was so changeable.

  “Once we are snowed in, I can move. Then in spring my bon
es will ache again until summer is here.”

  So the children played outside during the afternoon.

  “I’m cold, Gretel. I want to go in.”

  “We have to stay outside, Hansel. That way, she’ll forget we’re even here.”

  “I hated the turnips last night,” he said.

  “You have to eat them.”

  “Nobody liked them. They were mushy.”

  “If Magda doesn’t like them, then we have to like them a lot. That way she won’t say we’re eating all the good food and taking the best things away from her. We have to like all the bad food, Hansel. Then she won’t mind feeding us.”

  When Gretel was ahead of him and couldn’t hear, he whispered, “I hate mushy turnips.”

  They lived outside most of the time, running and moving to keep warm, eating everything allowed. The days went slowly. It wasn’t like home. Home was before the ghetto. Before the cart and horse and the airplanes. Gretel could remember the piano, toys, and books, whole walls of them everywhere. Hansel could remember nothing.

  “Not walls of them.”

  “Yes. Walls and walls of books from the floor to the ceiling.”

  He didn’t believe it. In the ghetto there had been three books, and not toys exactly but sometimes there was a piece of chalk for a game or the cigarette cards.

  Because his father had been a mechanic and went outside the barbed wire to work on the German trucks and cars, Hansel had the best collection of cigarette boxes of any boy in his building. The front of the box was always bright and clean and shiny. Cut apart, they made cards to play with or trade for something else.

  Hansel frowned. He had left them under the blanket in the corner where they would be safe. Someday he might go back and get them. He knew the street. He knew the stairs. He tried to remember the name of the city.

  No piano, Gretel thought, and her fingers twitched, remembering. Her mother’s hands moving over the keys. The white and black of the keys so clean. Washing her hands before she practiced. The Germans had the piano now. They probably had all the pianos in the world.

  It was hard to tell what day it was. Magda never went to the village. There were no calendars or clocks. The Germans didn’t allow church on most Sundays. They slept in the dark and got up when it was light.

  Days had gone by when the priest returned. With him was a man carrying a knapsack. Gretel saw them moving through the trees, and she drew Hansel behind her. The man was as ragged as the priest but younger and more frightened.

  The two men went into the hut. Then Magda came outside. “Children?”

  Hansel stared up into his sister’s face, and Gretel felt the weight of taking care of him come down on her. She could hardly breathe.

  The new man didn’t look like a German. He was too thin. He looked too frightened.

  She stepped out from behind the tree, and the three adults watched them walk toward the hut. The priest laughed.

  “By God, the boy looks all right. A little odd with those dark eyes, but his skin’s so pale. It may work.”

  The other man said nothing.

  “It will work, and if not, then the wheel will go on.”

  It was something Magda said often. Gretel didn’t know what she meant.

  “Take their picture.”

  The new man spoke for the first time. “I have to get their heads just the right size. Then I cut them off and glue them over the other heads in the old photograph. Then I’ll take another photograph of the composite picture. It won’t be perfect, but if I age the picture a little—no one would notice without a good lens to study it.”

  “He’s going to cut our heads off,” Hansel whispered.

  “No. He won’t.” Gretel wasn’t sure.

  “You can’t cut my head off.” Hansel tried to pull away from Gretel’s hand and run.

  The priest grinned. “We’re not the Nazis. Just the head in the picture will be cut off.”

  Hansel was uncertain still, but the pictures of the children were taken. They stood separately and the man worked a long time to get the heads at a proper distance.

  “It’s done,” the man said to the priest. “Give me the First Communion pictures tonight. The girl will be harder. I have to make her look younger. Maybe one picture will blur just a fraction. Maybe if she blinked.”

  He grabbed Gretel by the shoulder and stared at her eyes. “When I say blink you will blink very slowly. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. He cried out the word and she closed her eyes and then opened them slowly while he took another picture.

  And it was done. Seven more days of the light and dark coming and going, and the priest came back with a package.

  Magda unwrapped the pictures. “That’s a nice touch, using old frames.” Magda stroked the wood gently. “Come look at what Christians you are, children.”

  Gretel and Hansel looked at the photographs that lay on the table. Hansel smiled. He looked wonderful. Below his face, which had a startled expression, was the body of a boy fatter than Hansel. He wore a black suit with short pants, clean white socks, and shiny shoes. There was a white flower in the lapel of the suit and a white ribbon with a bow was fastened around the sleeve of the suit on the child’s left arm.

  “My shoes are beautiful.”

  “Those aren’t your shoes.” Gretel was angry.

  “Yes they are.” Hansel was complacent. “I remember them.”

  Gretel stared at the picture of the girl. It was her but it wasn’t her. The girl had blinked and her face was a tiny bit blurred. You couldn’t say how old the face was, but the body—

  “I was never like that.” Gretel frowned.

  “Yes, you were. I remember.” Hansel picked up his picture and cradled it in his arms.

  “You weren’t born then.” Gretel stared at the five-year-old girl in a white dress who carried a bouquet of white flowers and stared out with blurry eyes.

  “I remember.” Hansel smiled. “I want to hang it where I sleep.”

  The priest patted the boy on his head. “Now listen, children. These are your photographs of your First Communion. It is when you took the body of our Lord for the first time. Magda will explain all this to you.”

  He turned and grinned at Magda. “You have to teach them all of it. The prayers. How to behave at Communion. Confession.”

  “I don’t remember those things.”

  “If you want to live, you had better remember, sister.”

  “You teach them.”

  “I can’t come here every day. You must do it.”

  “They never allow services. Who will see them worshiping?”

  The priest laughed. “Perhaps that is why God led these children here, sister. Perhaps it was to make you faithful at your devotions. Here—” He drew from his jacket a small book. “I brought you this. You can say morning prayers. Noon prayers. Prayers at night. The Lord’s Prayer. The devotions. And—”

  He put his hand back in his pocket and pulled out a string of wooden beads. “The rosary. They should know it. Say it every night until they can do it in their sleep.”

  “No.”

  “Teach them or die, sister. Teach them or kill everyone—the villagers—” He paused and then went on. “Nelka. All of us.”

  She took the beads reluctantly. “I’ll teach them enough to answer the need. I’m not trying to make a priest and a nun.”

  “Perhaps they were sent to save you!”

  The children said nothing. Hansel hung up his picture, and Gretel, after some thought, did the same. If people came in, both pictures should be there. She hung her picture on the wall but didn’t like to look at it. The blurry eyes and the pale face over the well-fed body made her uneasy.

  “It’s like that fat girl ate me up,” she told Magda.

  Magda thought for a long while, rocking as usual, and then she spoke. “Let her eat you up, Gretel. There are worse wolves than that waiting with sharp teeth. Let the child have you.”

  Gretel hated it, but she knew
Magda was right, so she forced herself to stare at the picture until she could no longer tell if it was her or not. She let the fat child devour the child she had been. After all, there were no pictures left of herself at that age or at any age. She had no pictures of her house, or her mother, or father, or the Stepmother.

  The chair the fat girl stood beside, the lamp on the table with its shiny glass base, the carpet and the wall behind, and the physical fact of the child herself, this was what Gretel had for a past. She was uneasy, but she accepted it. Any picture was better than nothing.

  The Mechanik

  To live he had to find the motorcycle, but he could only think of his children, lost in the snow. The father, newly christened the Mechanik, moved steadily, concentrating on erasing his son and daughter from his mind. If he was caught, he must not think of them.

  His feet began to sink in a bog of moss and mud, and he circled around it, moving slowly now, but steadily. The ooze of swamp had not frozen, and mist lay deep over the wet heart of the forest.

  He saw a movement to his right and fell to the ground. Pushing his face into the snow-covered moss and leaves in his terror, he lay still. He caught no sound, and then, near him, the snort of breath released and a whickering.

  He barely raised his head and saw the wild ponies in the trees. Four of them stood and stared at him, and only the jets of steam that their breath made in the cold air betrayed their presence.

  “Too small for German horses,” he muttered.

  Their gray winter coats hung low under their legs, and he couldn’t see their eyes for the shaggy hair that grew over their faces. The ponies didn’t move until he stood and walked toward them, and then they disappeared into the trees and the white mist with only the squelch of hooves in the soft mud.

  He stood resting, looking at the mist hanging in the air where the horses’ breath had been, and smiled. The German horses. Huge and impossible to feed in the Russian winter. They had all been eaten by their masters. The Mechanik plodded through the woods. He chanted to himself, and it almost became a song as he walked on.