The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (10 page)

“Where are the parents?”

“Their father died in 1939. Then their mother was sent into Germany as a farmworker. The children were brought to me.” Magda said only what had to be said, with no embellishment.

“Who brought them?” The German threw his cigarette on the floor and crushed it into the scarred wood with only the toe of his boot. Hansel looked at the cigarette butt and wished he could pick it up. It was worth something, maybe a couple of potatoes.

“Someone put them on the supply truck from the city three weeks ago. Threw them in the back and the driver didn’t even know.” Magda stared at the floor.

Gretel knew it was her turn. “We climbed out when the truck stopped. We knew how to get to Aunt Magda’s.”

“And why did the truck stop?” He moved beside Gretel and lifted her plait of hair. Tugging gently, he watched her face.

Oh God, I didn’t think of that question, Magda thought, but there was nothing for it. The child would either get them killed or not.

“The driver had to pee.” Hansel grinned up at the Major.

“Papers.” He lit another cigarette and moved back to the window. This fucking village. A mud hole in hell. Some days he didn’t even appreciate that he had escaped the Russian front. It was hard to be grateful since it had taken an eye to get him out—and all the other men were still there.

Gretel set the basket on the desk and gently took out the First Communion pictures and the papers. The clerk behind the desk examined them, staring from the pictures to the children and back to the papers. The seals didn’t look bad. The papers might actually be genuine.

Filthy alley rat, Magda thought. Sitting at this desk like he’s someone. Dragged out of a Warsaw prison and working for the Germans.

“They seem all right. These are Polish children, Major Frankel.”

The Nazi nodded. You could tell sometimes by the bones and the hair. The girl was quite a pure Aryan type.

“Give them ration cards.” He smoked the cigarette and watched the old woman. Not an Aryan type. Dark eyes and short. Like a gnome. Twisted and subhuman. But her niece was perfect. Interesting.

“Was your father German, children?” He asked in German, and Gretel opened her mouth to answer. She closed it immediately, but he saw.

“Ah. You understand.” It wasn’t surprising. These lumpish villagers understood nothing, no matter how he screamed, but the girl was from the city. He smiled at her.

“What’s your name?”

“Gretel, and he’s Hansel.”

His eyes widened, and he smiled. “I thought so. There’s German blood in the family somewhere. We are the
Kulturtrager,
child.” He spoke in rough Polish except for the one German word. “Tell me what that means.”

“You are the bringers of culture,” Gretel whispered.

He put his hand in his pocket and drew it out quickly. He stepped toward Gretel, and she moved slightly so she was between the Major and Hansel.

“And we rule by
zuckerbrot und peitsch.
Tell me what that means.”

“By sweets and the whip,” Gretel spoke slowly, like it was difficult for her to translate.

“Open your mouth and close your eyes.”

Now he will shoot me in the mouth, Gretel thought, but she had to do it. If she ran he would shoot her in the back.

She let her eyelids drop and waited to feel the cold metal of the gun barrel against her tongue. Instead there was the rough touch of his hand and then sweetness filled her mouth.

She opened her eyes, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. Candy. She let the sweet lie on her tongue and tasted real sugar and peppermint for the first time in years.

“See her cry, Wiktor? A touch of nerves. It’s that weakness that shows her Polish blood.”

Gretel sucked the candy in silence. The man at the desk, Wiktor, stamped cards and threw them in the basket with the pictures and papers. “Go on, woman. Take them off.”

Magda felt a touch of guilt for her anger at Wiktor. He might be a Warsaw jail rat, but he hadn’t mentioned the card saying that the children were Karaites.

“Wait.” The German was smiling. “I have an honor for you, girl. Because you have a German name, you can be the lucky child this week. Go to the store and tell them you will hand out the sugar.”

Magda bowed and shuffled backward, taking Hansel with her. Gretel hesitated and then stepped toward the Major.

“Thank you.” She stepped close to him and kissed the sleeve of his jacket with a soft brush of her chapped lips.

“You see, Wiktor? This one has a bit of civilization. She is almost mannered.”

The three backed into the hallway and out the front door. Magda was panting. Hansel hadn’t said a word, thank God, but Gretel—

“He noticed you too much. You have to stay out of his way.”

“He liked it. He may give us more food.”

It was true, but being liked was dangerous. Magda shook her head. “The store. We have to register your cards.”

There were only two shops now. One store, with all the flour allotted the village, all the salt, all the bits of salt pork and beans locked in barrels, was in the middle of the village where there wasn’t really a town square but a widening of the mud to allow a weekly market in summer.

Next to the store was the butcher shop where all meat was kept. Any meat not coming from the store, any pig or goat or cow not registered and numbered, was reason for death. A single slice of black market ham sent a bullet to your brain.

Gretel stopped by a post which stood in the middle of the mud circle in the heart of the village. Nailed to the post was a poster of heavy paper, clean and white, and she read it aloud:

“ ‘Any Polish woman who insults a German by word or action will be considered a whore and sent to whorehouses on the Russian front.’”

There was another piece of paper tacked on the back of the post. Gretel began to smile.

“Don’t smile, child,” Magda whispered.

“What is it?” Hansel whispered too.

“‘On October sixteenth two treacherous attacks on German soldiers were—’” Gretel hesitated.

“‘Perpetuated,’” Magda said.

“‘Attacks on German soldiers were perpetuated by two cowardly Polish criminals. Both Germans were injured, one severely.’”

Magda’s mouth twisted like a wolf at the end of the hunt.

“ ‘As a consequence thereof, on October 19, three Polish criminals, who as members of the PZP and the PPR were hirelings of England and Moscow were selected from a number of persons under death sentence by the court-martial of the Security Police, but previously designated for an act of mercy, and publicly executed. It is always intended to pardon the condemned. The population of the village Piaski is therefore called upon to do everything to prevent further attacks on Germans so no further executions will take place.

“‘Village Piaski, November 22, 1943.

“ ‘Major Frankel of the Security Police for the Security Service for the village Piaski.’ ”

“Lies!”

They all jumped at the deep voice. The man was big and square, his bones so large he didn’t look thin. His eyes rolled and he turned and blew snot onto the mud with a fierce snort from his nostrils.

“They got drunk on some homemade vodka and knocked two of the Germans over in a joking sort of way. Just young fools. They took the Germans’ cigarettes. Nobody would admit to doing it, so they killed three prisoners.”

“Only three?” Gretel was impressed. They would have killed everyone in the building if it was in the ghetto.

“They only had three in the jail. It’s getting harder to make grand gestures. Fucking
Shkopy.
” The man blew his nose again onto the ground. “I can read snow like the Bible, and I tell you, it’s going to be a blizzard, Magda. Go home.”

He turned and stalked off.

“Who’s he?” Hansel wanted to know everything.

“That’s Feliks. He’s been angry since they made his Jew run away.”

Gretel stared at Magda, who sighed and told the story.

“He had a friend. A Jew. Jacobe was the only man in the village who could play chess with Feliks and make the game last longer than ten minutes. They played every week, sometimes all night. When they weren’t playing chess, they sat and talked for hours. People said that when the end of the world came, Feliks and Jacobe wouldn’t stop talking for it. Everything was quiet. We were waiting for the Germans. When we woke up, that first morning after the Russians had gone, Jacobe had run for it. Telek, the water carrier, saw him creeping into the woods at dawn. Jacobe was afraid of the Germans.”

“He’s in the woods?” Hansel asked.

“In Russia if he’s lucky. Or dead. But Feliks has no one to play chess with now. He hardly speaks. He hates them for chasing off his Jew, his friend. Feliks had a brother, but his brother is gone. Feliks’s real brother, the brother of his mind and spirit, was Jacobe, and Jacobe ran away.”

“Where did Feliks’s real brother go?” Gretel asked.

“Killed.” Magda said no more, but the boy wouldn’t leave it alone.

“Why?”

“Because Feliks’s brother wasn’t perfect. So they killed him.”

“What was wrong with him?”

“He was crazy. Not crazy exactly, just simple. Foolish. His mind didn’t work right. The Germans talked to him, and saw he was simple, so they shot him. They shot all the crazy people.”

“There was a crazy man—” Hansel stopped. He couldn’t talk about the cantor who sung under the window. The three of them walked on in silence, Magda thinking of Feliks, and the children thinking of Feliks’s brother.

The store was only a wooden hut with barrels behind the counter. Magda handed over the cards and waited. She hoped there were beans this week. A lump of fat. Her hands already had chilblains and so did the children, but there would be no fat for their hands this winter. The children had to eat all the fat. Bleeding fingers wouldn’t kill them, but they were still growing and couldn’t get too thin.

Gretel stood looking at the barrels. Magda, watching her, shook her head. The boy wouldn’t grow so much, but the girl was at the age to sprout up. She would die if she didn’t get enough food. Probably already stunted. She looked younger than she should, and her body would keep growing whether there was food or not. All the children in the village looked younger. And all the adults looked like old men and women.

“He said that the girl should hand out the sugar,” Magda told the clerk. She didn’t like it.

“Truly, Magda? Don’t get me killed.” He touched his neck nervously where an ulcer suppurated and rubbed his collar.

“Truly.”

“Come on, girl.”

He took a small jar and a spoon.

“Go with him, Gretel.” Magda had to let her do it. The Major might ask.

Gretel followed the clerk outside, where there were children milling around the steps.

“No sugar until you’re lined up.”

The village children fell into a long line. Magda counted them. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty-one. Only thirty-one left and almost no babies now. Women didn’t get pregnant if they could help it, or if their men were in Siberia or dead or hiding in the woods.

Or the babies were dead. Most of them died from lack of milk. Polish women’s tits were wrinkled sacks, empty like the cupboards in the houses. All the good food had been stolen away into Russia and was stolen now for the German soldiers at the Russian front.

The clerk stood Gretel on the top step and handed her the jar and spoon.

“One level spoonful for each child. In their mouth. Not in their hands. Put it in their hands and the little cockroaches sell it.”

Gretel nodded. She scooped up one small spoonful of sugar, tapped it carefully against the inside of the jar to shake off the rounded top, and looked up.

“Begin,” said the clerk. Magda didn’t know his name. He was a Pole brought in to manage the food by the Germans. He had no ties to the village, so he had no one to be kind to, no one to save. He was called the Clerk. His name had disappeared with the war.

A child stepped forward and turned his face up to Gretel. He opened his mouth, and Gretel gently poured the sugar onto his tongue. She could see the saliva that had flowed as he waited, a pool in his mouth that caught the sugar. Another child stepped up, and Gretel poured a spoonful of sugar in his mouth. At the end, she held a jar with only a little sugar in it. She looked at the Clerk and he nodded. Gretel turned to Hansel and tipped half the sugar into his mouth. It was more than a spoonful. She watched his eyes grow round as the pure sweetness, so much fuller than the sweetness of saccharin with its metallic taste afterward, filled his mouth.

“More,” he said.

She nodded. It was only fair. She had had the candy. She tipped the jar and he crunched the rest between his teeth and licked the edge of the jar to take off any crystals that clung.

She turned to give the jar to the Clerk, and saw the Major watching from the road. He stood in the mud, smoking, and smiled at her.

“He prowls the streets,” the Clerk whispered to Magda. “He’s guilty about leaving his men at the front. He can’t sit by the stove and stay warm. He prowls.”

Gretel did not smile back at the Major this time. He walked forward, and the village children were suddenly gone. Moving quickly, the soft mud hiding the sound of their wooden shoes and patched boots, they were just gone.

“She is a good girl. She gives generously and isn’t greedy. So she gets a reward.”

His fingers, smelling of tobacco, rough on her lips, pushed another candy into Gretel’s mouth, and she nearly gagged.

“
Danke,
” she whispered, and in an hour the whole village knew that Magda had two brats staying with her and the Major was taking an interest in the girl, and the girl spoke German.

It was a mistake. All of it. But no one said it out loud. Magda had always been separate from the village. Perhaps any disaster would fall on her head alone, outside the circle of the houses. It was her mistake, and she could keep it out in the dark wetness of the forest with the wild ponies and the bison and the ancient hornbeam trees that blocked out the sun. It was hers and they didn’t want it.