The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (15 page)

The partisans moved on, going away from the village, moving into the forest, looking for a place to sleep before the sun went down. Telek moved away between the trees, and he was gone when the woman looked over her shoulder for him.

Gretel lay perfectly still where he had put her. Hansel had climbed out and was behind a tree. Telek pulled the girl out of the snow and laughed.

“You did well. You lay as still as the rabbit when the fox is hunting. If the rabbit lies still, the fox never catches her. But if she runs—” Telek snapped his jaws twice.

“I wasn’t still. I was going to help. I can fight too.”

“When I say be still, you must be still.”

“I want to help, Telek.”

Telek grinned at the boy. He was foolhardy but brave.

Gretel shivered. “What was it, Telek?”

“A wild boar. I would have shown you, but they’re hungry and angry in the winter. It was better that you stayed here.”

“I want to see one.” Hansel started forward, and Telek grabbed the boy and put him on his shoulders.

“Someday. I’ll show you that and the mother pig with her piglets. But we’ll climb a tree and sit like squirrels and let her come to us. Magda is worried, and I have to get you home.”

He took Gretel’s hand and began to lope through the snow, going around the drifts and avoiding the patches that covered the swampy places, the boy’s weight light on his shoulders.

“You children must never come here alone, Gretel. Never again. There are bright lights over the swamps. People say it’s witches trying to draw us into darkness. Listen, Hansel.”

“I wouldn’t be afraid. I want to see it all.”

“Promise you won’t come in the forest alone.”

“I promise, Telek,” Gretel said, squeezing his hand.

“I’ll show you the forest, Hansel, but don’t go beyond the creek again. Do you promise?”

“I promise,” Hansel said.

“Yes,” she said, promising for the second time.

The boy was too independent, but Telek was satisfied by Gretel’s promise. She was not like other children. There was something in her that he could understand as he had never understood a child before. She felt about the woods as he did. Telek tightened his grip on her hand and moved faster toward the hut and Nelka.

In the Cage

H
ansel looked at Gretel, who lay with eyes half open, breathing heavily on the sleeping platform. Her cheeks were bright red, and he could hear her breath rasping. It had been ten days since they had wandered off and been found by Telek.

Magda took a small bottle and poured a spoonful of dark syrup into a cup. She added hot water, and the smell of raspberries filled the room.

“When it cools a little, she must drink it. God help us. I have almost no herbs left. Everyone has been sick for the last three months.” Magda went to the girl and felt her head.

“She’s too hot.”

Magda lay her head down on Gretel’s chest and listened. The lungs were filling.

“It is a grippe of the lungs. Help me pile logs against the wall of the platform. Cover them with a pad of blankets. We have to make her sit up so the lungs will be easier.”

Hansel lifted the largest logs he could and made a backrest. Then the blankets. The two of them pulled Gretel until she was sitting upright, her head lolling back onto the blanket.

“I don’t feel good, Hansel. I don’t like it. Let me eat snow, Magda. I’m hot.”

“No, child. Open your mouth wide ... wider.”

She turned the girl’s head toward the light coming through the waxed paper of the window.

“I have to swab it.”

She began to cry. “Don’t do it, Magda. Leave me alone.”

Magda got the bottle of iodine and with a few firm twists wrapped the tip of a twig in clean cotton. Hansel stood clutching his own throat with his hands.

“You make people well, don’t you, Magda?”

“Hold her shoulders, Hansel.”

Hansel climbed on the platform and held Gretel down. He struggled against her determinedly.

Magda opened Gretel’s mouth and put a piece of wood between her back teeth so the girl couldn’t shut her mouth. The old woman dipped the cotton in the iodine and slowly painted the whole of the girl’s throat with the stinking medicine. She painted it so deeply that Gretel gagged repeatedly. Then Magda would stop and wait. She didn’t want the child to vomit and take the iodine off the membranes of her throat.

When they were done, Gretel lay limp. “I hate it,” she whispered.

“You were a good girl,” Magda said. “That will make your throat heal.”

“It hurts.” Tears ran down the child’s face.

“I know.” Magda gave Hansel a bowl. “Get a few icicles off the trees. Not from the roof, they have soot in them from the stovepipe. She can suck them and it will get some liquid into her.”

Hansel ran outside, not stopping for his coat. The larger trees were too tall, but the saplings had lovely icicles hanging from some of the branches. Then he saw the pine trees ahead. The icicles were small and easy to suck, and when he broke them off, they smelled faintly of pine sap.

Hansel filled the bowl and ran back to the hut.

“Let me,” he said. Sitting on the platform beside Gretel, he held the icicles to her lips.

“It’s nice,” she whispered.

Hansel sat beside her all day, getting fresh icicles from the pine trees and encouraging his sister to suck, but she was not getting better.

Magda shook her head. It was a bad grippe. She could hear the gurgle of liquid when she pressed her head to the girl’s chest.

Magda didn’t believe cupping would help much, Gretel was too far into the grippe now, but trying anything was better than doing nothing. It was growing dark. The fever had to break before night.

“Darkness sucks the life out,” she muttered.

“What, Magda?” Hansel sat up from where he lay beside Gretel.

“Nothing, child. We’re going to fool her body.”

“How?”

“We’ll make her body think about something besides the lungs. Take Gretel’s shirt off and lay her flat on her stomach.”

“It’s my piano!” Gretel shouted weakly. She flung her arm out and it struck Hansel.

“Magda!”

Magda sprang to the platform and helped Hansel roll the girl over. Without the shirt her arms were almost fleshless, and Magda could see all the veins under the skin.

Magda sighed. Gretel ate all Magda had to give her, but it was a time when the girl should have been growing. Every piece of bread was burned off by her growth.

“Hold her, Hansel, while I prepare the cups.”

Magda went to the floor and took out a basket that held her cups. Clear glass, they had a lip at the bottom. She took three of them and lit a candle.

“On my mother’s milk I pray to you, Virgin. Make it break the fever.”

Holding the glass with a cloth so she wouldn’t burn her fingers, Magda heated the air in the cup until it was hot. Swiftly, she clapped it onto the white skin of the child’s back, avoiding the backbone, which stood out like a fish’s spine.

Gretel cried out and struggled, but Hansel held her down.With hands stiffened by arthritis but practiced in doing this, Magda heated two more cups and pressed them to the girl’s back.

As the air in the cup cooled, it created a vacuum which sucked the circle of skin up in a puff of flesh into the cup. The skin turned bright red from the heat.

“See, child.” She nodded at Hansel. “The cupping brings the blood to the surface. It distracts the body and makes it forget the lungs. The pain goes to her back, and then the lungs can fight harder and not just lie on the bed and give up.”

Hansel watched the cups for about half an hour until Magda took them off by pressing down the flesh near the cup to break the suction and lifting the glass. They made a popping sound as they released the flesh, and there were three red circles on Gretel’s back.

They rolled her over, and she struggled against them, turning and twisting.

“I want to go out!” she screamed. “I want to ride the pony!”

Magda knew that unless the fever broke, the girl would try to get up and leave the hut. She would fall off the platform. Tying her was too harsh. It was better if she could move some, but not fall to the floor. She needed to be on the warmth of the platform.

“Hold her down, Hansel. I won’t be long.”

Magda put on her coat and went out. If only it was still there. If only the children hadn’t broken it up playing with it. She walked through the trees to a small clearing. It was downstream from the hut, and here she had once kept chickens. The last one had been eaten long ago. She hoped it was large enough for the girl. She hoped it was still unbroken.

Kicking through the snow, Magda searched the ground near the low shelter the chickens had used. Her boot hit something hard, and she dug the snow away with her hands.

Not very clean, but unbroken. Her eyes measured the wooden length of it. It would do.

It was frozen to the earth, but a few hard kicks freed it. She dragged it behind her to the hut and kicked it again before she took it inside. Most of the frozen mud had fallen off, and the wooden cage was wet with snow but unbroken.

Magda dragged the cage inside and put it near the stove. Hansel stared from the platform.

“Move her over if you can.”

Hansel dragged the girl to one end of the platform, and Magda, with strength she didn’t know she had, swept the blankets aside and lifted the chicken cage onto the wooden boards. She flipped open the top and laid blankets down until the bottom slats were covered and wouldn’t hurt Gretel’s back. The girl could roll and turn, but she couldn’t fall off.

Hansel’s eyes were wide, but he understood. “Just until the fever breaks, Magda.”

“Yes. We can give her syrup and icicles if she’ll take them. She’ll just have to pee on the blankets.” Although there had been no urine for hours now.

Hansel hauled and Magda pulled, and they dumped Gretel onto the blankets in the long cage. Magda closed the top and tied it firmly with a piece of rope.

“It looks cruel, Hansel, but it will keep her up here where it’s warm. You go to sleep.”

“I’ll sit up too.”

“No. If you want to help me, you’ll sleep. I’ll be tired tomorrow. By then her fever will have broken, and you can nurse her while I rest. But you have to be strong tomorrow. Sleep.”

Hansel felt a wave of exhaustion come over him. Gretel had been sick for too long. He lay on the far corner of the platform and pulled the blanket over his head to shut out the sight of the cage. Sleep came on him like a hammer blow. The boy twitched once and then lay still.

Gretel muttered and sighed. She rolled and twisted, but she didn’t try to stand. Her face bumped against the cage, but she was too weak now to hurt herself.

Magda went close to the cage and held out an icicle. “Suck on this, little dear.”

The girl opened her eyes wide and stared into Magda’s face. Gretel saw the cage for what it was, and began to moan in panic.

“It’s just to keep you safe. You’ll be sitting at the table again tomorrow.”

Gretel’s feverish brain tried to understand. The witch had trapped her in a cage.

“You’re going to eat me. You’re going to make me fat and eat me.”

“No, no.” Magda backed away. “No, child, I’m going to make you well.”

“The witch is going to eat me.”

Gretel slept during the worst of the night, her breathing quick and shallow, her face red. The girl’s thin body twitched and she moaned, but she slept.

“The Hour of the Wolf has passed,” Magda whispered. That was the worst time, the darkest moment before dawn when the souls of humans gave up and stopped hoping for the light.

She was nearly asleep when Gretel began to scream hoarsely. Magda stood beside the girl, gazing at her face, but Gretel didn’t see anyone. Just a ragged scream going on and then another one, not stopping, the girl lost in her fever dreams.

Hansel was awake. He moaned as his sister screamed.

“The fever hasn’t broken, child. Soon, I hope.”

Hansel looked around the hut. His eyes were wild.

“Go outside and get an icicle off the roof, child. It doesn’t matter about the soot.”

“No! Don’t open the door, Magda. Be quick, be quick.” Hansel remembered now. He remembered what people in the ghetto did when a child was near death. He had seen it done. “Get some money.”

“I don’t have any money, boy. What do you want it for?”

“You must have a coin! Quick!”

Magda could hardly think. She couldn’t bear the one child moaning and screaming and now the boy shouting at her. She moved to the wall and slid a board to one side. Taking out a leather sack smaller than her palm, she opened it and shook out two coins and a button.

The button was the one from Hansel’s coat. Magda remembered tearing it off as payment for the charm. She remembered how the boy had looked, standing in the circle she drew in the dirt, weeping over his lost bread.

Hansel stood close and turned Magda until she faced Gretel.

“I am selling Magda my sister,” Hansel said loudly. He took the coins from Magda’s hand, leaving the button on her palm. “You now own her. She is not in my family anymore. She is sold to you. Her soul is safe in your family.”

Then Hansel climbed on the platform and took up Gretel’s ragged clothes. He took her coat and shoes and the rags she used for socks. Leaping down Hansel threw open the door of the stove.

“Gretel is gone. She isn’t here with me anymore. She’s dead,” the boy shouted. With swift thrusts he put the clothes on the coals and they sprang up in flames. Looking wildly around the hut, Hansel saw the stick doll that Telek had made for Gretel. Hansel snatched it up and pushed it into the stove. It lay on the burning clothes, and he slammed the door of the oven.

“Gretel is dead,” he screamed. Hansel reached to the neck of his shirt and tugged. “Help me, Magda,” he cried. “Tear it!”