The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (23 page)

He staggered off the porch of the house and walked down the muddy road like a drunk. His hands hung loose at his sides like dead things.

“Nelka.” He walked into her house with no knock. “Nelka.”

She was making bread. The flour was gray with rough sprinkles of sawdust. She had mounded it carefully and was kneading it, making sure that not a single grain was lost.

“Telek? Don’t wake the baby.”

“I had to hurt them. I burned Pawel and Marta’s house. The children were perfect. They had to be mutilated. I burned the girl’s head. I hurt her.”

“You hurt children? So they wouldn’t be kidnapped? But why you? You have no children.”

“I drew the straw. They didn’t want to make their children hate them. Only Patryk took care of his boy. I had to scar the rest of them. My straw was short.”

“So the SS man will leave them in the village?”

He nodded and looked into her eyes. He wanted to be dead.

“The cowards. And they let you be one of them. Part of the village council. They paid no attention to you before the war. And now when you go in the forest and bring news and do things that are dangerous—then they meet with you.” Her cheeks were red.

“I drew the short straw.”

Nelka glared at him, and he began to cry.

She stroked his face with her hands. “They were cowards, and you saved their children.”

He was so grateful that he began to sob. He could tell her. He could tell her anything. She was wiser than he had understood. He had only seen her beauty, but she was also wise.

“They all stank of raspberries and vodka. They screamed.”

“Oh, my darling.” Nelka tried to move away so she could see his face, but he clutched her.

“I couldn’t do Miron and Ania’s two. They have dark hair, but their eyes are blue. I can’t do any more. If their blue eyes get them kidnapped, their parents will have to save them.”

“It wasn’t fair, Telek. Every parent should have to protect their own.”

“But there’s more.” He looked toward where the baby slept.

“But he’s just born! He cries all night.”

Telek stared at her, and knew he couldn’t mutilate a newborn baby. It was too much.

“You promised to take us and hide in the woods.”

He pulled Nelka to him and held her until she was still. The weather would kill the baby, but he could save her. He had waited too long for her, and she was all he’d wanted.

“I’ll take you both into the forest, but you have to understand. It’s cold. They bring dogs and sweep the woods looking for partisans.”

“I’ll carry him inside my clothes and keep him warm. I can feed him.”

“The constant walking. No food. You’ll lose your milk.”

“You can kill ponies for food, or one of the bison.”

“They’re preserving this forest for Göring’s special hunting grounds. If they found a carcass, they’d kill all the village.”

“I won’t have him look in the mirror and see all this evil marked on his face all his life.”

Telek picked her up and carried her to the curtain that hid the bed next to the oven. He felt himself growing warm as he laid her on the bed. “I’ll take you both into the forest. We’ll survive.”

Telek stripped and lay beside her. She rubbed her hands, covered with flour paste over his chest and back. She stroked him hungrily, and he moved swiftly over her, taking her clothes off with clumsy fingers.

She wanted him so badly, wanted the maleness of him, the hardness of his body against her so much, that she sobbed as she pushed against him. He held her and they both were lost in their passion, getting finally what she had wanted for months, Telek had wanted for years, and they rocked together in love that was done and then done again during the gray afternoon.

When the baby finally woke, Telek rose and took the child to Nelka. She nursed him there in the bed made damp with their sweat, Telek lying beside her, watching.

“Will you love us, Telek?”

“I always have.”

“But will you love him?”

“He’s my son now.”

She nodded and lay nearly asleep, the only sound in the hut the wet sucking of the child.

Blood

I
t was an ugly room. Floorboards unpolished and darkened by years of mud. A bed next to the wall. Two chairs, neither comfortable. Apine table. There had been a rag of a rug, but the Oberführer had it taken away. He supposed the Russians had stolen any decent rugs, assuming that the village ever had a rug worth owning. Major Frankel said it was one of the better houses in the village because the floor was wooden rather than clay. It was barely sufficient.

But other things were proving more than sufficient. Sister Rosa had examined the woman’s blood. It was a magnificent chance. Nelka’s blood type and his matched. They were both O negative.

The door opened and Nelka came in. Following her was Sister Rosa, dressed as always in her long brown dress and dark bonnet, a gray cape sweeping the tops of her boots.

“I see that your baby was born.” The SS man smiled at Nelka. She was pale, but the golden quality had not been disturbed by childbirth.

“Yes, Oberführer. He is not well. I think he may die before spring,” Nelka lied.

“What a shame.” The Oberführer nodded at Sister Rosa, who put her leather bag on the table and began to unpack it.

“The baby was early. It’s weak.” Nelka tried not to look at the woman. They had drawn blood from her, and now they had called her back to see the SS officer.

“I sympathize.” The Oberführer gestured to Sister Rosa. She went to him, her small eyes lowered humbly, and carefully, with caressing movements of her thick fingers, she unbuttoned his tunic. It took a few minutes to do. The woman undid each button and then moved behind the man to take off the tunic. She put her hands over his shoulders almost in an embrace.

Nelka watched in silence and thought, They’ve done this before.

The stiff fabric of Sister Rosa’s dress pressed for a second against the Oberführer’s back. She felt the hot flush spreading up her neck and mottling her cheeks. She knew her nipples were hardening as she drew his tunic off. She moved in front of him and unbuttoned the shirt cuffs as he extended each hand to her. She unbuttoned the shirt-front with delicate movements.

Sister Rosa yearned to lay her hands on his white, white chest and stroke the silky hair that flowed in a line down to his navel and disappeared under his pants. She wanted to touch each of his dark nipples, press them flat and feel them harden under her fingers, but she resisted as she always resisted. He never allowed her to touch him. Never.

Nelka watched. How terrible can it be, she thought. I have made love with two men, my husband and Telek. This is only a man. I can go to Magda’s and make a bath and scrub when he’s done. Magda will make sure that I don’t have a child from this, and besides, it’s hard to get pregnant when you’re nursing a baby.

Sister Rosa was panting slightly. She didn’t know if the excitement was caused by the body of the Oberführer, muscled like a statue, or if she panted at the thought of what was to come. It was exciting that the man could do anything he wanted.

“Take your clothes off, Nelka.” The Oberführer kept his pants and boots on.

“I am nursing the baby,” she began. She wondered if the Brown Sister was going to stay.

“Obey.” Sister Rosa moved toward her. She hated to move her eyes from the man. He was pale and beautiful, and Sister Rosa trembled. She would have taken the place of the Polish woman if he asked, but he never asked.

Nelka unbuttoned her coat and laid it on one of the chairs.

“Quickly now.” Sister Rosa was checking something medical looking. Tubes. A needle.

Nelka took off her dress, and the two shifts, and the pads of cloth wrapped over her breasts, and the long pants and boots, and the socks and rags wrapping her feet. She stood in the warm room, and one of her breasts leaked a drop of milk. It fell and made a spot on the floor.

Sister Rosa moved to her and squeezed Nelka’s breast. The milk shot out in a stream into the air. The SS Sister saw the man watching closely, smiling, and she squeezed again to please him. She held Nelka’s breast and offered it to him like a fruit.

“She’s thin, but with that much milk she’s healthy.” Sister Rosa took a stethoscope from her bag and listened to Nelka’s chest, front and back. “No tuberculosis.” The woman pulled Nelka’s eyelids down. “Open your mouth.”

Nelka obeyed. The Oberführer stood and watched.

“Her mouth is pink and fresh. No jaundice in the whites of her eyes. She’s clean.”

“She has a certain look, don’t you think? I noticed it when we were first in this village.”

“What do you want?” Nelka knew she shouldn’t have asked. It didn’t matter if she knew. They would do what they did.

“I will lie on the mattress,” he said. “Set the chair over my body so she sits on the seat.”

“Help me,” said the Brown Sister. Her face was bright red. Nelka helped pull the mattress off the frame. It fell onto the floor.

“This will help get rid of the tiredness I’ve felt for the last few weeks.” He lay down on the mattress on his back.

“Are you a nurse?” asked Nelka.

“I am a Brown Sister. Our duties are to assist the creation of the new world that is coming.”

She talks like one of their posters, Nelka thought.

Sister Rosa picked up the chair and carefully placed it over the knees of the Oberführer.

“Sit on the chair.”

Nelka sat carefully, one leg on either side of the man’s body.

“Move forward on the chair, Nelka. I want to see you.”

She obeyed him and slid her buttocks forward.

“Almost come off the chair. Spread your legs wide.” He stared at Nelka, her breasts full and leaking milk, her body tilted back. Her sex, surrounded by dark blond hair, was violet pink.

A strange rose, he thought.

There was fear in her eyes now, not much, but he saw it. He sighed.

“It would be better if she had no fear at all,” he said, but he was lying when he said it.

There had been a woman once who had no fear. A Dutch woman. When he had taken all of her blood that he wanted, and the needle had been taken from his vein, he ordered that the needle stay in the woman’s arm. The rest of the woman’s blood ran out of the tube and made a puddle under the chair where she sat. Even when the puddle wet her feet, and she was dying, the fear never entered her eyes. Only a final glazing over before she fell off the chair. He’d shot her then.

Nelka looked in the man’s eyes. They were going to kill her. And who would feed the baby? She watched the Oberführer’s handsome face. More handsome than Telek. Almost as handsome as her husband had been.

He watched Nelka and wondered why it was that the fear made a difference. A fearless woman was no use to him. The blood of the Dutch woman hadn’t given him any energy at all.

Sister Rosa put the rubber strap around Nelka’s arm. She rubbed the crook in the girl’s arm where the skin was soft. When the vein popped up she inserted the needle smoothly, and the blood began to rise. Quickly, Sister Rosa attached a tube to the needle.

Bending to the Oberführer, the woman did the same to his arm. Gently, with deft fingers, she attached the blood-filled tube from Nelka to the needle in the man’s arm. The blood now dripped freely down the tube from Nelka to the Oberführer.

“You are really quite beautiful. I like it that you are a mother.” He moved slightly to make his arm more comfortable. Sister Rosa sat quietly on the other chair and watched.

That was it, he decided. It was beauty. A woman with fear in her face achieved a desirableness, a radiance. Courage in a woman’s eyes made her face hard, arrogant. Even a rather ordinary woman achieved a delicate beauty when she was afraid.

“Why do you want my blood?”

“Do not speak unless—” the Brown Sister began.

“I don’t mind. The idea came to me from my days as an athlete. Sometimes transfusions were given to increase energy during the last Olympic games. Your blood will refresh me and serve a higher purpose. Go, Sister Rosa, and do what I ordered.”

Sister Rosa, the graying spinster selected for service by the SS, nodded, put on her long cape and left the room. She was trembling a little, and she wanted to stay. She wanted to tell him that it would be her joy to stay. She wanted to say that she could watch his pleasure with the Polish woman, and his pleasure would give her the greatest happiness any woman had ever had. She wanted to tell him all this, but she didn’t. She simply obeyed because he wanted it.

Leaving the other woman with him, naked and golden, connected by a cord of blood, Sister Rosa felt the pain of being sent away, and even that gave her such pleasure that she nearly cried out as she left the house and moved down the street, her cloak a dark shadow around her.

“You will help me stay strong, Nelka,” the Oberführer was saying to the young woman.

Nelka was beginning to get dizzy. The shiny red line of blood swayed as she tried to move a little and get better balance.

“I won’t take too much. Just enough for a beginning. You can do this again in two weeks. You are giving service to the Reich. The highest thing a Polish woman can aspire to is giving service to the German people. You are a chosen one.”

Nelka said nothing, and they sat for what seemed a long time. Then he began to talk again.

“You are a chosen one, Nelka, and I am chosen also. But there is a difference. You are the giver. Your duty is to be drained of all you have to serve your masters.”

He smiled, and Nelka couldn’t look into his eyes. He is insane, she thought, but not like the insane people I’ve seen before. His penis had begun to swell and pushed against his pants.

“I am also chosen, but differently. I was selected by God to be the receiver. I am the Chalice.” He liked the sound of the words and repeated them again. “I am the Chalice.”