The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (24 page)

The forest, Nelka thought. I can go into the forest with the baby and Telek.

They sat, joined by a tube of blood, for twenty minutes. Then the door opened and Sister Rosa came in.

“It’s locked in my room with a guard.”

The Oberführer smiled. “Just a minute or two more, Nelka.”

The woods, she thought. The woods. The forest that had never been burned, never been logged, the primal forest that man had never dared to harvest and prune and use. The wet moss. Snow that hid your tracks.

“Sister Rosa will take perfect care of your baby. It will be in Sister Rosa’s room. You can go and sit with it. You will nurse it. It will sleep with Sister Rosa for the moment. Is he sick, Sister Rosa?”

“He seems healthy. Quite good-looking. Blond and with no marks.”

“My baby?” Nelka tried to stand, and Sister Rosa slapped her gently to make her sit. “Where’s my baby?”’

“Safe in my room. You can see him anytime you need to nurse.”

“You have him?” Nelka stared at the woman. She was light-headed. “Why?”

“So you won’t be tempted to run away from me, my darling.” The Oberführer felt the power in his body. He was hot all over, and his arm stung from the needle. The girl’s blood was good. “You’re a lucky girl, Nelka. I could become quite fond of you.”

Sister Rosa saw the girl sway. Stepping forward she grabbed Nelka roughly by the shoulder. It was terrible that he had called Nelka
darling.

“Take the needles out.”

Nelka dressed with the help of Sister Rosa.

“You may go to the baby. The soldier has orders to let you in. Sit with the baby as long as you like. You’ll both be quite safe.” The Oberführer lay on the mattress. Nelka saw that he still had an erection under his pants, but he didn’t touch himself or seem to notice. Only Sister Rosa stared at the man’s swollen penis pushing against the cloth.

“And, Nelka?” he said to her.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“You must not tell anyone about this. If I hear that anyone knows, I will have to deal harshly with them. And with you. And with anything that is yours. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Nelka moved to the door. She had to see the baby.

“Here.” Sister Rosa pressed something into Nelka’s hand. It was a chocolate bar.

“Eat it. It will get rid of the light-headedness. Take this also. You need more food.”

Sister Rosa handed over a sack. Nelka knew from the weight and the lumpiness that it held potatoes, perhaps a twist of salt.

She walked out onto the street with the food in her hands. The snow was falling again.

Nelka moved toward Sister Rosa’s house. She had to see if her baby was safe. She walked slowly, each step an effort, but didn’t stop to rest. His sweet little body. He might be wrapped too loosely. He might be hungry.

Nelka moved down the street looking for her baby. She had to see if it was true that he had been taken from her.

Wiktor stood in the dark and watched Nelka leave the house and walk unsteadily down the street. He twisted his hands together, and his forehead was crumpled into lines as he thought.

Being the clerk gave him a certain freedom and certain responsibility. He could come and go after dark simply by right of being the Major’s clerk. He got more potatoes and bread and a glass of decent vodka when the Major was drunk enough not to care who drank with him.

He was responsible for all the paperwork. The Major had trouble caring much about the paper that flowed into the village and must flow back out or cause trouble with headquarters in Bialystok. Wiktor did the paperwork, but the responsibility that interested him the most was staying alive. No one in the village would help him with that. He was a dog to them. He was the Nazi Major’s clerk, brought from a jail in Warsaw, but he was still a Pole.

“I’m as Polish as they are,” he said, almost too loudly.

And that thought decided him. He moved toward the Major’s house. The man would be awake and drinking as always. The Major would want to know all about what Wiktor had seen, standing in the dark. The Major wanted to know everything that happened in the village, and Wiktor told him what he chose to tell. He didn’t tell it all, but some of it.

And this information was so amazing, so strange. Lying there under the naked woman and taking her blood. It was something peculiar. Even for the SS, it was peculiar. Wiktor was unsure of the exact laws governing the fraternization of Poles and German officers, but he knew that taking blood from a Pole would be a closeness that might interest the Major.

Wiktor grinned then for the first time. He liked keeping the Germans as uneasy as he could. It was a small thing, but he liked it when they had to think about things and worry. He walked up the steps to tell the Major, but he carefully rearranged his face into a look of docile stupidity before he knocked. He wouldn’t smile even once when talking to the Major about this.

“He did what?” Telek stood over Nelka, who slumped in the chair.

“I feel drunk.”

“What did he do to you? Where’s the baby?” It will only take me a moment to go to the forest and get my gun, Telek thought. Just a quick run, and then I could come back and—

“He said he’d kill me if I told. He’ll kill the baby.”

“Tell me.”

Nelka shut her eyes. She couldn’t live alone with it.

“The baby is with Sister Rosa. I saw him. He’s warm, and I fed him a little. I have to feed him there now.”

“Why does he want the baby?” Telek thought of the boy’s perfect blondness, and he shivered.

“So I won’t run away. Then he can do it again.”

Telek’s throat constricted, but he forced the words out. “Do what?”

“He took blood. The woman connected me to him with needles and a tube. He was transfused from me.” She could barely say the word and slurred it slightly. “Transfused,” she said, trying again.

“If he isn’t wounded, why does he need blood?” Telek knew his voice sounded angry.

“He just did it. He said it gives him energy. She wanted to watch, but he made her go, and that’s when she took my baby.”

“Watch you giving him blood?”

Nelka nodded. She couldn’t think very well, but she knew that she wouldn’t tell Telek about having to take her clothes off. About how the Oberführer stared at her on the chair. About the man’s erection under his pants.

“He bled you?” Telek didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “He didn’t make you—rape you?” he finished bluntly, and his voice was loud in the room which seemed so silent without the cry of the baby. Telek hadn’t realized before how one tiny baby filled a room.

“He didn’t touch me. Just the woman. Just the needles. But they have my baby. They’re keeping him in her room.”

“I’ll take him. Tonight. We’ll go in the forest.”

Nelka shook her head. It was so heavy or her neck was so weak, she didn’t know which. She laid her head down on the table and shut her eyes. “They have a guard. You’d get shot.”

I’ll kill him, Telek thought, and she read his thoughts without looking up from the table.

“If you kill him, they’ll chase us. And they’ll kill the village for reparation.”

“Blood.” Telek thought about it, and he was puzzled. He didn’t like being puzzled by the Nazis. It wasn’t safe when you didn’t know what the Germans were going to do.

“He said he’d do it again when I recover. Maybe every few weeks.” Nelka felt the tears, hot under her eyelids.

“I’ve heard about using women for blood. It was information passed on months ago, but they were using the blood for the wounded.”

Nelka said nothing. She knew that the Oberführer was not really a logical man. There was not a reasonable explanation. It had to do with her nakedness and his excitement, but she wouldn’t tell Telek that. She wondered if the Oberführer would be more excited as he took more and more blood. She wondered if she’d have to die so he could come to orgasm.

Telek sat and put his hand on her head. He stroked the heavy knot of hair that caught the light from the window.

“He said he’d only do it sometimes, Telek. He doesn’t touch me.”

“I can kill him,” Telek whispered to her.

“Only if you kill all the Germans. Every one. Or they’ll kill the whole village.”

“If he touches you, I’ll kill him,” Telek said.

“He can’t have sex with me. I’m Polish.” Nelka raised her head and smiled at Telek. “It’s against their law for him to have sex with me. They’ll be gone soon.”

Telek sat and didn’t move to kiss her. Nelka sighed. She was so tired. She wanted to be petted and rocked like a child but Telek was rigid with shame and anger. His woman was being used by another man, and Telek could do nothing. He couldn’t even look her in the eyes.

Nelka wanted to lie down wrapped in blankets and slip under the darkness of sleep like slipping under dark water in summer, when they swam in the river after working all day in the fields. But Telek sat beside her, his face white with the pain of his helplessness.

“Come to bed, darling,” she whispered, standing with effort and taking his hand. “Come to bed and let me love you.”

Telek rose, still not looking in her eyes, and she moved against him and kissed his mouth until some of the rigidity of his jaw softened.

I can do it, she thought. I can make love to him, and I can give blood to the German, and I can wait and steal the baby away when the Russians come. I can do all of it. She was still thinking this as she led Telek to the bed.

Christmas Eve, 1943

“
I
f the beaters can’t find another one, I’ll shoot them,” the SS man said.

The Oberführer carried the beautiful gun on his shoulder, and the Major winced when he saw that it was not broken. Unbroken guns were how hunting accidents happened. Even the Major knew that, and he had never owned such a glorious, expensive gun in all his life.

“The gun is worth ten of the man,” the Major whispered to Unterfeldwebel Rahn, the sergeant who followed at his elbow.

“How long will he keep us out here?”

The Major shrugged. Half the boys of the village were strung out in the woods. The man who should have been there, the one most likely to find a boar, Telek, was mysteriously absent.

“Probably trapping rabbits,” Wiktor had offered, but the Major didn’t believe it, and the boys of the village had flushed only one small sow who had squealed her way through the beaters.

“It’s here someplace.” The Oberführer stopped walking. “I can feel that he’s near. This is a smart, old boar.” Hunting in Poland was as bad as he had feared it would be. His father would have laughed at him, trying to kill a boar with a handful of children and the deformed Major.

“It’s getting dark.” The Major didn’t want to meet a boar under these giant trees at night.

And then they heard it. A rumbling grunt, loud and unafraid. The hair rose on the back of the Sergeant’s neck. It didn’t sound like a pig. It didn’t sound like anything he’d ever heard, and the man crossed himself surreptitiously.

The Oberführer was smiling. “He’ll rush us soon. Neither of you fire. It’s my shot.”

The Major drew his pistol. He’d disdained to carry a rifle, and now he was sorry. It was a bad thing, this hunting in the Bialowieza Forest. Göring had said it was to be the private preserve of the Nazi high command. They could be court-martialed for poaching.

“Shot because of a pig,” he muttered.

“Silence.” The SS man stood and waited, and the glossy stock of the gun wavered.

“You have to stand like a rock to hit a boar when it comes at you,” the Sergeant whispered.

The silence lay all around them, broken only by the noise of the boys coming closer through the forest. Their calls had a minor key, like a lament, as the sound came to the three men.

Hansel, serving as a beater, was crying with exhaustion and frustration. The pig had slipped past him. It was going to be killed. He had tried to drive it back toward the creek, but the stupid beast kept moving toward the guns.