The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (26 page)

Hidden by the night, the boar dug into a pile of leaves and pine needles under a log which had fallen twenty years before and still lay slightly off the forest floor, supported by its roots. The spongy peat under the leaves gave off a dense odor that mixed with the musky smell of the animal. It lay silent, its dark eyes open and watchful. Across its back was a single line of red where the Sergeant’s bullet had taken off a layer of skin and bristle. It was a slight wound and only oozed a little blood.

The animal grunted once and rolled to dig itself more deeply into the floor of the forest that stood all around. It lay on the matted, decaying matter, warm and alive, only the glitter of eye betraying its presence and watched the dark forest until the light began to change toward the waiting dawn of Christmas day. As the stars faded and dimmed, the boar finally lay its head down and slept, hidden by the darkness of shadow as the morning brightened.

Father Piotr

J
anuary began with more snow and storms so fierce that everyone stayed inside as much as they could. “Winter is howling because his back is broken,” Magda muttered.

“I’m bored.” Hansel frowned.

“Be patient, boy. Life is sometimes a great waiting.”

The knock on the door made her jump. The door opened and Father Piotr came in.

“I hear you’ve become a drunk,” she said.

He took off his coat and it dropped to the floor.

“My God, sit down.” Magda took the kettle from the stove and poured the water over herbs. “It’s the last of the peppermint. We might as well drink it.”

Magda made a cup for Gretel and a cup for Hansel. The children took their tea and climbed onto the sleeping platform. They watched the priest slantwise, never letting him see them staring.

Father Piotr sat in a chair and did not touch the cup that Magda put on the table in front of him. He rubbed his hand repeatedly over his face.

“What’s wrong with you? Getting drunk every Sunday just when the Germans give permission for Masses?”

“I am an evil man, Magda.”

“You’ve always been cursed with ordinariness. You’re just a human for all of it.”

“I had women and they threw me out of Rome. Then the birth of the girl in this village. I never had a church better than a peasant’s hut.”

“Still grieving over lost glory?”

“I don’t care anymore. But now I’m ending this way.”

“Brother, your weakness was never drink, but now you are drunk at every Mass.” Magda suddenly understood. “They’ve ordered you to get drunk every Sunday. It makes you a buffoon and a weakling. The people will hate you. It could break their belief, but if you tell the people that the Nazis ordered it, the Nazis will kill you.”

Pushing the cup aside, he put his head on the table and sighed deeply. “It is the idea of the new one, the SS, and yesterday was the worst of all. I can’t stand it anymore.”

“What happened?”

“They came to our houses before light with a truck. Feliks and Patryk and I. We had to dig the truck out of the snow when the road was too deep. I was nearly dead with it.”

“We’re too old for that sort of work, brother. And then?”

“We went to the rail line. There was a boxcar they wanted to use for wounded Germans. The Germans were laid around fires to keep them warm, waiting for the train, but first we had to free the boxcar.”

“From ice?”

“No. From people.”

Magda frowned and rocked slowly. Hansel heard the words as if he were dreaming them, and Gretel was nearly asleep.

“Magda?” Gretel spoke suddenly, and the priest jumped at her voice.

“Yes, child?”

“Will I dream my name?”

“What do you mean, Gretel?”

“I can’t remember it, Magda. But when I dream, I’m that girl again. The one before the fat little girl in the picture.”

“What does she mean?” Father Piotr whispered.

“You will remember your name when God wills, Gretel.”

“But I want him to will it now.” Gretel fell asleep and didn’t hear Magda’s answer.

“He is keeping you safe, child. Go to sleep.”

They sat in silence for a time, and then Magda’s brother began again.

“We were given axes and crowbars to force the doors open because of the ice. Inside there were people. Standing. Lying. Stepped on. Crushed against the walls. We had to use the axes to chop them out of the boxcar. They were frozen solid. Stuck together.”

“Who were they?”

The priest nodded his head toward the children. Magda silently mouthed the word,
Jews,
and he nodded again and went on with the telling.

“Finally, there were only two left stuck to the walls. Two little ones. They made me chop them out. The ground was too frozen to bury them. And we couldn’t have found enough dry wood to burn them. We threw them in a ditch and covered them with snow and rocks. Then we cleaned the boxcar as best we could and loaded the wounded soldiers. We heard the train coming as we got back on the truck.”

Magda sat in silence and rocked gently. Her brother put his head down on the table again and for a while they sat. Then he spoke again, and he didn’t lift his head so she couldn’t see his face.

“There’s more. I’ve hurt the girl.”

“What girl?”

“Nelka. I couldn’t stay away from her grandmother. She became pregnant, and I hoped people would think she’d gone to the city and gotten pregnant there.”

“Villages are like families, brother. You can’t fool them for long.”

“I pretended it was nothing to do with me. She never married, and then she died. And my daughter died too. After her death, Nelka came to me. She told me that she knew everything. Her mother was barely in the ground. She just wanted to love me—to know me—to have me as family. I drove her off with platitudes. I lied and said that we weren’t related. I’ll never be able to speak of it to her. She thinks I have no feeling for her.”

Magda stood and went behind him. She put her arms around his shoulders and pressed close to him. The magnificent golden head, now white-haired and aged, pressed back against her.

“Come and sit with me sometimes, brother. Our differences are not so large anymore. I don’t curse your church much now, and you don’t tell me how wicked I am.”

He sat and sipped the tea, and Hansel thought of what the priest had said. He could picture the bodies frozen together. It was like in the ghetto, when the bodies piled up in the street froze and had to be torn apart to be carried away. Some of the tougher boys who lived alone on the streets had made walls of the bodies and thrown snowballs at each other from behind them.

“Come and sit with me, Piotr. The winter is waning. Then springtime.”

He nodded, and Magda stood behind him for a long time, holding him and sighing deeply. Winter was going, but the sun was still covered by dense clouds and the hut was dim. She began to croon and hum, and the fire fell to coals in the stove.

“Come now, my little boy,” Magda said to Hansel early one morning. She took his hand and led him through the giant trees. They walked for a long while beside the creek until it broadened and became a river, and still Magda walked, stopping only to pant for breath occasionally.

“Gretel will miss us, Magda. She won’t know where we are.”

“Gretel mustn’t know about this. Telek and Nelka know, but no one else can know.”

He nodded and took her hand. They walked on, both of them beginning to feel the cold all the way to their bones. They walked until Magda stopped and turned him to face her.

“Listen to me, Hansel. We followed the creek to the river. You know how to do that?”

“I can get to the river.”

“Good. Then we turned directly into the sun and walked until we came to this rock. Now we turn south and walk until we come to what you must never tell anyone about.” Magda stared into the boy’s face. He must understand how serious it was, and he was so young. If only the girl hadn’t lost her mind.

“You will never speak of this? Not to anyone for any reason. Not to Gretel.”

“I won’t tell, Magda. Not anybody.”

“Good boy.” She turned and moved south for about a hundred feet. Then she stopped and pointed. There was a small grove of saplings in front of them.

“I made this years and years ago, boy. When the villagers were angry with me and threatened to get me and kill me. When they were sure that I was a witch.”

Hansel nodded. There were many reasons to kill people.

“So I made this.” She knelt in the snow and began to brush it away.

“Magda! It’s boards. What is it?”

“I never used it. The pigs stayed here when the Russians stole our food. Go down.”

He dropped into the pit. It was just big enough for five or six people, and in the corner were rocks with sacks on them. He opened a sack and saw frozen potatoes and turnips. The sack next to it had bread, flat and hard. Two buckets sat on the dirt floor.

“One bucket to piss and shit in, one bucket to hold snow and let it melt so you have water to drink if you have to stay in the pit for very long. You can’t eat snow. You have to melt it.”

Hansel looked quickly at her face above him and then lowered his eyes. He shivered.

“Hansel, can you bring Gretel here and stay inside and be very quiet if you have to?”

“I can find it, Magda.”

“And can you stay in this hole to be safe? Maybe for weeks?”

“You’d be here. Not just me and Gretel.”

“But if you didn’t have me. Can you do it?”

Hansel wanted to cry, but his chest was too tight for it to heave. “I can do it,” he whispered.

Magda stared down at the boy. “All right. Now come out.”

He climbed out and the two of them pulled the boards back into place.

“Look,” she said.

Hidden between the thin trunks of three saplings that grew close was a small piece of pipe. It rose barely three inches above the snow.

“For air. It’s dark inside, and it won’t smell good when it thaws, but there is food and it’s as safe as anything in Poland now.”

Hansel nodded. He helped push snow over the boards. His face was very white and his eyes almost as dark as Magda’s. It was smaller than the grease pit outside the ghetto walls.

“When, Magda?”

“Soon, I think.” Magda looked in his eyes. She knew if she shut her eyelids she would feel the darkness coming down on her.

“I know things. I don’t know why. Don’t forget the way.” She shivered and took his hand.

They walked back to the river and began to struggle through the snow which was now soaking their legs almost to Magda’s hips.

Father Piotr arrived at the hut before noon, and only the girl sat on the platform, singing.

“Hello, Father Piotr.”

“Hello, child.” He stood and looked at her. She smiled at him the way children used to smile, her mind blocking out the war and all the dark days they were caught in.

He looked at the girl and began to cry. He coughed and blew his nose.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, frowning.

“I am sad, child. I’ve become a slave, and God is gone. The winter is dark, and I’m tired of being cold.” You fool, he thought. You childish old man.

Gretel’s face brightened. She jumped off the platform and went to the floor where Magda kept her baskets. Kneeling, she lifted the boards and groped in a basket. Carefully she took out something and put it in a sack. She put the boards back and went to the stove. She lifted the iron top and took out a few red coals with the tongs, placing them in a small bucket. Then she pulled on her coat and opened the door.

“It’s cold outside.”

“Come on.” She pulled him by the hand and he followed her.

They walked between the trees, and the child paused occasionally, looking around. She would shake her head and walk deeper into the woods. “Here,” she said finally.

They were in a circle of tall trees. The snow was unmarked, and the only sound was the water of the creek smothered by ice. Gretel brushed a circle large enough for them to sit. She rounded the edges of the circle and then turned to him. “Sit down. It’s nice now.”