The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (6 page)

The man ran his hand through his hair. His eyes rolled like a horse hearing the airplanes coming back over the fields. The whites of his eyes showed for a second.

“I couldn’t help you with our mother. When she was sick I was in Rome. We’ll be killed for this.”

Magda looked at the two children. The boy was nearly dead. The girl was forcing herself to stay awake in the warmth of the hut. Only a gray light came through the one window, but the girl’s hair shone like moonlight.

“Our grandmother would have fed them.”

“Those were different times.”

“Besides, I need help. I can hardly get wood. The girl is strong enough. The boy is tough. I’ll survive the winter with them to help me.”

“It may be impossible.”

“Do it.”

He left the hut and Magda sat very still for long minutes. She began to rock finally and looked up at the girl.

“Can you make soup?”

“Yes.” Gretel had never made soup, but she had seen it made.

“I’ll show you where the food is hidden outside, and you can begin.”

Gretel climbed down and the two of them, the girl walking now only by will alone, and the old woman nearly bent double, went into the snow, leaving the boy asleep and dreaming on the platform.

Nelka

T
he woman’s hair made Hansel remember a jar of honey, the comb dark gold and the liquid honey lighter gold around it. He knew she wasn’t fat. She had a baby inside.

The woman turned and saw the boy. She stared at the child, her skin glowing in the watery light of winter, her cheekbones like wings, full lips curving into a smile. Hansel felt a smile pulled out of him in return. The woman went into the hut and the door closed behind her.

“Someone’s come.”

“Hide,” Gretel whispered and scuttled between the trees like a squirrel in the snow.

“She’s all right.”

“How do you know?”

“Her hair looks like honey.”

“Gretel? Hansel? Come inside.” Magda called from the hut.

Gretel moved behind a tree, but Hansel ran to the door and went in.

“I’m Nelka, Magda’s great-niece, Hansel, so we are related now.”

He had never seen anyone so beautiful. It wasn’t just the color of her hair. It was that she looked happy. And her eyes weren’t afraid. They looked Hansel full in his face.

She isn’t scared, Hansel thought, and she wasn’t angry either. Everyone was afraid except the Germans, and they were angry.

“How did you know my name?”

“A bird told me.”

Magda snorted. “A bird called Telek. Telek knows everything that happens.”

The woman laughed. “Telek travels all over the woods to gather firewood and snare rabbits.”

“Telek is in love with you. You ought to take him on.”

“I’m married.”

“A Polish husband in Russia is a dead husband.”

There was silence in the hut, and Hansel didn’t hear the door open and Gretel creep in.

“Hello, Gretel. I’m Nelka. I’m your cousin now.”

Gretel stood and thought. “Magda is your aunt?”

“Great-aunt. Yes.”

“Enough of this fine family feeling.” Magda began to smooth the blankets on the sleeping platform. “Bragging about it, almost.”

“Magda’s brother is the priest. Priests don’t have children.” Gretel stared at Magda.

“Did you drag yourself out here to discuss the family tree, child?”

“I came to see what you’re up to, dirty old woman.”

Hansel took Magda’s hand. “She isn’t that dirty.”

“Too dirty for me and everyone else, and so are you. We’re going to get the big tin tub and fill it with water and wash all of you in it.”

“All at once?”

Nelka laughed. “Come on, Hansel, let’s ask Telek to bring water for us.”

“No one’s out there.” Gretel knew she would have seen him.

“If Nelka is here, then Telek is here, poor fool.” Magda shook her head.

Opening the door Nelka called, “Telek, can you help us?”

“The power of this girl,” Magda sighed.

Telek stepped from behind a tree. Gretel’s mouth fell open. He had not been there before. She would have sworn it.

“We need water. We need a fire to heat it. These children are filthy. Please.”

He nodded and walked back toward the creek and became lost in the trees. His clothes were the color of bark and dead leaves. His hair was blond but dirty-colored like leaves too. He was strong looking, but he moved so softly that he seemed smaller than he was.

“How does he do that?” Hansel asked.

“He spent most of his life living in the forest.”

“You should marry him, girl,” Magda said. “He’d keep you safe. And I don’t need to wash. I’ll get the grippe and die if I get wet.”

“First Magda, and then the children. Then we’ll do the walls and blankets.”

“You can’t wet the blankets. They’ll freeze.”

“We’ll pass them over the fire and drive the lice out. You know the children are crawling.”

Nelka grabbed Hansel and handily lifted his shirt. “Look.” She pointed to the red bites of lice made worse by his scratching.

“Set the tub on the floor, Telek.”

Gretel saw how Telek looked at Nelka. As if none of them existed except her. His face was bony like a fox’s, and when he turned to glance at Gretel, his eyes were chips of light blue. His eyes were the only color about him, and he turned them away quickly when Gretel stared.

The children were sent outside to help gather wood for the fire while Magda bathed. They piled up wood as fast as they could carry it, and when Nelka called them inside, Magda sat on the sleeping platform, wrapped in a blanket, her hair neatly braided.

Nelka turned to Hansel, beginning to undress him, but Hansel struggled, and turned so his pants would stay around his bony hips.

“Magda will die if she has to feed all your lice.”

“Nobody can see me,” Hansel shrieked.

“Don’t be shy. I’m your cousin now.”

Hansel hesitated and Nelka stripped him with a few twists of her hands.

“Aren’t you scared of me and Gretel?”

“If I was scared all the time, I’d get constipated. It wouldn’t be good for the baby.”

Hansel thought about this as he lowered himself into the tub. Then he couldn’t think about anything. It was too wonderful. The warmth of it. He dipped his face in and made little muffled snorts.

First Nelka rubbed kerosene in his hair. It stung and burned and he shrieked. Nelka laughed and kept rubbing it in. Then he had to sit and wait while it killed the lice, and Nelka scrubbed him all over with the soap until he thought the whole top layer of his skin was going to be rubbed off. But Hansel didn’t care about the burning because by then, Nelka had won him over.

“Nelka,” he crooned after she had scrubbed the kerosene out of his hair. He pushed his wet head against her bosom. “You can live with us and wash me everyday.”

“And who would take care of the baby that’s coming if I have to fuss with you, my Lord?”

“Gretel and Magda can take care of the baby.”

“Out. You’re done.” Nelka plucked him from the water.

“More.” He struggled free of the blanket and tried to leap back in the tub. “I can feel my heart, Magda. Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa.”

“Nelka, you’ll have another one following you. Telek will have to drown him like a kitten.”

The water was changed again, and Gretel was washed as thoroughly as Hansel until finally all three of them were sitting in smoky blankets on the sleeping platform.

“We’ll heat your clothes in a pan and drive out the rest of the lice.”

Nelka patted Magda on the head like she was a child, and Gretel saw that Magda liked it. The three of them sat in a row while their clothes were heated and then they dressed one by one.

“Now the rest of this pig sty.”

Telek had been bringing wood and water and carrying steaming buckets until he sweated. He had taken his coat off, and Gretel saw his muscles under the thin shirt. Telek lifted heavy pails of boiling water that had been reheated and had had kerosene and soap mixed into it with the dirt of their bodies and more kerosene added to make it deadly.

“It isn’t what I’d do if it was warmer, but we have to finish. The sun will go down and freeze us all.” Nelka started to pick up a bucket and Telek laid his hand on her arm.

“No.”

He spoke so softly that Gretel barely heard, but Nelka stopped.

“Then you have to do it all, my hero.”

Telek picked up the bucket and tossed the boiling water at the walls. It hit with a splash and went in the chinks between the wood.

“Get them, Nelka!” Hansel screamed. The lice were coming out of the walls and washing down to the floor. “Get the dirty things!”

Nelka, with skirts pulled up and her boots getting wet, ran into the puddles and dripped the rest of the kerosene onto the lice. They lay dead in pools of water and kerosene. The floor was soaked and the walls steamed.

Nelka took the broom and swept with such vigor that water and dead bugs and dirt flew in drops and splashes outside onto the mud.

“Wood, Telek. We have to dry it. And the snow is coming. We’ll sleep here tonight.”

Even the sun and the clouds mind her, Hansel thought, for as Nelka spoke, the clouds covered the sun and it began to feel colder.

“We’ll steam for a while and then go to sleep like loaves laid on the stove.”

“That was fun, Nelka.” Gretel smiled and turned so that Nelka could braid her hair. Gretel lifted her arms and wanted to dance. She had forgotten what it was to be able to stand perfectly still and not have the crawling in her hair and on her body, not have to scratch until the skin bled.

Nelka took what was left of the kerosene and dabbed it on Gretel’s wrists and neck and ankles. “Polish perfume.” She grinned at Gretel, and Gretel blinked back the tears that the fumes of kerosene stung from her eyes.

Telek stacked up as much wood as Hansel and Gretel gathered in six days. They ate potatoes and bread and drank hot water with ground rye in it.

Telek pulled out a flask and Magda and Nelka took sips.

“Where do you get it, Telek?” Magda’s cheeks were red. But Telek didn’t say a word. Gretel knew it was vodka. Where would a ragged man like Telek get vodka? He didn’t look like any of them. He wasn’t afraid or angry. He just looked hard.

“Magda? Why do you have such a big stove?” Hansel asked.

“Because the baker’s wife had to go and have twins and I got them out of her. He gave me his old stove when he brought a new one from the city.”

“It’s awfully big.”

“Too big,” Magda agreed.

They lay on the sleeping platform, Magda in the middle where it was warmest. Then Gretel and then Nelka. Hansel was on the other side of Magda and Telek slept on the floor.

In the middle of the night, Gretel woke and saw that Magda lay wide-eyed.

“Magda?” she whispered. “Priests don’t have children do they?”

“Yes.”

“Yes they do, or yes, I am right and they don’t?” But she was so warm that she fell back asleep and didn’t feel Hansel when he crawled over Magda and her and under the blankets next to Nelka.

“I love you, Nelka,” he whispered. “I’m going to marry you.”

She didn’t say a word but gathered him in her arms and pressed her warmth against him. He lay next to her, the rhythmic kicking of the baby bumping against his backbone and keeping him awake until it blended with his own heart thumping in his chest, and Hansel knew no longer what was his flesh, what the baby’s, and what Nelka’s as he fell asleep.

Pictures

“
I
told them that you needed it for a wound. Said you cut your leg chopping wood.” Father Piotr was out of breath.

“I’ll need a bottle every three weeks.”

“The Germans must not want peroxide because I can still get it. But that may not last.” He looked at the boy. “Cut his hair short first. That’ll get rid of the curls.”

“And the papers?”

“In a week. The children can’t be seen until their baptismal certificates are done. Don’t go to the village until then. The less you’re in the village, the better.”

When he’d gone, Magda called Hansel inside.

“Help me, boy.”

She went to the corner of the hut and lifted a board in the floor. Under the floor were baskets of potatoes and onions and another basketful of odd metal instruments. Hansel sat on the table so Magda could reach him easily, and she cut off all his hair. Gretel picked up each curl as it fell and held them in her skirt. When he was shorn so closely that not a curl could show, Gretel took the hair to the stove and opened the heavy door. With a flick of her skirt, she threw the dark curls onto the coals where they lay for a moment and then vaporized, leaving threads of red until the threads disintegrated and became invisible.

“We’re burning you up inch by inch.” Gretel grinned at Hansel. “All the parts that are no good are going in the stove.”

He put his hands over his penis and frowned, and Gretel giggled. “I’m joking, silly. Just your hair.”

“I’ll never get in the oven,” the boy said.

“No one asked you to. Sit still, child.” The witch had to use both bottles to get his hair the proper color. When she was done, it was a golden yellow, darker than Gretel’s but believable next to the pallor of his face. Hansel’s eyes looked even darker next to the hair. Unusual but possible.

“It looks really Polish, Hansel.”

“I want to look like the soldiers. They have blond hair.”

“What soldiers?” Magda held his shoulder as he tried to squirm down from the table.

“You know.”

“Don’t ever say you want to look like the Devil.”

“They have guns.”

“They’re the Devil. They get out of bed and say, ‘Where is someone to kill this morning?’”

“Nobody tells them what to do.”