Travellers in Magic (25 page)

“Everyone laughed, I suppose because I was new at the work, and so clumsy. But Johann came to my side immediately, and put towels soaked in cold water on the burn.”

She did not look at either of us as she spoke. It was as if she were compelled to tell the story to its end, without stopping. Yet her voice was level and calm, and I could not help but think that she might as well be telling us one of her fabulous stories.

“Johann was a little hotheaded, I think. At home he would talk about sabotage, about making vacuum tubes that didn't work or even about blowing up the factory, though I don't know where he would have gotten the dynamite. He talked about his connections in the Underground. We were together nearly all the time, in the factory and at home, and I knew that he had no connections. But I could not help but worry about him—the Germans were taking younger and younger men into the army as the war began to turn against them, and I knew that soon it would be Johann's turn.

“Near the end of the war, as more and more young men were drafted, the Germans brought in prisoners from the labor camps to work in the factory. We knew that these prisoners were probably Jews, and it made Johann angry to see how they were treated—they had to work longer hours than we did, and had less to eat at the midday break. He wanted to do something for them, to contact them in some way.

“We got into horrible arguments about it. You must understand that we hardly ever talked to our fellow workers for fear of giving ourselves away, and so the only company we had was each other. We had become like two prisoners who had shared the same cell for far too long—for a time we could not say anything without giving offense.

“I told him I thought these prisoners were better off than the ones in the camps, because by this time we had begun to hear terrible rumors about what went on in those places. I said that he could do nothing for them, that he would only raise their hopes if he went to talk to them, and that he would be putting himself in danger for nothing. And I pointed out that they didn't speak German anyway—they seemed to be mostly Hungarians and Poles.

“As I said, we couldn't speak to each other without causing pain. He called me a coward. He said—oh, it was horrible—he said that I had lived among the Germans for so long that I had begun to think like one, that I believed myself superior to these people. And—and he said more, too, of a similar nature.”

I noticed that my mother had said it was horrible, but that her expression and her tone still did not change. And that she did not stop telling her story but continued on as calmly as though she were reading it from a book. Her fingers picked at the sandwich, dropping pieces of it on the ground.

“So I didn't speak to him for a week. I had only my foster parents to speak to, and I—well, I was an adolescent, with an adolescent's certain, impatient opinions about the world, and I had started to hate my adopted family. They were Germans, weren't they? And so at least partly responsible for this war and the dreadful things that were happening. I had heard the remarks my fellow workers made about the Jews at the factory, and I thought my foster parents must feel the same way. So what if they had saved my life, and my brother's life? Perhaps I hated them for that too, for their courage and generosity.

“Was Johann right? I don't know. We might have been able to help these people, but I can't think how. Perhaps if everyone who felt the way my brother did had done something—I don't know.

“We used to walk each other home when our shift ended, but now I started going home by myself. I couldn't bring myself to speak to anyone. I felt that I was alone, that no one understood me. The war might not have existed, I was so deeply buried within myself.

“There was a young man at the factory, a German, who began to watch me as I worked, who always seemed to be next to me when I turned around. I thought he was a spy, that he knew my secret. You children, oh, you've lived such a pampered life—you have no idea what we went through. We had to suspect everyone, everyone. Then one of the women who worked near me said, ‘I think Franz is in love with you.'

“Of course I hated him—I don't have to tell you that. He was a German. It's strange, isn't it? We had such strong feelings about each other, and we had never spoken a word together.

“When he saw that Johann and I had stopped walking home together he started to wait for me at the end of my shift. I tried everything I could to avoid him, but some days it just wasn't possible. I was terrified that he would make some remark about the Jews working in the factory, and that I would not be able to contain myself and somehow give myself away. After a week of this I was desperate to make up with Johann again, to have everything the way it had been before. I hadn't forgotten what he had said to me, but I had convinced myself that it didn't matter. Well, you've been an adolescent too—you know how quickly you can change your feelings about something.

“I managed to avoid Franz and I waited outside the factory when my shift ended. But Johann didn't come out. Soon all my fellow workers had gone home, and the new shift had started, and I still didn't see Johann. I went back inside.

“Did I ever tell you what the factory looked like? It looked like hell. Whenever people say anything about hell I always nod, because I know what they're talking about. The place was huge, with low ceilings and almost no light to work by, just the yellow flames of the gas jets. It was hot in winter and like a furnace in summer, with everyone's jet on all the time. We dipped into the big vats of liquid glass and blew our tubes, and that was all we did, eight and nine hours a day. We were allowed to sit down only at the midday meal.

“At first I couldn't find Johann at all. Then I saw that he was walking over to the part of the factory where the Jews worked, and that when the guard looked away he passed a note to one of the prisoners. The other man read it and then turned on his jet of fire and burned it. And neither of them had looked at the other.

“Johann grinned when he saw me and said, ‘It's all taken care of.' I wondered what he meant, but I was so glad he was talking to me again that I didn't really care. And maybe he had been right; maybe he could do something for these people.

“When we left the factory I saw that I hadn't gotten rid of Franz after all—he was waiting for me at the door to the factory, and he was smiling, as if he knew something. Had he seen Johann? But I felt something of my brother's confidence, and I put Franz out of my mind until the next day.

“Franz sat next to me during the midday break. ‘What is your brother doing?' he asked.

“ ‘What do you mean?' I said. I am a very poor liar; I had always dreaded the thought of someone, anyone, asking me questions.

“ ‘I saw him the other day talking to the Jews,' Franz said. To this day I cannot stand to hear a German say the word ‘Jew'—‘
Jude,
' they say, in that horrible accent.”

She did not seem to realize that that “horrible accent” was her own as well. I said nothing.

“What was wrong with Johann? Franz asked. He leaned closer to me and raised his voice at the same time. I was desperate to ask him to speak quietly but I could say nothing, or his suspicions would fall on me. Was Johann a Jew-lover? Some kind of spy?

“I felt battered by his questions. He became more offensive. Why did I never leave my brother's side? Was I in love with him? Was I a Jew-lover as well? If I knew something about my brother's activities I had better go to the authorities and tell them, hadn't I?

“Then he said something I have thought about every day of my life. ‘I might just go to the authorities with what I know,' he said.

“ ‘What do you mean?' I said. ‘Don't be stupid. He hasn't done anything.'

“ ‘Good,' Franz said. ‘You'll stop me, won't you?'

“It's obvious to me today that he wanted to—to blackmail me. That he wanted me to walk home with him, or he would report Johann. And probably he wanted more as well, wanted sex, though I tried not to think of that at the time. I was young, and very sheltered, and even the thought of having to speak to him made me shudder with disgust. So I convinced myself that that could not be what he meant, and that he had no proof against Johann. And, for all I knew, Johann had not done anything. So I avoided Franz, and a week passed, and I began to relax.

“Only once in all that time did Franz try to contact me. He walked by me and gave me a note, and I burned it without reading it. I thought that that would tell him I wanted nothing more to do with him, and that he would leave us alone.

“But the next day when we came to work the prisoner who had gotten Johann's note was gone. Johann noticed it first, and I felt him become stiff with fear beside me, terrified to go to his place in the factory. ‘What?' I said. ‘What is it?'

“ ‘You don't know anything about anything,' Johann said. ‘Don't worry, I'll tell them that.'

“ ‘What's happened?' I said, but at that moment three men in the uniform of the Gestapo came into the factory, and Johann began to run.

“One man guarded the door, so the only place Johann could go was up the stairs. There were several floors above us—I think they were offices—but we were not allowed to go off the first floor and so I had never seen them. Johann must have run as far as he could go, until he was trapped, and then they brought him back down—” She was crying now, but her expression still had not changed. She wiped at her eye with her hand. “I saw him on a Red Cross list after the war. He had died in Auschwitz.”

Sarah and I said nothing. We were not a family used to confidences, to strong emotion. I wondered how my mother could have kept this story from us for so many years, and what I could possibly say to her. And I remembered Sarah's question—“Do you think she was happy?”—and I thought that nothing could be more irrelevant to her life.

“Does Dad know?” Sarah asked finally.

“I think so,” my mother said.

You
think
so? I thought, horrified. How had she told him? With hints and misdirection, just as she had always answered our questions, until finally he suspected the worst? But my mother had become silent. We would get no more stories today. For the first time I thought she looked very old.

We began to walk back. Had Gretel, I wondered, come back to the forest with her daughter? Many years later, when she was an old woman and tired of secrets, had she taken her daughter by the hand and followed the old path? What could she have said to her?

“This is where our parents left us, in that clearing by the brook. And here's where we saw the cottage. Look there—the trees have come and claimed it. And this is where the oven was, this place where all the leaves seem burnt and dry. We saw these things when we were young, too young, I guess, and all we knew was terror. But there were miracles too, and we survived. And look—here is the path that you can take yourself.”

It seemed to me that all my life my mother had given me the wrong story, her made-up tales instead of Hansel and Gretel, had given me breadcrumbs instead of stones. That she had done this on purpose, told me the gaudiest, most wonder-filled lies she knew, so that I would not ask for anything more and stumble on her secret. It was too late now—I would have to find my own way back. But the path did not look at all familiar.

A
FTERWORD

As I said earlier, I've never been very good at writing to an editor's assignment. So when Ellen Datlow told me about an anthology of stories based on fairy tales she was co-editing with Terri Windling I promptly forgot all about it. Then one day I remembered that as a child I had confused the ovens of the concentration camps with the oven in “Hansel and Gretel,” and I thought that something might be made of that.

But fairy tales are never as simple as they seem. Perhaps because of the primal nature of the tale I was writing about the story grew broader and deeper at every turn. I realized that instead of writing about a superficial parallel, as I had thought, I was exploring the ways in which parents abandon children: Hansel and Gretel, Margaret and Johann, and finally Lynne and Sarah. Because of this complexity—like most fairy quests, half planned and half discovered along the way—“Breadcrumbs and Stones” is my favorite of all my stories.

T
HE
W
OMAN IN THE
P
AINTING

25 June 1858

My Dear Henry—

You will not believe what a treasure I found yesterday. As you know, I had been trying to finish the painting I began last January, but it grows no closer to completion, and indeed I sometimes feel that it will never be done, that I will still be attempting it when I have grown too old and feeble to hold a brush. And yesterday I had an additional problem: the light was poor, a sooty, sunless London day. As the painting proved impossible I resolved instead to take a walk to clear my brain, and I headed toward the shops in Leicester Square.

And that is where I saw her, in a milliner's shop. At first, as I gazed at her through the dusty window, I thought her quite plain, with pallid brown hair and a thin, ungenerous mouth. To be honest I don't know why I stared for so long, except that she posed a minor sort of mystery: She was not a shopgirl, and in some indefinable way I knew that she was not one of the ladies patronizing the store.

Then she turned and saw me. Do you know how some women seem to change their appearance in an instant? I cursed myself for thinking her plain. Her hair was not brown but long and thick and black; her mouth was red, her skin so white it seemed luminous.

I have thought about our first meeting several times since then, but I cannot explain that first glimpse I had of her. Perhaps when she turned to me my soul understood her as she truly is; perhaps (more likely, I admit) I had first seen her through a distortion in the glass.