Gretel and the Dark (4 page)

‘Do you think she’s married?’

‘Who?’ Josef thought of Lilie changing the monster’s pronoun from the neutral ‘it’ to the revealing ‘he’. In his professional capacity, he’d examined her carefully. He knew what he knew.
Undoubtedly there was a brutish man in this somewhere but there was no ring on her finger and no mark where one had been. ‘You mean Lilie, Benjamin?’ He turned to face him. ‘I doubt it.’

‘Wait for me,
Herr Doktor
.’ Gudrun laboured up the stairs after him, clutching a work basket. I promised to come with you, and come with you I will.’

Josef drew himself upright. ‘There’s really no need –’

‘I won’t utter a word,’ said Gudrun, shouldering past him. ‘Not a word. I shall sit by the window and get on with my mending. Quiet as a mouse. In silence.’

‘Very well.’ Josef knocked on the door and entered quickly before Gudrun could blunder in. The girl was sitting exactly as before: hands loosely clasped in her lap; eyes wide open and blank. ‘Good afternoon, Lilie. I thought we might have a chat. How are you feeling now?’ He raised his voice when no answer came: ‘Lilie, you must speak to me. Answer now, please. Do you hear? How are you feeling?’

Lilie inclined her head. ‘A machine has no feelings.’

Josef waited until Gudrun had settled herself by the window with her darning mushroom and was busily jabbing a large needle into the heel of one of his socks. He left the question of emotional response for the moment. There was another, more promising topic that might yield results.

‘Tell me about the monster, Lilie.’ She stared at him for so long without blinking that Josef found himself opening and shutting his eyes at twice the normal speed, as if to ease her ocular discomfort as well as his own. ‘Tell me about the monster. What does he look like?’

‘He is small and dark.’

‘Small, yes.’ Unusual. Dark? Josef thought back to children’s tales. A picture of a prancing devil presented itself. ‘And does he have claws or horns? A tail? Huge teeth?’

‘No.’

‘Do you see him in your dreams or in everyday life?’

‘No.’

Josef frowned. ‘Where is he then?’

‘He is somewhere else.’

‘Somewhere in Vienna?’

‘No, but he will come here soon.’

‘To find you?’

‘No,’ said Lilie. ‘He isn’t looking for me. I am looking for him.’

‘Oh? And why is that?’

‘He won’t recognize me. I’ll be able to put an end to it before it begins.’

‘Ah,’ said Josef, wondering what Lilie imagined had rendered her incognito. The lack of hair, perhaps: women often attached disproportionate importance to the effects of a different style. ‘Are you frightened of him?’

Lilie shook her head. ‘Fear is a human weakness. I have no feelings.’

‘It’s hard to believe you’re a machine, Lilie, since you look exactly like a real human woman. And a very comely one, if I might say so.’ The girl’s face remained without expression but a prolonged clattering of bobbins from the window seat said far more than words and Josef immediately wished the stiff compliment unvoiced. ‘Like Galatea,’ he added, ‘who though not a machine was made by human hands.’

‘Pygmalion only sculpted one Galatea,’ responded Lilie. ‘I am one of many. There are thousands with the face and body
that you see before you. Machines such as I are provided with a pleasing female likeness unless otherwise requested. Since we are neither dead nor alive our appearance remains a matter of indifference to us.’

Josef leaned his elbows on his knees and made a steeple of his fingers. ‘Galatea was brought to life by Aphrodite. How is it that you are able to move, breathe, think and speak?’

‘Electrical impulses,’ said Lilie, rubbing her left wrist, ‘as in human bodies.’

‘But,’ he persisted, ‘what equivalence exists for the divine spark whereby a human infant quickens?’

‘It’s the same thing. Nothing but an electrical charge.’ She looked directly at him. ‘Such as a bolt of lightning from the
Blitzfänger
.’

‘From what you say’ – Josef’s eyes flicked sideways, irritated by the outbreak of huffing and tutting from near the window – ‘the only difference between a human and a machine such as yourself seems to be the existence of a soul.’

Lilie shook her head. ‘All the soul cares about is experiencing every variety of pain this world can offer. Souls are so greedy for pain they don’t care whether the body is natural or man-made. In a natural body it can feel the pain. In a fabricated one it observes the effects.’

‘But there are pleasures, too,’ said Josef, profoundly shocked. ‘Love, friendship, service, knowledge.’

‘Pleasure is only a pathway to pain because it must always end in …’ Lilie looked up at the ceiling and Josef’s eyes followed her gaze. More of the butterflies must have entered through the partially open window, for now fifty or more fluttered helplessly against the plaster. Gudrun would have to take a brush to them. The garden must be overrun with the creatures.

‘In –?’ he prompted.

‘Death,’ said Lilie. ‘Fear of dying brings humans the greatest pain. Death is implicit in every form of joy. Of course, it also brings the end of pain.’

‘And what happens when a machine dies? Does its soul return to God?’

‘God is a human invention,’ said Lilie.

‘That’s enough.’ Red-faced and trembling, Gudrun thrust herself between Josef and Lilie, still shoving her sewing inside the work basket. ‘I’m not listening to any more of this wickedness. What would your father say,
Herr Doktor
? What would he say?’ She turned on Lilie. ‘I’ll bring you food later, Miss. Eat it or not, as you please. I refuse to take part in your nasty game. And by the way, don’t expect me to get you ready for bed this evening. You’re quite capable of looking after yourself.’

Josef found himself on the other side of the slammed door without working out how it had been achieved.

‘I’m surprised at you, encouraging that sort of talk,
Herr Doktor
,’ said Gudrun.

‘A type of pantheism, perhaps,’ murmured Josef. ‘She’s a well-educated young woman.’

‘She can read, if that’s what you mean. Every book’s been off the shelves in that room. I can tell. I won’t explain how. It’s enough to say I’ve only one pair of hands and this is a big house.’ Gudrun pursed her lips. ‘Unless, of course, she was looking to see if anything had been hidden behind them.’

Two conversations with Fräulein Lilie took place today after I discovered that, while gentle persuasion has no effect, a direct order is instantly obeyed. It became apparent that the young woman has been well-educated and is of high intelligence. However, whatever occurred
in her past has led her to detach herself from emotional response. Lilie avers that she has no feelings, either negative or positive, that she has, in short, turned into a machine. Her elaboration of this fantasy involves a gloomy and joyless view of the world, backed up by simple logic gleaned from atheist literature. Lilie also referred to a man who is likely to have been responsible for the attack on her. She identifies him as a monster and courageously asserts that she will find him in order to see him punished. I am confident that considerable progress has been made and that Lilie is ready to receive treatment.

Papa says I should be glad that we’ve come to live in such a beautiful place. There are many important people here. People that matter. People who will make the future better for everyone. I’m not glad at all, and I don’t think he is either. As we were leaving our proper house, Papa said I must stay in the car with my toys and books while he locked up. After a bit I followed him back inside and heard him walking around talking to Mama, which was very silly because she isn’t there any more.

‘What else can I do, Lidia?’ he asked the bed. ‘It’s the last thing I want to be involved with, but these are dangerous times.’ He picked up Mama’s hairbrush and ran his hand across the bristles. ‘How else can I keep her safe?’

I popped out from behind the door. ‘Keep who safe, Papa?’

Papa got very cross and marched me back outside. ‘It’s about time you learned to do as you’re told, young lady.’

‘Don’t want to go.’ I tried to stop him putting me into the car. ‘No!
No!
’ I screamed so loudly the lady from the house next door threw open her windows to look out. Papa pushed me on to the back seat and started the engine. He tidied his hair and mopped his forehead, watching me in the car’s little mirror.

‘Be a good girl and we will stop somewhere nice on the way.’

‘Won’t. Don’t want to.’

‘Very well, Krysta.’ Papa sighed. He sighs a lot more than he used to. I knelt on the seat, watching our house get smaller and smaller until it isn’t there any more.

This new house is big, with fine new furniture and no dark corners to hide in, unlike our real home, which Greet said was impossible for one person to keep clean. A cat with a family of new kittens lives downstairs. Outside, we have a garden with flowers and trees instead of the noisy street. Beyond its walls there’s a big zoo, but not the kind that has lots of visitors.

‘There are lakes and forests, too,’ Papa says, raising his voice as I continue to wail and stamp and call for Greet. ‘When summer comes we’ll go for picnics and gather berries. And in the autumn we’ll hunt for mushrooms –
Steinpilze
and
Pfifferlinge
. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘No. No!
No!
’ Who would thread the wild mushrooms on strings now that Greet has gone? Who will tie ribbons in my hair? Who will tell me stories? I throw myself on the floor and kick my legs.

‘Stop that, Krysta,’ Papa says sharply. ‘You’re a big girl now, not a baby.’ He picks me up and sits me in a chair. I scream and drum my heels against the seat. His eyes dart from me to the door. ‘Stop! Any more noise and you’ll get a smack.’

I stick my thumb in my mouth, sniffing and hiccupping. Papa takes out a handkerchief and tells me to blow.

‘That’s better.’ He walks to the window and looks out. ‘I’m only here for your sake, Krysta,’ he says very quietly. ‘If it wasn’t for you …’ He sighs again, and adds in a louder voice: ‘At least it’s safe here. You can play anywhere you like. All the dangerous creatures are behind the walls, and there are guards with fierce dogs to make sure they never get out.’

‘When will my Greet come?’

Papa frowns. ‘Greet can’t come here. This is a special place.’

‘Don’t like it. Want to go home. Want Greet.’

‘Enough. Do you know what happens to bad little girls who don’t do as they are told? One of these days you’ll find out. Then you’ll be sorry.’

I’m lonely without Greet.

I don’t miss her shouting and flicking me with the dish rag, or the way she dragged the comb through my hair and made me drink my milk even when it had skin on it. Even though he sometimes threatens to, Papa never smacks me like Greet did. Instead he sits me on his knee and talks for a long time about being nice and how good little girls are supposed to behave. But he doesn’t do cuddles like Greet either. He holds my hand. Sometimes he kisses the top of my head. Greet gave me big, squashy cuddles and tickled me when she was in a good mood. She kissed me goodnight and tucked me in – unless I’d made her cross. Then she used to shout: ‘Get up those stairs out of my sight and let’s hope the evil one doesn’t carry you off in the night.’ Papa just stands at the end of the bed and hopes I sleep well.

Most of all, I miss Greet’s storytelling. Stories for this, stories for that, stories for everything else – she had new ones for each day of the week, ones that went with most of her jobs. There were puffing, blowing wash-day stories and hot, red-faced ironing stories. There were quick stories for making dumplings or Apfelstrudel and extra-long stories for sewing and mending afternoons. People here sometimes read me stories from books. They don’t carry them in their heads. They can’t do voices like Greet either. She did little honey-cake voices for princesses, crackly burning-paper ones for the witches, great big roars for the baddies, cheerful voices for the brave heroes. They don’t sing. They don’t make the right faces. Most stories here
are nice and end happily. Some of Greet’s were nasty, especially the liver-chopping and fish-gutting ones.

‘Once upon a time,’ begins Greet, grabbing the whetstone from its tub of water, ‘on a farm near Sachsenhausen, lived a man who let his children watch as he slaughtered a pig.’ She draws the blade of the largest kitchen knife across the whetstone, tip to heel, with a long quivering
whi-i-i-sh
that sounds like pirate swords slicing the air. Shivers run up my back. Again. Again. ‘Later that day, when the children went off to play, the eldest child said to the youngest: “You shall be the little pig. I’ll be the butcher.” And with that …’ Greet reaches into a bucket and slaps a bloody mass on to the table. She brandishes the newly sharpened blade aloft. ‘The eldest child took a shiny knife and slit his little brother’s throat.’

I gulp and shuffle backwards, staring open-mouthed as her blade slices the offal as easily as a breakfast knife slides through warm butter. I want and do not want to hear more. Greet straightens up, wiping her brow with the back of one hand.

‘Now, the mother was upstairs bathing the baby. When she heard the cries of her son she ran helter-skelter downstairs. On seeing what had happened, she pulled the knife out of the boy’s throat and was so angry that she plunged it straight into the heart of the son who’d played butcher –’ Here Greet lunges across the table with the kitchen knife, making me scream and run for the door. ‘Then she remembered the baby and raced back upstairs. But it was too late. He’d drowned in the bath.’

By now I’m trembling from head to foot. A small whimper squeezes through my clenched teeth. Greet sweeps the bloody offering into a pan with her bright-red hand.

‘The woman was so distressed,’ she continues, her voice
mournful, mouth pursed, head shaking, ‘that she hanged herself from a beam in the barn. And that evening, when the father returned from working in the fields, he took his gun –’

‘Margarete!’ roars Papa. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’

Greet’s mouth snaps shut just like one of the Little Nippers in the pantry, but this time she is the mouse. I put my thumb in. She hangs her head.

‘Beg pardon,
Herr Doktor
. She does like her stories.’

‘There are other stories, Margarete. Pleasant stories. Uplifting ones that tell of the beauty and sanctity of life, of good overcoming evil. You should know better than to frighten an innocent child with such dreadful tales.’

Greet glances sideways at me. Papa, if only you knew …

‘Beg pardon,
Herr Doktor
,’ she mutters. ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘I should think not,’ says Papa, his face grim. ‘Such tales spring from sick imaginations. Childhood is precious. It’s where the building blocks of life are laid. We have a duty to protect our little ones from hearing about such atrocities.’

Every day now Papa goes to the infirmary. When he comes back he washes his hands. He rubs and scrubs until the basin is full of soap bubbles. His fingers go pink and wrinkly. After he has finished drying his hands, Papa runs clean water and washes them again.

Faces here are mostly stern, but Uncle Hraben never stops smiling. He even smiled when he kicked the kittens out of the way. Johanna says he is very handsome, but not nearly so handsome as Papa. On my birthday Uncle Hraben gives me a Negerkuss. I eat it very slowly, first the chocolate shell, then
the marshmallow filling, then the biscuit base. Afterwards I smooth out the wrapper, rubbing the back with my nail until it shines like silver, and he makes it into a ring for me.

‘Where is your father taking you this afternoon, pretty Krysta?’ asks Uncle Hraben, stroking the back of my neck. I pull away.

‘He says it’s a secret surprise.’

‘Ah. I see. But where do you hope you’re going?’

I run to the window and point in the direction of the high wall. ‘To the zoo. Greet’s uncle, who’s a sailor, went to one in America. He saw a polar bear and a giraffe and …’ I pause, overcome with excitement and anticipation, before continuing in a hushed voice ‘…
and they let him ride on an elephant
.’

Uncle Hraben bellows with laughter. Some of his friends come over and he repeats what I’ve said. They also laugh. Eventually he dries his eyes and tells me there are no elephants, bears, giraffes or monkeys behind the wall.

I take off his ring and put my thumb in my mouth. It’s bad luck to cry on your birthday.

‘It’s not that sort of zoo,
Mädchen.
’

‘This one’s for a different kind of beast altogether,’ explains the man with straw hair and eyes the colour of winter rain. They laugh again.

‘What sort of beasts?’ I stamp my foot but this only makes them laugh more.

‘Animal-people.’

There
are
animals that look like people. The old lady who lives next door to our real house has a pet schnauzer, the fattest dog I’ve ever seen. Greet said over many years they’d grown alike: now both had hair sprinkled with salt and pepper, both with snouts poking into other people’s private business, both
with bad tempers and yappy voices, both the shape of wine barrels. And once I heard Greet shout, ‘
Männer sind Schweine!
’ at the man who brought firewood. Also, one of Papa’s friends had big, yellow teeth that made him look like a rat.

‘I still want to see them.’

‘Too dangerous,’ says Uncle Hraben. ‘They eat
proper
little human girls, especially pretty ones. Snip, snap – one bite and you’d be gone.’

When Papa came back from the infirmary he still did all the hand-washing, even though he’d promised we’d go out straight away. While he was scrubbing his nails with the little brush I asked if we were going to the zoo, in case Uncle Hraben had been joking.

‘No.’

I scowl. ‘You said I could choose.’

Papa dries his hands and looks carefully at his fingers. ‘Wouldn’t you rather come to the toyshop with me? There’s something there you might like to bring home. And afterwards we can have ice cream in a café.’ He runs fresh water and picks up the soap.

‘
Erdbeereis?
’

‘Strawberry, chocolate – whatever flavour you like.’

The town is bright, with flowers at the windows and many red flags with bendy-arm ‘X’s on them fluttering very gently in the breeze. People sitting outside a café smile at us, some stand up to wave, and when we go into the toyshop the shopkeeper leaves all his other customers to serve Papa.

‘Ah, so this is the birthday
Fräulein. Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!
’ He reaches below the counter and brings out two boxes. Each contains a pretty doll. One has dark-brown, curly hair and a red
frock; the other is blonde and dressed all in blue. ‘Yes, many happy returns from all of us. Here we are. Your papa wasn’t sure which you’d prefer.’

I look at Papa. He nods. ‘Which one would you like?’

‘Can’t I have both?’

Papa shakes his head. ‘No.’

‘Want both.’ I kick at the brass rail running along the base of the counter. I try squeezing out a tear, but it won’t come. ‘Not fair. Why can’t I have both?’

‘You may have
one
,’ he says in a tired voice. ‘If you can’t choose, then we will come back another day. Is that what you want? No. Then hurry up and decide before all the ice cream has melted.’

‘Not fair,’ I repeat, but I already know which doll I’ll be taking home.

The shopkeeper almost imperceptibly pushes the brown-haired doll towards me. She is a bit like Greet, except that her eyes are the wrong colour, but the yellow-haired doll looks like a fairy princess. ‘That one.’ I point and the shopkeeper gives a little sigh and takes the brown doll away. ‘What’s her name?’

‘You want the fair one. Good.’ Papa looks very pleased as he reads the label. ‘It says “Charlotte”, but you can give her whatever name you wish.’

‘I shall call her Lottie, except when she’s been naughty,’ I say, remembering Papa changing ‘Greet’ to ‘Margarete’ when she annoyed him. ‘Then she will be Charlotte.’

In the café I take Lottie out of her box to look at her knickers. A tiny blob of strawberry ice cream falls on to her blue frock leaving a mark, but I keep my finger over it so Papa won’t notice.

Just before bedtime, Herta brings me a birthday gift, a book called ‘
Der Struwwelpeter
’. She says all the stories are about naughty children. I don’t like the pictures and neither does Lottie, but Papa reminds me to say thank you. Then I have to sit by Herta, who is hard and lumpy, while she reads me the story of ‘The Thumb-sucker’ in a voice like heavy boots.

‘No thumbkins,’ she says, forcing my thumb out of my mouth and keeping a tight hold on my wrist. ‘Listen carefully. This story is about a child like you.’ I pull a nasty face but Herta doesn’t notice.

‘ “
Konrad,” sprach die Frau Mama,

Ich geh’ aus und du bleibst da.” ’

Herta stops. She taps my leg. ‘Sit still, child. Now, shall we continue?

‘ “See how ordered you can be

Till I come again,” said she.

“Docile be, and good and mild,

Pray don’t suck your thumb, my child,

For if you do, the tailor will come

And bring his shears to snip your thumb

From off your hand as clear and clean

As if paper it had been.” ’