Kindergarten (16 page)

His little sister began to cry, and Hansel tried to console her.

“God will never abandon us,” he said to her. “Don’t cry. Sleep peacefully. We will find a way out of the forest somehow.”

The following morning they were again woken by the woman before the sun had risen, and she pulled them from their beds in the darkness.

The pieces of bread that were given to them were even tinier than those they had had the first time. As they; began to make their way into the forest, Hansel, as he had done the previous time, stood still, and looked back towards their home, more and more often as they went deeper into the forest.

“You’re slowing us all down, doing that,” his father said. “Come on, keep up with the rest of us.”

“Sorry,” Hansel said. “I’m looking back at my little pet pigeon. He’s sitting up on the roof, all by himself, looking for me. I never said goodbye to him.”

“You’re a fool!” the woman said. “That’s not your little pigeon. All you can see is the morning sun shining on the chimneys.”

Hansel had not been looking back at his pigeon, or at the sun shining on the chimneys. He had been crumbling his piece of bread in his pocket, and secretly dropping crumbs to leave a track that he would be able to follow back out of the forest. Little by little, he dropped all the crumbs, little white fragments on the dark earth.

The woman led the children into the very deepest part of the forest, to a place where they had never been before in their lives. Again, a huge fire was made, and again the woman pretended to smile, and said, “Now you stay here, children. When you feel tired, have a little sleep. We are going into the forest to cut wood for the fire at home. When we’ve finished, we’ll come back to you in the evening, and take you back home with us.”

The adults went away, leaving the two children sitting beside the fire. When the middle of the day came, Gretel shared her little piece of bread with Hansel, because he had scattered all his bread in the forest. Then they fell asleep, and night fell, but no one came for them.

They awoke, alone, in the deep blackness of the night in the forest.

Hansel again put his arm around his sister to comfort her, because she was afraid of the darkness.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said. “Remember what happened last time? Just wait, and when the moon has risen, we will be able to follow the trail of bread, and reach home safely.”

They waited until the moon had risen above the trees, but there were no crumbs anywhere to guide them through the forest. Thousands of birds flew about the forest during the day, and they had eaten every piece of bread. The whole trail that Hansel had laid so carefully had disappeared.

Hansel took his little sister by the hand.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll soon be able to find the way out of the forest.”

But they did not find it. They walked all through the night, and for the whole of the next day, until night fell again, but they were still in the depths of the dark forest, weak and dizzy from hunger, as they had been unable to find anything to eat except two or three berries growing on the ground. Exhausted and cold, unable to walk any further, they huddled together beneath a tree, and fell asleep.

The sun had already risen when they awoke the next morning, and it was now three mornings since they had left their father’s house. They began their journeyings again, but seemed to find themselves travelling deeper and deeper into the darkness, across the black earth on which no grass grew. Hansel began to realise that they would soon die of hunger and exhaustion, and he was wondering what he could say to his little sister.

At midday, when the pale sun was visible in the sky above the trees, a lovely snow-white bird, bright against the dark trees, sat on a branch just above them, and sang so beautifully that they stood still and rapt, drinking in its song, as if to fill the hunger that was inside them. When it had finished singing, it spread its wings, and flew a short distance away from them, alighting on another tree. They walked towards it, hand in hand, stumbling and faint, Hansel helping Gretel, longing to hear that sweet music once again, and, as they drew near, the bird spread its wings again, flying just ahead of them, staying just in sight. All that afternoon, the two children followed the white bird through the forest, until, as night fell, they reached a little clearing, and the bird flew on to the roof of a little house in the centre of the clearing, and stayed there.

It was a lovely little steep-roofed house, standing amidst the trees in the quiet forest, in the cold clear air, surrounded by lawns and flower-beds, with soft warm light glowing out of its windows to guide them towards it in the rapidly falling darkness. As they came closer up to the house, they saw that it was built entirely of gingerbread, covered with little decorated biscuits, and that the windows were made of clear sugar, shining with a soft translucent glow. It was a dream come true.

“Look, Gretel,” Hansel said, “our prayers are answered. We have found something to eat at last. I will reach up and eat a bit of the roof, and you can eat some of the window. It will taste nice and sweet.”

Hansel stood up on tip-toe and broke off a little corner of the roof to see what it tasted like, and Gretel leant against the window, and pulled away a piece of the pane.

Faint with hunger, they were feasting on the house, when a soft little voice cried out from inside:

“Nibble, nibble, gnaw,
Who is nibbling at my little house?”

The children thought quickly, and then answered

“The wind, the wind,
The heaven-born wind,”

and went on eating, not pausing for a moment. Hansel, in his hunger, tore away a great chunk of the roof, and Gretel pulled out a complete circular window-pane, sitting down and leaning against the wall to eat it.

Suddenly, the door of the house opened, and a very old lady, frail, bent-over, came out slowly, supporting herself on crutches. Hansel and Gretel, frightened and guilty, dropped what they had in their hands, and Hansel put his arms around his sister.

The old lady, however, smiled gently, and held out her arms.

“Oh, you poor, dear children,” she said tenderly, “here in the forest all by yourselves. You must come in and let me look after you in my house. Here you will be safe. Here you will be cared for.”

She took them both by the hand, and led them into her little house, talking to them kindly, and welcoming them. She sat them at the table in the little kitchen, beside the warm firelight, near a big tiled oven, and the smell of cooking filled the room. Then she set a meal before them: milk and pancakes, with sugar, apples, and nuts. Afterwards, she took them into the bedroom, where two pretty little beds were covered with soft white linen. Hansel and Gretel lay down to go to sleep, and thought they were in heaven.

The old lady had only pretended to be kind. She was, in reality, an evil witch who lay in wait for children, and who had built the little gingerbread house in order to lure them into her power. When she had a child under her control, she killed it, cooked it, and ate it, and that day was a feast day for her. Witches have red eyes, and cannot see far, but they have a keen sense of smell, like animals, and know when human-beings are nearby. When she realised that Hansel and Gretel were drawing near to her house, she laughed with malicious delight, and said, “I shall have them! They shall never escape from here.”

Early the next morning, before the children were awake, she got up and went into their bedroom, and looked at them as they lay asleep in bed, young and unprotected, with their rosy cheeks, and warm breath, their hands flung back against their pillows.

“These two will taste good!” she thought, drooling.

She seized Hansel, sleepy and confused, in her shrivelled hands, and carried him behind the house into a little stable, and locked him into a cage made out of iron bars. Hansel screamed repeatedly for help, but there was no one there to hear him, or to come to his help. The immense dark forest stretched away on all sides, silent and unpopulated, empty of all humanity. Snow had started to fall, and the huge flakes fell silently from the grey sky, covering all the dark earth with a deep, trackless whiteness, dazzling to look at.

The old woman went back into the bedroom, and shook Gretel until she woke up.

“Where is Hansel?” Gretel asked at once, frightened to be alone. “Where is my big brother?”

The woman laughed, immensely amused.

“You’re never going to see him again,” she said. “Get up! Make yourself useful. Bring me some water from the well, and then you can cook something good for your brother. I have locked him in the stable behind the house, and I’m going to feed him up and make him fat. When he is all ready, I am going to eat him.”

Gretel, terrified and lonely, sobbed as if her heart would break, but the old woman only laughed at her, and tormented her, and forced her to do all that she had commanded.

In the days that followed, as the snow continued to fall, all the best food was cooked for Hansel, locked away out of sight in the stable, but Gretel got nothing to eat but the shells of crabs. As she worked, weak and exhausted, beaten and mocked by the old woman, she found a long corridor leading out of the kitchen, near the oven, lined with doors. Behind the doors were many rooms piled to the ceilings with all kinds of goods, all neatly stacked and sorted. One room was full of money, paper and coins from many different countries; another was full of jewellery, rings, brooches, necklaces, valuables of every type imaginable. There were rooms entirely filled with children’s clothing, with shoes, with children’s toys, underclothing, blankets, handkerchiefs, and hair cut from girls’ heads.

Every morning, the woman went out to the little stable, and up to the cage.

“Hansel,” she commanded, “put your finger out so that I can feel if you are getting any fatter.”

Hansel, thinking desperately, stretched out a little bone through the bars of the cage towards her, and the woman, whose eyes were dim, thought that it was Hansel’s finger, and was angry and astonished that he seemed to be getting no fatter.

Four weeks went by in this way, and Hansel still seemed to remain as thin as ever, so that the woman was seized with impatience, and decided that she was not prepared to wait any longer.

“Gretel!” she shouted at the little girl. “Bring me some water this instant. I’ve waited long enough. Tomorrow, whatever happens, I’m going to kill your brother, fat or thin, and cook him.”

Almost blinded with tears, Gretel stumbled towards the well, the water falling unheeded from her eyes. She tried to remember what her brother had said to her, to comfort her, when he was there beside her, and could speak to her, and give her courage. “God will not forsake us,” he had said. “Don’t believe that we can ever be totally abandoned.”

“Dear God, please help us,” she cried in her despair. “If the wild animals in the forest had torn us to pieces, at least we would have died together. I’m so frightened of being all by myself.”

“Stop that noise!” the woman sneered. “It won’t do any good at all. No one can hear you, and no one will come and help you. Your brother dies tomorrow.”

Early the next morning, when it was still dark, the woman made Gretel get up, light the fire, and hang up the cauldron full of water. Outside the windows, the snow was still falling.

“We will bake first,” the woman said. “I’ve already heated the oven, and the dough is all kneaded and ready.”

Gretel stood bowed over the cauldron, silent, the tears running down her cheeks.

“Come here,” the woman said. “Stand in front of me.”

Gretel did as she was told, too frightened to resist without her brother.

“Take off your clothes,” the woman said.

Sobbing helplessly, frightened and alone, Gretel took off her shoes, her pinafore, her dress, and all her clothes, folding them neatly as she undressed, as she had been shown by her mother before she died.

When she was completely undressed, the woman took a pair of scissors and cut off all Gretel’s hair, close to her skull. Gretel remained with her head bowed as her hair fell to the floor, the braids falling all in one piece, with the ribbon still in them.

“Give me that chain,” the woman said.

Gretel unclasped the chain from round her neck. It had been a birthday present from Hansel, and had a little star at the end of it. She handed it to the woman.

She took Gretel over to the oven, from which the flames were already darting

“Creep in,” said the woman, “and see if it is properly heated for the bread.”

“Hansel,” Gretel whispered. “Hansel.”

“Get in,” the woman said, and Gretel, without saying another word, climbed up into the oven, and the woman shut the iron door, and fastened the bolt.

When she was sure that Gretel had been burnt to death, the woman went behind the house, and walked through the deep drifts of snow to the little stable, and walked up towards the iron cage where Hansel was imprisoned.

“Gretel?” Hansel called out when he heard someone approaching. “Is that you, little sister?”

“Your sister is dead,” the woman said. “I put her into my oven, and she was burnt to death. Now it is time for you to die.”

She opened the door of the cage.

“Get out,” she said. “What are you crying for?”

Hansel stood shivering in the cold stable, his breath white. The whole stable was flooded with a hard bright light from the snow outside.

“Come here,” the woman said. “Stand in front of me, and take off your clothes.”

Shivering, in tears, Hansel fumbled with the fastenings of his clothes, folding them neatly as he took them off, as Gretel had.

When he was completely undressed, Hansel stood shivering helplessly, his hands cupped in front of him, his head bowed, his body pinched and white.

“Give me that ring,” the woman said.

Hansel pulled at the ring until it came away from his finger, and handed it to the woman. His mother had given it to him on the day that Gretel was born, and told him that it was a present brought for him by his new little sister.

The woman took Hansel out of the stable, and into the deep snow.