The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (12 page)

“Now you will get water and buckets and soap. You will clean all of this office. The walls, floor, furniture, ceiling. There will not be a speck of dirt. No dirt, ladies. I will send Sister Rosa to inspect. I think you should clean this office every evening, what do you think, Frankel?”

“Excellent, Oberführer. Thank you for the excellent idea. It is excellent.”

One of Himmler’s special boys. Frankel quashed those thoughts. Everyone had duties. Who was to say what was more important, but the arrogant bastard was flustering him. And what soldier would give a damn whether there was dust on a ceiling?

“And the other one—Wiktor?”

“Yes, Oberführer,” Wiktor nearly screamed.

“You neglected to salute me properly when I spoke to you, Wiktor. So you will now demonstrate the salute to the Führer.”

Wiktor stood so erect that his skinny back bowed like a green sapling. He flung his arm out and stood perfectly still, even his eyes fixed rigidly, gazing ahead. “Heil Hitler!”

“That is much better, Wiktor. Stand there until the ladies have finished their work.”

The Oberführer sighed. As bad as the last village. He turned to stare out the window as the women went out to get buckets and water. All gray and drear. The snow coming down again. At least it might stop the Russians for a few months.

And then he saw her. A woman with hair so heavy, so darkly gold it was like the hair of a girl you would dream about. Moving gracefully through the mud. Cheekbones a little too Slavic, but pure-blooded. A mythic girl, fertile and ripe.

“Frankel, who’s that pregnant girl?”

“That’s Nelka. She’s the bastard granddaughter of the priest.”

“And her mother?”

“Gone. Don’t know where. Dead maybe.”

“Husband?”

“Taken into Russia, people say. Likely dead or in Siberia.”

“The village may have possibilities, Major Frankel.”

“You want to see Nelka, sir? I can send her to your quarters.”

“There is time, Major. Now that the snow is falling, we have all the time in the world. We won’t be able to get the car back to Warsaw until the roads are clear. Let’s go to your quarters and have a drink. I brought some excellent brandy.”

The two men left the room and nearly bumped into the three women who were coming naked up the steps. Their skin was blue from the cold, and they shivered as they lugged the full buckets of water. There was no one on the street, and the village was silent.

Wiktor stood at attention behind the desk and watched as the women crawled over the floor and took turns standing on the chair to scrub the ceiling. It went on for a long time, and Wiktor was in the way, but he didn’t dare move so much as a centimeter. His arm grew so heavy that it was a lead weight held up by his shoulder, and then it went numb. He stood and watched the women and wondered how much worse it would get before it got any better.

The Burning

T
he Stepmother clung to her dream so she wouldn’t wake up and be cold again, but the numbness in her legs made her move. She crawled over the other bodies gently, letting them cling to their own dreams as long as they could, and crouched at the entrance of the snow house for a moment, sniffing the air.

There was no sound, no smell of cigarette smoke, no barking dog. She had lived long enough in the woods now to smell almost as keenly as a wolf. Her hair was going white so fast that the Russian teased her and the others took it up. White Wolf, they called her.

She rose and walked stiffly to the creek, knelt, and could see the movement of water under the ice. She took off her glove and broke the ice with a blow. Putting her face down, she drank deeply, the water like a knife sliding down the throat and cutting the belly, and then she washed her face with her hand. It woke her up completely and she crouched, listening. Still no sound.

It might be possible to make a fire and have hot water with rye in it. She would have to wait until the Russian woke up. It was his decision.

She went back to the shelter, stepping carefully in her own footsteps. The boughs of trees over the pit in the earth had been covered with a new layer of snow in the night making it invisible except for her footsteps. Her husband had climbed out too and stood with his back to her. After he pissed he knelt and covered the yellow stain with snow.

A dog would still find it, but the principle was good. And there wasn’t much you could do against the dogs except lure them away from the Germans and kill them. And the Germans had learned never to unleash the dogs until the quarry was in sight.

Her husband turned, and she liked the sight of him. He had gained some weight and lost the fragile, trembling, ghetto look. He smiled at her but didn’t speak, another good principle when living in the forest.

She went to him and put her arms around him and they stood close for a moment. They hadn’t made love in more than a year. In the ghetto they had shared the apartment with seven people. There was no privacy for even a minute. Others had coupled in the night, but they had not, both of them too shy, too private. And then hiding in the grease pit, they had the children next to them, and the terror, and the hunger. In the forest they had started to make love one night and he stopped.

“If you get pregnant it will kill you.”

She knew he was right. They held each other at night, but he would not risk her dying for a baby. And so it had been for more than a year.

The Russian crawled out of the snow shelter, and Lydka followed. He was the youngest. Maybe fourteen, but he carried his weight and had gotten a MP34 Bergmann from a dead German. The boy was terribly proud of his pistol and cleaned it whenever they had grease.

The others followed, silent and crumpled, their eyes coming out of sleep as they stood and stretched, each man looking around as if no one else had been looking before them. It was a good group. Every person cautious. No one counting on the others to save them. Everyone was dedicated to saving themselves which made all of them safer as a unit.

The Russian’s face was so pale that the scars of the branding stood out red and strange. She had gotten used to it. They were like medals. She knew that the Germans would pay someday for every time the hot iron had touched his flesh.

“We won’t be back here for weeks now, so we can make a small fire. We’ll drink something hot with the rest of the vodka to give us heat in our belly. We’ll move fast getting there and getting out, but with any luck we’ll eat well tonight.”

All nine of them nodded. The days when they simply survived and hid were drawing to an end. The Russians had never stopped fighting except in the hardest blizzards of winter, and the front was moving closer.

As if he read her thoughts, the Russian went on.

“This is the winter when my comrades break them. We’ll do what we can to destroy those who’ve collaborated with the Nazis. Our first job is to survive, and we can’t survive unless we become as ruthless as the Nazis.”

Her husband frowned. She knew he had no need to become ruthless. He wanted to get back to his clean machines and his immaculate ideas. She was glad that he didn’t argue.

“Any collaborator in this part of Poland will be killed.” The Russian watched as they all took the sticks out of their coats where they slept with them next to their skin to dry them.

“We’ll give them no hole to hide in.”

Everyone laughed then because Lydka had lowered his pants to get at two large limbs he had stuffed down his pants leg.

“You little bastard!” Starzec cried. “I thought you had a hard-on all night so I took pity and didn’t kick it out of my back where it poked me. Took pity on you, you little rat!”

“A hard-on like a piece of ash tree! Your wife will be a lucky woman!”

She grinned with the men but wondered how he stood it all night.

“You’re a strong boy to have pain so we have dry wood in the morning.” She stepped up to him and pulled his pants together, buttoning the fly and belting him securely like a mother would. She pulled down his coat and patted his shoulder. “That was a good thing, little brother.”

They made the fire and slurped hot rye drink with a splash of vodka in it. Dipping the bread in the liquid softened it and they all began to feel less insubstantial.

“Cover the fire with snow. You, Mechanik, brush out the tracks to the creek, and you and the boy follow behind and get rid of our tracks for the first half mile.”

They set out, moving as quickly as possible. The new snow had drifted, but they were able to stay on the firmer tracks marked down for centuries by wood gatherers and animals, and it wasn’t too bad. Sometimes there was a corduroy road of logs laid in a long ribbon, but most of those were gone now. The sky was gray and bright, like the sun was doing all it could to burn the clouds away. It gave them all heart.

The Russian stopped and lifted his nose and sniffed. Their noses ran with the cold, but they smelled it. Wood smoke. The Russian pointed, and they moved through the trees.

They were on the edge of a road, rutted and frozen. The top roofs of the village could be seen, squat and slanting. The snow covered them and was piled in drifts against the bales of straw stacked up to insulate the walls from the deathly cold.

“What village is this?” the Mechanik asked.

“Piaski.” The Russian kept moving.

She felt her husband’s hand on her shoulder, squeezing. It wasn’t necessary for her to ask him what he was thinking. This place was close to where the children were left. Perhaps the children had been taken in by some villager. She glanced up at her husband. He was staring hungrily at the village smoke.

“A major and a couple of dozen soldiers were left here,” said the Russian. “Not many but dangerous. The major was at the Russian front and he’s no city policeman. We don’t go near it. There’s a man there who’s our contact. You’ll meet him today, God willing.”

Everyone followed their leader through the trees except the woman and her husband, who hesitated a moment. He stared at the huddled warmth in the distance, and she stared at the fields looking for some marker so she could find this place again. She had grown up in the country, but all the villages looked alike to her in winter.

There. Two blasted lime trees. Shattered by lightning or by fire when the fields were cleared or shelled by the Russians or Germans. They stuck up like two fingers. She imprinted the memory of their silhouette on her mind and turned to go, taking his hand firmly in hers.

“We stay in the trees. It’s harder going, but safer. Sometimes they hide sentries in the fields and wait to see what walks out of the woods.” The Russian was moving at a trot now.

She felt her heart beat faster and her energy surged. She hoped it went well and no one died. She looked at the Mechanik. She hoped the collaborators had no children.

 

 

The farm was a large one. Her experienced eye compared it to her father’s, and she was impressed. Many outbuildings for meat and storage. Two large barns, one of stone and one of wood. A distant hut near the river that must be the icehouse.

She closed her eyes and remembered going with the servant to get food in the summer. Digging in the sawdust for the kegs of meat laid on the ice. The smell of milk from the jugs, pans of milk clotting into cheese, butter mounded on plates and laid in the cold.

Her mouth watered and her eyes widened. She knew exactly where to go to find the food. She looked at the farmhouse and smiled. In the autumn the wealthier people had come to shoot with her father and brothers. Great days of tramping in the fields and feasting on wild boar and duck and goose. There was the huge veranda with hooks screwed into the ceiling to hang game.

None of the hatred of Jews then. Not for her family. Her father had paid the village church a generous sum every year so his Christian workers had reserved seats in their church, and an equal sum for the Jewish workers in the synagogue.

Her father hadn’t attended services often. Twice a year perhaps. The Day of Atonement. And once again to pray for his parents. That was all. She remembered her mother lighting the candles and the perfect loaf of challah lying on the white cloth. Celebrating Passover every year.

She had left the farm. Studied at Lyon University like her husband, but they hadn’t met at the university. It had been in Warsaw, and she had stayed in the city. A deep pang for the old countryside made her whole body twitch and she almost cried out loud.

“It won’t be here tomorrow.” The Russian slapped her on the back and she nearly fell.

“That must be the icehouse over there.” She pointed to the low roof near the river. “Tell them not to burn it. It might be full of meat. Cheese.”

“Good woman.” He moved off, and she sat with her back to the farm. There was no point thinking about it.

They lay half asleep with Gregor keeping watch until it began to grow dark. Then there was a soft voice that brought all of them to life.

“Marilke sent us,” the voice called softly.

“Then you are welcome,” the Russian responded to the password, the name of a Jewess who had died a hero in the Bialystok ghetto, the password that had become common for those out in the cold in eastern Poland.

It was the group that had singled out this farm and needed them to help with it. They walked out from behind the trees, nine or ten of them, mainly Poles but a man who spoke Polish with a Lithuanian accent and another who looked almost Jewish. She didn’t ask. It didn’t matter, and it might be dangerous to single him out.

It was dark now. The animals were gathered in the barn. A woman had shooed the chickens into the poultry house. There were no children playing outside. Thank God for that.

“Now,” said the Russian.

Both groups unwrapped their most precious possessions. The Mechanik caught his breath. They were lovely. Oily and properly cared for. Two Russian PPD. Submachine guns. The
pepecha
he had gotten from the German he’d killed, and another
pepecha
from the Lithuanian’s group. The Mechanik could hardly wait for the sound of them. They said the rhythm was so perfect you could set a watch by it.