The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (18 page)

Gretel sat wide-eyed and watched, too amazed to be afraid. She watched and felt older and proud that she was present.

“Push,” Magda said.

“I can’t,” Nelka screamed.

“Don’t make her,” Hansel shouted from the platform. “Don’t hurt her, Magda.”

“My God.” Magda sighed. “Everyone’s a midwife today. Push girl, when I say so. It’s past my bedtime and dark outside. We all need our dinner.”

Nelka felt the pain coming and she was terrified. It was going to kill her. She knew it would. She was dying, and no one could help.

The moon was dead and the stars gave no light through the clouds. Only the white snow of the meadow allowed them to see a little in the black night. They crouched, waiting, the cold numbing even their lice until the itching stopped and they were alone with their thoughts.

They heard it long before it got to the meadow. The silence of the forest was broken by a tiny hum that they thought was only their own nerves, and then a rhythmic hum, and then the real sound of a train. It was coming steadily, and the falling snow was too light to slow it.

Telek waited and felt his pistol inside his coat, warm against his heart. He’d get a rifle out of this if he lived.

The Russian was triumphant. It was coming from the west. The Germans on this train were going east to kill Russians. Fresh troops. Not the wounded and crippled of the last battle being hauled back to Germany.

The sound of the train was louder. The
chug-chug-chug-chug
came closer and the men gasped with the tension of it. Their breath went in and out as though some hand struck their chest.

Then the train was in the meadow. Coming fairly slowly. The engineers had to watch for trees fallen and lying across the tracks. Trains weren’t able to move through Poland anymore with any sense of security.

The Mechanik strained his eyes to see in the dark. Surely it was over the bomb now. Past it. Oh God, help us, he thought, the bomb has failed, and just as he thought it, the air filled with noise. The train wrenched upward, and two cars came down crooked. The six cars were shuddering and moving, the locomotive still pulling, and then it happened. The two cars in the middle fell over and the whole thing stopped.

For a second there was only the hissing of steam, and then screams began in German.

“Wait, wait, wait,” the Russian called softly. “Wait.”

The German soldiers climbed out of the cars and milled near the train. The engineer was running down the tracks.

“Now,” the Russian called.

They opened fire with the two
pepechas
and the rifles. Telek bared his teeth and waited. The Germans were too far away for his pistol. He would fire when they ran in to finish them off.

It didn’t take long. A stove in one of the cars had ignited the walls, and the Germans were dark targets against the red flames. They were in shock and ran toward the woods where the Lithuanian and his men had been placed by Telek.

The Lithuanian had great control. He waited until the Germans believed they were safe, almost in the woods, and then they opened fire. Soldiers fell screaming and torn to pieces, their blood making black splotches on the white snow.

Telek ran toward the train. He climbed onto the first car and peered in. There were three men lying in the car, two unconscious. Telek shot all three and moved on to the next car.

There weren’t as many soldiers as the Lithuanian had expected, and they found out why when they opened the last cars. The heavy doors slid apart, and the men laughed and pounded each other on the back. One car held a huge artillery gun on wheels. They’d have to get horses and a sled to pull it. It meant a long night and morning of work, but it was a real weapon.

And the other two cars had no soldiers either. Food. Warm clothes. Vodka. Oil for the machines. It was a treasure trove.

They counted their dead and wounded. The Lithuanian had lost two. None dead in the Russian’s group, but Lydka had taken a bullet to his shoulder and was laughing and refusing to have anyone look at it. There was vodka enough to sterilize the knife and dig out the bullet.

Telek moved from dead German to dead German until he found the rifle he wanted. He took it out of the hands of the corpse and began collecting cartridge belts.

The night was warmer now, and the falling snow had turned to a slushy rain. It was coating the trees and ground and Telek knew it could turn to ice. They had to move fast and hide the food and clothes. And there was the artillery gun. It would be a long night.

As dawn lit the sky, the woman, soaked to the skin as they all were but not feeling it yet because of the hard work and the vodka, went to Telek. Her black hair heavily streaked with white lay plastered to her head.

She worked in silence beside him, loading boxes of food onto a sled, but Telek saw she wanted to speak.

“What is it?” he finally asked her.

“You are from Piaski?”

“Yes.”

“Did two children come to Piaski? A boy seven, nearly eight, and a blond, older girl?”

Telek nodded. “A woman got false papers for them. They have ration cards and live with her. Outside the village in a hut.”

The woman looked around quickly and then whispered, “Don’t tell any of the others about the children. They’re the Mechanik’s, and he’d go and take them. They can’t live with us. They’d die, or we’d get killed. They’re better where they are.”

Telek nodded again. She was right. The children were safe for the moment, and they would die if the Mechanik tried to have them in the woods. Telek knew the Russian. Nothing was going to endanger the safety of his group, and children were too unpredictable. Children got you killed. He wondered if the woman was their mother. Probably not. She would have said so.

The woman kept on working in the rain that was beginning to freeze now. In a little while she stopped and looked at Telek again.

“I’ll tell the Mechanik later. When it’s over. Tell the woman that we’ll come and get them when the Russian front moves past the village.”

Telek wasn’t sure that he’d tell Magda anything. She might let the children know that their father was alive, and it was better not to raise hopes. Better they forget everything except living with Magda. He and the woman worked side by side as the sun rose.

Nelka heard Magda shouting at her, but her body was beyond her control. She lay and felt the pain, and her body convulsed on its own accord. She heard Gretel cry out, and Magda laugh, and then the hut was silent.

Nelka lay still.

“She’s dead, she’s dead,” Hansel sobbed. He wanted to go down on the floor and kiss poor Nelka, but he couldn’t do it.

“Wake up, you troublemaker.” Magda’s strong finger with its swollen joints cleaned the mouth of the baby lying on the floor, and then she lifted it and shook it gently. Its chest heaved and it choked and gasped. A strong wail came from its bloody face.

“It’s alive!” Gretel felt like dancing and singing.

“Of course it’s alive.” Magda shook the baby again just to clean its lungs a little more, and then she laid it on Nelka’s chest while she pulled out the afterbirth.

“I hate that baby.” Hansel jumped off the platform and threw his arm around Nelka’s neck.

“Do you want to cut the cord?” Magda asked Hansel.

He hesitated, but the knife was shiny and he was never allowed to play with Magda’s things.

“Yes.”

“Cut right where I tell you.”

Hansel took the knife and sawed the cord where Magda held it doubled up in a loop. The birth had been much bigger and messier than either of the children had expected.

“What is it?” Nelka whispered.

“Look for yourself.” Magda cut the cord closer to the baby’s belly and tied it with a twist. Then she began wiping Nelka with cloths dipped in boiled water.

Nelka raised herself on her elbows and looked down at her child. She felt the tears in her eyes, hot and relentless. She couldn’t stop them.

“Oh, Magda, I have a son.”

The amazingness of it came over her, his perfect feet and toes, the rounds of tiny penis and scrotum, the hands moving, and the eyes staring up at the ceiling, so dark blue they looked black. A perfect maleness that had come out of her female self.

Nelka’s heart felt like it was breaking. He was radiant and warm and alive and not even crying. And they would all try to kill him, all his whole life, because he was a man.

She sobbed over the boy, and Magda laughed.

“You can’t stop them from being born men, my dear.”

“I know. I just want him to be left alone. I love him so much.”

“Too bad he isn’t a girl.” Magda grinned.

Nelka swept the baby up into her arms and held him tightly. “He’s what I want, and they’ll never hurt him. Never.” She blew gently on his round head until the fine hair, damp from Magda’s scrubbing, turned from brown to pale golden.

Magda touched the baby’s cheek and said, “May I eat at your wedding, boy.” But her voice was sad when she said it.

Gretel watched wide-eyed and listened to the cold slush of rain hitting the roof. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and it was also the scariest. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Hansel shrugged. “It hurt Nelka.”

Gretel climbed down and sat stroking Hansel. She began to hum the way that Magda did. The room was quiet except for the high, clear humming of the child.

Before they left the meadow, the Russian had them take the corpse of the highest-ranking German they could find and nail him to a tree with spikes from the rail line. His right arm they nailed through the hand to the sapling next to the tree with the index finger pointing westward. The sign hung around his neck said:

 

Ice Storm

T
he light in the hut was intense, the oiled paper of the window golden with the brightness of dawn. Gretel crept off the sleeping platform and pulled on her boots and coat. She’d get water at the creek for Magda and then look for firewood. Nelka lay curled around her baby, and Magda and Hansel were deep in dreams, their eyelids twitching in the morning light.

It was two days since the baby had been born, and Gretel was doing a lot of chores so Magda could help Nelka. Gretel opened the door, and had to blink. The forest nearly blinded her. The cold rain had gone on for hours until the darkest point of the night. The sleet covering the forest had frozen into ice on everything she saw.

She walked toward the creek carrying the bucket. The snow was covered with a thick crust of ice that crackled under each footstep. Her foot sunk a few inches, but the snow was so frozen and her weight so slight that she walked over the deep snow as if she had on snow-shoes.

Gretel stepped on the thicker ice of the creek and thumped the bucket hard on the ice in front of her. With two thumps the bucket broke through. She carried it to the hut where she set it gently inside the door. Then she went into the forest and crouched down to pee.