The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (21 page)

“She’ll be mad.”

“She’s not my mother. She can’t boss me.”

Hansel didn’t say anything. Halina’s aunt didn’t go beyond the last house on the edge of the village, and her voice died away. Halina lowered her head again and the two of them watched the coals for another half hour until the potatoes were done.

Hansel was so hungry that he burned his mouth and had to suck air in to cool the potato. Halina giggled at him and blew on her potato until she could pick it up.

“Good,” Hansel said. It was soft and mealy inside and black and tasty outside, the burnt part adding a nice crunch that potatoes cooked in pots didn’t have.

“You don’t have a house. Or toys or anything.” Halina licked her fingers carefully.

“I have things.”

“What?”

“I have a secret. It’s important.”

“Tell me.”

“Can’t.”

“You don’t have a secret. You don’t know anything.”

“I do. I’ll tell you sometime. Really.”

It was getting very cold. Hansel walked over the field to the road. The sun was a red eye watching them through the bars of the tree branches.

“Come play again. When the ice melts, we’ll catch fish with a string and a pin and cook them in the woods. And we’ll pick blackberries and raspberries.”

The children sighed almost as if they breathed in unison. They stood fidgeting, and Halina suddenly broke away and ran down the road toward the village. She ran back just as suddenly and kissed him on his mouth, a cold, firm kiss. Then she ran down the road again as fast as she could.

Hansel stood watching until she had rounded a bend in the road and was gone. He turned and began trotting away from the smoke of the village. He thought about the aunt shouting at him. He thought about Halina and the pig and the candy, but mostly he thought about when the aunt had hugged Halina, how she had smiled down at her, and then later came out in the cold and looked for Halina.

It was dark when he got back to the hut, and Magda was angry.

“Where were you, Hansel?”

“I went to the village.” His eyes kept sliding toward Gretel. She lay very still.

“You never go to the village unless I or Nelka take you,” she said. “Never.”

He nodded. But he wanted to tell Gretel about it, about what Halina’s aunt had said.

Gretel lay wrapped in blankets on the platform. Hansel crept close to her and whispered so Magda wouldn’t hear.

“Gretel, I went to the village and Halina’s aunt told me to go away.”

“The village must have a lot of flowers now.”

“There weren’t any flowers. Halina got potatoes. We cooked them out in the field.”

Gretel smiled at him and hummed to herself.

Hansel reached out his hand and shook her shoulder a little.

“Listen. The aunt was mean. She shouted, and I hadn’t done anything.”

“You must have walked on her flowers. I did that once, and Grandfather picked me up and told me not to. Grandfather picked me up and said—” Gretel’s mouth hung open, she frowned and then shook her head hard like she was trying to shake the words out of her mouth.

“We can’t talk about that. We can’t talk about before,” he whispered.

“What’s my name?” she asked him loudly.

“Gretel,” he whispered. Hansel stared at her. His stomach felt terrible and the potato almost came up.

“My other name. I remember the orange. But I can’t think what he called me.”

“Your name has to be Gretel.”

“I can’t remember my name. It’s gone.”

Magda turned and saw the girl’s face. “Now, dear one. It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

“I want it,” Gretel spoke loudly. “I want it.”

“You’re Gretel. That’s your name.” Hansel was crying. He wasn’t crying because she couldn’t remember her name. He was crying because he wasn’t sure that he remembered it. It felt like they had been in the forest forever. Her name—he didn’t know what it was. Hansel tried to think of his own name, and then he stopped and began to sob. It could get you killed if you thought about things. He opened his mouth wide and wailed.

“Magda, Magda,” he sobbed. “What’s wrong with her? She can’t talk like that. She can’t be crazy. They kill crazy people.”

Magda stroked Gretel’s head and tried to take Hansel’s hand.

“She’s been hurt. Two men caught her and hurt her, Hansel. But she’ll get better.”

“She can’t remember—” Hansel sobbed louder. If Gretel forgot, he wasn’t sure if he’d remember. She was the one who knew things.

“Listen to me.” Magda took his head with her hands and put her face close to his. “Your sister is hurt. Her mind is not well. She can’t think right.”

“Why?”

“Because men hurt her.”

“When can she think right again?”

“Someday. But now we have to take care of her.”

Gretel struggled out of the blanket and looked at Hansel.

“Poor Hansel, you mustn’t cry. I know your name.”

“What’s my name?” he whispered. He knew she shouldn’t say it, but he couldn’t think what his old name was. His heart hung on her answer.

“Your name is Hansel.” She smiled at him and out held her hand. “I have an orange. He gave it to me. You can have a piece.”

“You come back,” he shouted at Gretel. “You have to come back!” Gretel sat beside him, but he knew she was gone. He didn’t have a big sister to take care of him anymore, and it made his stomach turn over again. He’d never lived without a big sister.

“You’re the big brother now,” Magda said. “She’ll get better.”

“When?” He felt everything slipping away from him, but Magda didn’t answer, and Gretel just sat smiling between them.

Telek

“
D
on’t expose the baby’s face. It’s so cold, Telek. I can’t stop thinking about Gretel. Five days, and she doesn’t remember the rape or the shooting or any of it.”

Telek had told them that a partisan had killed the rapists but not that the dead shooter was someone he had met before, someone who knew the children. Hansel and Gretel mustn’t have more grief, or be distracted from their new identities. They could be told later.

“Maybe it’s kinder that she doesn’t remember.” There were dark patches of ice under the snow, and Telek walked carefully with the light weight of the baby on his arm.

“It’s too much. That SS officer and the woman. She keeps staring at the children. Giving them candy.”

They walked, and Telek knew he had to tell her. “The woman is selecting children, Nelka.”

“Why? Children can’t go to Germany and work.” She stopped walking.

Telek couldn’t bear to look at her and stared off at the fields smothered with snow. “They are taking children. We don’t know why, for adoption, for slaves maybe. If they select your baby, I’ll take you both into the woods. They’ll never get him.”

Her chapped lips trembled. “Babies can’t work. Why babies?”

Telek felt like a fox caught in steel jaws with no way out. He must mutilate the children, including Nelka’s perfect blond child. What mother could love such a man? And if he didn’t, the baby would be taken and probably die being transported to Germany in this winter cold.

He wanted to kiss her. He had never kissed her in all their living in the village. It might be his last chance in life to kiss Nelka, this woman he had loved at a distance for so long.

His mind told him to hold back, but his body moved as if it were not part of him. Holding the baby with one arm at his side so he could be close to her, Telek put his arm around Nelka, drew her to him, and kissed her. It was a deep kiss, long and yearning.

“Oh, Telek.”

“They won’t get him.”

The child began to cry thinly. Nelka’s breasts rippled with twinges of pain from chest to nipple as she heard the cries, but she ignored the sound and raised her face, taking joy in his mouth. She had wanted to kiss him for months, and now she took and prolonged a second kiss until they gasped for breath.

They pulled away from each other, panting, luxuriating in the rush of feeling. It was done. They had leaped into love, and the whole world, the dark trees and the fields, shimmered with bright light. They saw this and smiled at the same time.

“Hurry. He wants to eat,” she said, and her voice trembled as she commanded him.

They walked on faster, and Telek thought about love and about her baby and about Hansel and Gretel. Hansel had brown eyes and curly hair, and Gretel’s mind was gone. It was hard to win with the Germans. They wouldn’t kidnap a crazy girl, perfect though she was, but the Germans killed crazy people. Crazy people weren’t productive. They’d shot Feliks’s brother. There were too many things he didn’t want to think about. Her baby. The children he had to hurt. Hansel. Gretel.

He had to save Nelka’s baby and the children. She had to love him, because he could never bear to live again as the man he had been for thirty-five years before she kissed him on the road.

The first houses of the village appeared. Nelka took the baby from Telek. The boy was screaming now for his nursing. Telek touched Nelka’s cheek and went to get buckets. She would need water.

Feliks stood near the village well with his bucket while Telek drew water. “The SS and the Brown Sister are finishing in Bialowieza. They’ll be here soon. What about the children?”

Telek moved under the wooden yoke and grunted as he lifted the weight of four buckets.

“You drew the straw. It has to be done.”

“They should take care of their own children.” Telek felt the jaws of the trap around him.

Jedrik, the only fat Pole left in the village, slunk past Telek, and Telek didn’t look at him. Jedrik got food from the Major since he had pointed out the Mayor, and his wife, and the Jews.

And then there was Feliks. Walking miles to other villages. Taking a chance on getting caught and shot. Bringing information. Taking information to the partisans.

“Every Pole who isn’t a devil is an angel,” Telek muttered. There would be time to take care of the collaborators after the Nazis were driven out by the Russians.

He stopped and left a bucket on Nelka’s doorstep. Tonight he would begin.

Telek walked up to Pawel as if he was trying to sell him some wood.

“Look at the wood on my back and listen.”

Pawel nodded. He lifted the top pieces and felt them, as if to see how wet they were.

“Tonight you and your wife will go to see her sister. You’ll leave the children in the house. If your wife has a brooch or anything of value, have her wear it.”

“Everything we had went into Russia. They stole the clock off the wall.”

“Be gone by dark. Leave the children.”

“All three?” Pawel was so pale that blue shadows lay around his eyes and mouth.

“All three.”

“Telek, don’t—”

“It’s this or have them kidnapped. And for God’s sake, don’t tell your wife.” Telek hesitated, and then climbed the steps of the church. He dropped the wood on the porch and went inside where the man hung on the cross.

“Why don’t you do something?” he said to the crucified man. There was no sound in the building except the sound of the wind through the broken windows. It would be a bad night.