The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (40 page)

“We have to try, Telek.”

“They were dead as soon as they got to the camp, Nelka. They kill them quick. She was too old to work, and they were too young. They’re with God now.”

She sobbed in his arms, and the baby slept beside them. Dredging up a memory from some church lesson, he went on. “Their souls are warmed in God’s hand and opening like flowers.”

He was embarrassed at his own words, but they seemed to help Nelka. She stopped crying and grew quieter.

“God will have to—” Telek stroked her hair with a suddenly awkward hand. “He’ll have to laugh when Magda walks into Heaven leading that mischievous boy, Hansel, and—” He couldn’t bear to say Gretel’s name.

Nelka nodded again and lay still against his chest.

Telek held her and tried not to think of Gretel. The way she had looked at the wild ponies with her mouth open in joy. The way she had offered him a piece of her magical orange. He shut his eyes and held Nelka tighter. It was over. He had no one in the village. Nelka and the baby had no one either. It was just the three of them.

“We’re leaving this place.”

“Where can we go?” She lifted her swollen face and he smiled at her.

“Away from here. Away from Poland.”

“Leave Poland?” Her eyes widened.

“I won’t spend the rest of my life killing Russians.”

“But they promised. After the Germans are beaten, Poland will be free.”

“Promises are easy to make.”

He looked at the baby sleeping in a patch of sun.

“I don’t want to teach him how to slit a throat, and there’s no family for either of us here.”

“If we have to go, I want to be where it’s warm. Where there isn’t any war.”

“We’ll find it. If we have to cross oceans, we’ll find it.”

“I don’t think there is a place like that.”

He turned her head up and put his face close to hers. Moving his chapped lips against the salty moisture from Nelka’s tears that wet her mouth, he spoke slowly.

“I will find it for you.”

He kissed her deeply and then drew back and saw her face with her eyes shut and the skin flushed and the beautiful lips open, and he kissed her again and again for a long time. They sat like that until the baby woke and began to cry, and Nelka nursed him. Then the three of them, Telek with his arm around Nelka, who carried their son, walked down the road toward the west.

“When the others come from Bialowieza, we march on.” The Russian was so restless that he had hardly slept for three nights in the village even though they were given food and beds. Three days in a village while the war was moving on. It was hard to obey other men’s orders again.

The Mechanik sat on the steps beside the Russian and said nothing. The sun was warm, but he didn’t feel it.

“We’ll join the main force again and march on to Berlin.” The Russian laughed. “Let the bastards see what it’s like fighting on their own soil.”

He was so excited that he began to pace back and forth in front of the village store.

“I have to look for my children.”

“Listen, friend—” The Russian cuffed the Mechanik lightly on the shoulder. “You know what they say the camps are. It’s death in hours when you get there. Your children are gone, Mechanik.” It was a hard thing to say, but the man had to recover from this. “Going to the camps is a waste of time. We’re in the front line. We’ll be in Berlin before the men who’re coming up from the south. And what of the woman? What of your wife?”

“They haven’t seen her here. She must be dead or she would have come back.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe she had to lie low or join some other group. Think about it. You know her. If she’s alive, she won’t stop until she gets to Berlin and the Nazis are beaten.”

There was truth in this. The Mechanik had thought about what she would do. She would fight on and try to find him after the war was over.

“If you want to find her, you have to keep marching on to the end of the war. That’s where she’ll be. Let the children go. Pray for their souls, my friend, but let them go and keep fighting.”

The Russian knew that it was hard for the Jew to sit and think. But they needed to move on. He wanted this man beside him. The Mechanik knew machines, and soon they would be able to ride. Soon they would be firing their own rockets and setting off real bombs.

“You’re a Comrade now. You have to fight with us,” he said over his shoulder.

The Russian was still pacing when he saw a man watching them from across the square. He was fattish and one of his hands was behind his back. The other hand held a wooden club. There was something about the man that made the Russian pause.

“What’s your name, friend?” the Russian asked as the man walked past him.

“Jedrik.” He held the club in front of his body and walked toward the Mechanik.

“What do you want?”

Jedrik walked past the Russian without replying, and it happened too quickly for the Russian to draw his pistol or take his rifle off his back.

“They say you’re a Jew,” Jedrik said.

“I’m a Jew. I’ve fought in the woods since November with the partisans.”

“The Russians are bringing Communist Jews to rule Poland.”

The Mechanik realized his mistake. He shouldn’t have said he was a Jew. He had thought it was safe now. Jedrik pulled his hand out from behind his back. He held an ancient pistol.

“That gun hasn’t been fired since the last war.” The Mechanik almost laughed, but his hair began to rise on the back of his neck.

“Shoot my Comrade, and I kill you.” The Russian didn’t draw his pistol. He didn’t want to panic the man. Jedrik moved his eyes back and forth from the Russian to the Mechanik, and the old pistol swayed back and forth from one man to the other.

“Don’t move, Russian. I have no argument with you.”

“You have no argument with me either,” said the Mechanik. But he knew that it wouldn’t matter to this man.

“The Nazis never would have fought us except for you Jews.” Jedrik was pale and his hand trembled. “You were why they hate us. We let you live here in our land, and millions of Poles died because of you. They only came here because of all the Jews they wanted to kill.”

“I’m a Pole too. Besides, they wanted our land.” The Mechanik thought of his pistol, but it was buttoned under his coat.

“You’re an asshole, Jedrik.” The Russian laughed, but his laugh was tight. “They didn’t give a damn about the Jews or Poland. The Germans wanted Russia. You were just in the way. Poland’s always in the way of all the armies trying to kill Russians. The Jews were the excuse they used, but next time they’ll have another reason to run over Poland.”

Jedrik shook his head.

“Kill the Jew and you die.” The Russian stared past Jedrik down the street. There were a few villagers who watched in the distance, but none of the Russian soldiers were on the street. He wondered if he could get his pistol out and shoot the bastard after Jedrik killed the Jew.

The Mechanik knew that this Jedrik was going to shoot him, and then the Russian would try to draw his pistol. If the peasant was a good shot, then the Russian would die too. The Mechanik stood slowly, his hands out at his sides so Jedrik wouldn’t panic and shoot.

“We have all suffered. My wife is dead, I think. My children are dead.”

“Dirty Jew. You should all be dead.”

Jedrik talked on, and the Mechanik moved forward a little, incremental shuffles that took him closer, as if he needed to get closer to hear better.

“The Jews get rich off us peasants, and then they join the Russians. You’re a Communist, Jew. And the Communists should die too. All of them. All the Russians will be killed like rats.”

Jedrik had spittle at the corner of his mouth. The Mechanik nodded as if he agreed. He tried to look humble, and he moved forward a fraction as the man rambled on with his talk.

“Jews killed children. All of you did. You killed children and ate them.”

The Russian saw the Mechanik moving forward, and he waited for Jedrik to panic and shoot, but the man kept talking. He wanted to say it all.

“You bled Poland dry and then you lived fat in the cities. I’m going to kill you, Jew, and then I’ll kill the Communist who brought you here.”

The Mechanik thought of all the poor Jews of this village who had been shot and buried in the woods. He didn’t contradict Jedrik. He nodded humbly, hoping the man would keep talking.

He knew he couldn’t get much nearer, or the peasant would shoot. He knew it was going to kill him, but if he could knock the man down, the Russian would have time to draw his gun. Sliding his eyes toward the Russian, the Mechanik spoke softly.

“Goodbye, friend. You saved us in the forest. Thank you.”

The peasant opened his mouth to speak again, and the Mechanik jumped forward. He leapt over the six feet of ground and heard the explosion of the pistol as his body hit Jedrik’s. The Mechanik screamed, but he held Jedrik’s arm down as they both fell backward onto the dirt of the street. Jedrik got in one blow with the club, and then it fell from his hand.

“Jew! Jew!” Jedrik screamed.

The Mechanik felt like a hand had knocked the wind out of his chest. He knew he was shot, but he lay on Jedrik and held his pistol hand down. The gun went off again, and the Mechanik felt his eyes dimming. He was fainting, and everything began to darken at the edges of his vision. He saw stars over the face of the screaming peasant, but he couldn’t hear him anymore.

The Russian, cursing steadily, dragged his pistol out of the holster and tried to put it to Jedrik’s head. The two men were struggling so in the dirt that the Russian had to shuffle around them, almost dancing in the dust of the street.

“You stupid shit!” The Russian took his chance for a clean shot, put the gun almost against the peasant’s head and fired. Jedrik’s head popped like a broken squash and opened. He shuddered and twisted, his words gurgling in his throat, and then he lay still. The Mechanik lay on top of him.

“Oh God! Oh Jesus!” The Russian had to pull the Mechanik’s hands from Jedrik. He rolled the unconscious man over and saw the blood on his chest.

He knelt and opened the Mechanik’s coat and shirt. A single shot had passed into his chest, but it was on the right side. The Russian put his ear to the wounded chest. The man was breathing well. It had missed his lungs. No great spouting of blood gushed out. He rolled his friend onto his side, pulled his shirt up roughly, and laughed at what he saw.

“It went right through. You’re in luck, Comrade.”

The pain of being rolled over brought the Mechanik to consciousness, and he groaned. He opened his eyes, and stared at the dirt of the street. It took a moment for him to remember where he was. To remember what had happened.

The Russian rolled him gently onto his back and grinned down into his dark eyes.

“The peasant? He shot you?” the Mechanik asked.

“You took the bullet for me, Comrade.”

“I’m shot?”

“Shot like a dog. But it missed your lungs and heart. You have a nice hole going through you. With luck, you’ll heal, but you won’t go to Berlin this winter.”

“I’m shot.” He lay in the dirt and thought about it.

“You’re no good for marching now, Comrade, but you can come to Berlin after we’ve done the dirty work.” The Russian called out to the peasants who were creeping closer. “You people! Come help me with this hero. He saved my life. That bastard, Jedrik, would have killed us both if this Jew hadn’t jumped him.”

“I’m shot.” The Mechanik whispered it again.

The Russian grinned down at his friend. “The fucking Pole wanted to kill us all.”

“There are Nazis in every country,” the Mechanik said, but then he had to stop. The pain was making him light-headed.

“You get well, and I’ll beat the Germans for you.”

“You saved our life in the forest,” the Mechanik whispered as darkness closed in on him.

“So now we’re even. Don’t worry. Every other German I kill, I’ll kill him for you.”

The Russian leaned over and took the Mechanik’s face in his hands and kissed him loudly on each cheek, but the other man was unconscious again and didn’t know he had been kissed.

“Every other one for you, my friend.”

The Mechanik moaned a little in his unconsciousness, and the Russian grinned. There wasn’t a lot of blood. The man might live if the wound didn’t get infected. He just might live.

Swans

T
he children were hidden in the brush beside the road, watching the trucks move past them through the mud. The German soldiers in the trucks weren’t clean like the Germans in the ghetto. They were dirty and slumped. Guns boomed in the distance day and night.

Gretel started to stand up, and he pulled her down.

“The trucks won’t hurt us, Hansel.”

“They’re Germans. We have to hide. You promised to do what I said.”