The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (5 page)

“Then you have to go back and find it. Walk it up the road. Keep walking until you reach the first dirt track turning into the forest. Turn off on the track and walk until we find you.”

She stared at them. “No.”

“I’ll get it, darling. Don’t worry.”

“He needs food. He’ll get lost. He’ll—”

“You get the motorcycle and bring it back. Then you’re one of us, Mechanik.”

She watched her husband turn and walk into the trees. He began a staggering lope, trying to move faster than his strength would allow. He was weak because he always gave his food up to his children when she wasn’t watching. She knew he was hurrying to try to find them. She knew it. For a moment she hated those children.

The Russian was pleased. They would either acquire a motorcycle and a mechanic or the man would be killed. If he was killed, it was a sign that he hadn’t been able to survive and they were right to test him first. Of course, if he was tortured, the man might tell where he had come from—where in the woods he had last seen the partisans. But that would also expose the woman. He wouldn’t want to do that. It could be dealt with. They would move fast. He began to unfasten his pants. “Piss now. Shit if you can.” The men began to unfasten their pants.

“You too.”

“You do this next to where you live?” She was scornful. She knew all about hiding excrement. They had hidden their shit for months so the Nazis wouldn’t find them.

“We don’t sleep here. We just want to leave our stink so if they bring dogs they’ll think they’ve found our camp.”

“We don’t live this nice,” said a younger man whose ears stuck out from his head and had reddened with the cold. His round face was very young. “Not nearly this nice.”

The men laughed. “Listen to Lydka. He’s right.”

The woman smiled. The boy’s nickname, Lydka, suited him. He moved restlessly, with the springy walk of a young calf.

She squatted and pulled aside her pants so the piss wouldn’t wet her. The men paid no attention. Her mind went to her husband, alone and running through the woods, back toward the hunters and dogs. There was nothing she could do for him now. She thought of the black and silver of the uniform splattered with red blood. She thought of the dead German, and she was happy for the first time in four years.

Brother and Sister

H
eavy snow had begun to fall. Gretel and Hansel sat watching Magda’s hut for nearly an hour. Every few minutes they stood and jumped up and down to get warm and knock off the snow.

“Take a piece of bread. She won’t know.”

“We can’t make her angry. Wait, Hansel.”

Another hour went by. The door opened and Magda came out, ignoring the children and walking past them to the woods. She moved slowly, her back bowed with arthritis.

“We can help.” Hansel moved after her.

“It won’t do you any good. I can’t help you.” Magda talked without turning. Occasionally she leaned over and picked up a piece of wood. “There’ve been others. I couldn’t take care of them either. Walk a mile toward the sun. There’s a village. I can’t keep you.”

Hansel dropped Gretel’s hand and began to pick up wood. He filled his arms, grunting with the effort, and Gretel picked up wood until she was breathing hard. They had walked for too long, and Hansel was giving a little moan with each exhalation.

When they returned to the clearing, Magda went into the hut, and Hansel walked in behind her without knocking or begging. He just walked inside and Gretel followed. They put the wood on top of a pile near the huge stove that filled half the side of the hut.

“Come on, Gretel.”

They climbed on top of the sleeping platform and sat on the blankets laid out on the shelf above the great oven. Hansel had never seen such an enormous stove in anyone’s house. It was like the stove that bakers used. The warmth almost made the boy laugh, but he was too intent on disappearing from the witch’s mind so they could sit and be warm.

Magda sat opposite them on the only chair, a wooden rocker with no cushion or comfort to it. The thump of her rocking and the moaning exhalation of the boy were the only sounds.

We will sit and maybe the war will stop, Gretel thought. Someone will come and tell us that it’s over, and we’ll find Father, and go home, and live in our house, and it will be summer. She drooped into sleep.

The door to the hut opened.

“What’s this? What can you be thinking?” An old man stared at the children. “You have to get rid of them.”

“You kill them. I’m too tired. You’re the priest.” Magda kept on rocking.

“For God’s sake, don’t be crazy.” He was thin and white-haired with piercing eyes.

Hansel stared at the man. He had seen priests on the street. This man didn’t wear the things that priests wore. He had on woolen pants and rough boots like a peasant. His coat was ragged at the cuffs and missing two buttons.

“Go report me to your friend, the Major. That fine man.” Magda spit on the floor.

The priest pulled a stool from under the table and sat. His head was lower than Magda’s. He did not look at the children.

“You only survived by accident, Magda.”

“And you also.”

He was silent for a moment. “The fire in Warsaw—the birth records destroyed—was good luck. Your grandmother was whoever we said she was.”

“My grandmother was one of the Rom. She never tried to steal land and kill people.”

“They hate Gypsies more than Jews.”

“She helped everyone.”

“She was a thief. She killed babies. She spent six years in prison.”

“She sent unborn babies back to God when no one would love them in this world. She only stole from those who were stupid and fat. The villagers would have helped her if they had been as Christian as they bragged. She saved them from their greed.”

Hansel felt himself falling asleep. He had to stay awake. If they didn’t get food soon, he wouldn’t care about eating, and when the caring was gone, death would come.

“I got you clean papers! All the money and trouble! And now you’ll be killed when they find these children. Give them one crust of bread, and you’ll die.”

“We ate some bread.” Hansel spoke and his voice woke Gretel. “The witch didn’t want it. It was for the birds.”

“No one comes here.” Magda rocked rhythmically. “Everyone stays away. Who’s to know?” She smiled at the man and he winced.

“Children talk. They’ll make noise, and run, and play games. Children are the worst. They have no sense. They forget.” The man was sweating.

“I don’t care anymore.”

“You cared when you came running to me in a panic for false papers. And what about Nelka? She’s pregnant.”

“Why do you talk to me about her? Everyone knows who should be taking care of her.”

The man was silent and stared at the floor. Hansel forced himself to stay awake.

“If you keep these Jews, they’ll kill her too. Pregnant or not. You’ll both be put on the trains or shot right here.”

“You should know. You should know about the shooting in the forest.”

“I didn’t shoot anyone,” he shouted. “I never killed anyone.”

The shouting made Gretel come completely awake, and she stared at Magda, willing her to look back. Magda lifted her eyes and looked into the blue eyes of the child.

“We can stay inside. We can be quiet. There must be a way,” Gretel said.

“All the ways are over.” The priest didn’t look at the girl.

Magda shook her head. “Stalingrad held fast. One hundred thousand Germans captured.”

“Sent to Siberia like the Poles. God help them.”

“God damn them.” Magda stopped rocking.

They sat until Gretel felt the tears coming. She choked them back. Weak people weren’t good for anything. Crying twice in two days. She had to stop.

“It will end, Piotr. I see it coming.”

“And you can be here when it does. Think. You can sit here and wait for the end.”

“Someone in the village could tell about Grandmother.”

“But they haven’t so far. No one has told. Even Jedrik, who pointed out the Jews for a sack of potatoes, is afraid to point out the priest. The village would kill Jedrik if he turned me in and I died, but I can’t save you if you keep these Jews.”

How does he know we’re Jews? Gretel thought. They always seemed to know. It wasn’t their accent. She and Hansel spoke good Polish. No one had used Yiddish in their home. Father had hated it when she repeated a Yiddish word heard from others.

“My children will be citizens of the world,” her father always said. “They will speak perfect Polish. Perfect German. Then English and French when they are older.”

Gretel put her arm around Hansel. She remembered her father arguing with someone—someone who wanted them to learn Yiddish—but how did everyone always know about the Jewishness? What could it be?

“The girl is blond.”

“The boy has dark eyes. Curly dark hair.” He shook his head. “And he must be circumcised.”

The priest stepped to the sleeping platform. Rolling Hansel over, he fumbled with the boy’s pants. Before the man could lower them, Gretel fell on his arm and bit him. He shrieked and shook her off like a dog.

“You can’t look at him.” Gretel was screaming.

Magda didn’t move.

“He’s circumcised. I told you. How the hell do you hide that?”

Magda was silent for a minute and then she smiled. “My great-niece. The crazy one. Our sister’s granddaughter.”

“You haven’t seen her in years. She’s probably dead.”

“She was always crazy. Joined any group that would have her.”

“So?” He rubbed his arm and glared at Gretel.

“So we will say that she joined the Karaites.”

He stood silent and then his jaw dropped. He understood.

“She joined the Karaites while she was pregnant and they told her to have the boy circumcised because the Karaites believe that should be done even though they are Christian. She was such a fool. Of course she did it. She’d do whatever anyone said. She was mixed up with the Karaites and had the boy.”

“So you’ll explain the circumcision by claiming he was with the Karaites? Half the Jews in Poland must be claiming this. And why aren’t the children with their crazy mother now?”

“Because she was sent into Germany to work on a farm. She used to work on that farm near Warsaw. Do you remember? And she couldn’t take the children so she sent them to me.”

“And if she turns up in the village?”

“Who will travel east with the Russian wolves creeping down on us? Everyone with a brain will go west.”

“She never had a brain. It would be like her to arrive now.”

“And you only need identity cards for children over eleven. The boy looks no more than six. She looks about ten.”

“But they would need—” He stared at her and she smiled, amused at his panic.

“You could get them.”

“I won’t.”

“Two baptismal certificates. Zbigniew would take a picture of them standing in their communion outfits. Pictures of the little Karaites getting ready to eat God.”

“I’m sitting the war out in this backwater. I can’t take any more chances.”

“And you helped shovel the dirt when they shot the mayor and the Jews.”

“What good would my death have done?”

“All your damn holiness. All your life. And an illegitimate daughter, and now a pregnant granddaughter, and you vowing celibacy.”

“Half the village is dead. Sent to Germany as slaves. Sent to Russia to build roads in Siberia. Shot. Starved. Forced to enlist in the Russian army. They’ll shoot the whole village if they find these children hidden with you.”

“We won’t hide them. We’ll treat it all as natural. You have the connections. Get me peroxide. I’ll dye the boy’s hair. Get the baptismal certificates. We’ll apply for food coupons.”

“You’ll kill the whole village for those two?”

“What has the village ever done for me?”

“They’ve kept silent about your grandmother.”

“They sent her to prison after she spent years cleaning up their embarrassing mistakes.”

He stood and stared at Magda. She stared back, and Gretel shut her eyes and prayed. Let the woman win.

“You want me dead,” he said.

“Why not pretend to be a Christian?”

“Don’t use God as a weapon against my life. I have a duty to abstain from suicide.”

“Your whole life has been a suicide.”

“Go to Hell.”

“This is Hell. God couldn’t invent anything worse. The Nazis have exceeded the imagination of God.”

“Blasphemer.”

“If you won’t do it as a priest, I demand that you do it on the head of our dead mother.”

“Don’t drag her into this. She was dead before it started.”

“She took you and abandoned me and my sister. She left us with my grandmother because I wasn’t beautiful enough. She dumped us and never looked back and took her golden boy. Her blond, beautiful, clever, good, pious little altar boy with her. And then you abandoned her.”

“Enough.”

“She came back to me, and used up all I had with sickness.”

“She died.”

“On her miserable head, I demand that you do this. Get the certificates.”

“Why punish me now?”

“Because it amuses me. You and your going to Rome. The boy genius. You’re a trapped rat with all the other stinking rats now.”

He was silent, and sweat ran down his face.

“Do this, brother, or I’ll march these children in and leave them in your church. I’ll say you hid them there, and they’ll burn the church to the ground with you and the children and everyone else inside.”

“You don’t care about these Jews.”

“That’s none of your business. Go and do your duty. Tell Zbigniew to bring his camera.”

“He has no film.”

“He has film to take pictures of documents and make identity papers for those with enough money. He can spare an inch of film to help me. Remind him of his clerk. She could have embarrassed him badly before the war. She was a Jew and she carried his half-Jew child until I helped her.”