The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

  The Russian and the Lithuanian whispered for a moment. Having witnesses wasn’t a bad thing. They’d tell every peasant in the district that the partisans were as dangerous as the Nazis. It would mean more cooperation. More food.

  “We’ll let you live, but you have to work.”

  “Anything. We thank you.”

  “God hold your soul in his hand, Master.”

  “Bless you—”

  “Shut up!” The Russian was getting restless. They had to get out. “Take them and get to work,” he told Gregor and Lydka. “Fire everything but the house for the moment, but take what you can. We leave nothing but scorched earth for the Nazis. Not a blade of hay. Not a potato.”

  The house was ransacked and the clothes and food were packed in bags. The wooden barn was in flames, all the winter fodder on fire, a square candle of burning flame against the sky. They had to move faster. The flames blinded them to anyone coming out of the darkness. The sound was deafening when the men ran past the barn. The wind caught the fire and it created a sucking chimney that roared and occasionally exploded when a can of gasoline ignited.

  The Lithuanian who led the other group had business to do. The woman was dragged upstairs and stripped. They spit on her and slapped her and she screamed.

  “Bitch.”

  “Collaborating cunt.”

  “Nazi.”

  “Shkopy.”

  She howled and begged, but in her eyes the Mechanik could see that she knew it was over.

  The Lithuanian began. “Elwira Dlugosz, I accuse you of collaborating with the enemies of your people, your church, and your country. I accuse you of causing the death of patriots.”

  He leaned toward the naked woman and smiled. “I accuse you of enjoying these things and bragging about them later. What do you have to say to this?”

  She stood dazed from the slaps, her mouth bleeding. She knew it was hopeless.

  “Throw her out,” the Lithuanian said.

  The Mechanik knew it had to be done. The collaborators caused too much death. But he turned and let the others do it. It had been their comrades who died.

  He went down the stairs and outside, looking for his wife. The air was red now and thick with the smell of burning hay. He heard a thump and looked back at the house. Her body had been hanged and thrown outside the upstairs window. It hung kicking and flapping, her breasts and the fat on her thighs rippling until she was dead.

  The house was already on fire, and the red light spread all around the hanging body, from the upstairs behind the window, and then all the downstairs sprang into flame.

  “Beautiful, huh?” a Pole from the other group shouted over the sound of the fire, pausing to stare. “Like when you look in a woman’s iron and see the lump of red coal.”

  The Mechanik nodded. It was beautiful. The whole house holding its shape but red and moving and alive inside. He watched for a minute and then turned away.

  Everything was on fire now, and screams were coming from the stone barn. The loft had been fired, and the top was catching. The stored hay caught easily and would burn the roof off.

  The screaming came from the partisans in the other group. Two of them were holding a man, and at first the Mechanik thought it was another farmworker, but it was one of their group.

  He looked like a Jew, dark curly hair, something about his eyes. He was struggling silently.

  “No, no. Let it go,” they were shouting at him, but he broke loose and ran to the barn doors.

  Throwing up the bolt, he opened them and plunged into the heavy smoke.

  Horses. Neighing in panic. The thud of hooves against boards as they tried to break down their stalls. It was the last pride of the farmer.

  “Don’t,” the Mechanik said, grabbing his wife’s arm.

  She shook her head. She wouldn’t risk her life for the horses. The top would cave in at any second, but nevertheless—she cried out to think of the hot rafters falling on the backs of the horses. She had loved horses once.

  Two horses came jostling and bolting out the door. The Jew had opened the stalls and was driving them out.

  “They won’t drive easy,” she whispered. “Fire makes them crazy. They could kill him if he gets in the stalls to drive them. If there’s a stallion, he’ll die.”

  The Mechanik kept his hand on her with an iron grip. She mustn’t try to help with this.

  “Did you find food?” he asked, hoping to distract her, but she didn’t answer and watched the flames now engulfing the roof of the barn. How many minutes did the man have?

  Three more horses bolted out. The partisans were busy now. They chased the horses and caught those they could.

  “The pillows,” a man screamed. “Tie them on for saddles, brothers.”

  Another horse came out and then a stallion too wild with terror to get near. It galloped off toward the woods.

  The man, staggering and coughing was at the door of the barn. Everyone cheered. He raised his head and grinned.

  “Always in love with the damned horses,” the Lithuanian shouted.

  They could hear the terrified neighs, like women screaming, from the horses in the barn who were too crazy to run. He hadn’t been able to drive them all out.

  The Jew opened his mouth to shout back when from behind him came a horse with a chest like a wagon front. Before anyone could drag the Jew away, the roof began to fall in with tearing sounds, the wind catching the flames and making a roaring as a blizzard of sparks flew around them. The heat made everyone turn and run, and the last screams of the horses were cut off.

  “He was already dead,” the Mechanik said. “The horse killed him. He felt nothing.”

  “He got most of the horses out.” She didn’t look behind her. She hoped the Jew knew that he had saved the horses. If you had to be killed, she thought, it wasn’t such a bad thing to be killed by a horse. It was a death unspoiled by any ideas at all.

  She settled the weight on her back and lowered her head, letting the rhythm of walking take her over. They had a long way to go before they would be safe.

  The Drawing

  “Where did he hear about it?” Pawel asked.

  There was silence. It didn’t matter. The partisans, illegal radios, gossip. Who cared? The five men sat, the room lit dimly by the fire which they did not stir up.

  “Hush.” They strained forward and listened to the footsteps of the Major pass by.

  “He can’t sit by his warm stove like a normal man.” Czeslaw was the oldest. He had seen too much of men like the Major.

  “He left his friends to die in Russia. He can’t rest.” Bialy spit into the fire.

  “At least he has friends left.” Feliks had lost his brother, shot with the first executions.

  “Katyn Forest,” said Bialy, the name reminding him that the Major was one of the beasts who wanted to kill all the Poles. “Russians or Germans. Who gives a damn who did it?”

  They all knew the story. Fifteen thousand Polish officers massacred after an honorable surrender. Lying in the forests of Katyn.

  There was a soft knock on the door, and Telek slipped in and sat at the edge of the room. He was cold, but he didn’t move close to the warmth.

  The men waited. It was no use rushing Telek. He had always been different. His mother a suicide and his father running away. The boy sneaking out into the woods instead of going to school. Carrying water and selling berries and firewood for his living. They waited.

  And Telek began slowly. “He is an SS Oberführer. He has no battle ribbons. Not a real soldier. He’s been in the other villages between here and Bialystok. He and the woman are sorting them. They’ve gone to Bialowieza, but they’ll be back.”

  “Sorting who?” Andrzej was impatient. He didn’t want to be on the street after curfew.

  “The children. He and the woman examine the children and sort them.”

  “Sort them how? Why would they want children?” Feliks was beginning to sweat.

  “The children strip and are
measured all over—head, body, legs, hips. They measure the width of the pelvis in the girls and the penis size in the boys.”

  “Degenerates.” Czeslaw clenched his fists.

  “Then they photograph them from all angles.”

  “Dirty pictures? Much good it will do them.” Bialy turned and spit in the fireplace again.

  “Go on, damn it. Finish it, Telek.”

  “They’re looking for children who are blond and blue-eyed. They don’t want thick lips, or ears that stick out, or cheekbones that are prominent. They don’t want sloping shoulders. They don’t want any flaws or scars or broken bones or birthmarks. The mothers are told it’s a medical examination. They’re told that sometimes the children need special treatment, but it’s always the healthy, blond, blue-eyed ones that need it.”

  “And then?” Pawel thought of his three children. All blond. All perfect. A great feeling of coldness had entered the room, but no one got up to stir the fire or add another log.

  “The mothers are given cards. A red card for a child who is physically perfect and blond, a white card for a child who is too Slavic or marked in any way.”

  “Enough.” Feliks the chess player stood so suddenly that his chair tipped over with a bang. “Christ. Enough. They’re sending the women away. Probably for their whorehouses or to be worked to death. But what do the devils want with the children? Babies aren’t any good for work.”

  “I don’t know.” Telek sat in silence, his face reddened by the fire-light. “We don’t know what they’re going to do with them. They send them into Germany.”

  The room was silent. No one could think very clearly for a few minutes.

  “Be rational. They came here. The SS and the woman,” Feliks began.

  The men nodded.

  “And they didn’t do anything. Just drank with the Major and terrorized three women.”

  The men nodded again.

  “So maybe there’s nothing they want here. We’re a small village.”

  Telek sighed. “They’re coming back soon. After Bialowieza.”

  “There are children who are scarred, whose ears stick out.”

  “Children who look Slavic.”

  “We must do it ourselves first.” Telek spoke almost in a whisper. “We must examine every child in the village and see which would be selected and which rejected.”

  “And then?”

  It crept into their minds but no one dared to say it.

  Andrzej finally groaned and stood up. He walked to the fire. He threw a log on, and sparks flew out onto the hearth. The room was brighter, and he turned and faced the others.

  “We’ll have to make sure that there are no perfect children in our village.” He felt guilty saying it. His own were dark-haired, and the boy’s ears stuck out. They were safe. He thanked God for Basha’s brunette coloring.

  “Why not just hide them?” Pawel was nearly in tears. “We could go into the woods.”

  Straightening his leg, Andrzej sighed. “And then you have to stay in the forest with tiny children for the rest of the winter.”

  There was silence. Everyone knew it was impossible. No child could live in the woods and survive the winter. You might as well hand them over to the Nazis.

  “And who of us,” Czeslaw asked, “will make sure they’re imperfect?”

  “Each man could care for his own children,” Telek said.

  “No.” Pawel shook his head. “If someone has to hurt the children, it should be one person doing it. Then it would be—” He paused. “It would be on one soul only. It’s too unnatural for a father to injure his child. No man should have to do it.”

  “It would save them,” Telek said.

  “What if you’re wrong and we hurt the children for nothing.”

  “How many children are we talking about?” Bialy tried to remember all the children lined up to get their spoonful of sugar once a week.

  “Thirty-one children in the village.” Feliks squinted his eyes and thought. “At least seven are blond.”

  “Seven plus you have to count the two of Miron and Ania. Their eyes are blue.”

  “Tolek? And Jolanta’s little girl? His ears stick out, and she coughs. It’s T.B.”

  “So it’s seven and maybe two more.”

  They all nodded in agreement.

  “And the girl that Magda took in. The boy is brown-eyed, but the girl is perfect. We have to decide this fairly,” said Bialy. “Pawel has a point. It’s unnatural for a father to injure his own child. His wife might hate him forever, and the child—”

  “We can do it by a drawing.” Telek went to a broom that stood against the wall. Drawing his knife he cut six pieces of twig, five of them similar in length. Turning his back he cut one twig until it was only half the size of the others. He arranged them in his hand, sticking up out of his clenched fist, and turned toward the men.

  “Six straws. You have to be in it too, Telek,” Pawel’s voice was shaking.

  “Six straws.”

  Pawel leapt up and nearly tore a straw out of Telek’s tightly clenched hand. “Is this a long one or a short one?” Telek said nothing. Pawel didn’t know if his straw was long or short, but he moved away with a nervous laugh and waited.

  Each man took a straw, and Telek’s face hardened.

  “You don’t have children, Telek. It’s better for you.”

  “Out in the woods all the time. You don’t know the children like we do.”

  The men felt humble. They watched Telek as he opened his fist and showed them the short straw that was left. His forehead was beaded with sweat.

  It’s my fault that this has come to me, Telek thought. And they will dislike me more when I’ve done it. He knew the village would have no place for him when the war was over. The heart of the village would be closed to him. And Nelka. Would she forgive him for mutilating Gretel?

  “But what will you do?” Pawel couldn’t look into Telek’s face.

  “Do you think it has to be—” Bialy said, and then he fell silent.

  “I’ll think about it. It has to be soon because the SS Oberführer will be back in a few weeks. It can’t look like we did it the day before he comes. It must look as natural as possible.”

  Telek threw the short straw into the fire. “Don’t tell anyone yet. Don’t frighten the children. I’ll decide how to do it and then tell you.”

  They nodded. The fate of the children was in his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Telek,” Andrzej said.

  Telek nodded. He wished he could stay, sit by the fire, and share the homemade vodka he knew they would pass around, be slapped on the shoulder and talk about where the Russian line was now. He glanced at them and saw the relief they felt that he was going. He nodded once and went outside, moving quickly down the street, looking ahead to avoid any soldier on duty.

  “He doesn’t drink much anyway,” Czeslaw said as he sipped his vodka. The bite of the raw alcohol made his throat thick. “And he doesn’t have children himself. It’s better that he drew the straw. Telek has never been one of us.”

  They sat for an hour in silence and sipped the tiny glasses of vodka. None of them could bear going home to their wives yet. They heard the Major going down the street again, drunk now and talking aloud to his dead comrades in German, but they didn’t move. No one wanted to go out into the darkness.

  Gretel

  “The children are playing too deeply in the forest. They disappear for hours.”

  Telek nodded, and without a word to Magda, turned and walked into the trees. He found their footprints moving not toward the road but straight into the forest. The children hadn’t been running but had walked steadily and quietly between the giant trees.

  The two had walked with the sun at their backs and had kept it there. He nodded approval. By following their own footprints and watching the sun, they could find the way back to the hut. But even if they didn’t get lost, it wasn’t safe. Too many strangers were wandering in the forest.

  The tw
o sets of footprints went on until they reached a clearing. At the edge of the clearing they had stopped and stood. The snow was pressed down in a spot there. He moved across the clearing and saw why they had stood still. The marks in the snow showed where two foxes had been playing. Probably male and female. The children had watched until they frightened the foxes off.

  Or something else frightened them off. A crow cawed and then another one, irritated at his presence. They didn’t fly off, so he relaxed and waited. Just silence.

  He had walked on for a mile when he heard her singing. She was singing some sort of child’s song. He tensed and then relaxed. Gretel was singing in Polish. A cautious child.

  She was sitting on a huge fallen log, having carefully brushed off the snow and climbed up. She sat, the light turning her hair almost white, and the only color in the whole world was the blue of her eyes when she looked around at the forest. She seemed perfectly happy.

  Telek watched for a minute, then stepped out from behind an oak tree. Gretel gasped but she didn’t cry out. Hansel peered around the log.

  “It isn’t safe to be deep in the woods, children. You mustn’t wander so far.”

  They knew him and relaxed, her face smiling that it was Telek. “We saw foxes, and a rabbit, and some animal was in the water. All dark and fat.”

  Hansel made a snowball and threw it at Telek.

  “It was the beaver. They’re building a dam near where you walked.”

  She smiled radiantly. “I keep count, Telek. I’ve seen owls and crows and deer. The deer walk in the snow and lift their legs like dancers. But more beautiful than dancers.”

  Telek climbed up on the fallen tree and sat beside her. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a piece of bread and a smaller piece of sausage. With his knife he cut the bread and sliced the sausage into thin pieces that he placed delicately in a single layer on each piece of bread. Hansel climbed up beside them. “Eat.”

  They ate slowly, and Telek finished long before the children. “What else have you seen?”

  “I think a wolf. Or something.” Hansel growled and slid off the log.