The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

  “You’re scared of the pig.” The older boy tapped Hansel on the shoulder.

  “I’m not.”

  “Then go kiss it.”

  “You don’t kiss pigs.” Hansel picked up his stick.

  “You’re scared to get close to it.”

  “Kiss it. Kiss it. Kiss it,” the black-haired boy chanted.

  Hansel walked past the pig who was rooting again in the road. It stopped rooting, turned its head and fixed its small eyes on Hansel.

  “He’s scared! He’s going to shit his pants he’s so scared!”

  “Run home to the witch, baby,” the boy shouted. “Go back to the woods and hide.”

  Hansel stepped forward gingerly and kissed it on the back above the stringy tail.

  “I did it! I’m not scared!’

  “He kissed the pig’s butt! He kissed the pig’s butt!” Overcome with laughter, the two boys leaned against each other and pointed at Hansel. Three other boys had edged up and watched.

  Hansel looked at the pig and then at the boys, and he felt the tears in his eyes. The hotness of rage flushed his cheeks, and he clenched his fists. “Shut up.”

  They howled with laughter, and Hansel flew at them. The force of his run knocked down the bigger boy. Falling on him, Hansel punched twice and then leapt up. Catching the smaller boy off guard, Hansel knocked him down, and they rolled over and over in the road.

  “You dirty Nazi,” Hansel screamed.

  “I’m not a Nazi! I’m a girl!”

  Hansel stopped punching and lay on the road. The girl sat on him and Hansel put his hands over his face so her punches bounced off. “Girls can be Nazis.”

  “No they can’t.” She punched twice more and then stood up.

  “I’ve seen them,” Hansel said.

  “Where?”

  He couldn’t talk about the life before the woods. “I don’t know.”

  “They’re all men,” she said.

  “There was that woman in the brown coat,” one of the boys said. “She was SS. Do you really live with the witch?”

  “She’s my great-aunt.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s your father?”

  “He died in the war.”

  Silence greeted this information, and the children moved closer.

  “I’m Halina. I live with my aunt and uncle. They killed my mommy and daddy too.”

  They were silent. Then one of the boys spoke. “Her parents were hanged—”

  “Shut up,” the bigger boy ordered, and the other child cut off his words as if he swallowed them. He gulped twice and no one looked at Halina.

  Hansel could stand it no longer. And he didn’t want to talk about the thing with her parents.

  “Let’s play,” he said.

  “Play what?” The children vibrated with interest.

  “Soldier.”

  “All right. I’ll be the general of the Poles, and you”—the bigger boy tapped Hansel on his shoulder—“have to be the Nazi. I’m Jerzy.”

  Jerzy chose first, and Hansel hesitated and then chose Halina.

  “I’m the Generaloberst,” Hansel said, “and you’re the Oberst.”

  “I want to be a general too.”

  “There’s only one general, but you’re next to a general.”

  When they had chosen, Hansel had three on his side. The girl and two boys.

  “I want to be the Oberst.”

  “Me too.”

  “You’re the Hauptmann and you take command from the Oberst. And we have to have a regular soldier, so you’re the Grenadier,” Hansel told the youngest boy.

  “I won’t. I won’t be a regular soldier.”

  “The Grenadiers get to do most of the fighting.”

  The Major who was standing on the porch of a house leaned against a post and watched. This boy was sharp. He had properly memorized all the ranks of the army as Polish children were ordered to do, and he was smart enough to know who did the real fighting.

  “Good job, Generaloberst. Always respect your men.”

  The children shrank back and stared, but Hansel clicked to attention and saluted.

  “Heil Hitler,” he shouted.

  The Major sprang to attention and returned the salute.

  “Come here, boy.” He reached in his pocket and took out a handful of peppermints. He counted out five into Hansel’s hand. “One for the Hauptmann. One for the Oberst. One for the Grenadier, and two for the Generaloberst.”

  Hansel gave another salute and stood at attention.

  “Dismissed, Generaloberst.” The Major moved on down the street.

  Hansel turned back to the other children and was surprised at their still faces.

  “You saluted him.” Jerzy spit on the snow. “He didn’t make you. You just did it.”

  “Look what we got!” Hansel grinned and showed the candy.

  “Dirty Nazi,” Jerzy whispered. He hit Hansel’s hand and knocked the candy onto the road.

  Hansel picked up each piece. They were stupid. He had gotten five pieces of candy.

  “We’ll all eat it,” he said. “Here.”

  Hansel laid the candy on a porch rail and carefully cracked it into smaller pieces, catching them in his hands. He turned and held out pieces. “Why throw it away?”

  First the littlest boy and then Halina took candy and put it in their mouth. Their eyes grew round with the shock of the sugar and sharp flavor.

  “Lovely,” the girl sighed.

  They all took the candy except for Jerzy.

  “I don’t want to play,” the littlest boy said. “I don’t want to be a Nazi.”

  “Me neither.” Halina tied her scarf more tightly.

  “We’d just beat you anyway,” said Jerzy.

  “I have to go. Magda will be mad.” Hansel turned and moved a few steps down the road. The other boys ran back down the street playing tag and shouting.

  “Don’t go.” Halina shook the hair out of her eyes. “We can get potatoes and roast them.”

  “All right.” Hansel didn’t want to go back yet. He’d show them. They’d miss him, and he was glad.

  Halina’s house was like the others in the village, raw boards and a sloping roof that nearly touched the ground. Bales of hay were piled around the sides for warmth.

  “If my aunt asks what we’re doing, you have to talk to her so I can get the potatoes.”

  The aunt sat near the fireplace with the daylight coming through the oiled paper onto her lap. She was sewing pieces of cloth over the holes in a pair of pants.

  “Yes, children? Are you cold?”

  “He’s cold.” Halina pushed Hansel toward her aunt. “I want a drink of water.” She went to a curtain and pushed it aside. The pantry and buckets of water were behind the curtain.

  “You are the boy who is staying with Magda?”

  “My sister and I are staying with her. For now.”

  “For now.” The woman looked at him and put down the sewing. She looked into Hansel’s eyes and then stared toward the curtain. “Magda brought you to the village today?”

  Hansel shook his head.

  “You came alone?”

  “She said I could,” he lied.

  The woman watched him until the flush spread up his neck to his cheeks.

  “Halina! Get in here!”

  The girl came out from behind the curtain.

  “You don’t play with this boy again. You never bring him in our house. Never.”

  “But we just—”

  “Halina, you never talk to him. You leave him alone.” The woman was standing now. She turned to Hansel and waved her hands at him. “Get out! Go away!”

  “We were just playing.”

  “You should play in the woods. It’s better that you not play in the village.” The aunt reached out and pulled Halina to her. She held the girl’s head tightly, looking down into her face. “You never play with him again.” Halina’s aunt leaned ov
er, burrowing her face against the child’s neck, kissing her cheek. “You smell like snow. Don’t stay out late. I don’t want you getting sick.”

  Hansel watched from the door.

  “You, boy, you heard me. She can’t play with you. Go back to the woods.”

  Hansel ran out and jumped off the porch. He began to walk very fast down the road. He didn’t want to cry in the village where other children would see.

  He heard footsteps behind him and slowed, looking over his shoulder. It was Halina.

  “Don’t run off. Come on.”

  “She hates me. She said I had to go back to the woods.”

  “I’ve got three potatoes.”

  “I don’t care.” Hansel wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  “Let’s go cook them. Just us.” Halina took out one potato and showed it to Hansel. It was clean and didn’t have any mold on it.

  “How do we cook them?”

  “You didn’t cook potatoes in the city?”

  “We cooked them on the stove.”

  Halina crept close to a woodpile on a porch and took an armload of dry sticks. She led Hansel out of the village, and in a field near two trees, Halina showed Hansel how to cook outside.

  It took a long time. Halina had used up three matches before the bit of candle caught and the smaller wood lit. Then they had to wait until the fire burned down, and they could put the potatoes on the coals. The potatoes roasted slowly, and the children burned their fingers turning the charring lumps so they’d cook evenly.

  Just when they were nearly done, Hansel heard Halina’s aunt calling.

  “Halina! Halina! Come home now. You’d better come right now.”

  “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

  “Don’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.