The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

  That night they found boxes in the snow, the ropes of the parachute and the silk cloth still attached. Inside were treasures they hadn’t seen since before the war.

  The Mechanik used the can opener taped to the side of a can, and when it opened with a glitter of tin, the men stood silent. Their mouths watered as they smelled it.

  “Canned meat!”

  They dug in with their fingers and smeared the meat paste on the hard bread. There were guns and ammunition and vodka and, most amazing of all, a little medical kit with aspirin and bandages and salve for wounds, a needle and some gut, and a vial marked MORPHINE.

  “Good Russian bread,” the Russian cried as he held the bread in his mouth. It was too hard for his teeth, but he held it and thought it tasted better than the Polish bread.

  The guns were silent now except for an occasional boom. They walked over fields that were covered with holes from the shells.

  It was late afternoon on the eleventh of March when they saw up ahead, on the other side of a field, coming over the top of a rise in the ground, men walking. They didn’t walk fast, but there was a relentless quality to the movement that made the Mechanik shiver. He looked at the face of the older Pole and saw that he was shaken too.

  It wasn’t men so much as it was a wave of humans. Most weren’t in uniform. They were a flood of ragged, gray men who just walked and didn’t stop. The tide of men covered the hill behind them.

  “Move back to the road,” the Russian said. His face glowed. “I’ll call out in Russian first, and get the attention of some of the men. You can hide until they see I’m a Russian.”

  First a truck passed them and then a small vehicle. “It’s a Jeep,” the Mechanik said in awe.

  “What’s that?” The Russian watched the odd, open car, painted dark green, move off through the mud.

  “The Americans have them. I saw a picture once. In Bialystok.”

  “How did the Russians get it?”

  “The Americans must have sent them.”

  They watched as tanks and trucks and more Jeeps began to fill the road. They were muddy, but they had a modern look that pleased the Mechanik. Other engineers had been busy while he lay hiding in the ghetto. His hands itched to open the hoods on the trucks and see what they had been inventing since he had been trapped in the irrational world of war. When the road was nearly covered, the Russian made a gesture with his hand, and all of them melted back into the woods.

  “Pray,” Starzec said as he lay behind a log. “They are killing everyone in their path.”

  The men heard the Russian calling out in his own language. He called for a long time, and then other voices shouted answers. None of the partisans understood the language.

  “Come out,” the Russian began screaming in Polish. “Come out. My brothers are here.”

  The Russian was standing in the road. Men were kissing him on the cheeks and on the lips. They were grabbing him and laughing.

  “Come on,” he said, shouting at them. “We’re going with these comrades. They’re going back to our part of the forest to clean the Nazis out of the villages. We can show them the way.”

  The Mechanik began to smile. They were going back to where the children had been left. Back to that village near the road where he had last seen them in November.

  “I’m coming, my darlings,” he whispered. “And you, my wife. I’ll find you. I’m coming.” They could be where he had left the motorcycle in two weeks, maybe in ten days. Then he would go to each village and ask. Someone must have taken the children in. She was such a beautiful girl. His son was so quick and alert.

  It was March 11, 1944, and they weren’t partisans anymore. They were part of the gray locust hoard of the Russian army, fighting in the open, cleaning out the enemy. The partisans walked down the road with the Russians, and even the Poles were smiling. This foreign army was walking on Polish soil, but perhaps they would be content to return to Russia when the Germans were dead and beaten. Perhaps freedom was coming soon.

  There was so little left to steal or use in Poland. Half the Poles must be dead, the flower of the men killed. Surely there was nothing about Poland for anyone to covet now. The government in exile in London said that the British and the Americans promised freedom for Poland when the war was over. They had heard it on the illegal radios in Bialystok for a year now. Freedom would come. The world had promised it to them.

  “I’m not supposed to play with you.” Halina dropped her head and stared at the floor of the porch.

  “Why?” Hansel stood in the shadow of the porch, staring up at Halina.

  “My aunt said. And anyway, you don’t have anything to play with. You don’t even have a house where we can play.”

  “We could play at Magda’s. She doesn’t care.”

  “My aunt won’t let me go to Magda’s. She’s a witch.”

  “No she isn’t.”

  Halina went down the stairs and stood close to Hansel. She took his hand and swung it. “If I went to Magda’s, she’d find out. We can’t play in the village. Everybody will tell.”

  Hansel stood and thought. He looked at Halina, and she smiled.

  “I could get potatoes. We could go out in the fields, but it’s cold.”

  Hansel shook his head. “Come on. I know where we can play. It’s a secret. You can’t tell.”

  “Where is it?”

  “You can’t tell.”

  They ran up the road and were nearly at the bend when the aunt came out on the porch.

  “Halina! Get back here. I told you not to play with that boy. Halina!”

  She watched them disappear around the curve of the road, heading toward the woods. She’d find out later about this. The girl couldn’t play with the strangers. Her parents were dead already. The boy wasn’t safe. He could get all of them killed.

  Both children were breathing hard by the time they got to the river and found the rock and turned south. Hansel ran to the saplings and pulled the brush off that covered the boards.

  “See? It’s a hidey-hole. There’s food and everything. Nobody will know we’re here.”

  “We can play house.” Halina clapped her hands. “It can be our special place.”

  “Just us. And you can’t tell, Halina. You can’t tell no matter what.”

  “I won’t tell. My aunt will just think we played in the woods. I’ll never tell, Hansel.”

  Hand in hand they climbed into the hole, arranging the boxes like tables and chairs.

  “We need candles. It’s dark.”

  “We can only use one, Halina.”

  “You light it.”

  Hansel set a candle on the box and lit it with one of the matches Magda had wrapped in oilcloth. The glow filled the dark hole, and both children sighed in pleasure.

  “You’re the papa and I’m the mama.”

  Hansel leaned over and kissed Halina on the cheek. “We can play till it gets dark.”

  Halina was busy arranging potatoes on the box. “And we can fix dinner for the children.”

  “Yes. I just came in from work and you are going to make dinner for us, but you have to not tell. Never. About this place.”

  “I won’t. Besides, who’d care anyway?”

  Confession

  Telek walked to the village, doubled over with a mound of firewood. Unable to lift his head, he stared at the mud and walked steadily on, making up his mind.

  The baby was going to be taken into Germany by the Nazis. Telek couldn’t believe the SS man would give up Nelka either, and if she disappeared into Germany—but he couldn’t think about that. That was a bone he wouldn’t gnaw until it was thrown at him.

  He would kill the Brown Sister and the guard, and take the child, but he wouldn’t tell Nelka that he was going to do it. He’d kill the two of them, and go straight to her house with the baby in his arms. She’d have to run, and the village could take care of itself.

  Telek threw the wood down and began to stack it. By tomorrow he would never see this wood
again, but he must act as if it was an ordinary day. He hummed while he neatly built the pile.

  Nelka went to get water and saw Telek at the well. He turned to her and smiled, and he was different. His face was smooth and his eyes were not narrowed and anxious. Telek tossed his bucket over the edge, watching the rope uncoil and follow the bucket into the darkness, and Nelka heard it hit the water and sink with a gurgle.

  “You’re different today, Telek.”

  “Because I love you.”

  “You’re going to do it. You’re going to get the whole village killed.”

  He set the bucket on the cement lip of the well, and he looked so relaxed that she shivered.

  “I do it for love of you. The child is my son now.”

  “It isn’t just love, Telek. The village made your life hard since you were born. They always made you the outsider. Because of your mother. Because you went off in the woods alone. And since you saved their children, they flinch when you walk by. The children run when they see you. The village never accepted you and now they can’t. You’ll leave here anyway. You can’t stay.”

  “Would you stay if I left?”

  “If there is no place here for you, there is no place here for me. But we can’t go with blood on our heads. We could follow the Germans and steal the baby after they leave the village.”

  “Once they have it, it will disappear. There is too much going on, too many soldiers, too many armies on the move.”

  “But killing them and running will kill the whole village. Go confess this, Telek. Save your soul before it’s too late. Talk to the priest. Tell him you are going to kill everyone. I ask you to do it. For me.” She walked away and disappeared down the mud lane that led to her house.

  Telek turned and threw the second bucket down the well with such rage that it hit the side and nearly cracked. What was the point in confessing sins that were uncommitted?

  Father Piotr was behind a curtain stained along the edges from his fingers pulling the cloth back and forth. It blocked the rest of the room from his bed where he sat and waited.

  “When was your last confession, my son?” Father Piotr wanted this to be finished. Most of the villagers didn’t confess anymore. It was forbidden as the Mass was forbidden.

  “Maybe three years ago.”

  Father Piotr sighed. He hoped that Telek wasn’t too scrupulous. It might take a long time.

  “And what do you have to confess?”

  “I came because Nelka asked me to do it.”

  A flash of anger came over Father Piotr. He didn’t want Nelka to love this man, a common water carrier, but he asked automatically, “You have been lying with Nelka?”

  “I’ve always done anything she asked. She never had a wish that I didn’t take care of. I’ll always take care of her.” Telek brushed his hair out of his face nervously. This man was the priest, but he was Nelka’s grandfather, and it made the confession difficult.

  “Telek, you know that if we’re discovered—you have to be quick.”

  “I’m going to kill the Brown Sister and the soldier who guards her room. I’ll take the baby, get Nelka, and hide in the forest. I won’t let the Oberführer take the baby with him, or Nelka.”

  “It is wrong to kill,” the priest said automatically, but his heart had lifted. He was smiling. His anger at this man was gone. His granddaughter. The flesh of his flesh. And his great-grandson. They would live. He knew that Telek could survive in the woods. Telek would never let them die, but his priestly training made him speak almost automatically. “This is a noble thing to attempt, the saving of a child and its mother, but deliberate murder is a sin.”

  Kill the Germans, Father Piotr wanted to say. Kill them, and save Nelka and the baby.

  “I could do it tonight, or tomorrow night. The SS and the Major always sit on Saturday night and drink. The soldiers get a ration of vodka. If I don’t do this, the baby will disappear into Germany. God knows if we could ever find him there.”

  There was silence in the room except for the heavy breathing of the priest who panted as if he had run a race. He finally made his decision and spoke.

  “I understand your desires, my son. I only ask this one thing. Do nothing until tomorrow night. Come back tomorrow morning and we will talk again. Do you repent the sins you have committed since your last confession?”

  “Yes, Father.” Telek didn’t know if he did or not. He wasn’t sure what was a sin and what wasn’t since the war began.

  “Then I absolve you of your sins. Say the rosary once. Before tomorrow morning. Pray to God to forgive you.”

  “And what about the other thing? What about the baby? I’m going to do it, Father.”

  “A planned murder will lie heavy on your soul. Do nothing tonight.”

  “And then?”

  “Give me the night to think.”

  Telek hesitated. The Oberführer wasn’t leaving tomorrow. He was sure of it. There were no movements of Russians in the area yet. “I’ll wait a day, Father, and I’ll say the rosary while I clean my guns and pack my knapsack.”

  Telek left the house, and Father Piotr sat fingering the cloth. This younger man’s imperfect confession had brought it all back. “I must be losing my mind.” The priest laughed.

  The smell of the fields. Her scent. Hair the color of wheat and her eyes looking at him. Moist summer and the heat on his back as he lay on her. Cuckoos calling, and the far-off falling of water over rock.

  The love had lost him any chance for advancement, and it had cost him the respect of the village. They came to him still, but they never loved him the way he wanted to be loved. He had not paid the price the people demanded in order to gain their love, and he had been a failure. A man with no courage when they shot the Mayor and the Jews of the village.

  “My soul is such a little one,” he whispered. “It is so worthless.” He sat for a long time until it began to get dark. Then he got up.

  The Babe

  “If we survive the next week, we might survive the war.” Feliks stood holding his shovel, watching the plume of smoke rise into the tree branches. “The fucking Nazis are hiding the evidence from the Russian cameras. They’re on the run.”

  Telek knew how hard this was for Feliks. The bodies of the village Jews, and the Mayor, and Feliks’s brother reeked of the meaty stench of death and mildew and rot from leather and cloth. It was late afternoon, and the fires smoked fitfully. Feliks poured kerosene in a jar and threw it on the flames. They blazed up as Patryk dragged another of the corpses out of the trench. While the men dug, they had only one thought. When the bodies were dug up and burned, the ashes spread, and the evidence gone, would they be next?

  Telek watched the day disappear and knew he had another job before he could sleep. He couldn’t kill Sister Rosa and her guard and run into the forest leaving Magda sitting in her hut. The Major would take his revenge on the old woman because of Nelka. He had to tell her to take the children and hide in the pigsty when he killed the Germans.

  It was obvious that the Germans would be leaving soon. A truck had passed through two days ago, and the Major had commandeered it. The Russians, like a deadly flood of gray water, were pouring over the forests and washing the rats out of their holes.

  “Fill in the ditch.” The Major stared at the men. He should shoot them so they wouldn’t tell about those killed in the first taking of the village, but there was only him and sixteen soldiers. If he shot these men, the rest might riot. The people knew the Russians were coming. He could see it in the way they met his eye now in the street, and why should he kill these peasants? He had followed Berlin’s orders. Sometimes he thought everyone at High Command had gone mad. They should have pulled back weeks ago to defend Germany’s border.

  “Drink with me tonight, Telek.” Feliks shoveled slowly but steadily. His brother was ash, and he wanted to get drunk. If he’d known the Nazis killed simpletons, he could have hidden him.

  “I’m too tired. I need to rest. When will they pull out,
Feliks?”

  “When the trucks come from deeper in the forest, from Bialowieza. Soon.”

  Telek kept shoveling. He knew that he would have to wait until tomorrow night to take the baby back. Tonight he would tell Magda to go into the forest by dawn. The old woman moved slowly, but if he told her to go at dawn, they’d be hidden and safe by noon. The smoke blew in his face, and he knew that he breathed in the ashes of the dead. He kept shoveling and didn’t raise his head until the ditch was filled.

  “I will take the children and hide tomorrow, Telek.” Magda coughed and held on to the table so she wouldn’t fall. The grippe had come suddenly. Telek stared at her for a few minutes. Her cheeks were red with fever. Magda couldn’t survive long in the forest with the grippe.

  “I’ll have to kill the soldier and the German woman. There will be revenge on the village.” Magda nodded. There was nothing else to be done now, and then it was best to hide until the Germans retreated and the main force of the Russians had passed over them. By the time Telek killed the woman and the guard tomorrow night, Magda would be hidden with Hansel and Gretel in the hidey-hole.

  Back in the village, Telek stripped naked in the darkness of night and washed with pails of water and lye soap that burned his skin, expunging the stink of death before he touched Nelka.

  Hansel had listened, eavesdropping outside the hut, breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t make any noise. Telek would get killed, and maybe Nelka would get killed too. He shoved his fist in his mouth so he wouldn’t cry out. Someone had to do something for Nelka and Telek. Someone had to help them.

  Night came later now. It was still the same cold and chill as it grew dark, but the earth had the smell of mud during the day and the water from melted snow flowed over the land and filled the rivers until it was as if the whole earth wept. The curfew in the village was tighter. Everyone lay quietly in their houses and waited for what was coming.

  Father Piotr thought about going to the church and praying. He wanted to kneel down and ask forgiveness for all his sins, but it seemed hypocritical. He picked up the poker from the fire and shifted it in his hand. Then he laid it down in its usual place and sighed. He went to the curtain in front of the kitchen and pulled it back.