The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

  “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 d
amn 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.”

  The man ran his hand through his hair. His eyes rolled like a horse hearing the airplanes coming back over the fields. The whites of his eyes showed for a second.

  “I couldn’t help you with our mother. When she was sick I was in Rome. We’ll be killed for this.”

  Magda looked at the two children. The boy was nearly dead. The girl was forcing herself to stay awake in the warmth of the hut. Only a gray light came through the one window, but the girl’s hair shone like moonlight.

  “Our grandmother would have fed them.”

  “Those were different times.”

  “Besides, I need help. I can hardly get wood. The girl is strong enough. The boy is tough. I’ll survive the winter with them to help me.”

  “It may be impossible.”

  “Do it.”

  He left the hut and Magda sat very still for long minutes. She began to rock finally and looked up at the girl.

  “Can you make soup?”

  “Yes.” Gretel had never made soup, but she had seen it made.

  “I’ll show you where the food is hidden outside, and you can begin.”

  Gretel climbed down and the two of them, the girl walking now only by will alone, and the old woman nearly bent double, went into the snow, leaving the boy asleep and dreaming on the platform.

  Nelka

  The woman’s hair made Hansel remember a jar of honey, the comb dark gold and the liquid honey lighter gold around it. He knew she wasn’t fat. She had a baby inside.

  The woman turned and saw the boy. She stared at the child, her skin glowing in the watery light of winter, her cheekbones like wings, full lips curving into a smile. Hansel felt a smile pulled out of him in return. The woman went into the hut and the door closed behind her.

  “Someone’s come.”

  “Hide,” Gretel whispered and scuttled between the trees like a squirrel in the snow.

  “She’s all right.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Her hair looks like honey.”

  “Gretel? Hansel? Come inside.” Magda called from the hut.

  Gretel moved behind a tree, but Hansel ran to the door and went in.

  “I’m Nelka, Magda’s great-niece, Hansel, so we are related now.”

  He had never seen anyone so beautiful. It wasn’t just the color of her hair. It was that she looked happy. And her eyes weren’t afraid. They looked Hansel full in his face.

  She isn’t scared, Hansel thought, and she wasn’t angry either. Everyone was afraid except the Germans, and they were angry.

  “How did you know my name?”

  “A bird told me.”

  Magda snorted. “A bird called Telek. Telek knows everything that happens.”

  The woman laughed. “Telek travels all over the woods to gather firewood and snare rabbits.”

  “Telek is in love with you. You ought to take him on.”

  “I’m married.”

  “A Polish husband in Russia is a dead husband.”

  There was silence in the hut, and Hansel didn’t hear the door open and Gretel creep in.

  “Hello, Gretel. I’m Nelka. I’m your cousin now.”

  Gretel stood and thought. “Magda is your aunt?”

  “Great-aunt. Yes.”

  “Enough of this fine family feeling.” Magda began to smooth the blankets on the sleeping platform. “Bragging about it, almost.”

  “Magda’s brother is the priest. Priests don’t have children.” Gretel stared at Magda.

  “Did you drag yourself out here to discuss the family tree, child?”

  “I came to see what you’re up to, dirty old woman.”

  Hansel took Magda’s hand. “She isn’t that dirty.”

  “Too dirty for me and everyone else, and so are you. We’re going to get the big tin tub and fill it with water and wash all of you in it.”

  “All at once?”

  Nelka laughed. “Come on, Hansel, let’s ask Telek to bring water for us.”

  “No one’s out there.” Gretel knew she would have seen him.

  “If Nelka is here, then Telek is here, poor fool.” Magda shook her head.

  Opening the door Nelka called, “Telek, can you help us?”

  “The power of this girl,” Magda sighed.

  Telek stepped from behind a tree. Gretel’s mouth fell open. He had not been there before. She would have sworn it.

  “We need water. We need a fire to heat it. These children are filthy. Please.”

  He nodded and walked back toward the creek and became lost in the trees. His clothes were the color of bark and dead leaves. His hair was blond but dirty-colored like leaves too. He was strong looking, but he moved so softly that he seemed smaller than he was.

  “How does he do that?” Hansel asked.

  “He spent most of his life living in the forest.”

  “You should marry him, girl,” Magda said. “He’d keep you safe. And I don’t need to wash. I’ll get the grippe and die if I get wet.”

  “First Magda, and then the children. Then we’ll do the walls and blankets.”

&nbs
p; “You can’t wet the blankets. They’ll freeze.”

  “We’ll pass them over the fire and drive the lice out. You know the children are crawling.”

  Nelka grabbed Hansel and handily lifted his shirt. “Look.” She pointed to the red bites of lice made worse by his scratching.

  “Set the tub on the floor, Telek.”

  Gretel saw how Telek looked at Nelka. As if none of them existed except her. His face was bony like a fox’s, and when he turned to glance at Gretel, his eyes were chips of light blue. His eyes were the only color about him, and he turned them away quickly when Gretel stared.

  The children were sent outside to help gather wood for the fire while Magda bathed. They piled up wood as fast as they could carry it, and when Nelka called them inside, Magda sat on the sleeping platform, wrapped in a blanket, her hair neatly braided.

  Nelka turned to Hansel, beginning to undress him, but Hansel struggled, and turned so his pants would stay around his bony hips.

  “Magda will die if she has to feed all your lice.”

  “Nobody can see me,” Hansel shrieked.

  “Don’t be shy. I’m your cousin now.”

  Hansel hesitated and Nelka stripped him with a few twists of her hands.

  “Aren’t you scared of me and Gretel?”

  “If I was scared all the time, I’d get constipated. It wouldn’t be good for the baby.”

  Hansel thought about this as he lowered himself into the tub. Then he couldn’t think about anything. It was too wonderful. The warmth of it. He dipped his face in and made little muffled snorts.

  First Nelka rubbed kerosene in his hair. It stung and burned and he shrieked. Nelka laughed and kept rubbing it in. Then he had to sit and wait while it killed the lice, and Nelka scrubbed him all over with the soap until he thought the whole top layer of his skin was going to be rubbed off. But Hansel didn’t care about the burning because by then, Nelka had won him over.

  “Nelka,” he crooned after she had scrubbed the kerosene out of his hair. He pushed his wet head against her bosom. “You can live with us and wash me everyday.”

  “And who would take care of the baby that’s coming if I have to fuss with you, my Lord?”

  “Gretel and Magda can take care of the baby.”

  “Out. You’re done.” Nelka plucked him from the water.

  “More.” He struggled free of the blanket and tried to leap back in the tub. “I can feel my heart, Magda. Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa.”