“Hold my hand, Hansel. We’re there.” She was almost glad that the Nazis had shot all the dogs. The way they used to run at her whenever she went into the village, barking and snarling. She hadn’t liked it any more than the Nazis. But the dogs were dead now.
Magda walked around the curve in the road, holding the boy firmly by the hand. Her face was still and had the blankness of one who lives alone, but her heart convulsed in her chest with quick jerks.
The road ran through the village of Piaski with streets even narrower and muddier going off it. There were only three buildings larger than the huts of the peasants: the school, the building for the village officials with the jail in the back rooms, and in the middle of the village, the church.
The Communists and the Nazis between them had burned all the other churches in the district, but not this one. The spire, tipped with a cross for a thousand years, still stood in the heart of the village, but the cross had been broken off by the Russians. Only a stick remained.
The Communists had used the church as a restaurant, and they made the women cook meals in front of the altar. A big stove was set up where God had lived and the roof broken open to let out the stovepipe. All the soldiers ate there, and sang their Russian songs and drank until they puked on the floor and lay in it.
The stove had been bad enough, and using the altar itself to cut meat and vegetables—setting pots of water on the wood that stained it and left rings and tore away the finish and wax—had upset everyone. Except for the old women of the village.
“Don’t worry, children,” they said. “The Russians are barbarians who don’t know what clocks are. They don’t know that every time we cut meat on the altar we think of God. It will be over someday and God will have been here all the time.”
Magda had no use for the church, but it gave the people heart. The Communists couldn’t take it away. The Communists vomited on the church but they couldn’t drive it out of the heart of the Poles. The Nazis made her brother get a signed paper every time he had a service, but the people still went whenever they could.
“Stubborn bastards, us Poles,” she muttered.
The poorer people lived on the edge of the village. A few hardened cabbage stalks still stood in the gardens, and a pig rooted in a pen near the road. They walked past the huts and came to the second largest building, unpainted, shutters hanging crazily with neglect, on their right.
“What’s that?” Hansel asked.
“The school.”
“School? I’m going there.” He stopped skipping and stood stock-still.
“No.” Magda laughed. “No school for Polish children.”
He ran up the steps and scrubbed the dirty glass of the window. Magda watched the boy and was amazed that the glass was not broken. The windows of the church were all gone.
“Magda, come tell me.”
She went up the stairs and peered into the school. It was empty. The desks were long gone. Chopped up for firewood, she supposed. Mud was turning to dust on the wooden floor.
“Who are they?” he demanded.
She raised her eyes to the wall where three pictures hung, dust-covered but still staring out over the bare boards of the floor. On the left was Lenin.
“Beady-eyed bastard,” she whispered. “It’s Lenin on the left. The one with all the hair is Stalin, on the right.” A crucifix with Jesus on it hung between the two pictures.
“Jesus is hanging between two thieves like he always has,” she muttered. She grinned and spit on the porch. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t be going in there.”
“No school at all?”
“They have classes once a week and teach counting to one hundred and how to write your name. They teach you to recognize all the ranks of the German army and how to address our conquerors. That’s all the school for Poles. And they do it outside. You stand in the mud like the pigs. I don’t want you coming here for that. They won’t care. They don’t like education for Poles.”
“I can count to a thousand and read a lot.”
“You can’t. You can only read a little.” Gretel shifted the basket.
“I read as good as you.” He glared at his sister.
“I can read Polish and some German and some French.” She smiled. It had been so nice to sit with a book on her lap and let the hard cover of the book be a wall that shut out everything in the ghetto room where they lived with seven other people.
“You just brag. You’re dumb, Gretel.” He danced in front of them and made faces, but Gretel ignored him.
Magda shook her head. It was too complicated. A boy who needed to run. A girl in a poor village in eastern Poland who could read in three languages. She stopped walking as they got to the first house and stared at Gretel.
“He can run, but you aren’t able to read anything but a little Polish. A little. The shop signs and a little from the Bible. You like to read cooking recipes best of all.”
Gretel turned paler and nodded. Her face was almost as pale as the silver of her hair. “I read just a little. In Polish.”
Magda nodded. The girl was possible. But the boy. Anything he saw that was strange to him, he asked about.
“Magda,” Hansel called. “Magda, look at me. I can do this.” He hopped on one foot and then hopped on the other, covering the ground almost as fast as he could run. “Look at me!”
“Come here.” She sighed.
He came and grabbed her hand. She winced when he pulled her arthritic fingers too hard.
“Magda, I’m never going to stay inside when I grow up.”
“You can be a farmer and work outdoors all day.”
He thought about it and then shook his head. “No. I’m going to go all over the world and I’ll never just stay in one house.”
Magda smiled. He was dangerous, this child, but he was a child that her grandmother would have loved. She stopped smiling. There was no need to love these two. Just keep them quiet, get the ration cards, and be patient. It would be over someday. One hundred thousand Germans had surrendered at Stalingrad. The Russians were breaking the back of the Nazi army.
The three walked through mud torn up by carts, and the mud clung to their shoes making them rock with each step. A rooster shrieked in rage, most of his chickens slaughtered and their bones cracked and boiled until they gave up every last shred of nourishment.
Villagers who saw Magda turned away and didn’t speak. Magda the Witch had found two children and had to register them. God knows what the day would hold.
Only Telek the water carrier followed them like a gray shadow, stopping to adjust his buckets, never looking directly at the three of them ahead of him, following behind. Magda was Nelka’s aunt. Magda could help her when the baby came. Nelka would care if the Germans killed Magda. Telek followed and waited, letting his face relax into its usual blank stare.
Basha pulled back the rag of a curtain and watched Magda and the children walk past. “She’s going to try and get ration cards for them.”
“Who are they, do you suppose?” Her husband didn’t really want to know.
“God knows. Magda isn’t a talker.”
“I’m surprised any of that family is alive.”
“Hush.” Basha bit her lip and crossed herself.
“She’ll only stir them up registering two, strange children. She’ll give them something to think about, and that’s always a mistake.”
“She can’t feed them on her card. Eight hundred calories a day.”
“On good days.” Andrzej sighed and moved to the window. He limped heavily. Only his bad leg had kept him from being sent into Russia as a laborer when the Communists had taken the village. “And Jedrik, that fat bastard. Filthy collaborator. He could talk anytime about Magda’s Gypsy blood. He’d do anything for a sack of potatoes.”
“Her brother’s the priest. Jedrik wouldn’t dare tell about Magda’s grandmother. She’s Father Piotr’s grandmother too. They’d kill him.”
They stood silent for a minute and then Andrz
ej spoke. “I heard someone new is coming.”
“Something to do with the farming?”
“Talk is, that an SS man is coming. With a woman. In a car.”
“A car.” That had to be bad. The Germans had stolen all the bicycles and used only them for transportation between the villages since the Russians had gone. Any Pole caught with a bicycle was shot. The trucks and cars had moved on with the war, leaving the dregs of the army to run the village. Only one lone truck brought the German mail and supplies for the Major.
“We aren’t important,” she said.
“No. But a car is coming. It was in Rastilkov yesterday.”
“And now these children.” She shivered. “And since October—” She didn’t finish it.
“They’ll kill us if they find out. Forget October. We have three children and three ration cards.” He stared out the window. He didn’t like to see Basha’s face when she mentioned the dead baby, the baby who was buried in an unmarked grave in the woods, the baby whose ration card still gave them food each month because the death was unreported and undiscovered.
Neither spoke again. The street was quiet. Only Telek the water carrier moved slowly toward the center of the village with his two buckets swaying from the yoke across his shoulders.
Magda walked up the wooden steps to the building that held the mayor’s office, although the mayor was dead, and the post office, although no letters came now, and the jail, although the Germans just shot anyone they arrested.
“Magda,” Gretel whispered. “Maybe we should go back to the woods.”
“When you’re falling off a cliff, you can even grip a razor blade, child.”
Magda opened the door and led them in.
Sugar
Hansel knew the Major immediately. He wasn’t behind the desk but stood smoking a cigarette, staring out the window. He was wearing a tunic cinched tight with a leather belt, and the tunic wasn’t very clean. He had mud on his boots like everyone in the village, and only his shoulder patches told his rank.
The man behind the desk was too thin to be German, and his eyes looked almost as anxious as Magda’s did when he saw the old woman and the children.
“What do you want?”
“Heil Hitler.” Magda lifted her arm. “My great-niece and -nephew have been sent to me.”
The major stared at them, and Gretel made herself go very still. Then she turned slightly and smiled at him. She tried not to look at the patch that partly covered a scar of shiny, red skin. His left eye was blue, bright blue and damp with moisture. The Major wiped his eye quickly, pressing the moisture out, and stared at the children through his single red-rimmed eye.
“Where are the parents?”
“Their father died in 1939. Then their mother was sent into Germany as a farmworker. The children were brought to me.” Magda said only what had to be said, with no embellishment.
“Who brought them?” The German threw his cigarette on the floor and crushed it into the scarred wood with only the toe of his boot. Hansel looked at the cigarette butt and wished he could pick it up. It was worth something, maybe a couple of potatoes.
“Someone put them on the supply truck from the city three weeks ago. Threw them in the back and the driver didn’t even know.” Magda stared at the floor.
Gretel knew it was her turn. “We climbed out when the truck stopped. We knew how to get to Aunt Magda’s.”
“And why did the truck stop?” He moved beside Gretel and lifted her plait of hair. Tugging gently, he watched her face.
Oh God, I didn’t think of that question, Magda thought, but there was nothing for it. The child would either get them killed or not.
“The driver had to pee.” Hansel grinned up at the Major.
“Papers.” He lit another cigarette and moved back to the window. This fucking village. A mud hole in hell. Some days he didn’t even appreciate that he had escaped the Russian front. It was hard to be grateful since it had taken an eye to get him out—and all the other men were still there.
Gretel set the basket on the desk and gently took out the First Communion pictures and the papers. The clerk behind the desk examined them, staring from the pictures to the children and back to the papers. The seals didn’t look bad. The papers might actually be genuine.
Filthy alley rat, Magda thought. Sitting at this desk like he’s someone. Dragged out of a Warsaw prison and working for the Germans.
“They seem all right. These are Polish children, Major Frankel.”
The Nazi nodded. You could tell sometimes by the bones and the hair. The girl was quite a pure Aryan type.
“Give them ration cards.” He smoked the cigarette and watched the old woman. Not an Aryan type. Dark eyes and short. Like a gnome. Twisted and subhuman. But her niece was perfect. Interesting.
“Was your father German, children?” He asked in German, and Gretel opened her mouth to answer. She closed it immediately, but he saw.
“Ah. You understand.” It wasn’t surprising. These lumpish villagers understood nothing, no matter how he screamed, but the girl was from the city. He smiled at her.
“What’s your name?”
“Gretel, and he’s Hansel.”
His eyes widened, and he smiled. “I thought so. There’s German blood in the family somewhere. We are the Kulturtrager, child.” He spoke in rough Polish except for the one German word. “Tell me what that means.”
“You are the bringers of culture,” Gretel whispered.
He put his hand in his pocket and drew it out quickly. He stepped toward Gretel, and she moved slightly so she was between the Major and Hansel.
“And we rule by zuckerbrot und peitsch. Tell me what that means.”
“By sweets and the whip,” Gretel spoke slowly, like it was difficult for her to translate.
“Open your mouth and close your eyes.”
Now he will shoot me in the mouth, Gretel thought, but she had to do it. If she ran he would shoot her in the back.
She let her eyelids drop and waited to feel the cold metal of the gun barrel against her tongue. Instead there was the rough touch of his hand and then sweetness filled her mouth.
She opened her eyes, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. Candy. She let the sweet lie on her tongue and tasted real sugar and peppermint for the first time in years.
“See her cry, Wiktor? A touch of nerves. It’s that weakness that shows her Polish blood.”
Gretel sucked the candy in silence. The man at the desk, Wiktor, stamped cards and threw them in the basket with the pictures and papers. “Go on, woman. Take them off.”
Magda felt a touch of guilt for her anger at Wiktor. He might be a Warsaw jail rat, but he hadn’t mentioned the card saying that the children were Karaites.
“Wait.” The German was smiling. “I have an honor for you, girl. Because you have a German name, you can be the lucky child this week. Go to the store and tell them you will hand out the sugar.”
Magda bowed and shuffled backward, taking Hansel with her. Gretel hesitated and then stepped toward the Major.
“Thank you.” She stepped close to him and kissed the sleeve of his jacket with a soft brush of her chapped lips.
“You see, Wiktor? This one has a bit of civilization. She is almost mannered.”
The three backed into the hallway and out the front door. Magda was panting. Hansel hadn’t said a word, thank God, but Gretel—
“He noticed you too much. You have to stay out of his way.”
“He liked it. He may give us more food.”
It was true, but being liked was dangerous. Magda shook her head. “The store. We have to register your cards.”
There were only two shops now. One store, with all the flour allotted the village, all the salt, all the bits of salt pork and beans locked in barrels, was in the middle of the village where there wasn’t really a town square but a widening of the mud to allow a weekly market in summer.
Next to the store was the butcher shop where all meat wa
s kept. Any meat not coming from the store, any pig or goat or cow not registered and numbered, was reason for death. A single slice of black market ham sent a bullet to your brain.
Gretel stopped by a post which stood in the middle of the mud circle in the heart of the village. Nailed to the post was a poster of heavy paper, clean and white, and she read it aloud:
“ ‘Any Polish woman who insults a German by word or action will be considered a whore and sent to whorehouses on the Russian front.’”
There was another piece of paper tacked on the back of the post. Gretel began to smile.
“Don’t smile, child,” Magda whispered.
“What is it?” Hansel whispered too.
“‘On October sixteenth two treacherous attacks on German soldiers were—’” Gretel hesitated.
“‘Perpetuated,’” Magda said.
“‘Attacks on German soldiers were perpetuated by two cowardly Polish criminals. Both Germans were injured, one severely.’”
Magda’s mouth twisted like a wolf at the end of the hunt.
“ ‘As a consequence thereof, on October 19, three Polish criminals, who as members of the PZP and the PPR were hirelings of England and Moscow were selected from a number of persons under death sentence by the court-martial of the Security Police, but previously designated for an act of mercy, and publicly executed. It is always intended to pardon the condemned. The population of the village Piaski is therefore called upon to do everything to prevent further attacks on Germans so no further executions will take place.
“‘Village Piaski, November 22, 1943.
“ ‘Major Frankel of the Security Police for the Security Service for the village Piaski.’ ”
“Lies!”
They all jumped at the deep voice. The man was big and square, his bones so large he didn’t look thin. His eyes rolled and he turned and blew snot onto the mud with a fierce snort from his nostrils.
“They got drunk on some homemade vodka and knocked two of the Germans over in a joking sort of way. Just young fools. They took the Germans’ cigarettes. Nobody would admit to doing it, so they killed three prisoners.”