Gingerbread

by Robert Dinsdale

  The crunch of branches underfoot, the snap of a foot pressed down – but, when he looks up, it is only Grandfather that he sees.

  ‘It must have been very frightening, to live so wild,’ whispers the boy.

  ‘Oh,’ says Grandfather, ‘it was frightening, but it wasn’t because of the wild out there. It was the wild … in here.’ He folds his wizened hands around the boy’s and presses the bundle of fingers to the boy’s breast, above his heart beating like an injured bird.

  ‘Is it true?’ asks the boy.

  Oh, says Grandfather, with the deepest exhalation. I know it is true, for one was there who told me of it.

  Winter hardens. When it is at its hardest the snow cannot fall. Grandfather says it is frozen in the sky, and to the boy this seems the most terrifying thing. When they cross the dell each morning, Grandfather cranes his neck so that his eyes are fixed on the low, jagged clouds, hanging above like a range of upturned mountains. In class, he listens to Mr Navitski’s lessons and slowly composes his own report: what my papa did in the war. He makes notes about the little boy who helped the babe in the woods, and how that boy grew up in the shadow of the Winter King. Sometimes, Mr Navitski comes to read his notes and ask him questions. He gives the Winter King a real name – it is Josef – and says that the wars lasted only six years, not a hundred, and that if they had truly lasted a hundred years it would mean Grandfather was as old as the forest itself.

  Going through the gates as each school day ends, he is beset by nerves, but Grandfather is always waiting near the car, fragile as a newborn bird in his greatcoat. Soon, he learns not to question why they do not go back to the tenement at the end of each day. It is because Grandfather is happier in the house in the wild, and for the boy that is enough, part of the promise he made. One week passes, then two, then a third. Then it is a month since he last heard mama’s voice. It slips away from him, just as mama slipped out of her body, and Christmas is not yet rising when he realizes he no longer thinks of the tenement at all. The house in the forest called Grandfather back, but now it calls to him too.

  This morning, Grandfather sleeps later than usual, but now the boy knows not to be afraid if the old man lingers longer in his dreams. Curled in the eiderdown, the boy waits, and waits, and waits some more. Dawn’s fingers creep into the ruin, but Grandfather sleeps on. Only when the boy rocks and kneads at his arm do the old eyelids part, stirring life back to the blue irises underneath.

  This morning: no words. Grandfather stokes up a fire and feeds the boy pine-needle broth, and then it is up and over the glade, into the trees to find the car. No words even as the boy climbs inside, no words as the engine fires up and the car belches back towards the road.

  ‘Papa, are you all right?’

  No words even now, and now they come to the edge of the forest.

  The car is nosing out of the final stand of trees, to touch the black asphalt snaking towards town, but the engine slows and it simply hovers there, half in, half out of the forest. In the front seat, Grandfather cranes his neck forward, eyes glimmering as if to consider the sheltering sky. Then his eyes drop. His knuckles are white as they knead at the steering wheel and, every time he dares to look back up, they pinch and strain.

  Then, at last, his head whips round. He fixes the boy with a look whose meaning the boy cannot fathom, and exhales deeply. ‘Are you okay back there, boy?’

  Words to make the boy’s heart soar. ‘I thought something was wrong.’

  ‘No,’ says his papa, and his foot finds the accelerator, guiding the car slowly out to the road. ‘Nothing’s wrong, boy.’ He pauses, and in the rear-view mirror the boy can see him furrowing his eyes, thatched eyebrows to protect him from whatever he was peering at above. ‘I just … can’t wait for you to come home again. That’s all.’

  After that, no words anymore, not until the goodbyes at the school gates.

  It is gloomy when he comes to school and darker yet when the last bell peals. It is even dark, though perhaps not impenetrably so, at the middle of the day when they are released into the yard to play or throw snow or to make teams and kick balls. Alone among them, Yuri walks the edges of the yard, because he is not welcome in games and, besides, would rather fill his head with stories and imaginings of what it is like at other boys’ homes. Though he sits with him in class, the boy does not follow Yuri when it is time for lunch. Yuri has his own box from home, into which his mama has put a waxy apple and hunk of black bread, but the boy must sit with Mr Navitski at the teachers’ table. Here, he eats half of whatever is on Mr Navitski’s plate, but the kapusta does not taste like mama’s, and the dark brown macanka, with hunks of sausage rolled in fat pancakes, does not have the same appeal as steaming hunks of starling and cattail strands frothing on top. Sometimes Navitski asks him why he is so dirty, why there is forest earth in his fingernails, why he does not change his shirt. These are questions the boy would rather not answer, but his silence seems to weigh heavily on the teacher. Some days, there are more clean shirts from lost property; once, a shirt from Navitski himself, cleaned and pressed and six sizes too big.

  Today, it is the boy’s turn to tell his tale. Yuri has gone only two days before, telling a story about his mama’s own papa, who was kept in prison all through the wars of winter, and not the one he really wants to tell, of his father’s father, a proud policeman. Now, the boy must stand at the front and everyone must listen. When Mr Navitski calls him, he is still scrabbling with his paper.

  ‘Take your time,’ says Mr Navitski.

  At the top of the classroom, the boy surveys the class. More than anything, they look bored.

  This isn’t the tale, says the boy with his head buried in the page, but an opening. The tale comes tomorrow, after the meal, when we are filled with soft bread.

  Among the children, Mr Navitski’s face creases. The boy decides to carry on, like walking into a snowstorm.

  And now, he says, we start our tale.

  Long, long ago, when we did not exist, when perhaps our great-grandfathers were not in the world, all of the world was at war. The warriors of the Winter King fought the King in the West, and in the middle, there was my papa, and the babe in the woods. Now, in the long ago, men ran wild, but the forests were on their side and saved them from soldiers, all but for the wicked trees, who feasted on the men marched out into the deepest wild …

  There are titters in the classroom, and Mr Navitski holds up his hand. ‘Class, we’ll do some reading now.’

  As the class rummage for their books, Mr Navitski glides to the front of the room and crouches at the boy’s side. ‘Don’t worry,’ he begins. ‘We’ll try again next time.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We’re doing history, you see. Not stories. Do you understand?’

  The boy thinks: Grandfather’s story is history. His story.

  ‘Maybe you could ask your Grandfather to come and see me one night? Nothing urgent. But he might be interested, mightn’t he, to come and see your school?’

  The boy nods, but only because nodding will send him back to his seat. There, he finds Yuri, with an upside-down picture book in his hands.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Yuri whispers. ‘They didn’t make you do it at all.’

  When the bell tolls for end of day and the children tumble out, the boy can hardly see the edge of the schoolyard. He can hear the distant calls of cars and lorries rumbling by, but that is the only sign they are there, for the fog has swallowed everything else.

  Distinctly aware that Mr Navitski is watching him, he crosses the tundra of the schoolyard and stops at the gates. Moments later, Yuri wanders past and joins his mother on the roadside. She takes Yuri’s chin in a brittle hand, rolling his head as if to inspect him for strange marks, and pushes him on his way.

  From here, the boy can just about see to the other side of the road. The boarded-up shop-fronts are lined with cars, but no old man prowls between them, and he cannot see the car anywhere.

  The simpleton
caretaker trudges across the yard. Next will come the teachers, and something in that disturbs the boy; he does not want to see Mr Navitski’s worried face peering down, offering him new shirts and hot dinners.

  He goes between parked cars, but on each side the road fades into fog. In the streetlights it sparkles like glitter. He puts his hands into deep pockets and thinks of the hearthfire and bundles of kindling drying above.

  ‘Still waiting, are we?’

  He looks up, only to see Mr Navitski lurking in the mist.

  ‘My papa’s late.’

  ‘So I see. Are you sure he’s coming?’

  ‘Of course he’s coming!’

  ‘Simmer down, boy. Perhaps you’d like to wait inside? It’s warmer in the schoolhouse.’

  Being in the schoolhouse after the bell is like venturing into one of the uninhabited flats in the tenement. Those halls are not supposed to echo with footfalls.

  ‘Well, I can’t just leave you here all night. What kind of a teacher would that make me?’

  Mr Navitski is trying to laugh, but to the boy the joke doesn’t seem so funny. ‘Might you need a lift home, boy?’

  ‘What if papa’s …’ He stops. It is not good to talk about Grandfather, just like it is not good to talk about mama too much. ‘I’m supposed to walk today,’ he ventures, uneasy in the lie. It is like climbing into somebody else’s clothes for the first time, finding them ugly and ill-fitting.

  ‘Oh? Then why are you waiting here?’

  ‘I forgot.’

  ‘Forgot, is it?’

  More words will tie him in knots, so it is better to remain silent.

  ‘So, do you want that lift or not?’

  Because there is nothing else to do, the boy nods.

  ‘Come on, then. If I’m late home, my wife starts … getting ideas.’

  The way Mr Navitski stresses the last words makes a meaning the boy does not understand. He trudges after Mr Navitski, along the road to where a black motorcycle is sitting between the cars.

  ‘I’ve never been on a motorcycle.’

  ‘You just have to hold on. It’s perfectly safe.’

  It takes a few minutes for the motorcycle to warm up. When it is ready, Mr Navitski scoops him up so that he’s sitting in the seat. Then, he swings onto the seat behind him, so that the boy is held tightly in the crook of his legs. ‘This way, you won’t fall off.’

  ‘What will happen if I fall off?’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘But what if I …’

  The end of his question is lost, for the engine roars, Mr Navitski kicks down, and the motorcycle swings into the street.

  Soon the city is rushing by. It is not like in Grandfather’s car, slowing and stuttering in traffic, for Mr Navitski and his motorcycle swoop in and out of the cars, squeezing along narrow passes to reach the head of every intersection. They leave the main roads behind and ride along lanes between tenements, where the day’s snowfall has not been cleared and grey sludge abounds. More than once, the motorcycle slews beneath them; Mr Navitski wrestles it back in line, and the boy can hear him laughing as if, to him, it is all a great game. The tenement looms above, forlorn as a forgotten toy, and when the motorcycle comes to a stop he can hear the wheeze of wind in the gutters above.

  ‘Should I come upstairs?’

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you will …’ Mr Navitski takes off his helmet. ‘But I’d love a quick word with your Grandfather. He must be feeling awfully overwhelmed.’

  ‘Over …’

  Mr Navitski’s face darkens, as if he has said something wrong and is anxious to unsay it. ‘Well, I know he loves you very much, but …’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ says the boy, firmer now.

  ‘As you wish. What if I wait here to see you safely inside?’

  In spite of himself, the boy nods. He trudges along the tenement wall. Halfway along, he passes through the archway of brick and climbs the first flight of stairs. In the cold of the stairwell he is completely alone. Never have those steps seemed more alien. He tries to count the days since he was last here, but finds he cannot.

  From the first landing he peers out, to see the diminutive figure of Mr Navitski and his motorcycle still waiting below.

  He realizes: I don’t have a key. I never had a key.

  There is nowhere to go but up. He keeps his head down along the second landing, and finally reaches the third. Here he leaves the stairs behind, pushing along with his hood drawn high so that he does not have to see Mr Navitski’s eyes tracking him from the verge. Past one door he goes. Past a second and a third. Now he is standing outside Grandfather’s door, as old and unfamiliar as the ruin was on that very first day.

  From the safety of his hood, he risks a look down. Mr Navitski is still watching. He whips his head back. The door handle is at the same level as his eyes, and seems to leer at him, screws for its eyeballs and a big hooked beak.

  He closes his fist over the handle and pulls down.

  It does not move. He pulls harder, thinks he can feel something give, but still it does not move. Once more, and there is a sound like grating stone. He turns his head, as if he can squint sidelong and see Mr Navitski, but before he has turned all the way the door swings open, dragging him with it. He pitches forward, over the step.

  When his hand peels from the handle, he falls to his knees, scuffing them on the wire mat where Grandfather used to scrub his jackboots. He lies there for an instant, eyes unaccustomed to a darkness this soft around the edges. Then he stands. He shakes off his hood, looks back through the open door. Through that portal, the other side of the tenement yard is a cliff face, punctured with pits of orange. He creeps back to the threshold. Careful not to cross, he cranes to look down. Mr Navitski is still looking up.

  Their eyes lock.

  ‘See,’ the boy whispers, adding just a little shrug. ‘I got home, didn’t I?’

  Mr Navitski lifts a hand and presses two fingers to the side of his head. It is the kind of lazy salute Grandfather would have despised, because to salute is a very special thing and to do it so impudently is ignorant and ignoble. Even so, the boy finds himself doing the same.

  Mr Navitski turns the salute into a flourishing wave and turns to swing back onto his motorcycle. Then he is gone, the motorcycle weaving wildly in the sludge, as disobedient as a toboggan.

  After he has gone, the boy lingers on the threshold. Soon, he can hear the tramping of feet, footfalls echoing as they come up the concrete stair. Probably it is the neighbour, Madam Yakavenka, coming back from the bakery, but he must not be here to find out. Madam Yakavenka would say, ‘Where’s your papa?’ And then Madam Yakavenka would know. She’d come with potato babka and kalduny stuffed with the pieces of gristle she calls sausage and want to take him into her flat and wrap him up and wash his hair.

  The boy slams the door. ‘Papa,’ he whispers. ‘Papa, I’m home.’

  In the hallway it is not dark like the woodland dark. It is dark like being under covers in a well-lit room, or pulling your hood up to block out the sun. Light bleeds in, and it is the light of a city, the dirty groping glow of streetlights and cars.

  ‘Papa, are you here? Teacher brought me …’

  But there is no answer, and the boy knows there will not be one coming. He keeps on asking, just to fill the silence, but by the time he has reached the kitchen he is certain: the flat is empty as ever it was, not even the ghosts of the forest to fill it. Wherever Grandfather is, he did not come to the city today.

  In the kitchen, he goes first to the cupboard. There is a can of Smolensk Stewed Beef and another of pickled cucumbers and a box of dry biscuits with only one rattling about inside. By the stove there is half a bag of sugar, but the milk in the fridge has long ago soured and not even the light in the fridge works when he opens the door.

  To let more light in, he pulls back the ragged net curtain that mama always threatened to have washed. He pulls his coat tight around him and whi
spers the word again, though he knows it is useless. He is far too far away to hear. ‘Papa …’

  He is there a long time, long enough to hear Madam Yakavenka returning from work. The sound of her voice brings him back to wakefulness, and he decides to make a hot water with sugar, which is a kind of syrup you can drink if the winter gets too bitter. There is gas still in the stove, and this kind of fire is easy to conjure without needing any sorceries at all. He climbs onto a stool, twists a switch, and watches the blue fire flicker into life.

  When the syrup is ready, he pours it into a mug. The drink works its magic, filling him with sweet, sticky strength, and soon he is brave enough to venture into the rest of the flat. Somehow it seems so vast, and he so small inside it. The flat is wide and the flat is wild and the flat is the world forever and ever. He leaves the kitchen and turns to the hall with his bedroom at its end, and there, in the alcove by the dead gas fire, he sees the rocking chair with a rag curled at its runner.

  It is mama’s shawl, and it cries out for him to take it.

  He drops to his knees and snatches it up, presses it to his face and breathes in the scent. It is still there. It is like clouds and bluebells and the forest at summer. It is like the press of lips on his cheek and the red imprint they always left behind.

  Now the tears come. They leak, hot and heavy, into the shawl. It is scrunched up, sodden in his hands and, too late he realizes what he has done. He is washing away mama’s scent, the last thing of her that remains. He is corrupting it with the salt of his tears and the slime from the back of his throat.

  Still clinging to the shawl, he comes down the hallway. The photographs leer at him from either side. He feels their eyes on him, but he does not want to look – for, suddenly, Grandfather is with him, staring at him, and his eyes are accusing.