Gingerbread

by Robert Dinsdale

  Grandfather’s eyes flare. The left one has emerged from its swelling, the sore above scabbing over to make an eyebrow like crusted lava.

  ‘There’s honey, papa. It might be good for you. I can mash it with water.’

  He shakes his head, only once.

  The boy’s head hangs. In the knapsack, the six gingerbreads stare back. They are shrunken now – hard – their decorations hardly recognizable as stars and ears of wheat. Yet, in their crimped edges, he can still see the depressions of mama’s fingers, mama’s thumb.

  ‘Mama made me gingerbreads, didn’t she, every time I was sick? And I always got better. Well, didn’t I?’

  Grandfather’s mouth opens and out comes a sound like knotted words. The boy has heard him grunt and howl in the last days, but for the first time he thinks he hears real words smothered in the sounds.

  His eyes lift, bright. ‘Papa?’

  Grandfather makes the sounds again. Three short, simple words – that is all they are, and yet he cannot truly hear them at all.

  His head sinks again, the bunker filled with the guttering of Grandfather’s breath. ‘I’m hungry, papa.’

  This time, when he looks up, the old man is nodding. He takes it as a sign and drags the knapsack into the middle of the bunker. From inside, he produces the package of mama’s gingerbreads. He spreads them out, hard as rock.

  The old man lets out a howl, forcing the first gingerbread from the boy’s hand.

  ‘Please, papa. We’ll starve.’

  The howl goes on. Desperate, the boy tries to block it out – but it is reverberating in his head now and he cannot send it away.

  Even so, his gut screams more loudly. He lifts the gingerbread again. With his eyes still on the fire, he puts one corner between his teeth. The crust is solid, but then he tears a chunk off. In his mouth it is dry, its surface rough. For a moment it is even painful. Slowly, it starts to soften. Tastes rush out, honey still the strongest of all.

  When the corner is soft enough, he swallows it down. It feels tough, leaden as it makes its way down his throat – but that does not sate his appetite for more. He bites again, sucks again, chews and chomps down. He does it again and again until all of the gingerbread is gone, and the insides of his mouth are coated with sticky, sweet residue.

  The aching is gone from his belly, but after a few moments he knows that his gut is not yet satisfied. The taste of honey, of ginger, of mama and the tenement and everything that went before, is burning in him, more vigorous than the fiercest of bonfires.

  ‘Papa,’ he says, pretending there is not a new haunted look in the fell creature’s eyes. ‘Just one more.’

  His eyes fall on the next gingerbread in line, and he picks it up.

  When he has finished all but one of the gingerbreads, the boy turns and doubles over. He can feel a great boulder rising in his gorge. He swallows, concentrates, swallows again. It takes an age for the sensation to ebb away, but at last he has it conquered; the gingerbreads remain in his belly, and ripples of warmth find their way to every corner of his being.

  ‘Papa, have one. You have one too.’

  The boy takes the last gingerbread, offers it up. But Grandfather’s clawed hand comes back, sends the biscuit flying. It rises up, arcs across the boy, and lands in the heart of the flames. There, it turns suddenly black. The boy watches the darkness spread.

  It takes mere minutes for the gingerbread to die. He wonders how long it took for mama. He thinks: how long is it taking for papa, even now?

  ‘Why, papa?’

  Grandfather rolls his head.

  We’re all hungry, he seems to be saying. Then he lifts his good arm to flourish at the world above.

  But the wilds are there. The wilds will provide.

  And in the air: a smell like burnt honey.

  Nights later, he is late in returning to the bunker. The sun has spilled glorious light over the aspens, but as he returns thin drizzle begins to fall, heralding the darkness. It has been falling for some time before it can filter through the trees, so that he only knows it is raining at all by a shift in how he senses the air. Still, the drizzle will bring new life to the budding nettles, the brooklime between here and the marsh’s edge. In the morning the leaves will taste different, more tender somehow, and his papa will take them more easily.

  At the bunker there is no smoke. He hurries through the last remaining mounds. The shadow men darting in the corner of his eyes have faces young and old, and they too are hurrying for the cover of their shelters under the advancing tide of rain. The boy hears the tramp of their feet descending into each mound. Fires doused and whispered words: the soldiers are coming, the soldiers are coming …

  ‘Papa?’

  Grandfather is there in the darkness. The boy descends, hand over hand, to find the fire low. He kicks through its ashes to reach his papa’s side.

  The old man has been sleeping. The boy nudges his good arm, to shake him gently awake.

  ‘Boy.’

  The boy stumbles back. This time, there is no doubt: it truly was a word.

  ‘Papa, I brought mushrooms.’ He empties his pockets, quite certain that these will not poison him. He found them growing on the earth beneath a fallen birch, could tell them by the depth of the cup and the scent when he dug a fingernail into the skin.

  ‘Boy.’ The word is thick, as if it is too big for his mouth.

  ‘Oh, papa …’ The boy wants to fling himself into Grandfather’s lap, hear the word over and over. Yet, the leg still stinks, the wound and its ooze eating up mama’s shawl, and though his foot is less swollen, each day that the swelling recedes it reveals the mangled mess beneath: the toes, a loose collection of fragments and flesh; the ankle gone, as if forced back inside the body.

  ‘Boy, I …’ Grandfather’s tongue appears between his lips, dry and scaled.

  ‘I got you some water, papa.’ He scrambles to bring Grandfather the tin can, and holds it to the open abyss of his mouth. ‘Papa, I have to go for help.’

  The last water trails out from Grandfather’s lips. ‘No.’

  There is no mistaking this word either.

  ‘Papa, if I don’t …’

  ‘No!’ The word is only an instant long, but by its end it is no longer a word at all. Grandfather brings his one good hand to his lips, draws it back covered in watery blood.

  ‘Papa, your tongue.’

  The boy brings him more water, but the old man knocks it aside.

  ‘Please, papa. Please. I have to go.’

  Grandfather tips back his head; his throat wrenches as he swallows something back. His eye locks with the boy’s, and through great pain he utters, ‘You … promised.’

  Soon, Grandfather is gone to that restless world of sleep again. The boy builds up the fire, scuttles from one corner of the bunker to another. In the world above, he fancies he can hear the tramping of a hundred different jackboots as the soldiers come through the woods. He tells himself: they’re only ghosts, they’re only ghosts. Stories can’t hurt you and neither can ghosts.

  There’s only one thing that can hurt you here, and he’s lying next to you, an anguished giant under the ground.

  He did promise. He sat there, in mama’s lap, and he said: I’ll look to my papa. But it’s been nine days. Nine days and nine nights. He’s fed him and brought him water, wrapped the wounds and built him fires to keep him warm. And still the smells rise. Still the rot festers. Perhaps, if he doesn’t go now, there’ll be no point going at all. Perhaps going is what he has to do, if he’s going to keep that promise. Leaving now, finding help, that’s what would make mama proud; not just lying here, in a hole in the dirt, petting his papa as he wastes away.

  He goes up into the night. The axe is standing guard, with its blade biting an aspen root. He passes it, steals through the bracken, and in that way comes across the tiny brook and to the shores of the marsh itself. The drizzle has moved on but there is wind tonight – summer wind, with summer’s smells. Midges and mosquito
es descend, to make a banquet of his flesh.

  He stands and gazes into the distance. There is moonlight enough from this hanging crescent to illuminate the tops of the canopy on the marsh’s farthest side. His eyes scour the reeds and he finds the tiny island where he and Grandfather camped. What lies beneath, he cannot tell, but perhaps the marshes are drier than when they came across, so that he might find an easier channel.

  He thinks to ask mama what he should do. The aspens would whisper to the marsh grass, who would whisper to the oaks on the other side, and they in turn would send the whispers down to mama’s tree. Finally, she would hear and send her whispers back: come, little man; or, stay, little man, and care for your papa. Yet, he does not say a thing. He sits in the roots of the first tree and watches the moon.

  Mama cannot help him now. Papa cannot help him. If he believed in stories, he would think: the trees can help me. But, if he believed in stories, he would have to believe in the Old Man of the Forest turning to a wolf – and perhaps, thinking of his papa, he would rather not believe in that.

  Some time later, he thinks he hears a rustling in the bracken behind him – but, when he turns, he sees nothing, not even a ghost. He stands, because he thinks he has made up his mind to go to the marsh, but when he reaches the shore, the rustling comes again. He stops. His eyes are on the moon and the moon is telling him: turn around! But he will not turn around.

  A cold hand closes around his ankle. He screams, kicks out. The scream scatters across the marsh, fading in that vast emptiness. The reeds rustle in reply.

  The hand still holds him. He pitches forward, leg snapping taut, and now he is on his hands and knees, with his face pressed into moist marsh moss. He reaches out, grapples onto the reeds, tries to haul himself up. Whatever holds him, holds him tight. He shakes his foot, manages to twist around. Now he is on his back, with his leg bent. He tries to scrabble backwards, but the thing, the creature, is holding him, and the weight is unbearable. He collapses, exhausted. His hands are sinking into the mire – and now, now the hand is crawling up his ankle, up his leg. He stares down the length of his body. Fat talons appear through the reeds. They grasp his knee. Next comes a hand, and with that hand a naked, purple arm.

  ‘Boy.’

  ‘Papa!’

  The boy reaches out, touches Grandfather’s arm. At once, his body relents. The hand does not grip him as fiercely, and the reeds whip him as he scrabbles to stand.

  In the reeds, lies Grandfather. He sprawls, face-down, breathing heavily. His leg trails behind him, hanging out of the marsh like a dead body washed ashore. Standing tall, the boy can see the ugly smear where he has dragged himself through the bracken.

  ‘Papa, how did you get out of the hole?’

  ‘I … had to.’

  ‘Papa, where were you going?’

  ‘You … left.’

  The boy sinks at his papa’s side, pets his bloody head.

  ‘I have to, papa. I have to get help.’

  ‘No, boy. You promised. You promised.’

  He barely recognizes the word, so gutturally does Grandfather speak. ‘I’m not leaving you, papa. I’m going to come back.’

  ‘They’ll take you away.’

  The boy is quelled. It is a fear he has not yet had, for his head is filled with stories and ghosts. It has been many months since he was last at school, but he can still remember the look on Mr Navitski’s face when he dropped him at the tenement, when he thought to come in and talk to his papa.

  He thinks to take Grandfather’s leg and drag him back from the marsh, but it looks so ruined that it might shear off. Instead, he takes the hand of his papa’s one good arm. He senses that the old man wants to resist, but the fight is gone from him. That hand has clawed his way up, out of the bunker, down through the aspens. Its muscles must be as shredded as the rest of him.

  In a series of stuttering attempts, the boy hauls Grandfather around and lies him in the bracken beneath the aspen boughs. The midges and mosquitoes swallow them both in a cloud blacker than night. The boy tries to fight them away, but it is easier to fight a big, monstrous enemy, than a thousand insidious ones.

  ‘Papa,’ he says, sitting at the old man’s side. ‘I wasn’t going to leave you. You know it, don’t you?’

  The old man gutters a reply.

  ‘I’m scared, papa.’

  Grandfather lifts his trembling good hand. With it, he finds the boy’s. He tries to clasp him, but at first his fingers will not work. ‘Don’t be scared,’ he says with forked tongue. ‘The woods will look after us.’

  ‘But how, papa?’ the boy trembles. ‘How?’

  Grandfather’s breathing goes up into the night, summoning further mosquitoes. ‘I’ll show you,’ he utters – and those three words seem to demand more of him than all of his wounds, every inch of flayed skin. ‘I’ll … teach you everything, boy. Everything I learned on that wild walk home. Everything from Perpetual Winter and that frozen city called Gulag. It kept me alive. It can keep you too.’

  ‘Papa,’ the boy whispers, feeling the chill in the summer’s night. ‘It is a story, isn’t it?’

  This isn’t the tale, says Grandfather, but an opening.

  Then, for the first time since he fell, he begins to cry.

  ‘Bring me nettles, boy. Build me a fire. I’ll be your eyes. You’ll be my hands. In the morning, we’ll make snares and pits and traps. I’ll show you stalking. I’ll show you kills.’

  The boy stands. ‘Yes, papa,’ he says, and scurries into the trees.

  In the weeks that follow: journeys at first light, to check new snares made from nettles and gather up the morning’s forage; then long afternoons and evenings, sitting in a bivouac beneath the aspen boughs. No stories from his papa, nor even any stories from the boy for his papa to hear. Few looks, and fewer words. Grandfather teaches him, but he teaches in silence: snares and traps, and the stillness of stalking. It is long months since winter, yet he finds himself waiting for another kind of thaw.

  Summer flourishes and summer grows old. With the rolling of the season, flesh comes back to his papa’s bones, transforming the shape of his face by degrees more perceptible with each passing meal. His cheeks fill out, his eyes heal, but somehow he looks more drawn, his face longer, the corners of his lips turned neither up nor down. His chin loses its point, and his whiskers cling more closely to the flesh. No longer do they grow out; now they curl upon themselves instead, tight coils like fur. In the tracts where they do not grow, his skin is hard, as if permanently scabbed. The earth has left an impression on his cheek where he fell, a pattern of thin grazes that heal badly and somehow scar.

  He holds one shoulder higher than the other, and when movement stirs again in the fingers of his broken arm, it is jagged, strings being played by a poor puppeteer.

  One morning, the boy returns with forage to find the old man standing. His dead leg, bent and shorter than the other, still hangs useless, but he balances himself with hands on an aspen trunk. Today he just holds himself there, refusing to fall. The next day he takes steps, crude shuffling things that propel him forward at an interminable pace. The next day, he learns to prowl from one aspen to another. The boy watches as he picks his path back to the bunker, peers in at the ground that tried to feed him to the trees.

  He looks to his papa, slowly healing into a new shape and wonders: mama, what have I done?

  Because Grandfather does not mention his mama anymore. She is gone with the gingerbreads, gone from his thoughts and words. She is, or so the boy believes, gone from the forest itself.

  Across the fire, the old man utters the same words, as if in a fevered dream.

  This isn’t the tale, but an opening.

  This isn’t the tale, but an opening.

  This isn’t the tale, but an

  This isn’t the tale

  I’m the tale I’m the tale I’m the tale

  In the aspens, the days turn to weeks, the weeks into months – and, in the branches above, the colours,
just like his papa, start to change.

  This morning, when the boy wakes, he is distinctly aware that it is darker than it was the morning before, or the morning before that. By the remnants of the fire, Grandfather still sleeps. A rattle comes up from his belly and forces its way out through lips dry and scabbed.

  He opens the embers, feeds them with pieces of bark and steps out into the aspens. There is no doubt about it; there is a bite in the air this morning, one he has not felt in many months. He takes a deep breath and roars it silently out; a gentle discolouring in the air tells him that his breath can make fog once again.

  It is time for the morning forage. There are still brambles on the briars, and he hunts for ones the birds have not yet found. Then it is time to check the snares. This morning there is only a lonely squirrel dangling from its noose, not nearly enough to sustain them through the day. The boy will have to go after rabbits, wood pigeons, whatever birds he can find. Eggs have long since disappeared, but perhaps there are frogs, huddling down in the reeds.

  Dull light in the trees and no warmer, even after an hour running the range.

  He is on his way back to the shelter when the wind starts to blow. It flurries up from nowhere, but he knows it will pass soon, just one of those idle gusts trapped in the trees. He retreats between the aspens and suckles on a hazelnut to keep off the morning’s hunger.

  As he suckles, he sees something he thinks he has forgotten: a single fracture of white sails down through the branches. It hovers before them, revolving as if to show off its crystal indentations, before it floats on, finally finding rest on the tip of a thistle. He goes to it, crouches, expects it to melt away – but it clings on; it remains.

  At last, he picks his way back to the shelter, fingertips stained with the juice of the brambles he has devoured.

  In the gloom Grandfather is awake and whispering woodland secrets to the fire.

  ‘I’m sorry, papa,’ he says, coming hand over hand into the shelter. ‘There isn’t much.’

  Grandfather peers as the boy empties the knapsack and all of its treats. ‘There’s enough.’