Gingerbread

by Robert Dinsdale

  The boy cannot follow this train of thought, but for some reason the girl seems terribly pleased with herself. He cups his hand to his mouth and shouts up, in a hoarse whisper. ‘Elenya!’

  ‘Are you down there or not?’

  The boy reaches for the torch and heaves it back out of the ice. ‘I’m here!’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘It’s a fire stick. So I can see.’

  Elenya drops out of the window frame. Now the only thing looking down is the little Russian horse. It has been an age since he petted the ill-hewn wooden mane, but its chipped eyes seem to be imploring him. Its open mouth might be speaking. At first he fancies it is asking him to come to its rescue; it has spent too long with an unruly little girl and wants the boy again, wants his mama. Yet, he is fooling himself. The Russian horse is telling him: everything’s well. She’s been looking after me. She’s a good little girl, no matter what your papa might say.

  Elenya reappears, brandishing something in her hands. When she fiddles with it, a beam of light erupts to roam the garden. ‘See! I don’t need a silly little fire stick, because I have a flashlight.’

  ‘Turn it off,’ whispers the boy. ‘I can’t see …’

  The girl gives a dramatic groan and kills the flashlight. ‘What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you know it’s the dead of night?’

  ‘I’m sorry about my papa.’

  ‘Your papa! Why didn’t you tell me he was your papa?’

  ‘He isn’t … bad.’

  ‘Bad? I built a snowman of him and I mean to chop off his head …’

  ‘And … I thought you might be lost.’

  ‘Do I look lost? Here, in my pyjamas?’

  The words stumble on his tongue: ‘Do you want to … play?’

  She leans, suspiciously, beyond the window ledge, shying at the flurrying wind. ‘Now?’

  The boy shrugs. ‘I have a den you can come to.’

  ‘I’ve seen your den.’

  ‘It’s another den, one my papa doesn’t know about. It’s by a cattail pond.’

  ‘What’s a cattail pond?’

  ‘It’s where the cattails grow.’

  ‘You know, you’re a stupid little boy. All I wanted was to be kind to you.’

  ‘Please?’ he breathes.

  Elenya lets the silence linger, to be filled only by the sound of wind straining at icebound branches. Then she pulls the window shut and promptly disappears.

  The boy does not have to stand alone for long. In three jerks, the backdoor pulls back and Elenya appears, poking her head into the night. She is in a nightgown, hair tied back but hanging loose at the front. On her feet she has big fur boots of scarlet red, each with the face of a fox: buttons for eyes and a smile stitched on.

  ‘Just what do you think you’re doing here?’

  The boy scurries over. ‘I’m sorry about my papa,’ he repeats. ‘I’m not like my papa. I promise.’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t tell me about him?’

  ‘I thought he’d frighten you.’

  ‘Frighten me? With his head in the side of a dead deer? Why would that sort of thing frighten me?’

  ‘He isn’t … well,’ says the boy. It does not seem the right word, but it will have to do. ‘We came camping in the woods and …’

  ‘You can’t just come to my house and think I’ll come out and play!’

  ‘Why not? That’s what you did to me …’

  ‘I thought you said that den wasn’t really your house?’

  The boy shrugs, caught in another snare.

  ‘Just look at you! You’ll have to come in quick. If my daddy wakes, he’ll have my guts on a plate.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It means he’ll be cross. He’s cross every time I open a window or leave a light on or set fire to a classroom. It doesn’t matter if none of it’s my fault … Well, don’t just stand there! Little wolf-boys might like the cold, but I’m …’

  ‘I don’t want to come in,’ says the boy. ‘I want you to come out.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you even dare come indoors?’

  She stops, considers him methodically, as if trying to deduce the solution to a riddle. Softly she says, ‘You don’t really live in the woods, do you?’

  ‘I’ll come in,’ he whispers, fearful of what his papa would say.

  ‘Hurry up, then! I’m meant to be in bed without dinner.’

  Inside, the warmth is astounding. It pummels him with memory and fire. After only a few steps he feels a sickness rising in his gorge. He has to stop, clasp hold of the kitchen counter.

  Around him, everything is different – and yet eerily the same. There is no longer an open range, but in its place a metallic oven with a polished top and circles for four pots to sit. The tin sink is set into cupboards of gleaming oak veneer and the upper walls are lined in cabinets with glass doors. Inside stand figurines of friendly woodcutters and benevolent wolves.

  It was under that sink that his papa found the axe. But the sink isn’t the same sink anymore – and, if he dared to look under it, he wouldn’t find axes at all, only soap crystals for washing and rubber gloves.

  He is in a daze, but a yelp from the girl brings him back to his senses.

  ‘Look at you! You’re skin and bone! Let’s find you a treat.’

  Before he knows it, Elenya has dragged a stool out from under a countertop and is scrambling onto it. She hangs there, poised like an acrobat, and opens one of the uppermost cabinets, there to reveal a clay jar full of biscuits. She teeters as she lifts it down. Then she delves a hand inside and comes back with a fist full of ginger and honeycomb breads, of shortcake and pastries. Wings of the angel.

  ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Eat one.’

  When the boy takes one of the treats out of her hand, he sees her skin as white as snow. Against it, his own skin is bark-brown, the colour of the wettest thaw.

  ‘Well, don’t be shy! We’ll have to fatten you up, like a little piglet. That papa of yours isn’t doing it. Somebody has to.’

  ‘He goes hunting for us.’

  ‘I don’t need to hunt to find a biscuit.’

  She struts on, through a doorway where there was once only a crumbling arch of stone. More than any, it is this threshold over which the boy dare not stray. He hangs on the edge, suckling his biscuit – and feeling, for the first time in many long months, like somebody’s son. He would stand this way on the cusp of mama’s bedroom, knowing he was not meant to go through and see her coughing, wheezing, sweating into her sheets.

  ‘Well,’ Elenya says. ‘You’ve come this far. What’s frightening you now?’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’

  ‘I think you’re afraid. How can you sleep in a wood with that old beast and be afraid of a few tables and chairs?’

  Elenya treads back across the thick carpet to offer her hand. ‘Come on, little wolf-boy,’ she says, her tone softer, more motherly than he has heard before.

  It has been so long since he held a hand that, at first, he does not know how he ought to take it, if the fingers should intertwine or if one palm should nestle crosswise to the other, like ragdolls stitched together. His dirty fingers are about to touch hers when, suddenly, Elenya recoils. Her eyes have dropped low, staring at his feet. ‘Just look! You’re leaving a trail!’

  The boy follows her eyes. She is right; all across the kitchen floor are the prints of his feet, outlined in melted snow and forest dirt. He has even left an imprint on the very edge of the cream carpet, five half-moons of filth where his toes strayed over the line.

  ‘I’ll fetch slippers. Wait there!’

  The girl darts away, her footfalls silent on the deep shag. While she is gone, the boy hovers in the doorway. The living room appears bigger than it was when he lived here. The windows on the farthest side are broader, with deep alcoves on either side of the chimneybreast where bookshelves climb to the ceiling. There is no longer an open fireplace, but a little wood-burning stove instead. A big
mirror hangs above, reflecting back a coffee table with magazines, and a table with places set for breakfast.

  Gone: his papa’s armchair, with its threadbare hide and springs showing through. Gone: the nest by the fire where he used to sleep with the Russian horse looking down.

  Elenya reappears from the staircase, and deposits at his feet a pair of big slippers. She is about to show him how to put them on when another face appears on the stair: the dog named Mishka. She stops halfway down, her muzzle pressed between the banister rails. A low growl erupts in the back of her throat but, curiously, her tail is beating hard.

  ‘Mishka!’ Elenya hisses. ‘Back to bed!’

  The dog does not obey. Now that she is acknowledged, she bounds to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Yes, Mishka,’ Elenya says, trying hard to ignore the dog as she forces slippers onto the boy’s feet. ‘This is the wolf-boy from the forest. Don’t you remember? And he’s filthier than you!’

  Mishka whimpers, nosing under Elenya’s arm to sniff the boy. One sniff is evidently not enough, for soon her nose is probing every corner of the boy’s body: the cold cavities at the backs of his knees, his fingers with their nails yellow with dirt, the crevice of his backside itself.

  Her tongue begins to work on the bare skin at his shin, revealing dirt in lighter layers, old scabs and scars from tumbles in the wild. So entranced is Elenya at watching the boy revealed, shade by shade, that she only realizes he is crying when the first hot tears roll from his chin and cascade over her own face. By then they have picked up so much dirt that they paint a dark scar on her cheek.

  ‘Mishka,’ she whispers. ‘You’re hurting him.’

  The boy’s mouth works, but the sounds are indecipherable, a woodland language of whimpers and phlegm.

  ‘Dry those eyes,’ says the girl.

  ‘It’s all gone,’ he finally breathes.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Everything but my little Russian horse.’

  The girl rocks back and draws to her full height. ‘What Russian horse?’

  ‘It’s mine, and it’s in your window.’

  ‘Yours?’

  The boy nods, half-sadly, knowing she will not believe.

  ‘Who are you really, little wolf-boy?’

  The boy looks at her, her face distorted, but he cannot say, cannot let her know.

  There is a great river of carpet separating them. Elenya reaches out, and this time she takes the boy’s hand without recoiling. The boy hardly notices. He takes his first step into the room, and the slippers are soft on his feet and the carpet beneath them even softer. With Mishka still nosing at his every step, he allows Elenya to lead him across the bottom of the stairs.

  The boy looks up. Spots of colour swim in his vision, a swirling vortex like looking straight into a snowstorm. The last time he ventured up those stairs, they stopped halfway.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ he says, straining on Elenya’s hand.

  ‘Don’t you want to see that horse thing?’

  ‘I want you to come …’

  ‘No you don’t. You don’t really want to go back out there, do you?’

  Instinct drives the boy to shake his head. The movement is so small, yet the guilt is so huge. He should be out there, even now, leading Elenya back to the cattail pond. There, his papa lurks between the trees.

  ‘We’ll have a game,’ he says.

  ‘What kind of a game?’

  Before he can reply, Mishka lets out a single shrill bark. Elenya whirls around, as if to cuff her around the nose. ‘Shut up, Mishka! You’ll wake the whole house! Then we’ll both be …’

  Evidently, she has spoken too soon. From somewhere upstairs there comes the creak of a floorboard, the sound of a house much older than this. Elenya freezes, one palm up against the boy’s breast as if readying to thrust him away. She keeps her stare on the stairs – but, when no more creaking comes, she relents.

  ‘Come on. My room’s at the top. We can get there without them waking.’

  At the top of the stairs, the landing goes two ways. Elenya takes odd footsteps, long and zigzagging. At last, she takes one last stride and pushes open a bedroom door. The boy moves awkwardly behind her, careful to land only where she has been standing.

  ‘Come on, wolf-boy. Quick! Before they hear!’

  She disappears through the door. For a second, the boy pauses. Mishka sidles past, pushing the door with her nose and snaking after the girl. He is vividly aware of the walls, the slippers he is wearing, the sounds of an alien snoring from the other side of the hall. He is about to turn, take flight down the stairs, when the door reopens and Elenya’s face peers out.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’

  She is holding in her hands the little Russian horse – and, after that, all thoughts of running away melt like the thaw.

  Her bedroom is big, ten times the size of the gingerbread house, with a sweeping alcove for the windows and a radiator blasting out heat. The bed is big enough for three little girls, with an eiderdown covered in a pink, patterned sheet. At the foot of the bed sit a bank of teddies, as unlike bears as the fairybook door knocker, and a shelf full of books. An electric light buzzes, but it is a comforting buzz, one that tells you you are never alone.

  The girl leaps onto the bed and sits, cross-legged, with the Russian horse in her lap. ‘Well? Why are you just standing there?’

  The boy knows he is being dumb, but he can’t find any words.

  ‘You can have him, if you want …’ The boy lurches forward, dirty hands reaching out to grasp it. ‘… but first you have to tell me why.’

  The boy couldn’t snatch it, even if he wanted to; that dreaded Mishka is in the way, back to sniffing every corner of his body.

  ‘It was my mama’s.’

  ‘Your mama’s?’

  The boy whispers, ‘Then she died, and then it was mine.’

  Elenya nods, unperturbed by this news. ‘But it doesn’t explain what it’s doing in my house. My daddy gave me this Russian horse when we moved here. It was a present. He built this house himself.’

  The boy shakes his head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  Elenya straightens. ‘Are you calling my daddy a liar?’

  ‘No, I …’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry. He is a liar. He told me this house would be fun, but it isn’t nearly as fun as our old house in Brest. There were shops and a café and you could go to the pictures at night. Daddy said the forest would be the best picture show of all – so I know better than anybody what kind of a liar he is.’

  ‘This is my house,’ the boy whispers.

  ‘Your house!? I’ve seen your house, remember! It’s a pile of sticks in the wood.’

  The boy broils. He had a home, once. It doesn’t matter if the stones are different stones; the earth is the same earth, the air the same air. The forest remembers.

  ‘This is my baba’s house, and you came and took it, and now you’ve got my little Russian horse!’

  Elenya leaps up, scrambles off the bed. In an instant she is across the room, with her hand clasped around the boy’s encrusted mouth. Mishka leaps up too, lets out another shrill yap. Still holding the boy, Elenya flails out with her foot. Mishka is repelled – but it is already too late; there comes a shifting from the other side of the wall.

  ‘Now you’ve done it!’ hisses Elenya. ‘If that’s my daddy, he’ll have you locked up!’

  She pushes him, bodily, to the other side of the room, where the radiator does battle with the draught coming in through the windows. Here, she forces him down. ‘Take it,’ she snaps, thrusting the Russian horse into his hands. ‘But keep out of sight!’

  The Russian horse: it’s in his hands. So amazed is he, feeling the familiar chips, the cracks in its polished rump, that he does not even think about getting back up. He huddles down, hands tracing every contour of the horse’s wooden body. And in that second he is a real little boy again, somebody who sleeps in a bed and
has breakfast in a bowl. Now he has it back, he’ll never let go.

  ‘Elenya!’ comes a voice. ‘What’s going on in there?’

  Not her father. Her mama instead.

  Elenya scurries to the door. ‘Nothing, mama. It’s only Mishka.’

  ‘Elenya, open this door.’

  It is the kind of quiet command that means you mustn’t disobey. Elenya opens the door a crack, enough to poke her head without. In a sudden flurry of excitement, Mishka forces her way between Elenya’s legs to push out of the crack itself.

  ‘How many times do we have to tell you? The dog sleeps downstairs …’

  ‘I know, mama, but she was …’

  ‘What are you doing in there, Elenya?’

  ‘It’s only a game.’

  ‘It’s two in the morning!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And you have school.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Your father’s going to be furious.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to tell him, do you?’

  The boy keeps the Russian horse in his hand and creeps along the edge of the bed, certain that he is out of sight. At the end, he risks a peep around, but all he can see is Elenya’s back to the crack in the door.

  ‘Elenya, what have you done?’

  ‘Nothing, I promise …’

  ‘It stinks in there!’

  The boy ducks back. There is room enough under the bed, and he angles himself to slide beneath. The corners of the pink eiderdown tickle him as he starts to crawl.

  ‘It must be Mishka, mama. She’s been stinking all day.’

  ‘What have you fed her?’

  ‘Maybe she had some scraps.’

  ‘Scraps? What have we told you about …’

  ‘Mama, please!’

  The boy hears a soft thud; then footsteps. He peeks up, but there is only a hand’s breadth between the hem of the eiderdown and the carpet, and he can see so little between. The footsteps, soft, come his way.

  ‘Mother, please. I told you there’s nothing!’

  The boy tracks the footsteps around. Now they are at the window. He hears a whirr as the curtains draw back on their runners. He thinks he can feel the stir of the cold, the winter playing on the naked glass.

  Elenya’s mother turns on her heel. ‘We’ll talk about this in the morning.’