“Don’t move, Russian. I have no argument with you.”
“You have no argument with me either,” said the Mechanik. But he knew that it wouldn’t matter to this man.
“The Nazis never would have fought us except for you Jews.” Jedrik was pale and his hand trembled. “You were why they hate us. We let you live here in our land, and millions of Poles died because of you. They only came here because of all the Jews they wanted to kill.”
“I’m a Pole too. Besides, they wanted our land.” The Mechanik thought of his pistol, but it was buttoned under his coat.
“You’re an asshole, Jedrik.” The Russian laughed, but his laugh was tight. “They didn’t give a damn about the Jews or Poland. The Germans wanted Russia. You were just in the way. Poland’s always in the way of all the armies trying to kill Russians. The Jews were the excuse they used, but next time they’ll have another reason to run over Poland.”
Jedrik shook his head.
“Kill the Jew and you die.” The Russian stared past Jedrik down the street. There were a few villagers who watched in the distance, but none of the Russian soldiers were on the street. He wondered if he could get his pistol out and shoot the bastard after Jedrik killed the Jew.
The Mechanik knew that this Jedrik was going to shoot him, and then the Russian would try to draw his pistol. If the peasant was a good shot, then the Russian would die too. The Mechanik stood slowly, his hands out at his sides so Jedrik wouldn’t panic and shoot.
“We have all suffered. My wife is dead, I think. My children are dead.”
“Dirty Jew. You should all be dead.”
Jedrik talked on, and the Mechanik moved forward a little, incremental shuffles that took him closer, as if he needed to get closer to hear better.
“The Jews get rich off us peasants, and then they join the Russians. You’re a Communist, Jew. And the Communists should die too. All of them. All the Russians will be killed like rats.”
Jedrik had spittle at the corner of his mouth. The Mechanik nodded as if he agreed. He tried to look humble, and he moved forward a fraction as the man rambled on with his talk.
“Jews killed children. All of you did. You killed children and ate them.”
The Russian saw the Mechanik moving forward, and he waited for Jedrik to panic and shoot, but the man kept talking. He wanted to say it all.
“You bled Poland dry and then you lived fat in the cities. I’m going to kill you, Jew, and then I’ll kill the Communist who brought you here.”
The Mechanik thought of all the poor Jews of this village who had been shot and buried in the woods. He didn’t contradict Jedrik. He nodded humbly, hoping the man would keep talking.
He knew he couldn’t get much nearer, or the peasant would shoot. He knew it was going to kill him, but if he could knock the man down, the Russian would have time to draw his gun. Sliding his eyes toward the Russian, the Mechanik spoke softly.
“Goodbye, friend. You saved us in the forest. Thank you.”
The peasant opened his mouth to speak again, and the Mechanik jumped forward. He leapt over the six feet of ground and heard the explosion of the pistol as his body hit Jedrik’s. The Mechanik screamed, but he held Jedrik’s arm down as they both fell backward onto the dirt of the street. Jedrik got in one blow with the club, and then it fell from his hand.
“Jew! Jew!” Jedrik screamed.
The Mechanik felt like a hand had knocked the wind out of his chest. He knew he was shot, but he lay on Jedrik and held his pistol hand down. The gun went off again, and the Mechanik felt his eyes dimming. He was fainting, and everything began to darken at the edges of his vision. He saw stars over the face of the screaming peasant, but he couldn’t hear him anymore.
The Russian, cursing steadily, dragged his pistol out of the holster and tried to put it to Jedrik’s head. The two men were struggling so in the dirt that the Russian had to shuffle around them, almost dancing in the dust of the street.
“You stupid shit!” The Russian took his chance for a clean shot, put the gun almost against the peasant’s head and fired. Jedrik’s head popped like a broken squash and opened. He shuddered and twisted, his words gurgling in his throat, and then he lay still. The Mechanik lay on top of him.
“Oh God! Oh Jesus!” The Russian had to pull the Mechanik’s hands from Jedrik. He rolled the unconscious man over and saw the blood on his chest.
He knelt and opened the Mechanik’s coat and shirt. A single shot had passed into his chest, but it was on the right side. The Russian put his ear to the wounded chest. The man was breathing well. It had missed his lungs. No great spouting of blood gushed out. He rolled his friend onto his side, pulled his shirt up roughly, and laughed at what he saw.
“It went right through. You’re in luck, Comrade.”
The pain of being rolled over brought the Mechanik to consciousness, and he groaned. He opened his eyes, and stared at the dirt of the street. It took a moment for him to remember where he was. To remember what had happened.
The Russian rolled him gently onto his back and grinned down into his dark eyes.
“The peasant? He shot you?” the Mechanik asked.
“You took the bullet for me, Comrade.”
“I’m shot?”
“Shot like a dog. But it missed your lungs and heart. You have a nice hole going through you. With luck, you’ll heal, but you won’t go to Berlin this winter.”
“I’m shot.” He lay in the dirt and thought about it.
“You’re no good for marching now, Comrade, but you can come to Berlin after we’ve done the dirty work.” The Russian called out to the peasants who were creeping closer. “You people! Come help me with this hero. He saved my life. That bastard, Jedrik, would have killed us both if this Jew hadn’t jumped him.”
“I’m shot.” The Mechanik whispered it again.
The Russian grinned down at his friend. “The fucking Pole wanted to kill us all.”
“There are Nazis in every country,” the Mechanik said, but then he had to stop. The pain was making him light-headed.
“You get well, and I’ll beat the Germans for you.”
“You saved our life in the forest,” the Mechanik whispered as darkness closed in on him.
“So now we’re even. Don’t worry. Every other German I kill, I’ll kill him for you.”
The Russian leaned over and took the Mechanik’s face in his hands and kissed him loudly on each cheek, but the other man was unconscious again and didn’t know he had been kissed.
“Every other one for you, my friend.”
The Mechanik moaned a little in his unconsciousness, and the Russian grinned. There wasn’t a lot of blood. The man might live if the wound didn’t get infected. He just might live.
Swans
The children were hidden in the brush beside the road, watching the trucks move past them through the mud. The German soldiers in the trucks weren’t clean like the Germans in the ghetto. They were dirty and slumped. Guns boomed in the distance day and night.
Gretel started to stand up, and he pulled her down.
“The trucks won’t hurt us, Hansel.”
“They’re Germans. We have to hide. You promised to do what I said.”
It was twilight when he saw the plume of smoke. It was hard to see, because it was nearly the same color as the sky, but Hansel saw it. He led Gretel over the fields in the middle of trees, and by the time they were close to the buildings, it was dark.
“Crawl,” he told Gretel, and the two of them crawled under a broken board into the barn.
There was only a single cow, old and standing with her head down. Gretel climbed the ladder to the loft and called out, “There’s hay, Hansel. We can sleep here, but I’m hungry.”
They piled hay up behind a stack of straw, where it wouldn’t be seen easily, and made a bed. The two of them, exhausted and cold, lay close together and pulled more hay on top. It was warmer lying between the stack of hay and the wall of the barn, and Hansel thought
they wouldn’t freeze. I’ll get food tomorrow, he thought. He tried to think how he’d do that, but he fell asleep before he could figure it out.
They had hidden in the barn for two weeks. Gretel had been quiet and slept for hours during the day. At night Hansel crept out and dug through the straw in the ditch to gather half-rotten potatoes. He even stole two eggs he found in a nest outside the chicken house. When the farmer came to throw hay down for the cow, the children hid behind the piled-up straw.
One silent morning, Gretel, seduced by the sun, stood in the blaze of dawn looking out the loft window. Hansel woke when his sister began to sing. And then the woman screamed.
“Ladislaw! There’s a girl in the loft. I can see her.” The woman grabbed a pitchfork and ran toward the barn.
“Wait till I get my gun,” he called, but she ran into the barn and was climbing up to the loft.
Gretel stood at the window, smiling. Hansel sat in the hay, his face twisted, his hair with its dark inch of roots and golden top like some odd cap on his head.
The woman stared at them. “How long have you been here?”
“Only a few days,” Hansel lied.
“The girl looks Polish,” the farmer gasped, out of breath from running.
“Well, the boy doesn’t. Look at that hair! Get them out of here. If any Germans pass through, they’ll kill your own child and us too. You know what these children are!”
She went down the ladder, throwing the pitchfork with such anger it nearly hit the cow.
“I want to leave now.” Gretel was nearly crying. “I want to go back to Magda, Hansel.”
“She’s not that bad,” the farmer said to Hansel. “The Nazis killed our son. Our daughter has the coughing disease. My wife is afraid she’ll die. She’s afraid all the time.”
Hansel nodded, but he thought the woman was bad anyway.
“I’ll give you some potatoes. Stay in the trees. Stay away from soldiers.” He looked at Gretel. She was a beautiful little thing. He wished that his wife would take her in. The man slipped a loaf of bread in the sack even though he knew his wife would hate him for it.
After the children were gone, his wife cleaned the loft until no trace was left of them.
“We’re not going to get killed now,” she muttered. “Not after the last five years.”
The children crept across the open fields, and Hansel didn’t breathe easily until they were in the forest again. He knew where they were going.
The winter had lasted so long. It was April, the farmer had said, and the forest had changed while they were in the loft of the barn. The children had never been in a forest when it bloomed and buzzed with bees and the water flickered with the color of dragonfly wings.
The bud scales on the giant hornbeams had loosened and the leaves pushed out. The limbs above their heads, coated with ice and snow for so long, were now feathery with new leaves. The forest was beginning to fill out its canopy, and there was a pinkish-green roof over the children’s heads.
Hansel walked as fast as he could. It was dangerous, going back to where Magda’s hut had been, but he couldn’t think of what else to do. The roads were full of soldiers. The men walking to the west never seemed to diminish, and the boy knew it wasn’t safe to travel on the roads. He hated the sight of the soldiers and wanted to hide from all of them.
His hands shook all the time now, and he couldn’t stop it. He wanted to sleep, even in the morning after he had woken up from sleeping all night. The forest was filled with new life, and he saw it, but it gave him no pleasure.
“Listen,” Gretel said, smiling. “It’s woodpeckers. They wake me up every morning.”
Hansel heard the birds chirping above their heads, and at night the croaking of frogs startled him awake dozens of times. He couldn’t hear if anyone was creeping toward them. He couldn’t tell if soldiers were coming to kill them when the woods were so noisy.
“I hate it. I liked it better when it wasn’t all birds and frogs.”
But Gretel loved it. She remembered things that Magda had told her about the spring. She saw mushrooms, but Hansel wouldn’t let her eat any of them.
“You’re crazy! Magda said you couldn’t tell the good ones until you’re grown up.”
Gretel didn’t eat the mushrooms, but she found wild strawberries, and they feasted on the tart berries until their chins ran red with the juice. She found mint which she knew from the smell of Magda’s teas, and they chewed on it while they walked.
“Where are we going?” They had walked for three days, and the food was almost gone.
“We’re going back to where the hut was.”
Gretel didn’t really care if it took a long time to get there. It was lovely being in the woods. The forest ran with streams of water in the swollen creeks. Under the giant trees were deep layers of moss like velvet beds. Hansel let Gretel wander as they walked, and he didn’t care if it slowed them down. He was so tired. She would explore and look at the plants and suck cool water off the moss, and he would lie and stare up at the leaves coming out, more and more of them every day. He had to force himself to stand up and move on.
Hansel knew they were close to the hut, close to where the pigsty was hidden. He got up early, before it was light, and made Gretel walk fast now. He couldn’t find the pigsty unless he found the hut. They had to stop wandering. It was gray dawn and the birds were calling so loudly that it made his head hurt. He hated the noise.
“Here,” he said. It was the curve in the road. The big rock. He turned into the woods. He wouldn’t go to the hut. He couldn’t bear to see the ashes.
“Don’t sing, Gretel.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
He looked at her and nearly cried. It wasn’t fair. She was the big one. She should help him. He knew it was right ahead of him, but Hansel didn’t recognize the cluster of trees. They were in bloom, and the tender fragrance of wild cherry blossoms filled his nose as he drew closer.
There was only the mound of earth and splintered wood from the grenade. No Nelka kissing him. Telek didn’t rush out and throw him up in the air. No one was there.
“The sky is all flowers.” Gretel reached up and pulled a cherry twig to her face.
Hansel sat sobbing and shoved his fingers into his mouth as if they were bread. Magda had baked the bread that got blown up by the soldiers. She had pushed it into a pan with her hands. He sobbed and sucked his fingers, and Gretel stood above the hole in the forest floor, smiling.
“We have to get clean,” he told Gretel.
It was warmer now all the time. The chilblains on his hands had healed, but the lice were making him itch until his wrists and sides were scratched and bloody.
“We can make a fire and kill them.”
“Somebody could see a fire. We have to drown them.”
They sat beside the creek and took all their clothes off. She pounded her clothes on rocks, and Hansel pounded his clothes on the rocks too. When they were tired, they spread the clothes in the creek with rocks on top to weight them. He and Gretel lay in shallow water, and he saw little fish nibbling at his toes in the sun-shot water.
“Put your head back in the water and let it soak. They’ll all drown,” he said. The water was so icy it made his head ache.
After a long time, they dragged out their clothes. Hansel lay in the sun and fell asleep, but Gretel spread the clothes over bushes where the sun could reach them. In an hour, they were almost dry. Hansel woke up, and pulled on his pants. He didn’t itch as much. It was lovely. He waited until Gretel had dressed and then he took her hand. Standing on tiptoe, he reached up till she leaned her face down and let him kiss her on both cheeks the way that Nelka did.
“I don’t itch so bad.”
She nodded. “Let’s explore.”
They walked hand in hand through the towering lime, hornbeam, and oak, the occasional smell of lilac growing wild and the pungent whiff of chamomile coming to them as their feet crushed the herb, not knowing what it was. They both heard i
t at the same time. It was a wild cackling ahead of them. Hansel knew they were nearly at the river.
A shallow bend in the river, the sand and gravel dredged over the rocks for thousands of years had made a little lake, but the children couldn’t see the water. The whole surface of the shallows was covered with white birds, wings flapping, necks bending and preening, beaks opening and shutting in a great, constant cackling.
“They’re swans,” Gretel whispered. “Don’t move.” She put her index finger in her mouth and held it up into the air. “Animals won’t know you’re there when the wind blows in your face.” Gretel frowned. Someone had told her that. Her finger was coolest on the side toward the swans, and she smiled. “They can’t smell us. Let’s watch.”
“I wonder if we could catch one,” Hansel said. “We could eat it.”
“You can’t eat them.”
“Why not? They look like that goose in the village.”
“Because swans are special. There were swans in my fairy-tale book.”
It made him angry. He wanted to catch one and eat it. There was only one potato left, and Gretel didn’t even care. She didn’t care that it was so hard to steal food or just to find it and feed themselves. Gretel would let him starve and not care at all.
Hansel ran toward the swans, his fists clenched. The birds saw the movement and gabbled furiously, flapping their wings and flurrying in the water. Then they began to rise and fly, first one group, then another, then the whole mass of them, two hundred birds, a cloud over the river, flying up, turning in the sky, and going on south.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
Gretel was sitting on the moss and Hansel didn’t look at her. He didn’t care if she cried. Hansel stood looking at the shallows, covered with white down, feathers floating in the air from the violence of the swans’ lifting into flight.
“We have to leave the forest, Gretel. There isn’t much noise now from the guns. We’ll go back the way we came before we were in the forest.”
“Which way did we come?” She was puzzled.
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel Page 28
