The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (11 page)

The Car

“
L
ike being hit in the chest with a board,” Magda muttered. Her feet, wrapped in layers of rags and socks inside her boots, were frozen stumps.

“Listen.” Hansel looked at Magda and took Gretel’s hand.

Magda finally heard it. Breaking the silence of the late afternoon was the mutter of a car.

“Hide.” Magda waved her hands at the children like she was shooing chickens.

Before she could get out of the ditch and into the trees herself, the children were flattened out, not a trace of them in sight. Magda felt her numb feet breaking through the crust of ice in the bottom of the ditch and the muddy water rushing into the cracked soles of her boots. She barely had time to step behind an oak tree before the car rounded a bend in the road.

It was going slowly, and she listened to the engine sound with dread, leaning her cheek against the cold bark of the tree. Cars meant that something would be done to someone. It was a black Grosser Mercedes. The roof of the car still held the shine of layers of wax, and the mud splashed halfway up the sides didn’t conceal all of the polished finish.

Two soldiers in front. Two in the backseat. The flash of black and silver. Worse and worse. An SS officer. And—Magda stared but couldn’t see the other person clearly. Just a shape.

The car struggled slowly but steadily over the ruts. The motor never faltered. It went on down the road in a left-to-right motion, trying to avoid the deepest holes. Then it was gone and the sound turned into a low hum until the silence of the forest fell upon Magda and the children again.

“We have papers. Why do we hide, Magda?” Hansel knocked the snow off his chest.

“Cars mean people who cause trouble. If they don’t see us, then we have no trouble.”

“There was a woman.” Gretel stared after the car. “And an SS.” Gretel looked steadily at Magda. She didn’t want to frighten Hansel. “Not like the Major. Not army, Magda.”

The girl was sharp. But so was everyone else in Poland by now. SS. The skull worn proudly to show that they defied death and were not frightened by it. But to the Poles the SS were the Angels of Death, the winged skeleton who comes for your bones and drags them out of you while you squeal like a hog being butchered.

“The woman may be his wife. Perhaps it’s just a trip to see the country.” Magda looked at Gretel and saw the child was not fooled. Germans didn’t leave the comforts of the city in the winter to visit a muddy Polish village where they had to eat black bread with sawdust in it.

“I’m cold.” Hansel shivered and clung to Gretel.

“Come on. Feliks was right. Snow’s coming. A lot of it. I can smell it.” Magda sniffed deeply and breathed in the almost metallic scent that had been growing stronger all day. Snow was good. It slowed them all down. Things were postponed during the hard snow. The war almost stopped.

And that was too bad in a way. The Russians had been killing the Germans, and now they would have to stop. Magda smiled when she thought of the springtime and the way that the Russians would rise up like animals shaking the snow off, killing again when the armies moved.

“The Russians,” she said. “They’re bastards and can’t be trusted, but the Germans have made a mistake with the Russians.”

“What do you mean?” Gretel carried the basket and the flour and tried to hold Hansel’s hand too so he would walk faster and not fall behind.

“It’s like a woodcutter who meets a wolf in the forest, and the man’s too proud to run, so he grabs the wolf by the ears.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing for a while. There they stand. The wolf waits and the woodcutter doesn’t dare turn loose of his ears. But sooner or later the woodcutter tires and his hands slip. Then the wolf eats him up.” Magda laughed. “Come on. I can’t get sick. I want to live long enough to see the Germans turn loose of the Russians’ ears.” The first flurry of snow was covering their heads when they saw the hut ahead of them.

Major Frankel was sweating. He wiped his forehead with a gloved hand and cursed. There was a streak on the whiteness of the glove now. The SS cared about these things. It had been a miracle that he had found a pair of white gloves. Who the hell cared about white gloves?

“Wiktor. You Polish piece of shit!”

“Major!” Wiktor stood at attention behind the desk. He looked terrible.

“You Polish monkey! Straighten your desk.” The Major always screamed at Wiktor in German. Wiktor’s German was better than the Major’s Polish, and Wiktor always responded in German. Sometimes Frankel wondered where a jailbird like Wiktor had learned such good German.

There was nothing on the desk except for two metal trays and two pens lined up neatly beside them. Not a piece of paper in sight. Wiktor moved the trays an inch or two and lined them up perfectly with the edge of the desk. He moved the pens an inch toward the trays.

“You asshole of the world.”

The two men stared at each other until they heard the sound of a car engine.

Major Frankel forced himself to move down the hall to the outside door. Should he open it? Should he send Wiktor and remain in the office? Would the SS officer think he had nothing to do if he stood outside and greeted him? Should he be busy inside? “This fucking country.”

Maybe it wouldn’t go badly. This SS officer might be a comrade, a brother. He might even wear a ribbon worth having in his second buttonhole.

Major Frankel glanced down. It wasn’t regulation. But the medal had been sent home after the winter of 1941-1942. There wasn’t much use keeping the medal to get wrecked at the front, so he had sent it home to be framed and put on the wall. But he kept the ribbon. They all had. It was tied through his buttonhole where it always was. Dirty now and limp.

But noble, Frankel thought. Noble, goddamnit. Winter of ’41—’42 at the eastern front had been so terrible, so huge, that only a token would do. It wasn’t fitting to wear some hunk of metal with eagles and swastikas. Just a dirty piece of cloth to show you had been there for the dirtiest war ever survived, but every soldier knew what that ribbon meant. It meant you had fought the Russians through the worst winter of the century, and you were still standing. Wearing the ribbon tied through the buttonhole wasn’t regulation, but it was the only decoration he’d ever wear.

Wiktor opened the outside door, and Major Frankel saluted. “Heil Hitler,” he shouted.

The man was too high ranking. SS Oberführer. Almost a general. What was he doing here? With only a car and two soldiers?

“Heil Hitler.” The Oberführer returned his salute.

“I am honored, Oberführer, that you—” the major stopped.

“Let me present Sister Rosa.”

Frankel felt the sweat roll down his back under his shirt. Who the hell was she? Not a nun. But the brown cape and brown dress were odd. The Brown Sisters. He couldn’t remember exactly what they were for, not nursing, something to do with the SS. He didn’t know how to greet her, and his right leg began to tremble like a horse’s leg when it sees a piece of paper fly across the riding ring and is getting ready to bolt.

“Heil Hitler,” the woman screamed.

“Heil Hitler,” he screamed back. Major Frankel stared at the Oberführer’s chest and had to stop himself from smiling. Oak wreathes, swords on top of oak leaves, swastikas, glittering lines of medals. Everyone a piece of crap. A bunch of damn medals for physical fitness. Athletic medals.

The SS man walked up the steps in front of the woman and felt a moment of disgust. It was obvious why the Major was in this dung heap of a village. He was a cripple. Hideous looking with that scarred face. And sweating like a pig, of course. The Major jumped for the office door too late. The SS man opened it and swept inside.

The Oberführer smiled again and turned to let the Major, who was almost walking on his heels, see the smile. Now the Major would sweat even more. And the insolence of it. Wearing his greasy little rag in his buttonhole like he was someone. After the war all these butchers and postal workers would leave the army, and it would be run by professionals.

I should have gotten the door, thought the Major. He was so hot he felt his eyeballs throbbing. I should have opened it. Maybe not. Maybe it was the soldierly thing to do. Men in the field. Everyone paying less attention to things like that. Comrades in arms. He looked around the office. Wiktor, ragged and almost green with fear, his nails black and the desktop scarred and unpolished. Some lint in the corner.

“I’m sorry for this office, Oberführer. It’s impossible to keep clean.”

“The world tells us that everything about our Reich is impossible, but the new German finds only possibility. Only possibility.”

The Oberführer looked at Wiktor and waved his hand. “Go get three women. Quickly.”

Wiktor ran from the room, and Frankel winced. By God, the bastard had jumped.

“I’m sure you’re right, Oberführer. Any correction would be appreciated.”

“You saw, of course, that the man did not salute and respond to my order. We’ll take care of that. Just a detail, but details are the bricks that build success.”

He’s like a fucking training film, the Major thought. No one’s talked that way since last winter.

The woman was still standing. Frankel didn’t think that his grandmother would have worn such an ugly bonnet. He smiled at her, and she did not smile back.

“Sister Rosa will need accommodations. She’s helping me with my efforts.”

“Of course, Oberführer.” Sucking his cock every night, Frankel thought. Sucking his ass if he wants. Ugly cunt. Won’t smile at anybody but the SS.

“If you don’t need me, Oberführer, I will take a walk and look at the village.”

“Of course, Sister. Your eagerness to work is always commendable.”

The woman left the room, her brown cape sweeping around her. Face like a mule’s bottom, Frankel thought. It was starting to snow. Walking around. What the hell for? What sort of work?

A gabbling sound came from the hall, and three women were shoved into the office by Wiktor. One of them kept trying to put her body between the Major and the youngest woman.

“Ladies.” The Oberführer smiled, and Major Frankel saw the fear in their eyes.

First it was stark fear, fear from the black and silver that the Poles must see in their nightmares now. But then Frankel saw another thing in their eyes. It was—

Almost a softening. Frankel glanced at the Oberführer and noticed for the first time how handsome he was. With his hat off, his wavy hair sprang up, dark and thick. Pale skin and dark eyes. If his hair had been blond he would have been a recruitment poster for the German army. Handsome cocksucker. Well, a lot of the SS were good-looking. They didn’t take pimply humpbacks. Stalingrad was good enough for the ugly Germans.

The women stared and the Oberführer smiled.

“Ladies.” He went closer and lifted his hand as if he would take theirs. The first woman seemed to think he was going to take her hand and kiss it. She flushed.

Instead his hand went to the woman’s breast and he pinched her nipple between his thumb and middle finger. The woman gasped but did not move.

“Ladies. There has been some sort of mistake. And you will correct it. Yes?”

The Oberführer spoke in German, and Wiktor looked at Frankel.

“Do you wish Wiktor to translate, sir? I doubt these women know German.” The Major prayed to God that Wiktor would translate precisely with no clever additions. The Oberführer might speak Polish himself, and Wiktor could be shot on the spot for incorrect translation. That would be damned inconvenient for getting all the paperwork done in the next months.

“Have him translate.” The Oberführer smiled in a way that made the Major sure that he spoke Polish. He hoped Wiktor would be careful. Wiktor was a piece of trash, but he was a useful piece of trash.

Wiktor snapped his heels and translated slowly and correctly. The older woman looked like she might understand some of the German, but she waited until Wiktor had translated to respond.

“Yes, Oberführer,” all three women said.

They had gotten his rank right. Frankel smiled. He had conducted some of the classes himself. The Poles could tell what rank a German was from twenty yards after his classes.

“Excellent.” He was still clamped on the woman’s nipple, and tears rolled down her face.

“Since you didn’t come prepared, you will use your underclothes for cleaning rags. Strip.”

Wiktor translated and the women dropped their coats on the floor. The youngest looked at Frankel for a moment, and then they all stripped naked.

“Now, ladies. Take your underclothes and make nice rags.”

The sound of cloth tearing filled the room. The women used their teeth in their hurry.

“You see, Frankel. They are always willing, these slaves.”

Frankel was staring at the body of the youngest woman. Not bad. Not too thin and great tits. Not worth being shot for, but nice. He thought of his wife and the guilt rose in him.