Gretel and the Dark (13 page)

Just for a minute, Benjamin allowed himself to imagine a future where he was privileged to protect and care for her. It wasn’t impossible. Whatever she’d been, Lilie now had nothing:
arm wie eine Kirchenmaus
, poor as a church mouse
.
He’d picked her up, as his mother would say, in her birthday suit. Where could she go? How could she live? Perhaps the doctor would let him smarten up the small living space over the stables. He could build a partition, making it into two rooms – beg and borrow some furniture from home. It would be a start. By day they’d work, she in the house, he in the garden or taking the doctor on his rounds, seeing each other frequently, smiling at their shared secrets as they passed. In the evening, he’d study while Lilie sat and sewed or read or arranged flowers. At weekends, when the carriage wasn’t in use, perhaps he’d be allowed to take Lilie for excursions into the countryside, to the Vienna Woods and the castle at Perchtoldsdorf. Maybe even as far as Sankt Pölten, with its Roman remains. When he was qualified and rich he’d rent an apartment in the best part of the city; then they, too, would have a summer retreat in Gmunden –

‘Take that gormless expression off your face,’ bellowed Gudrun, brandishing a wooden spoon.

‘What’s biting you?’ whispered Benjamin. ‘Someone round here’s turning into a she-bear with a sore backside.’

‘What?’

‘Can’t help my face,’ claimed Benjamin.

‘I heard what you said. How dare you! We’ll have a bit more respect, thank you very much, or you’ll be getting your marching orders when
Frau Doktor
Breuer returns and hears about your drunkenness.’

Behind Gudrun’s back, Lilie gave a very small smile. Benjamin returned it with a grin, rolling his eyes for good measure. It was not a wise move.

‘Out!’ bawled Gudrun.

‘Fine. I take it you don’t need any fruit picking then.’ He stopped in the doorway and winked at Lilie.

‘Yes, I’ll have – come back here! How dare you walk away when I’m talking to you? The master will hear about this.’ She looked at Lilie. ‘Take this,’ she said, pushing a large bowl into her hands. ‘Raspberries. I presume you remember what raspberries are. After that, you can pick fresh flowers for the hall.’

‘She’s getting worse,’ said Benjamin, as Lilie emerged into the sunshine. ‘Power’s gone to her head. Be a good thing when the rest of the family returns. Come on, I’ll give you a hand with those raspberries.’ It occurred to him that nobody could see into the fruit cage from the house.

Away from the gloomy kitchen, her hair shone red-gold. The heat from the stove had left it damp so that the small curls lay flat against her skull like those of a cherub. The blouse was too big for her and gaped, leaving a gap through which he could see delicate lacework against her white skin. Benjamin carefully angled himself in the hope of seeing more. He twisted a length of raffia between his fingers and moved closer.

‘I was afraid you were dead,’ he said in a low voice. Lilie glanced at him, but didn’t answer. This close he could see the
greenish shadows of the bruises behind her ear, the top of the rough scabs on her throat. His blood seemed to ignite. ‘Only tell me who did that to you and I’ll kill him. I’ll kill the bastard slowly, very slowly.’

‘I’ll kill him myself,’ she answered quietly. ‘That’s my purpose here.’

‘Was it that filthy club? Were you a prisoner there?’

‘One way or another, we’re all prisoners.’

Benjamin took this cryptic pronouncement as an affirmative. Never mind the doctor’s agenda; he now had one of his own. ‘Let me help you,’ he said, opening the door of the fruit cage.

After one sideways glance, Lilie stepped inside and stood breathing in the hot raspberry fragrance laced with the sharp tomcat smell of blackcurrant leaves, while Benjamin seized a stick and drove out a fledgling blackbird that had found its way through the wire. Crickets zithered in clumps of long grass. A couple of white butterflies performed a ritual dance overhead. Benjamin led her along the rows of denuded fruit bushes until they reached the autumn raspberries.

‘I planted these.’ He reached for a particularly large and luscious specimen. ‘Try it? Have another.’ Feeding Lilie was something he could have spent the rest of the afternoon doing. But after the third, she turned her head away. ‘Don’t you like them? I prefer apricots, myself. What’s your favourite fruit?’

She laughed. ‘Cherries.’

‘They’re finished. Apples and blackberries come next.’

Lilie put her hand on his arm. ‘Daniel, you offered to help me. Can you take me to Linz?’ Benjamin looked at her small hand and then looked away, bitterly disappointed she’d not even remembered his name.

‘Daniel’s my brother,’ he muttered, his voice flat and dead. ‘It was Daniel who found you. Daniel and his friend, Bruno.’

‘Benjamin,’ Lilie corrected herself, looking up into his face so sweetly that he forgave her instantly. ‘Of course.’

‘Linz is a long way, a day’s journey, maybe more. We could take the train, I suppose. Is that where you come from?’

She nodded, but Benjamin was not entirely convinced. He looked at her curiously. ‘Can you really not remember who you are?’

‘I said I had no name. That’s true. It’s not a question of memory.’

‘Were you running away when you were attacked?’

‘No.’ Her lips trembled. ‘No, I was running
to
somewhere, not away.’ She held out the bowl of raspberries. ‘Surely that’s enough. There are only three people in the house.’

‘We’d better fill it,’ said Benjamin. ‘The old hag will gobble up half of them on the sly.’

Josef, strolling through the garden in search of the first naked ladies, the meadow saffron –
Colchicum autumnale –
that grew in abundance beneath the ancient walnut tree and was for him one of the few compensations of approaching autumn, spotted Lilie and Benjamin among the fruit canes and stopped. The sight of their heads so close together made him uneasy. He took a few more steps, saw Benjamin press a deep-red raspberry between the girl’s lips, heard her laugh out loud, and turned away, biting hard on his knuckles as sick envy struck him, sharp as a physical blow, dead centre of his solar plexus.

An urgent need to regain the sanctuary of his consulting room sent him blundering straight through the herb garden, but with eyes so misted he could barely see the narrow path.
His feet strayed, crushing plants right and left, unleashing admonishing fragrances, an unspoken language of culinary flowers: the sharp citrus tang of lad’s love; the evocative scent of mint, alleged by Culpeper – as by the Ancient Greeks – to stir an old man’s lust; Gudrun’s caraway, said to stop husbands straying; and the acrid stink of rue, herb of repentance, of regret. Finally, another, redolent of all things domestic – so strong that it lay like a taste on the air – reached out to claim him and Josef knew he’d stumbled into the swathe of rosemary bushes where the washerwoman spread small articles of household linen to dry in the old-fashioned way. He sank on to the mossy bench nearby and kneaded his calves. Old age was creeping up on him; any more of this foolishness and he’d end up an object of ridicule, or worse, as had the reprehensible pair of elders in Daniel who lusted after the youth and beauty of Susanna. His father had told him the story half a century ago. It was only now, though, that Josef realized that Leopold – who’d always seemed ancient, as fathers often do to their offspring – had been almost fifty, just seven years younger than he was now, when he’d married the beautiful and cultivated daughter of an established silk merchant. A tiny shock ran through Josef as he was struck by a second realization: Bertha Semler, his doomed mother, had only been twenty-two, near enough Lilie’s age. It was not unthinkable –

Enough
. The situations were entirely different. And as for Benjamin, he was a decent young man who might go far. What better match, questions of faith aside, could there be for Lilie if she were truly lost?

But what if she weren’t? The behaviour he’d just observed was very different to that exhibited during their formal consultations. She looked perfectly at ease with Benjamin, talking,
laughing and moving without any of that somnolent stiffness or hesitancy of speech. If Bertha Pappenheim had planted the girl in his household then Benjamin, being so easily swayed by a pretty face, was undoubtedly part of the conspiracy. Josef could hardly believe the boy would betray his generous friendship, but it had happened before. In spite of patronage, the gifts and the freedom of his homes – none of which Josef begrudged him – Sigmund now not only cold-shouldered him in public but spoke disparagingly to mutual acquaintances of his timidity, his over-cautiousness, his
oddity
, not only professionally, but as a man. And all, it seemed, because he was unable to accept
in toto
his erstwhile colleague’s pronouncements on the subject of sexual aetiology. If one was not with Sigmund, then one was against him; it had always been that way.

Josef nipped off a flowering shoot of rosemary and held it to his nose. Gudrun had been loud in her praise of this herb so he was aware it had other qualities deemed superior to its pleasant association with bed linen, towels and soap. According to her, sprigs under pillows repelled nightmares, Hungary water reduced gout, and an infusion improved memory.
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance –
this time it was Shakespeare backing her claim
.
It was said to be a love charm, too: tap the intended with a sprig and they were compelled to respond. Josef closed his eyes and allowed his imagination to conjure a blissful moment of fulfilment before letting the rosemary slip through his fingers on to the cold bare ground.

This morning Witch Schwitter spends a long time admiring my hairstyle. The plaits are wound round my head to make a little crown. Greet sometimes did it this way on special days or when we went to the place where they put all the flowers on the ground.

‘Somebody did a good job. Not your father, surely?’

‘Johanna.’ I move out of the way so big fat Ursel can push the carpet sweeper under the table to look for crumbs.

‘Oh. And when did she do it?’

‘Before breakfast. I don’t like my hair like this. The hairgrips stick in me. It’s too heavy. My neck aches.’

‘One must suffer for beauty,’ says the witch, tapping me with her wand. ‘Tell me, did Johanna have breakfast with you?’

‘She only has coffee in the morning.’ The witch and Ursel exchange glances.

‘I see. And –’ The witch starts to ask something else, but seems to change her mind and tells Ursel what she wants for lunch instead. When we’re by ourselves, she says: ‘Well, Krysta, you look like a little princess today so mind you behave like one.’

‘My great-grandmamma was a real princess.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘She was. She was,’ I protest.

‘A fairy princess?’

‘Don’t be silly. My great-grandmamma was a
real
princess. In India.’

‘You’re the one being silly, Krysta. If that was so you’d be black as a gipsy, and look at you, a perfect little golden-haired
Fräulein
, white as snow, so we’ll have no more of your nonsense.’ I poke out my tongue but Witch Schwitter is too busy rummaging in her basket to notice. ‘Come along, now. Look what I’ve got for you.’ She holds up a wooden cotton reel. Greet had lots of reels wound with different-colour threads in her mending box, but this one has four little nails hammered in the top. In her other claw there’s a ball of wool.

‘What’s that for?’

‘
Nahliesle
. Some people call it French knitting. This one belonged to my youngest granddaughter, Frederica, but she knits like a grown-up now and she’s only seven.’

‘Is your granddaughter a witch, too?’

‘Good gracious, child, what put that into your head?’ She twists wool around the nails, letting one end hang down through the hole in the middle. ‘There, I’ve started you off. Now, watch carefully. This is much easier than working with two needles. Hold the reel in your left hand,
so
, now bring the wool round the nail and pull the loop that’s already there waiting over the top of it with your needle.’ She does a few stitches for me. ‘And out of the bottom grows a knitted tube, see? It’s very quick. You can make pretty winter stockings for your doll.’

‘Don’t want to.’

‘But you will do some, Krysta.’ Witch Schwitter’s eyes glint and her two long teeth appear. ‘This is special magic wool. It changes colour as you knit. At the moment the colour is blue. Do a few rounds and it will become pink then yellow or green. Now you try.’

She watches me work a few stitches. I hate the stupid thing.
My fingers feel hot and sticky. I want to play. As soon as she starts looking at her magazine with a picture on the cover of men smiling and waving I pull all the stitches off so that the silly tube falls to the floor. The witch sighs and clicks her tongue but says nothing. She picks it all up, puts the stitches back on the nails and closes one of my hands on the reel, the other round the needle.

‘Act up all you like, Krysta. I’ve got nothing better to do and it doesn’t bother me one little bit. We’ll just sit here together – all day if need be – until you’ve produced something satisfactory.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I said so. And it’s about time you learned simple obedience.’

‘Why?’

‘Quiet now.’ The witch reaches for her wand. ‘Concentrate.’

I grind my teeth and whisper bad words. This time she keeps watching me until I get past the pink and on to yellow. Then she does a bit more, binds the stupid tube off and gives it to me.

‘That’s long enough for one doll’s stocking. Tomorrow we’ll make the second. Well done, Krysta. Play with your doll now while I finish my magazine.’

I sit in the corner with Lottie. She wants to hear ‘Hansel and Gretel’ again, but only the part where the witch gets pushed in the oven. Today we make the fire extra hot and the witch screams so loudly all the windows in the gingerbread cottage break into countless fragments of barley sugar. We sit and eat them while the witch burns. When we look in the oven all that’s left are her nasty yellow fingernails and two long teeth.

Ursel comes in and Witch Schwitter shows her something in the magazine, a picture, I think. They both look at me. I try the silly tube thing on Lottie’s leg. She doesn’t like it because it’s
itchy and has no proper foot. I tell her we’ll get real stockings from a shop. I want to throw the stupid thing away but it’s difficult to get off and I have to pull so hard Lottie’s leg comes loose from her body, leaving a gap. Inside, I can see the cord that holds it on.

I decide we’ll play rabbit doctors and borrow Witch Schwitter’s little scissors.
Snip
,
snip
,
snip
. Lottie makes such terrible noises that I put a cushion over her face. One leg falls off and I hold it up, pretending to be a nurse. Then the other leg falls off.

‘What in God’s name are you up to?’ demands Ursel, standing over me, clutching her duster. She pushes the cushion away with her foot and grabs Lottie. ‘Look what the little devil’s done now. It’s ruined. When I think of what this doll must have cost … most girls would be grateful.’ She taps her head. ‘Not normal, that’s what I say. Something’s not up to the mark.’

The witch waves the magazine. ‘What did I tell you?’ She holds out her claw for Lottie. ‘Bring the doll’s legs here, Krysta. Let’s see if she can be mended.’

‘No.’

‘Be quick or your father will see what you’ve done. Come on, now. I’ve fixed many broken dolls in my time.’ To Ursel, she says: ‘Get them for me, please. I don’t want to be held responsible for damage of that kind.’

Ursel grabs my hands, tearing the legs from my fingers.

‘Stop that.’ I scratch her arm and try to kick her. ‘I don’t want you to fix her. She’s being a rabbit.’

‘It’s a doll,’ grates Ursel, pushing me so hard I fall over. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘The legs are only held on with elastic,’ says the witch. ‘A thick rubber band will do the job. The boys often pull arms and
legs off their sisters’ dolls – heads, too, sometimes – to play funerals.’

‘Boys will be boys.’ Ursel shakes her head but doesn’t look cross. ‘That’s only natural. But I never came across a girl who did such nasty things.’

They fiddle around with Lottie, taking no notice of her screams. When her legs are back in place again Ursel puts her on top of the bookcase until I learn to behave myself. They don’t put her knickers on.

Uncle Hraben brings me a paper cone of jelly babies. I sort them into colours. The black ones taste best. The reds are next, but orange and green and yellow taste of nothing. I used to bite their heads off first. This time I try starting with the legs.

‘You’re looking very grown-up today,’ he says, poking my hair.

‘I don’t like it.’

‘Nor me. I prefer it loose.’ Uncle Hraben pauses. ‘I haven’t told anyone about you climbing out of the window, naughty Krysta.’

‘I didn’t tell anyone about you hitting the little boy,’ I say, my mouth full of legs.

‘How many more times, Krysta? There was no boy.’

‘I get smacked if I tell fibs.’

‘Do you like being smacked?’ Uncle Hraben slides his hand under my skirt and pats my bottom. He forgets to take his hand away.

‘No.’ I snatch up the sweets and move to the other side of the table. ‘Do you?’

He laughs very loudly. ‘It depends. Not by your papa, if that’s what you mean. As for the window, he won’t be taking
you to the infirmary again.’ He gives me a funny look. ‘Not after what happened.’

The witch didn’t take her magazine home. It’s still on the chair when Johanna comes. This evening she’s wearing a blue frock that clings to her legs. Her eyelids have turned blue to match.

‘Ooh, is that this month’s?’

‘Don’t know.’ I ask her to reach Lottie down. ‘Bad Charlotte.’ Her legs are floppier than they used to be and she won’t sit properly.

‘How’s your hair? I’m sure everyone liked it. Now, have you been a good girl today?’ I don’t answer. Johanna has big hands that look as if they’re always ready for some smacking. She doesn’t want to know anyway. ‘Let’s see what I’ve got in my pocket for you.’

This time she’s brought me new hair slides, only I don’t think they are new at all because there’s a bit of dark hair tangled in one. They smell of the stuff Greet used to pour in the lavatory. Two are like little branches with rainbow-coloured baby birds sitting in a row. The others have metal bows, red with white spots.

‘Like Minnie Mouse,’ she says.

‘Minnie Mouse is stupid.’

‘Where are your manners, Krysta?’ asks Papa, back from his hand-washing but still twisting them round each other. ‘Say thank you to Aunt Johanna.’

‘Thank you, Aunt Johanna,’ I say in my very smallest voice. Johanna smiles.

‘Just Johanna will do, Krysta. Which pair do you like best?’ I point to the birds. ‘Good choice.’ She glances at Papa. ‘I’ll put them in your hair tomorrow morning.’

Papa unlocks the cupboard and takes out a new bottle of the special water. He pours a glass for himself and drinks it all in one go. Johanna looks at him then looks at the bottle. I laugh.

‘Where are your manners, Papa?’

‘That’s enough of that,’ he says, frowning, but gets a second glass for Johanna. She has a tiny sip then sits down in the witch’s chair and opens the magazine. ‘Have you seen this article, Conrad?’

Papa stands behind Johanna and looks at the pages she’s pointing to. After a moment his face goes funny. He frowns and his lips go away, leaving his mouth like a letter-box opening.

‘Why are you showing me this?’

‘Aren’t you interested?’

‘Why should I be?’

I sneak up behind them and look under Papa’s arm. There are pictures of ugly ladies and a troll. At the top of the page is a heading in big letters. I spell it out:
Frauen, die nicht Mütter werden dürfen.

‘Why does it say they aren’t allowed to become mothers?’

‘In case they pass something on,’ says Johanna. ‘I mean, look at them. They’re hardly human. Sometimes, though, you can’t tell what’s wrong from appearances –’

Papa snatches the magazine and screws it into a ball. ‘Go outside, Krysta.’

‘You said I had to stay in. You said –’

‘Do as you’re told. Now.’

I stamp my feet as I leave, then creep back on tiptoe to listen.

‘Remarkably like blackmail,’ Papa is saying. ‘I would have expected better of you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Johanna pretends to cry. She isn’t very good at it. Then she starts telling him over and over again that she’s sorry. After a bit Papa says it’s all right. He holds her hand to make her feel better and lends her a big white handkerchief with his initials on. When she blows Johanna sounds like the coalman’s horse harrumphing into his nosebag. Lottie and I go inside the flowering currant bush to look at the powder compact we took out of Johanna’s bag. It’s round and pale green with a picture of a lady in an old-fashioned gown and bonnet. I powder Lottie’s nose and then mine. After we’ve looked at ourselves in the little mirror we rub it off and go back inside. Papa is staring at the wall. Johanna is smiling.

‘Would you like to play a game, Krysta?’ She gets out the
Damespiel
board and acts as if she’s stupid so I win. It was better when Greet and I played draughts. She hated losing. Once, when she lost six times in a row, she knocked the board off the table and pretended it was an accident.

‘What shall we do now? Do you know any poems, Krysta?’

Papa doesn’t like Greet’s poems so I shake my head and sing her the ‘
Alle meine
Entchen
’ song instead:

‘All my ducklings

Swimming in the lake

Little heads down in the water

Tails up in the air.’

‘Very nice,’ she says, and begins to clap.

‘I haven’t finished, stupid.’

‘
Krysta!
’ bellows Papa. ‘Apologize immediately.’ I pretend not to hear.

‘All my little doves

Settle on the roof,

Klipper
,
klapper
,
klapp
,
klapp
,

Fly over the roof.’

Der Sandmann
comes in the middle of the night. Before, he always had a little torch. He leaned over the bed sniffing me and sometimes he felt under the bedclothes while I pretended to be asleep. Greet says he can’t steal your eyes to feed to his children as long as you keep them tight shut. Sometimes I have to look but I only open one eye a tiny bit. In the morning I’d know it wasn’t a dream because I’d find a Negerkuss or a Pfennig Riesen under my hairbrush. Tonight he’s forgotten his torch and keeps crashing into things in the dark. When the moon comes out from behind her cloud to see what’s going on, Lottie whispers that it’s not the Sandman but a
Böggelmann
. There’s a big sack on the floor and he’s banging around, opening everything looking for us, and I quickly put my thumb in my mouth to stop myself screaming because it’s
der Kinderfresser
, the terrible Child-guzzler, with his sack of arms and legs and sometimes whole children. I slide under the bed, keeping my hand over Lottie’s mouth. I’m trembling all over, even worse than the time I hid from Greet after breaking the string of her pearl necklace and she came running up the stairs with the rug beater, threatening to tan my hide.

Then the lights are switched on because Papa has come.
Der Kinderfresser
turns himself into a shadow.