Gretel and the Dark (14 page)

I get up quickly. Papa smells funny. He’s emptying the cupboards and drawers, squashing my clothes and books, toys and hairbrush into a bag.

‘Papa, what’s the matter?’

‘Get dressed. We’re going on a journey.’

‘Are we going home, Papa?’

‘No. Somewhere else, over the sea, far away –’

‘Conrad?’ Johanna comes in, wearing only her vest and knickers. They are shiny and pink. She has a floppy bottom and big titties, but not nearly as big as Greet’s. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Can’t do it any more. It’s killing me. I’ve got to get out of here.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Conrad. You’re drunk. Sleep it off. Things will look different in the morning.’ She tries to put her arms round him. ‘Come back to bed.’

‘Leave me alone, you ugly cow.’ Papa pushes her away and starts washing his hands in the air. ‘Clear off.’

Johanna’s mouth falls open. ‘You don’t mean that. Not after what we’ve just –’

‘I didn’t invite you to stay.’

Then Johanna slaps Papa’s face and says a very bad word. She beats her fists against his chest, but he pushes her away and stumbles out of the room. Johanna makes me get into bed.

‘Go to sleep, Krysta. Your father is very tired. Everything will be all right in the morning.’

I lie awake for a long time in case any other bogeymen come. Johanna and Papa shout at each other. Then a door slams. Everything’s very quiet. An owl hoots. One of the zoo animals starts howling. A bit later I hear another door close more quietly. I watch a star looking back at me where the curtains aren’t pulled properly. If you stare really hard for a long time without blinking it looks as if the star’s falling to Earth. Greet said stars were the eyes of dead people watching us.

‘
Funkel, funkel, kleiner Stern
,’ I whisper into the darkness. ‘How I wonder who you are.’

Papa usually wakes me by shouting ‘I won’t tell you again,’ but today it’s only the cups and saucers clinking, so I know one of the witches has already brought our breakfast. I pick Lottie off the floor and we see it’s nasty fat Ursel with Papa’s coffee and rolls and more horrible creamed wheat for me.

‘Oh,’ she says, looking at my nightie, ‘not even dressed yet? Get a move on, girl. Frau Schwitter will be here soon.’ She picks up the two empty bottles, holding them away from her as if they might bite. ‘You’d better wake your father. Looks like he made a night of it.’

But Papa doesn’t want to wake up. He keeps the blankets over his head even when I see his trousers on a chair and feel in all the pockets. Lottie hides the fifty-Reichspfennig piece she stole under the loose corner of linoleum by my bed. Johanna doesn’t come to do my hair. Good. I sit and read my book. After I’ve finished the story I wash the bits Papa might notice and put on my very best frock and new white socks. I go to show Papa how pretty I look but he won’t wake up, even when I shout very loudly and kick the bed. I pull his pillow from under his head and still he doesn’t move. Lottie and I try some of Papa’s coffee with lots of sugar in, like Johanna drinks it, and eat one of his rolls, spread with butter and some more sugar. Lottie says she feels sick.

Herta comes looking for Papa and tells me to take my thumb out of my mouth. ‘Where’s your father? He’s late. There’s a busy schedule and we can’t start without him.’

‘Papa doesn’t want to get up.’

‘Really? We’ll see about that.’ Herta stands with her hands
on her hips. ‘Is he on his own in there? Right.’ She strides over to his door and raps on it with her big hard knuckles before going in. There’s a funny noise, a bit like a hen squawking when it’s having its neck wrung. Then she runs out and starts yelling so loudly some of the men come racing up the stairs.

‘What’s the matter?’ asks one, grinning all over his face. I’ve seen him before. He has orange hair and lots of freckles. His voice sounds like fir cones burning. ‘Chased by a spider?’

‘In there.’ Herta gasps, holding her neck with one hand and pointing with the other. ‘Strangled.’

‘Has the spider bitten Papa?’ Greet said some spiders hide under lavatory seats and bite your bottom if you sit for too long. ‘What’s the matter with my papa?’ No one answers. ‘What’s “
strangled
”?’ The other men crowd into Papa’s room but the orange-haired man only looks from the doorway. His face turns serious. He puts his hands on Herta’s shoulders.

‘How long?’

‘Cold,’ she says, rubbing her hands up and down her throat. ‘He’s cold. Stiff.’

‘So it happened last night. One of them must have broken out and come looking for the doctor.’

Herta shakes her head. ‘Even if they could, how would they know exactly where to find him?’

‘Animal cunning. You know what they’re like.’

‘But it would take some strength to …’ Herta goes through her pockets for a cigarette, and the orange man lights it. Her hands are trembling. After a few puffs she says: ‘Perhaps you’re right, Metzger. Yes, that must be what happened.’

I stand against the wall in Papa’s room. He still doesn’t wake up, even though the other men are being very noisy, examining everything – under the bed, in the wardrobe, behind the tallboy.
One of them is trying the window, opening and shutting it, opening and shutting. Then some go into my room. I follow and watch them find the bag stuffed full of clothes and toys. Herta stares at it.

‘Johanna’s right. He
was
planning to run away.’

A tall, thin man leaves and comes back with Uncle Hraben, who is smiling and looking cross at the same time. He goes into Papa’s room and shouts a lot of very bad words. All the other men go away except Metzger with his funny orange hair, who stands across the doorway. When Uncle Hraben comes out and picks me up, I start to cry.

‘Why won’t Papa wake up?’

‘Don’t be alarmed,
mein kleines Mädchen.
Your Uncle Hraben will take care of you.’ He pushes my hair back. ‘Now, listen carefully. I see one of the maids must have brought breakfast. Was anyone else here? Have you seen any strangers?’

‘Only
der Kinderfresser
.’

‘The Child-guzzler?’ Uncle Hraben’s smile grows even wider. ‘No, no, Krysta, I mean real people, after tea time yesterday and before breakfast arrived this morning.’

‘First Johanna came,’ I say crossly, ‘and then
der Kinderfresser
. I thought it was the Sandman, only it wasn’t, because he had a big sack. Anyway, the Sandman always leaves me a sweet, and there wasn’t one. After that, Johanna and Papa shouted at each other.’

Uncle Hraben frowns. ‘Johanna was here last night?’

‘Yes.’ I struggle to get down. ‘Let go. I want my papa.’

‘No, she wasn’t,’ says Herta, giving him a funny look. ‘Johanna was with me. She was very upset about … something. We spent half the night talking.’

‘That’s not right.’ Uncle Hraben finally puts me down, and I stamp my foot. ‘She was here with me and Papa.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Herta narrows her eyes and glares. She doesn’t frighten me but I get behind Uncle Hraben just in case. He reaches into his pocket and secretly passes me a liquorice wheel.

‘Johanna played draughts with me and brushed my hair. Afterwards she took off her frock. She came in my room wearing just her vest and knickers. I saw her titties.’

Metzger makes a funny noise and tries to pretend he was coughing. Uncle Hraben puts his hand over his mouth. Herta scowls at both of them.

‘The little fool’s been dreaming.’

‘Anyway.’ I get her powder compact from its hiding place beneath the cushion and leave the liquorice wheel there for later. ‘Look – Johanna left this behind.’

Herta shrugs. ‘Yes, that’s hers, but she could have left it at any time.’

‘Yesterday,’ I insist, and put my thumb in my mouth.

‘You know what happens to children who do that,’ says Herta, dragging it out with two fingers closing like scissors.

In hobbles Witch Schwitter, leaning on her magic wand so people think it’s a walking stick. She opens her eyes very wide when she sees me. ‘Krysta?’ She looks round at the others. ‘What are you all thinking of? Where’s your decency? This is the last place the child should be. Come, Krysta, let’s go down to the kitchen. Maybe we can find you something nice to eat.’

Ursel comes running up the stairs. Her face is bright red. She’s so hot and out of breath she has a moustache made out of little sweat beads. ‘Is it true? Downstairs they’re saying someone’s throttled the life out of him. I was up here less than an hour ago. If I’d known …’ Ursel shudders. ‘Is he really dead?’

Suddenly I’m scared. I pick up Lottie and hold her very tight.
‘Who’s dead?’ Everyone turns to look at me. ‘Who’s dead?’ I yell.

‘There’s been an accident, Krysta,’ says Witch Schwitter, pulling me out of the room with one claw. I fight her. She has to let go because she needs both hands and she won’t let go of her wand. I duck under Metzger’s arm and run back into Papa’s room.

Papa is still on the bed. Someone has pulled the blankets off his head and he has no clothes on. He looks funny, like a big doll, except dolls don’t have hairy fronts. He’s asleep with his eyes wide open and has big purple marks around his neck.

‘The hedge was as high as this house,’ says Greet as she rubs butter into the flour, ‘and as thick as the length of this room. In summer it was smothered with dark-red roses. So beautiful was their perfume you could smell it five miles away. Their scent was what drew the prince to Sleeping Beauty’s castle.’ She turns the pastry on to the board. ‘Pass me the rolling pin, Krysta.’
Thump
.
Thump
. The ball is divided in two and rolled into circles. Greet presses the biggest one into a dish. I go on picking stones out of the dried lentils.

‘What sort of pie will it be?’

‘Kitten-and-Rapunzel pie. Waste not, want not: the cat next door had babies and the cook drowned them in a bucket. Do you want the story or don’t you?’

‘Won’t eat kitten pie.’

‘Then you’ll have no pudding.’

‘Don’t care. What did the prince do next?’

‘Well, underneath the roses were sharp thorns as big as your little finger and curved like a wicked Turk’s scimitar, so he took out his sword and began to chop at the stems.’ Greet slices the air with the butter knife. ‘He cut the stems and the thorns cut him back till the ground was knee deep in red petals and scarlet blood. It took him a week, perhaps longer, but he finally made a hole big enough to crawl through. And there was the castle, still
with the spell on it, everyone and everything fast asleep: cooks, maids, horses, hounds. Dust everywhere.
Schmutz!
’ She slaps at the wall with her fly swat, picks the half-dead bluebottle up by one wing and carries it to the open window. ‘Even the filthy flies.’

‘Yes, but what about Sleeping Beauty?’

‘She was asleep too.’ Greet yawns. ‘She’d been asleep for a long, long time.’

I’m so impatient my feet won’t keep still. ‘Go on, go on.’

‘Later, perhaps – I’m too tired now. Besides, I’ve all these kittens to chop up and their eyes to gouge out.’

I peer into the basin. ‘Those aren’t kittens, they’re the pigeons you bought in the market.’

‘Are you sure?’ Greet laughs and pokes the bloody corpses. ‘Listen. Do you hear something?’ She covers her mouth. ‘
Miaow
,
miaow
,
miaoooow
.’

‘That’s silly. You’re doing the noises. Anyway, I know the end of the story. The prince kisses Sleeping Beauty and she wakes up –’

Someone is shaking me. Then a hand slaps my face, first the left side, then the right. I blink, and Ursel is standing over me.

‘Snap out of it.’

Uncle Hraben grabs her wrist. ‘What was that for? Leave the poor child alone.’

‘What, let her stand there for another five minutes with her mouth open, staring into thin air? It’s some kind of fit. Don’t look at me like that – someone had to do something.’

Witch Schwitter puts her skinny witch arm round me. ‘Come, Krysta, time for us to go downstairs.’

‘No! No! Wait.’ I throw myself on top of Papa and kiss him. He’s a funny colour and his cheek feels as if he’s just come inside on a snowy winter’s night. His eyes stare straight at me but he doesn’t wake up so I kiss him again and again until Uncle Hraben pulls me away. When Witch Schwitter leans over and closes Papa’s eyes, I remember him doing that to Mama after he opened all the windows. Everyone moves aside because Johanna has come and her face is a horrible puddle-grey with big dark rings under her eyes.

‘Conrad? They told me someone had –’ She touches his wrist.

‘It’s only a spell,’ I tell her. ‘You’ve got to kiss him and then he’ll wake up.’

‘He’s dead, Krysta,’ she says flatly. ‘Gone.’

‘No, he isn’t.’ I stamp my foot and start kicking the end of the bed. ‘Papa! Papa! Wake up.’

‘No great loss, as it turns out,’ says Metzger, shrugging his shoulders and raising his voice above my noise.

‘Shhhh!’ Witch Schwitter looks very cross and nods in my direction. ‘Aren’t things bad enough without –’ She tries to pull me towards her, but I won’t go.

‘Squeamish sod was about to bugger off, abandoning a vital research project, one that might have helped thousands of heroes. More than that, it’s an insult to the –’

‘I’ll kill whoever did this with my bare hands,’ says Johanna, staring straight at him. ‘I’ll stomp them into the ground.’

Metzger sticks his chin out. ‘Don’t look at me. I don’t go sneaking around bedrooms in the dark. I’d have stood him up against a wall and shot him.’

‘It was one of them,’ says Uncle Hraben. ‘They must have broken out and found their way in here.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Johanna says, glaring at him. ‘How could the creatures escape? The bloody wall’s twice your height with electrified barbed wire on top.’

I pinch Papa’s toes through the bedcovers. I kick the bed harder so she has to shout to make Uncle Hraben hear. He goes on talking as if he hasn’t heard.

‘I’ve already ordered an additional roll call –’

‘That was quick.’ Johanna narrows her eyes. ‘Exactly when did you do that?’

‘Earlier.’ Uncle Hraben and Johanna stare at each other. ‘It’s better this way.’ She opens her mouth to say something but he sticks out his arm and she seems to change her mind. ‘They’re checking numbers right now. Examples will have to be made – two hundred for one. That should teach the murdering swine.’ He looks around. ‘We’ll keep this an internal matter. Frau Schwitter, can we rely on you to do what’s necessary here?’