Gretel and the Dark (19 page)

‘You little devil!’ She flicks my legs with the wet dish rag. ‘Your papa will give you what-for when he comes home. Get down, this minute.’ But the shock of the cold water makes me slip and I fall, taking the bowl with me. It breaks into a thousand pieces; there’s glass everywhere. Greet’s face goes white. ‘That was your mama’s!’ she shrieks. ‘Your papa treasured it.
Du schlimmes Mädchen!
You wicked, wicked girl. How shall I ever be able to tell him about this?’

‘Didn’t mean to.’ Scarlet beads blossom from my fingertips. There’s a gash on my leg. I start to wail.

‘Stand perfectly still. Don’t move a muscle.’ Greet fetches a pan and starts picking glass from my hair and clothes. ‘And don’t expect sympathy from me,’ she says. ‘You brought this on yourself. Heaven only knows what will become of such a naughty, disobedient creature.’

Snuffling and miserable, I stare at the floor, counting the shards of glass lodged in the rug:
eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf
…

Each morning, even if it rains, we have to line up outside the shed and wait, like at school. Erika is being my mother, just for now, and I hold her hand until the name-calling starts. Then I stand up very straight and count the bits of gravel around my feet:
eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf …

One day Johanna comes. The name-calling goes on for even longer than usual and when it doesn’t come out right she gets very cross and walks between the rows slapping the back of everyone’s heads. I try counting the slaps
: achtzehn, neunzehn, zwanzig
… Then – twenty-one – Johanna is right by me, so
near I can smell her violet scent. I remember the lovely red ball and the hair slides she gave me, and the book we sometimes looked at together with the pictures of the filthy rats stealing food and biting babies in their cradles. She played games with me too. And braided my hair. When Papa was here Johanna wanted to be my new mama. Forgetting all Erika’s warnings, I step out of line.

‘Hello, Johanna.’

‘No,’ Erika whispers, and claws at my clothes, frantically trying to pull me back. So does Annalies, who is standing on my other side. Johanna turns and looks at me, but I can see from her face she doesn’t want to be my mama any more. I shuffle back into my place and go on counting slaps:
sechzig, einundsechzig
…

Then Johanna is behind Annalies,
slap
, and now me –

Uncle Hraben isn’t like Johanna. He seems very pleased to find me and takes me to see the rabbits. I tell him about Peter, but not about him being set free in the park.

‘These are big rabbits, Krysta, much bigger than ordinary ones. Enormous. And they’re very beautiful. You will never have seen such rabbits.’

The rabbits have their own shed with clean pens and lots of fresh straw. At one end there’s a room with tables where ladies are carefully brushing their coats and putting the loose hair in trays. Most are white like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, but one has black spots on his nose and another is very pale orange.

‘Their fur is used to line hats and jackets,’ Uncle Hraben tells me. ‘Wonderful stuff, rabbit fur. Keeps the cold out better than most things.’

I remember Papa talking about doing things with rabbits, but they must be different ones because the legs of these are too small.

‘Where are the really big rabbits, Uncle Hraben?’

‘You want even bigger ones?’ He laughs. ‘There will be, in time. You have to plan these things, pretty Krysta. For example, if you wanted only golden-haired baby rabbits you would choose the parents very carefully. It’s no good expecting to get beautiful offspring if the mother or father is dark or has a huge nose, nor big healthy ones if either parent is stunted.’

Next to the combing place there’s a kitchen with food being measured out. Someone who looks like Witch Schwitter only not so old is scrubbing huge piles of carrots. On the floor are baskets of tomatoes, celery, greens – broccoli, lettuce, kale, parsley, spinach and endive – and bunches of dill, basil, mint and tarragon. The witch cuts the carrots into small chunks before starting on bowls of apples and plums. I steal a plum. Uncle Hraben laughs again when he notices my cheek bulging.

‘Are you hungry, Krysta? Come with me, in that case.’ We climb three flights of steps to a room that is nearly all windows. ‘This is my tower. Do you like it? Now let’s see.’ He gives me cake and an orange. I remember the way Daniel crammed food in his mouth and make myself peel the orange very carefully. ‘Better?’ he asks. ‘What else have we got, I wonder?’ He opens a little drawer and takes out a Pfennig Riesen holding it just out of reach. ‘How about a little kiss to say thank you?’ His cheek is scratchy. ‘Poor little Krysta with no Papa.’ He pulls me towards him. ‘Sit on my knee. A bit closer … cuddle up, that’s right. Now, what if I was your new father?’ He runs his hand up and down my leg. ‘Would you like that?’ The toffee
clings to my teeth and I can’t say no. After a few moments Uncle Hraben sets me on my feet. ‘I must work. Come back tomorrow. Your new papa will bring some delicious food. What would you like?’

‘Cherries.’

‘Too late for cherries.’

‘Ice cream.’

‘Perhaps.’

We are almost at the door when Uncle Hraben doubles back and stops in front of a cupboard. ‘I expect you’re missing your nice things, Krysta. Don’t worry. They’re safe.’ He opens a door, and my frocks, my skirts and jumpers, socks and knickers and shoes are inside, even my handkerchiefs, all stacked in neat piles.

‘Give them to me.’

He shakes his head. ‘You can’t wear nice things out there, little one. They’d get spoiled, or stolen. You wouldn’t like that, would you? You can have it all later on. Until then, put them on when you come to visit your new father.’

Greet says Papa told her to make sure I eat lots of vegetables, especially green ones, but I don’t believe her. He never eats them. They look like sick.

‘Won’t.’ I move the carrots and cabbage around my plate, squashing them smaller and pushing bits on to the table. When she gets up to fill the kettle, I drop some of the mess on to the floor.

‘Stop that,’ Greet says, without turning round. ‘I know what you’re up to. Finish your food now while it’s hot. It’ll be much worse when it’s cold.’

‘Don’t like it. Won’t eat it.’

‘Never mind “don’t” and “won’t”.’ Greet scowls, placing the teapot between us. ‘You’re going to sit there until every last bit has been eaten.’

‘It tastes nasty. Give me some cake.’

‘Give me some cake, please.’

‘Please,’ I mutter, squeezing the words between my teeth.

‘No,’ Greet says, with a smug smile. ‘Not until that plate’s empty. Then you may have a very small piece. Do you know what happens to girls who only eat cookies, candy and cake? For a start, they never grow up into young ladies. First, their skin starts looking raw as new meat. Next, their hair drops out, and then their teeth. After a while they are so weak they can hardly walk. Their bones turn to rubber. Soon they are crawling everywhere on their hands and knees. And’ – she leans across the table, fixing me with her eye – ‘before too long they are begging strangers in the street for proper food – meat and cheese, bread, potatoes and greens.’

Everyone here is always hungry. They never stop talking about food. When someone tells a story – even if it’s a proper story about princesses or wolves and not one about how things used to be – no one ever wants to know about the beautiful dresses and jewels or how big the palace was, just what they had to eat. Zsofika and her friends play a little game over and over again. ‘What are you cooking today?’ one of them asks. The answer is always the same: ‘Wait a minute. First I have to get the roast out of the oven before it burns.’ When I take Lottie from her hiding place, she agrees with me that it’s a very stupid game.

Some nights, instead of stories or singing, there are pretend feasts in the dark. Each person has to bring a special dish they used to make at home. Weronika brings green borscht.

‘It tastes of spring in this place where it is always winter. Tonight we’ll eat it with black bread and plenty of creamy butter.’

Lottie would turn up her nose if she still had one, because the soup’s made of sorrel and potatoes and you eat it cold. Nobody says a word for a moment, though there are a few sighs and I feel Lena screw up her toes by my head. Someone calls out: ‘It’s delicious, Weronika. Please let me have the recipe.’

Mirela also brings a soup. When she says hers is called
Legényfogó Káposztaleves
everyone laughs. Lena tells me this is because it means Man-catcher Soup, but she doesn’t explain the joke. Everyone laughs some more when Mirela tells us it’s served with soft bread and kisses. She’s also brought
Ürgepörkölt
, which is Squirrel Stew. Lottie says she feels sick. So do I when Riika starts telling us about roast reindeer with rowanberry jelly. Everyone knows only witches eat rowanberries. While we’re waiting for the puddings to come I whisper some more ‘Hansel and Gretel’ to Lottie. She didn’t know about the gingerbread cottage’s secret back garden full of nettles and rapunzel and rowan trees, or about the black mandrakes, which scream when the witch pulls them out of the ground for her dinner. Where real people grow cabbages, she has rows of purple toadstools in between the red-and-white-spotted ones. The witch also keeps slugs in little cages and eats their eggs instead of tapioca. In place of hens she keeps crows that fly off each morning looking for battlegrounds where they can harvest eyes. All around the garden there are hunchbacked willow trees that snatch tiny birds from the air with their knobbly claws and squash them into holes in their trunks.

Lottie is so scared we almost miss the first pudding, makowiec,
which is poppy-seed cake. We take an extra-large slice. Nobody brings any ice cream.

There are many children besides Daniel, but he is my special friend. As autumn turns into winter we play games to keep ourselves warm: Catch, Tag and What’s the Time, Mr Wolf? Hide and Seek is our favourite, though we often find things we don’t want to. There’s more counting now, though everyone has a different way of doing it.

Sometimes, however hard we look and however long we seek, some of our friends hide themselves so well we can’t find them and never see them again. One after another they disappear. It’s like a game of Ten Green Bottles.

‘
Zehn grüne Flaschen, die an die Wand anklammern
,

Ten green bottles, hanging on the wall,

And if one green bottle should accidentally fall –’

I stop because Daniel pulls faces and doesn’t join in with my singing. ‘I had a book about a magic door into a mountain,’ I tell him. ‘The Pied Piper took other children there. Perhaps Casimir and Aisha and the others have found the way on their own. We should look for it, because there’s a wonderful place behind that door.’