Gretel and the Dark (22 page)

At first the shouting seemed no more than a falling-out of neighbours – common enough in this part of Vienna, where growing hardship repeatedly caused a witch-bag of old grievances to burst asunder. Only a few days had passed since Benjamin’s last visit, but he noticed a dramatic increase in graffiti. In some
squares ‘
Judenfrei
’ had been hastily scrawled on almost every wall, even occasionally the more ominous ‘
Judenrein
’, cleansed of the Jews, an impossible claim by those the doctor angrily referred to as simple-minded members of the Christian Socialist Party. From the base of each letter, bright-red paint trickled through the soot and filth, resulting in a curious colour, one Benjamin could hardly put a name to but was nevertheless familiar with, something once seen or dreamed, reminiscent of old blood. The sense of foreboding returned. Benjamin shrugged it off. These things went in cycles; next month it would probably be the turn of the Czechs to be persecuted because of their demands for a bilingual Vienna. The noise grew louder: to the shouts and yells were added the sounds of breaking glass, dull thuds that could only be falling masonry, the pounding of many boots. Though it shamed him, Benjamin had no wish to get caught up in any local skirmish, no matter who was involved. His sole aim was to satisfy his employer’s need for information about Lilie’s background … and Lilie’s, too, he supposed, not that he cared. Where she came from, whatever she’d done, it would never matter to him. That she’d survived and stayed at his side would always be enough.

Benjamin moved away from the uproar, slipping through gaps between buildings, down alleyways running with fetid water, and across neglected squares, his route taking him in a wide arc round the site of the trouble. After a breathless few minutes he stopped, confused: either the disturbance was rapidly moving outwards or his memories of childhood haunts had faded, for now the noise seemed right on top of him – in front, behind, above, below – and yet the streets were almost deserted. He whirled, unsure of which direction to take, headed
towards the Casa Sefardi, and immediately regretted the decision: Schattenplatz was also deserted but clearly something had happened here. Shop windows were smashed, shutters ripped from their hinges; goods and fittings lay scattered over the cobbles. His nose detected the smell of scorched fabric. Wisps of smoke drifted aimlessly. Benjamin took a few steps across the open square, conscious of unseen eyes watching from the windows of the apartments above. On the east side, a baker’s shop had been attacked, tins and trays, scales and weights, thrown into the gutter – recently, too, for one of the large brass weights still rolled from side to side as if trying to right itself – and Benjamin stooped and began collecting them before realizing his action might be misunderstood. He was no looter.

Others had no such qualms. Small movements, at first hardly more than the stirring of the buildings’ shadows, quickly became a horde of scavengers. A bowed old man stumbled forward, attempting to spear a new-baked loaf with his cane, only to have his prize snatched by a rack-ribbed cur. Ragged children spewed from dark crevices snatching up bread – even when it had been fouled by the gutter – tearing it with their teeth as they melted back into their hiding places. Women came running, darting fearful glances behind them, gathering even the smallest morsels of what remained and carrying them away in their skirts. Benjamin ran alongside them. ‘What happened here?’ Nobody answered. He might have been invisible.

The smoke increased. A dull glow in the ragman’s shop threw into relief a line of outmoded coats, investing them with a semblance of life as they twitched and contorted. Moments later, the fire took hold. The front of the shop became a curtain of flame belching forth foul-smelling smoke that crept
along the ground before rising in phantasmal columns, filling the square with ghosts and muting every sound. Into this silence erupted the roars and cries of a multitude of voices, the slap of running feet, and, behind them, countermelody to this cacophony, a steady double beat of marching boots. Benjamin turned to run, but it was too late. The fleeing crowd blundered through the smoke, seeking exits. Their pursuers relentlessly pressed them on, their arms rising from the smoke to fall on heads and backs. Benjamin thought there were grey uniforms, but couldn’t be sure, for it was the loathing on the faces that held the eye. The panic was so great that entrances to the narrowest streets were rapidly blocked. People started falling around him, choking, disappearing beneath the smoke; Benjamin fell, too, managing to scramble upright only by hauling on the boot of one of the attackers. Coughing and gasping, his eyes streaming, he fought against the crowd, elbowing, punching, kicking – a guilt-ridden process, whatever was necessary to survive – making for the opposite side of the square, reasoning that the attention of the aggressors would be focused in front rather than behind.

He was out of luck: a small knot of reinforcements waited here, perched on tumbled stones the better to observe the proceedings. Some were laughing uncontrollably. Another was counting aloud, gripping the collar of a great black dog whose bared teeth and attempted lunges were more terrifying than any amount of barking. One man sat apart, enthroned on a section of wall higher than the rest, polishing a gold Hanukkah lamp – an exquisite thing with a design of prancing stags – with his pocket handkerchief. He was intent on his work and his head remained bowed, but Benjamin’s mouth was suddenly dry. That crown of flaxen hair coupled with the duelling scar
was unmistakeable: he’d come straight to the one person in Vienna he’d been trying to avoid. He quickly turned back towards the square, thinking to hide in the smoke and the madness. Behind him, the laughter stopped. He was suddenly surrounded.

‘What have we here?’

‘Well, well, where you from, boy?’

‘H-here,’ quavered Benjamin. ‘I’m Viennese, like you. I live in Brandstätte.’

‘Hear that, Herr Klingemann? This rat thinks he’s like us.’

‘I heard.’ The fair-haired man slowly descended, passing the lamp to a companion for safekeeping. Benjamin flinched at Klingemann’s smile, guessing what was coming. And he was right: a sharp blow to each ear sent him reeling, first one way and then the other. Someone forced him to his knees and he fell heavily, small stones pressing into his shins. Klingemann leaned over him, coming so close Benjamin could smell the scent of his cigarettes, the undertones of stale tobacco, his hair pomade and a musky perfume that he knew but could not place. ‘You’re nothing like us, boy. You and your ilk aren’t wanted in Vienna. Get that?’

Benjamin’s anger temporarily overrode his fear. ‘I was born here. I’ve got as much right –’ The blow knocked him sideways on to the cobbles, banging the side of his head.

‘You’ve got no rights, rat.’

‘Let’s see what the creature’s made of.’ It was Klingemann’s voice.

Benjamin shook his head violently, trying to get his thoughts into order. ‘I’m just the same as you,’ he began, before realizing he was not the creature referred to. Two paces away, the huge black hound was snarling and yipping, biting at the air,
fighting to get free. Gritting his teeth, Benjamin struggled to rise. He was almost upright when someone kicked the legs from under him. A heavy boot landed between his shoulder blades, pinning him to the ground.

‘You are not the same as us,’ barked Klingemann. ‘The time will come when we’ll prove it to you. Crawl back to your rat hole … No, back down on your hands and knees. Be thankful I’ve more important things to deal with.’ He kicked Benjamin in the ribs. ‘And remember this – you’ve had two warnings about being in places where you’re unwanted. No more chances. The next time I see you, you’ll be wherever you lot go when the life’s beaten out of you.’

Greet feeds Papa’s shirts between the mangle rollers, turning the handle so energetically her words come out in small rushes along with the water. ‘You’ll come to a bad end, my lady, unless you change your ways. Do you know what happens to girls who tell lies?’ I roll my eyes and kick the laundry tub. She elbows me. ‘Stop that. Now, for the last time, did you steal the cake?’

‘No. I don’t like
Spuckkuchen.
’

Greet narrows her eyes. ‘And why’s that?’

‘I only like sweet cherries, not sour ones with the stones left in.’

‘There we are then. You’ve given yourself away nicely. How would you know whether they’re sweet or not without tasting?’ Greet holds up one of my dresses, squashed thin as paper by the wooden rollers. She shakes it alive again; one arm waves goodbye as it drops into the hanging-out basket. ‘I know a story about a girl who couldn’t stop telling bigger and bigger lies until finally the nasty little creature claimed she could spin straw into gold.’

‘Stupid.’

‘Of course it was. Straw’s good for nothing but old cows to chew on.’ Out through the rollers come Papa’s doctor coats, so long and flat they remind me of a picture of Wendy sewing Peter Pan’s shadow back on. Greet seizes each before it touches the ground. She examines them carefully, making sure they’re
white as spilled milk, every trace of the sick people boiled away. ‘Trouble was – the Emperor happened to hear about it. He was very wealthy, but such men always like the idea of being even wealthier. That’s the way of the world. Always has been. Always will be. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Fairness never comes into it. If I had my way –’

She goes on talking to the washing so I pick a dandelion clock and try getting it to tell me the time:
eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf
… Greet once told me if you puffed away every seed your mother would no longer want you. It doesn’t matter any more. I keep blowing until we get up to seven, but it’s already past eleven, which means the dandelion isn’t telling the truth either.

‘What did the Emperor do?’ I ask, when Greet finally stops muttering.

‘He ordered his guards to lock the little liar in a cellar with a cartload of straw and her spinning wheel. And there she had to stay in the dark. Alone. Not even a dry crust to chew, never mind stolen cherry cake. Spinning for her life, until the day wishes could come true and all his treasuries were overflowing with gold.’

‘Why didn’t she climb out of the coal hole?’

‘Emperors don’t use coal. They burn banknotes.’

‘What happened to the girl in the end?’ I dance from one foot to the other, impatient for the rest of the story. ‘Didn’t someone come to rescue her?’

‘No,’ snaps Greet, snatching up the peg-bag. ‘This time the wicked girl had to learn the hard way not to tell lies. She’s probably there still if she hasn’t been eaten alive by hungry rats. Out of my way, I’ve got work to do.’

‘But … but before, you said a little man called Rumpelstiltskin
spun the straw into gold and I … she became Queen.’ I suck hard on my thumb. This is no time for tears.

‘Stories,’ says Greet, ‘are fast travellers, always moving on.’ She empties the bucket of mangle-water over the stones, making me jump out of the way as soap bubbles tinted ultramarine by the Waschblau bag rush towards the drain. ‘Oh, yes, stories change with the wind and the tide and the moon. Half the time they’re only plaited mist anyway so they disappear altogether when daylight shines on them.’

‘When I make up stories I’ll write them down so they won’t disappear or be changed.’

Greet shrugs. ‘Then they won’t be proper stories, will they?’

The bundles of straw where we go each day are taller than Erika and very heavy. There’s no spinning wheel so she twists it into long ropes, which she braids to make shoes. Her hands get covered with little pricks and scratches. Sometimes they bleed. Afterwards her fingers swell up and hurt but still she must continue twisting and braiding, going on and on like the girl in the story who couldn’t stop dancing. Other people here use straw to make bags and sun hats.

Every morning I try to hide, but Erika always knows where to find me. I don’t like coming here. It’s cold and the air is full of dust. Straw doesn’t taste nice and you can’t swallow it however long you chew. I don’t believe cows eat it. There’s nothing to do but sit under the bench and tell Lottie straw stories, ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and the one about the straw bull with the tarred back. I tell them a hundred different ways, but they all end happily. The nastier ones I keep in my head to tell Daniel later. Sometimes I creep into a nearby room and watch mats being woven from reeds. They’re damp and
smell like a riverbank, reminding me of
The Wind in the Willows
. Papa started reading it to me the Christmas before we came here, but he was too busy to finish and Greet said the small letters made her head ache.

When the weather gets really cold, more people vanish. Sometimes they fall right down in the snow like the little match girl. And others melt. Or stay where they’re told and turn overnight into Ice Queen statues. Erika makes me a vest out of an old pinny laced up with string at the front.

‘It’s ugly.’

‘Put it on. An extra layer will help.’

‘Uncle Hraben still has all my nice vests and jerseys in his cupboard.’

‘Stay away from him. Remember what I told you?’

I stick out my lip and say nothing. Erika’s story about what bad men do to little girls was nasty and stupid, like some of the things Greet said when she was cross. But Greet’s stories were always about someone else a long way away, and Erika only talked about what might happen to me. Lottie keeps reminding me about Uncle Hraben’s pinching and prodding; I still don’t believe the rest of it. These days, Erika and Annalies watch me even harder than Greet did, but when they forget I’ll sneak through the rows of tents and run to the tower to get some of my winter things.

Soon it becomes so cold Lena’s nose turns bright red and has a dewdrop hanging from it. At night she lets me sleep cuddled up to her back, which is nice, until she cries in her sleep. The snow makes her sad.

‘Another year coming to an end,’ she says. ‘Another year stolen.’

Annalies doesn’t plait straw any more. Now she goes into
town to clean houses. Sometimes she brings back crusts, ends of sausages, or magpie bits and pieces, hidden in a special pocket sewn inside her skirt. Erika says this is madness and not worth the risk, but Annalies won’t stop.

‘They’ve taken everything from me. Everything. Taking something of theirs, however small and insignificant, is the only thing that makes life worth while.’ Annalies steals apple peels and single earrings, bent spoons, cloves and toothpicks, jar labels, keys to unknown doors and lost boxes, scent-bottle tops, hair pins, spent matches.

One day she comes back with a handful of beans. They’re dry and very hard, wrinkled like fingers that have been in bath water too long. ‘Here, Krysta, a little present. It’s almost Christmas.’ She gives me four, counting them out as if they were gold coins. ‘And who knows, they might turn out to be magic ones.’

‘We can eat those.’ Daniel holds out his hand. I close my fist around them.

‘What if they really are magic beans?’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

Now he’s said that, I won’t give him any. I won’t eat them either because, in the story, Jack’s mother said he was stupid to exchange their old cow for a handful of beans, but look what happened when he planted them. Greet used to plant beans like these in a double row, saying:
One to rot and one to grow, one for the pigeon, one for the crow
. And when they came up every plant had lots of pods, with five or six smooth green beans in each.

‘Hurry up with that podding.’ Greet rattles the pan. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

‘Don’t want to. Won’t. Don’t like beans.’

‘Well, you should. Beans make you grow up big and strong.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You’ve been told before’ – Greet stoops to pick up the beans I’ve pushed on to the floor – ‘what happens to people who say they don’t care. Remember?’

‘No.’ I fold my arms over my chest.

‘Don’t care was made to care,’ she chants, snapping open the pods.

‘Don’t care was hung,

Don’t care was put in a pot

And boiled till he was done.’

‘That’s stupid. Nobody boils people. The pots aren’t big enough. Anyway, beans are nasty. They taste like caterpillars. I won’t ever eat them.’

‘Let’s hope you never have to, then.’ Greet gathers together the empty pods. ‘Did I tell you the story of the poor old woman who had nothing in the world to eat but a few dried-up old beans at the back of her cupboard?’

‘Don’t want to hear.’ I put my hands over my ears, leaving a tiny gap between my fingers for Greet’s voice to squeeze through.

‘Of course,’ continues Greet, chopping dill to go with the beans, ‘the old woman wanted to cook them. So she gathered sticks for a fire, using a handful of straw as kindling. While she was waiting for the fire to grow hot she emptied her few beans into a pan. Now it so happened that a single bean fell, unnoticed, to the floor, where it lay beside a piece of straw. Soon afterwards a burning coal from the fire leapt down between them. Then the straw said: “My dear friends, how did you get here?” ’

‘Stupid. Straw doesn’t talk.’

‘I thought you weren’t listening.’ Greet begins scrubbing the kitchen table. ‘Anyway, the coal replied: “Luckily, I sprang out of the fire, otherwise I’d be dead by now, burnt to ashes.” At that the bean joined in, saying: “I, too, escaped with a whole skin. If the old woman had got me into the pan, I’d have been made into broth without any mercy, like my comrades.” ’

I take my hands off my ears. ‘Why can’t we have a proper story?’

‘Why couldn’t you pod those few beans for me?’ retorts Greet. ‘Stories shouldn’t be left in the middle, so let me finish now I’ve started. Well, like someone else I know, the straw turned up his nose at the mention of broth –’

‘Straws don’t have –’

‘ “I also came close to death,” said the straw. “The old woman destroyed my entire family. She seized a hundred at once and burnt them alive. Luckily, I slipped through her fingers.” Well, the bean, the coal and the piece of straw decided to run away and seek their fortunes together. They hadn’t gone far when they came to a stream. Since there was no bridge, the piece of straw stretched himself across the water so the others could walk over him. But the hot coal stopped halfway, frightened by the sound of rushing water, at which the straw started to burn, then broke into two pieces and tumbled into the stream. The coal fell, too, hissing as she touched the water, and breathed her last. The bean, still watching from the bank, laughed so much she split her sides. By good fortune, a tailor had stopped to rest by the stream and, being a kind-hearted fellow, he sewed her together again. But he only had black thread – which is why all beans have a black seam running up their middle.’

‘Let me see.’

‘No.’ Greet holds the pan out of my reach. ‘You’ll have to wait until you’ve learned to eat up your beans without complaint.’

One Sunday afternoon, Lena comes back smiling and happy because she’s been offered a new job. ‘There’s a sun bed, just imagine … and I’ll be able to wear make-up.’

Erika gets very angry. ‘Are you crazy? Isn’t everything bad enough without losing every last shred of self-respect?’

‘Don’t be like that. I just want to have pretty clothes again, clean clothes –’

‘If you ever get to wear them,’ Erika says, her mouth twisting.

Lena shrugs. ‘It’s only for six months, Erika. Then they’ll let me go home.’

‘Since when did their promises count for anything?’

‘At least I’d feel like a woman and not an animal.’

I sit on the end of the bed, pretending to be mending Lottie’s arms and legs again but listening hard. Perhaps I’ve become an animal without noticing, because now I have to bite my nails off to stop them being claws. When Erika and Lena start shouting bad words at each other, I creep outside and run to the empty aviary with my beans. Each one really does have a black seam along its tummy, so if that story was true, why shouldn’t the others be? After choosing a place next to a metal pillar – so the magic beans have something to climb up – I start digging. The ground is frozen hard. My holes aren’t as deep as Greet’s, but I heap snow over the disturbed earth. ‘One to rot and one to grow, one for the pigeon, one for the crow’ – I say her planting spell three times just to be sure.

Afterwards, I think about visiting Uncle Hraben in his tower.
There would be cake, and toffees, and I could cleverly steal one of my vests and the red gloves embroidered with little snowmen that Greet made for me. Too late: Erika has come looking for me, hunched against the wind and with her eyes red from crying. Without a word, I follow her back to our hut. When I sleep, I dream of climbing up and up a beanstalk, on and on, sunrise, sunset, winter after winter. Finally, I reach the top and step into the magical country of giants, harps playing lullabies, geese that lay golden eggs big enough for six breakfasts, only to find someone has been left behind. But the beanstalk has withered and died. I can’t go back.

I wake sad, and when we trudge past the aviary, there’s no sign of any beanstalk, though in the story Jack’s grew overnight. Perhaps it won’t grow because I forgot to say thank you for the beans. It’s too late now. Annalies never comes back. On Christmas Eve Erika gives me a little bed made of plaited straw for Lottie to sleep in.

Greet gets nasty every time Papa comes back from a hunting trip. Her face turns red. She burns my breakfast and throws plates into the sink.

Blood trickles under the door of the little outside room where the game is kept. The door is locked, just like Bluebeard’s; when I look through the keyhole I see a sad-eyed young deer, some pheasants and a hare hanging from great hooks in the ceiling. Every night cats clean away the blood, which grows darker as the days go on. Next Sunday, Papa’s hunting companions will come for dinner and there must be roast venison, and
Hasenpfeffer
with potato dumplings and
Blaukraut
.