Gretel and the Dark (35 page)

The witch repeats the word several times – it doesn’t seem to be one she knows – before taking off her apron and folding it to make a sling. ‘Let him rest. You, come with me.’

‘No. Why?’ I want to stay with Daniel. His face is running with sweat and he’s doing the terrible silent panting again. I write a bit more story in my head:
By mid-afternoon the boy’s condition had worsened. Clearly, his internal injuries were even more serious than suspected: Benjamin was feverish, raging, speaking in tongues
.

The witch interrupts me. ‘Stop daydreaming, girl, if you want to eat. And don’t forget he’ll need water.’

I follow Agnieszka unwillingly along paths littered with fallen bean flowers that look like crushed butterflies; already some of the parent plants are bending under the weight of swelling bean pods. When she unlocks the door to the tower, I catch my breath, covering my nose against the acrid stink of pigeon shit. The birds panic, taking flight in a blizzard of cast feathers: Mother Holle is shaking her quilt. As the air settles I see the curved walls are lined, floor to ceiling, with nesting cubicles set into the thickness of the bricks. At the centre, a tall wooden pillar rises from heaped droppings. It has two stout moveable arms at right angles to which ladders are attached, and the doves fly up again as the witch begins to climb the nearest.

‘Madhouse,’ she says, but it’s not the one I’d hoped for, and
my story is slipping away from me. The characters are becoming hazy: Gudrun has been overlaid by Greet and when I try picturing Benjamin I see only Daniel. Even Josef is fading back into history, where he belongs. Perhaps I am a ghost to him …
And Lilie was walking along the corridor away from him, already made small by distance. Josef began to run, his footfalls heavy against the polished wood, but every step widened the gap, until she was little more than a pale shadow, a phantom, an illusion, a creature spun of moonlight.

‘Wake up, girl,’ bawls the witch, passing me down a clutch of small white eggs. The ladder moves on, nest to nest, and I follow behind, holding the harvest in my cupped hands.

After she’s collected enough, Agnieszka climbs down and leads me out into the sunshine, pushing though overgrown shrubs until we’re standing in a courtyard behind the ruined house. Water drips from an old-fashioned pump. Feathers blow backwards, forwards, over the mossy cobbles, and flies gather around a bloody mess partly covered by roof tiles. Nobody else lives here. A heap of bones at the end of a long chain show where the watchdog was left tethered to the wall. I take its empty drinking bowl to carry water for Daniel.

This side of the house is in worse shape than the front. Walls have fallen in; beams and tumbled masonry block every door. The witch jerks her head towards a window opening. ‘In you go.’ When I hang back, she gives me a little push. ‘Get on with it. Pull yourself up on the frame. It’s easy enough. I’ll be right behind you.’ She must think I’m
einfältig
, not right in the head: everyone knows what happens next in the story.

‘I can’t. I don’t know how. I’m scared of falling.’ Just to prove the point I pretend to blub.

‘
Dummkopf.
Jammerer.
Watch carefully where I put my feet so
next time you can do it without snivelling.’ Once inside, she turns to give me a hand up, but I’m right behind her. This used to be the kitchen, now open to the sky but still with pots on shelves, pans hanging from hooks, and, just as I thought, there’s a huge cooking range with an oven big enough to roast an elephant. I sidle round the witch, keeping my back to the wall, only to discover it’s safe for now: she’s forgotten to light it. Instead she’s breaking up bits of half-burnt wood, making a fire inside a metal drum to boil the doves’ eggs. When they’re cooked she shares them out equally, but I still don’t trust her.

All afternoon, Agnieszka badgers Daniel to teach her more Polish. At first, he deals it out reluctantly, one word at a time.

‘
Medycyna
– medicine.’

‘
Medycyna. Medycyna.
’

‘
Penicylina
– penicillin.’

‘
Penicylina. Penicylina.
This is easy enough,’ she crows. ‘Nothing to it.’

Daniel frowns. ‘My father told me Polish is one of the most difficult languages to learn.’

‘And where’s your father now?’ the witch asks nastily. He doesn’t answer. ‘Teach me some numbers,’ she says. ‘I should at least know how to count up to twenty.’

‘
Jeden
,
dwa
,
trzy
,
cztery
…’ Daniel begins. After eating, he’d seemed better for a while. Now his eyes look strangely bright and he’s panting again. If Agnieszka really was a nurse, she can’t have been a very good one.

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘An infection,’ she says with a shrug, and goes on repeating the numbers, turning the list into a sort of silly chant, until I feel like screaming.

Outside, I carefully nip off a bean pod and open one of the tiny beans to see if there’s any sign of a soul. I’m trying to think myself back into my story and make Josef real enough to make that trip to Linz. I still haven’t decided how I’ll kill the little boy Adolf, but it won’t be difficult – I’ve seen it done in lots of different ways. Hanna said she’d heard he was a lonely child, so it ought to be easy enough to befriend him.

When I return to the shed, the witch is demanding to know about Polish towns. She wants a quiet place where it would be easy to find work and somewhere to live. Daniel’s slumped against the wall. His eyes are closed and he doesn’t answer for a long moment.

‘Jedwabne,’ he says, sitting up, suddenly more alert. ‘You could say you’re from Jedwabne. It’s in the north-east, near Białystok.’

‘Jedwabne?’ The witch frowns over the name. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard of the place. Is it famous? Did something happen there? Have you been to the town? More to the point, would it be a good place to live?’

Daniel nods, but I notice he’s clenching his fists. ‘Jedwabne was once a weaving town. My grandparents lived there. It’s surrounded by beautiful forests and has long, warm summers. So many people have …
left
… in recent years that there are plenty of houses and shops standing empty.’ His mouth tightens. ‘I think you’d fit in there. All you have to learn is
Pochodz
z Jedwabnego
– I come from Jedwabne.’

‘Now we will eat,’ declares Agnieszka, apparently pleased with this prospect. ‘We’ll have a feast. The boy will sing Polish songs for us. And afterwards you’ – she looks at me – ‘can help cut off my hair. Then I’ll tell you about my new idea.’

But before the feast there must be bloody murder. Back we go to the tower.

Evening’s drawing in and the doves are coming home to roost.
Thump
,
thump
,
thump
, go the witch’s feet as she mounts the ladder –
Fee fi fo fum
– and the big wooden ratchet that allows the arms to turn round the central pillar creaks and groans. Some of the doves fly outside, many more flap and jostle beneath the roof, a few even try mobbing Agnieska’s buttercup-yellow head … but the mothers only crouch lower, spreading their wings in a vain attempt to protect their babies. Nothing makes any difference: the witch will kill every last one if she has to, she’ll wipe the entire dove population from the face of the earth. Her big hands lunge, dashing the mothers against the wall, snatching up the squabs.
Snap!
and their necks are broken.
Thud!
The small bodies land in my outstretched skirt. I try doing what I’ve always done – escape into that secret part of me where by magic or heroism I make things turn out differently, leaving behind an automaton, a machine with no feelings whatsoever – but today I can’t. A door has closed. The ideas have gone. The words aren’t there. Perhaps this is what happens when you invent stories inside stories that are themselves inside a fairy tale: they become horribly real.

In the yard, the witch gleefully lays the young doves out for the count. She hacks off their wings with her nurse’s scissors, twists and pulls until their heads come free, plucks the sparse feathers from their breasts – which she then tears from the carcass, throwing the rest away. We climb into the kitchen where she makes
Jungtaube
stew, flavoured with garden herbs, in a battered cauldron. When it’s bubbling and spitting over the oil drum, Agnieszka leaves me for a few minutes.

‘Stay there and make sure it doesn’t burn,’ she yells over her
shoulder. From the noises that follow, she’s climbing over rubble in the rooms beyond, but although I’d like to see what she’s up to I’m more interested in a certain pan the witch surreptitiously pushed out of sight when we came in. On lifting the lid, I realize things aren’t happening in the right order, because Gretel didn’t find the precious stones until after the witch was dead. There again, Gretel wasn’t as curious as me, or as clever. Also, these are gold watches, rings and brooches, pearl necklaces and gold teeth rather than fairy-tale gems.

I want and don’t want to eat the baby-dove stew. It’s very different to the soup we’d grown used to. In the end I manage a few mouthfuls and Daniel gobbles the rest. There is no singing or dancing afterwards, and no hair-cutting either: Agnieszka is too eager to present us with her revised plan.

‘No.’ Daniel is shaking his head while she’s still talking. ‘No. I can’t. I won’t. I’d rather die.’

‘You probably will, in that case,’ the witch says pleasantly. ‘We’re running out of time. I’ll give you tonight to think it over.’

‘What does she mean?’ I whisper as we curl up on the sacks. ‘How can we run out of time? What does she know that we don’t?’

Daniel is silent for so long I think he’s asleep. ‘Perhaps there’s going to be fighting,’ he says at last. ‘I don’t care. Like I said, I’d rather stay here and die than pretend she’s my mother.’

‘If she can show us where to go, what does it matter what you’re forced to say?’ I demand. ‘What does one more lie matter?’ He doesn’t answer. ‘Say she’s your wicked
step
mother, then. Could you do that?’

He sniffs. ‘Maybe …’

‘You must. We’re not staying here, and we’re not dying.’

‘But my mother –’ There’s a catch in his voice.

‘Don’t.’ We promised to stay silent about these things until it was over. ‘Look, you never had a stepmother so it doesn’t matter if you pretend. Anyway, Agnieszka, or whatever her real name is, won’t fool anybody for long. With that great big bottom of hers who will believe she’s ever gone hungry?’

‘Ugly fat cow.
Dziewka. Suka. Kurwa
.’ He recites his entire stock of bad words, his voice slowing and fading as he runs out of steam.

‘And you’ll say she’s your –’ But now Daniel really is asleep, his stomach gurgling with surprise at finding itself full. When I can’t stay awake any longer, I dream I’m back in Ravensbrück, inside the infirmary, running down endless white corridors calling for Papa. And here’s Agnieszka. The witch emerges from doors to the right and to the left, her hands bloody, clutching pieces of raw flesh or whole legs that are sometimes feathered, sometimes still with shoes attached.

This morning I hardly recognize the witch. Instead of her nurse’s uniform, she’s wearing a striped dress like mine, but better fitting and a lot cleaner, though there’s still blood under her nails from yesterday’s massacre. Half her hair has gone and she’s frantically chopping off the rest even as she yells at us to get up.

‘He’s fixed the bloody thing. Even now he’s putting it back together. This is our last chance. They’ll be going soon.’

‘Who has?’ I ask, still fighting free of my nightmare. ‘Who’s mended what?’ Daniel jumps up without a word and lurches towards the door. He’s holding his stomach with one hand and covering his mouth with the other. ‘What’s the matter?’ Agnieszka stops me from following him. ‘Let go!’ I shriek. ‘I need to find out what’s wrong –’

‘It’s only gut ache. Everything out, both ends, I dare say. That’s what happens when you guzzle food after being kept on a simple diet.’

‘Why didn’t you stop him?’

‘That’s what they’re like, these
Kreaturen –
worse than animals. No self-restraint.’ The witch shrugs and goes on cutting her hair. ‘
Judenscheisse
. Who would have thought I’d be relying on one to save my bacon?’ She laughs, as if at some private joke, then grows sober. ‘Still, in a tight spot, needs must.’ I bite my tongue and watch the locks slide down her back like evil yellow snakes. ‘We’ll be off in a minute,’ she says. ‘This won’t take long.’

‘But where are we going?’ I force a smile. Never trust a witch, but if you want to get the better of them, it’s best to pretend you’re their friend.

‘To the bus, of course.’ Agnieszka puts away the scissors, shakes her head and runs her fingers through the uneven tufts of black. ‘That feels wonderful: quite liberating. I really don’t know what all the fuss was about. Vanity, I suppose. Now, where’s that boy?’

‘What bus?’ I demand, following her out of the shed. ‘I don’t understand. And where is it?’

‘By the lake – it’s not far. Come along, Benjamin.’ She jerks her head at Daniel, who’s crouching by the rhubarb. ‘We follow the drive down to the road and head for the village. The bus is well-hidden – set back, among the trees, plenty of cover – that’s how I was able to keep watch on them. I’ll show you.’