Gretel and the Dark (5 page)

It’s a stupid story. Nevertheless, I glance anxiously towards Papa when she gets to the part about the tailor. But Papa has his eyes closed. His fingers twist around each other as if they are washing themselves without water.

‘Bang!’ says Herta, without putting any bang in her voice.
‘Here goes the door ker-slam! Whoop! the tailor lands ker-blam!’

Seeing what’s coming, I quickly pull my hands away and sit on them. Poor Lottie falls on the floor. Herta laughs.

‘Who can tell a mother’s sorrow,

When she saw her boy the morrow?

There he stood all steeped in shame,

And not a thumbkin to his name.’

Pulling my right hand from under my bottom, she holds the special sucking thumb between two of her big, square fingers, pretending they’re scissors. Chop, chop. ‘Better stop your baby habits in case it happens to you. You’ve got to be a big girl now.’

‘Papa wouldn’t let the tailor cut off my thumbs.’

‘He might not be there to stop him.’ Herta flicks through the pages. ‘Would you like another story? Look at this one. A very naughty girl is playing with her Mama’s box of matches and a minute later …

‘Consumed is all, so sweet and fair,

The total child, both flesh and hair,

A pile of ashes, two small shoes,

Is all that’s left, and they’re no use.

‘See? All burnt away. Nothing left of silly Paulinchen but a pile of cinders. Can you imagine such a terrible thing?’

‘Greet said she would whip me if I touched matches again.’ I turn over the page and look at the picture of a black boy holding a big green umbrella. There is a magician in a long red robe and three boys that he turns as dark-skinned
as the first by dipping them in a giant inkpot. ‘Can you read this one?’

Herta frowns as she skims the text. She clicks her tongue.

‘Please,’ I add, in case Papa’s listening.

‘No,’ she says, ‘that is not a suitable story.’ And with that, she rips out the pages.

At home there’d always been plenty to do – Greet saw to that. Some days she sat me on the kitchen table to pod peas, and made me count aloud the number in each fat green pod as I snapped them open. ‘
Eins, zwo, drei
…’ If there were more than eight peas, I was allowed to eat the smallest. When the job was finished, there’d be a story, usually ‘The Pea Test’, which I liked until it didn’t work. Even with ten peas under my mattress. Or I sorted feathers when she was plucking a chicken or goose – quills in the bucket, down in a basket – and then we’d have ‘Mother Holle’ if I’d done it properly, but ‘Mother Trudy’ if I’d been careless.

Now there’s nothing to do except look at my books, draw pictures, or talk to Lottie. The ladies who play with me or read stories only come when Papa’s at home. Even the kittens have disappeared. Every so often, Elke, who plaits my hair in the mornings and baths me at night, comes to check that I’m being good and brings me milk, with cake, or bread and honey. She talks all the time but never listens. Sometimes the zoo dogs bark or the other animals squeal; the rest of the time it’s very quiet. The other people who live in this house are at work all day, some in the zoo, some in the infirmary or offices. Ladies work here, too, but they’re far too busy to talk. They dust and scrub and take the mats outside to beat them. Everything is very clean and tidy. Nobody kicks things under the furniture out of sight and I can’t find any of the fluff under my bed that Greet called ‘lucky sluts’ wool’.

Lottie says I should go to the kitchen and see if there’s a Greet there, so I creep along the passage and look round the door. I see Elke slicing sausage. A big fat lady with a red face is adding up sums; two others are washing dishes. None of them is like Greet. Elke is telling everyone about a film she’s seen, about a Swedish girl who falls in love with a rich bullfighter. It’s not a new film: the fat woman has seen it before and continually corrects her.

‘
La Habanera
was set in Cuba.’

The fat woman shakes her head. ‘Puerto Rico.’

‘Nobody cares where it’s set, Ursel,’ says Elke. ‘Not when Ferdinand Marian’s the star.’

‘No, no, Karl Martell was the star. Marian only played Don Pedro de Avila, a wicked foreign landowner, and he died of some filthy disease. Good thing, too, for even though he was her husband, Astrée loved the doctor.’

Elke shrugs. ‘Oh, but Ferdinand – such a fine-looking man.’ She sighs and presses her hand to her chest.

Lottie is bored now and wants to go into the garden, but something good is cooking in the oven. It might be
Zwetschgenkuchen
– a plum-sugar smell fills the kitchen when Ursel opens the oven door – and Greet always let me eat the trimmings, but the oven slams shut. We decide to wait until the cake is on the cooling rack. Elke hasn’t moved. She’s still gazing at the ceiling.

‘Never mind daydreaming,
fauler Nichtsnutz
,’ barks Ursel. ‘This isn’t the movies, and those sandwiches won’t make themselves. As for your Ferdinand, I’m surprised at you. There’s something about his appearance no right-minded woman should find appealing. Altogether too dark … and that huge nose …’ She shudders. ‘In my opinion, Karl Martell’s far better-looking. A much better match – you can see at a glance that he comes from the right stock.’

‘And that’s the one who played the doctor?’ One of the ladies at the sink laughs as she dries a pan. ‘Funny thing about doctors, they’re either dried-up old sticks or –’ She rolls her eyes and laughs again.

‘If you’re talking about the new one, reckon he’s already spoken for,’ says Ursel. She nods. ‘Yes, spoken for twice over. It’ll come to blows between those two, see if it don’t.’

Another voice mutters: ‘He doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get his hands on either. Perhaps he’d rather do without. And who can blame him? Ugly as sin, the pair of them.’ The speaker’s out of sight, but her way of talking reminds me of Greet so I push the door a little further open. It squeaks, but at last the cake’s ready and the clattering and banging as Ursel takes it from the oven hides the noise. I’m about to take another step into the kitchen but stop when I notice a little old witch sitting in the corner with the black cat on her knee. Her long wand is hooked over the back of the chair.

‘You’d be better off keeping that sort of observation to yourself,’ says Ursel, throwing down the oven cloth and fanning herself with her apron. ‘Walls have ears. Anyway, each to his own, as the monkey said when he bit into the soap.’

‘You’re right,’ says the witch, ‘personal tastes do differ, but do you think the monkey actually enjoyed eating soap, or was it all that was on offer? As I see it –’

‘What I think,’ Elke announces, ‘is that both the attendants would be getting more than they bargained for if it meant taking on that spoilt encumbrance of his.’

Lottie yawns. I edge forward, watching the plum juice bubble around the edges of the cake. Then the witch cackles and I jump back.

‘From what I’ve seen of the daughter,’ she says, ‘his wife will
take some living up to. And her being dead makes him remember her as seven times more beautiful than she likely was.’ Her skinny hand keeps stroking the cat and I know she’s calling up a storm.

‘Pretty she might be,’ puts in Elke, ‘but all’s not right up here.’ She taps her head. ‘Always talking to herself or standing staring at nothing for minutes on end. Won’t eat this. Won’t eat that. And what a temper! He lets her get away with it, but it can’t go on. She needs the flat of someone’s hand across her backside. Kicking and screaming and carrying on – in the old days we’d have said she was possessed.’

‘What can you expect?’ Ursel lowers her voice. ‘They say the bloodline’s tainted. Apparently, the mother was an unnatural wife, not to mention parent … spent her days playing with paint instead of looking after the home. She was a foreigner – a touch of gipsy there, or perhaps something even more degenerate. This is what happens when folk mate away from their own kind.’

‘That’s the trouble with men,’ Elke says bitterly. ‘They choose their wives with their eyes not their brains.’

The witch mutters something about trousers and they all laugh. Unable to wait any longer, I tiptoe behind Ursel and stick my finger in the plum syrup. It’s boiling hot, sticky as toffee, and won’t come off. I shriek and stick the finger in my mouth, burning my tongue. Elke grabs my hand and plunges it into a bowl of cold water.

‘Quiet!’ she bellows, as I continue to scream. ‘Stop your noise or you’ll have something else to cry about.’ But my finger is throbbing. It’s on fire.

‘How long’s she been standing there?’ asks Ursel.

‘Long enough,’ says the witch, and cackles so loudly that the cat leaps from her knees. She leans forward and taps my leg with her long magic wand. ‘You can stop now, Krysta.’ The
pain eases straightaway and I stop wailing. She stares at me. ‘What are you doing sneaking about in here?’

‘I want some cake.’

The witch raises eyebrows like hairy grey caterpillars. ‘Do you indeed? And what else do you say?’

‘
Give
me some cake now or I’ll tell my papa.’

Everyone looks at Elke. Her mouth turns into a thin, straight line and she is suddenly taller. ‘No, there will be no cake today or tomorrow. I shall speak to your father myself. You are a very rude little girl. Unless you learn some manners you’ll come to a bad end.’ She points at the door. ‘Go to your room and don’t come in here again without asking permission first.’

I kick the table and slam the door. Upstairs, I throw my cup and plate on the floor, squashing the crusts into the mat, and pull my clothes out of the wardrobe.

‘Bad Charlotte,’ I say, and stand her in the corner.

The soap tastes nasty. I tell myself the story of poor hungry Hansel and Gretel, left all alone in the dark forest. My gingerbread cottage has a very big oven and I push Elke, Ursel and the skinny old witch into it and close the door.

After Papa had finished all the hand-washing, we went downstairs together. Johanna came to sit beside us. I wished she would go away but she wants to talk to Papa. She was puffing a bit, like Greet did after she’d chased me upstairs to give me a smacking. Something had made her cross. Papa listened and nodded, nodded and listened. After a bit he excused himself, saying he had to fetch something from our rooms when really he was going upstairs to wash his hands again.

‘Now you and I can have a little talk,’ says Johanna. She makes a grab and sits me on her knee. ‘Shall we play
Kinne Wippchen
?’

She has the same violet scent that Greet used on her afternoon off, but Johanna’s got a nasty smell living underneath the nice one. Her nails are painted bright red to match her mouth. There are small brown stains all down one side of her skirt. I don’t want to play, but now Papa’s gone I’m afraid to say no.

‘Brow-bender,’ she says, tapping my forehead, ‘eye-peepers, nose-dreeper, mouth-eater, chin-chopper –’ Johanna pokes my eyes, pulls my nose, covers my mouth, hits under my chin with the side of her hand. I struggle to get away, but she holds me tight, tickles my chin and pushes up my nose. ‘Knock at the door,’ she says, ‘ring the bell, lift up the latch, and walk right in –’ And with that, Johanna pushes her finger hard into my mouth. It tastes dark and salty. I don’t want to play any more and struggle to get down, flailing my arms and crying for Papa. But Johanna forces me to stay where I am until she’s done the
Take a chair
,
Sit by there
, and
How do you do this morning?
Then she begins bouncing me in the air, higher and higher the louder I shriek … until Papa returns and she wraps her arms around me, kissing my cheek. ‘That was fun, wasn’t it? Run outside and play now. I want to talk to your papa.’

I have promised to be good so that Papa will take me to eat with the grown-ups
inside the zoo.
Through the big gate we go, and I look everywhere for the animals that look like people, but there are only dogs. When I ask Papa where the cages are he tells me to be quiet and sit by the window. There is lentil soup with bits of bacon and some omelette. It doesn’t look nice and I won’t eat it. Papa talks to his friends and I make a family of turtles out of squished-up bread … until I notice a naughty boy outside digging in the mud with his fingers. He pounces on something and I press close to the glass, trying to
see if he’s found buried treasure. A worm … a dirty worm. And he eats it straight down.

‘Papa! Papa!’ I pull at his sleeve.

‘Not now, Krysta.’ He carries on talking and turns towards me only when he’s finished. ‘Well?’

But it’s too late. The boy’s gone. I shut my mouth tight and refuse to say anything.

Johanna’s hands are clean. No one has made her cross today. She pats her knee and opens the new book. ‘Come,
mein süßes kleines Mädchen
, I have a story for you. Take your thumb out. If the wind changes it will stay in there for ever.’

I want to say no but last time she pushed my thumb into the mustard pot. Papa laughed.

‘
Der Rattenfänger von Hameln
– have you heard it before? Then listen carefully.’ Her jacket smells of rusty nails. The buttons stick in my back. She opens the pages and puts on a different voice. ‘There was once a beautiful town called Hamlin on the banks of the river Weser. The people there were happy, hard-working and prosperous until the night when a plague of filthy rats crept inside its walls. Big black rats, fat brown rats, greasy rats, lazy rats, dirty rats covered with fleas, rats with huge noses, rats with great hooked claws. Rats do not work or grow their food. Instead, they ate every last grain of wheat in the granaries. They stole food from the stores and the homes of the townspeople. They even took bread out of the mouths of the children. They bit the babies in their cradles and sucked their blood. Look, there is a picture.