Gretel and the Dark (6 page)

‘Finally the people went to the
Bürgermeister
and demanded that he rid the town of this terrible plague of vermin. What could he do? It was all very well setting traps and killing a few
of the beasts, but by the next morning so many more filthy rats had arrived that he might as well not have bothered.

‘Then one day a stranger dressed in red and white and black came to Hamlin. “You will never prosper while your town is overrun by these vile creatures,” he said. “I can rid your town of vermin. My kind of music will cause every last one to leave and never, ever return.” And of course the
Bürgermeister
agreed.’

Her voice rises and falls. Other people come and go. They talk and eat and stamp their feet. The filthy rats tumble into the waters of the Weser and are drowned, so that the town is clean and bright again.

‘See?’ She points to the picture of happy, smiling people, hard at work. ‘It will come,’ she says. ‘It will come.’

Papa returns from work. He nods and takes a drink. Johanna continues to read. She watches him from under her lashes and the story changes, her voice growing solemn.

‘ “If you do not keep your promise,” says the piper, “then I must take your children away.” He raises his pipes to his lips and played a different tune. And all the children came running. They followed him through the streets and over the fields.’ Johanna pauses. She looks at my father. ‘And there was nothing their parents could do.’

My thumb is back in my mouth now. In the picture the children have disappeared through a magic door in the side of a mountain. Only two are left, a boy who had been too busy with his game and the little girl who went back for him. I begin to cry.

‘What’s the matter?’ demands Johanna. ‘Not crying for the rats, I hope? Are you sad for the poor mothers and fathers?’

I shake my head and weep for the children who could not find their way out.

In spite of his show of confidence, Benjamin had no concrete idea of where to begin the search for Lilie’s identity. He stood, irresolute, outside the house in Brandstätte, still smarting from Gudrun’s caustic assertions that his so-called investigations were simply a ruse to avoid real work. Perhaps he’d head south to Graben, find himself a quiet spot by the Plague pillar to sit and plan his next step … and relish, as so many times before, that carving of a cherub plunging its flaming brand into the pestilent old hag at its base. Still undecided, he looked east, towards Stephansplatz. The great cathedral there was dedicated to a Christian martyr whose name, according to the doctor – though it was sometimes hard to tell whether the old man was teasing – could well be derived from the Greek
stephanos
, a crown, but was more likely to have come by devious pathways from
strenue stans
, meaning ‘laudably standing and instructing and ruling over old women’. Benjamin straightened his shoulders. It was undoubtedly a joke, a sly dig at the reigning kitchen tyrant, for these days even the doctor wasn’t immune from Gudrun’s sharp tongue, but at least it had nudged him towards a starting point, for there was another ‘old woman’ in Leopoldstadt – neither old, nor female, but awarded the nickname because of his obsession with gossip. Hugo Besser called himself a journalist; others labelled him a scandalmonger … and worse … nevertheless very little escaped him.

Benjamin stepped aside for a passing carriage, then hastily – before Gudrun, who had a nose for these things, emerged with a bucket and shovel, demanding that he collect the steaming pile of freshly deposited horse shit for the currant bushes – turned north into Bauernmarkt. It was late in the day and the market was over. A few flower-sellers lingered, hoping to catch the eyes of young husbands hurrying towards their homes. A solitary street vendor, anxious to sell the last of his pretzels, twirled aloft his carrying pole. Benjamin turned Josef’s money in his pocket but wasn’t tempted. At least he’d had the good sense to eat before announcing his plans.

The temperature dropped as he approached the canal. Curdled mist rose to devour the sloping banks, swallowing whole trees, licking at the pillars, leaving the bridge damp and slippery. When Benjamin glanced back, the inner city seemed veiled by a gauzy curtain where the mist hung like a lingering ghost of the old defensive walls. As the light faded, the mist advanced, biting great chunks from the earth. Minute by minute the buildings were rendered more ethereal until they were floating free of time, a city not yet fully imagined, a rootless island with the great spire of the cathedral tethered to the clouds. So, in such weather, it must have looked in the distant past; so it would always look, come what may. Benjamin shivered. He blew on his hands and plunged them into the pockets of the warm coat
Frau
Breuer had given him. It had belonged to Robert, her taciturn eldest son, and was only a little out of style, so that, Benjamin persuaded himself, as long as nobody’s gaze dropped to his boots he could be taken for somebody.

Thoughts of the warm and fuggy tavern quickened his steps but as he drew nearer to the familiar landmarks of his childhood
Benjamin’s pace slowed again. He hadn’t been back to this ugly misshapen little island for months precisely because crossing the Donaukanal felt like plunging back into the impoverished stew of yesteryear. The city’s. His own. The face of the
Altstadt
might be refined, her silks and satins embellished by the most exquisite embroidery, but her undergarments – in the shape of the old ghetto – were threadbare, filthy, unfit to be seen. Moreover, they were bursting at the seams with incomers crammed ten to a room. He’d heard of beds being rented out during the day while their owners worked. And these were the fortunate ones: the rest were forced to settle for the crude shelter afforded by the city’s labyrinthine sewers.

Benjamin went on reluctantly, taking shortcuts past shabby street-corner markets where stallholders would continue extracting every last Krone from unwilling spenders long after daylight had fled. Unlike the market in Karmeliterplatz, trading was mostly in small change: a Gulden was a rarity here, where women fresh from the pawnbroker’s agonized over the price of suspect meat and beggars counted out their reckonings Heller by Heller from sacs hidden among their rags. Quaintly dressed incomers wandered in small groups, intense but purposeless – but it was those clad crown to toe in orthodox black that had the locals looking askance, drawing aside and muttering. Averting his eyes, Benjamin dived into even narrower backstreets, only to be confronted by an ancient building crusted with the scabs of bodged repairs, one wall rendered a slimy greenish-black thanks to a leaking gutter. Someone had scraped letters into the filth:
Hinaus mit den Juden.
Benjamin grimaced: Out with the Jews. Once again, the stink of new envies and old hatreds had joined that of over-boiled cabbage and underwashed bodies.

At the intersection of two alleyways a gaggle of small boys played some incomprehensible game with a spinning bottle. A heated argument broke out and within seconds the group had split into uneven halves, pelting each other with sticks, stones and fistfuls of mud, and flinging the usual taunts.

‘Yid, Yid, spit in your hood, tell your mummy that is good.’

‘
Christ, Christ, g’hört am Mist!
’

A woman emerged shouting from a nearby building, throwing a bucket of dirty water in their direction, whereupon the pack re-formed and abandoned the place, jostling, clinging to each other’s elbows, giggling. As twilight thickened, night creatures emerged from the shadows. They wore masks of flour with brick-dust rouge, caricatures of women, posturing and beckoning in the circles of pea-soup light cast by the lamps. Benjamin thought of Lilie and broke into a run, turning this way and that by routes remembered from his younger years, until he heard the sharp double note of a guard’s whistle followed by the harsh
whoosh
exhaled from a departing train. The tavern he sought was no distance at all from the station. He stopped to draw breath before taking the steps three at a time.

The
Kneipe
was almost full, the atmosphere hovering at changeover point between that of its markedly different daytime and evening clientele. Sedate business meetings, quiet perusal of newspapers and coffee-fuelled discussions were giving way to the livelier bawl and bluster of serious drinking, the wild propounding of extreme political theories peppered with outright sedition. Benjamin was well aware that it wouldn’t just be his old friend gleaning information here.

Hugo was in his usual place, crouching so perilously close to the tavern’s roaring fire that his clothes were permanently
singed. With his massive shoulders and unkempt hair he resembled a vast spider – though he ingested tales rather than spun them. He’d always been stout; now, though, Hugo’s backside barely fitted on to a settle meant for three – and yet, it was rumoured, not a morsel of solid food passed his lips. It was also said that he rarely left this building. In the early hours he ponderously heaved his bulk upstairs; perhaps he never slept either. Long before midday he was back on his bench, raising his first tankard and dispatching the snot-nosed kid curled on the hearth like one of the
svartálfar
, the dark elves, with a sheaf of closely written articles for his editor. Benjamin grinned and loped towards him.

‘
Sittlichkeit und Ernst
.’ It was their usual greeting.

‘A fart to morality and sobriety,’ retorted Hugo, without looking up. It was the usual response. He seemed no drunker than usual. ‘And what demon belched you back to Matzoh Island from the fine boulevards? Missing the stench? Last time you graced us with a visit you were after a character reference.’ One hand slid the magazine he’d been reading out of sight, but not before Benjamin recognized the unmistakeable bright-red cover.

‘
Die Fackel
?’

Hugo grunted. ‘Beer,’ he demanded, kicking the dozing boy, who immediately scrambled to his feet and, working his bony elbows against the crowd, went in search of a waiter.

‘What do you think of it?’ persisted Benjamin, who’d read the doctor’s copies.

‘Man after my own heart. Says what he thinks. Even about me, the cheeky bugger! And since what Kraus thinks make sense, he won’t last the year out.’ Hugo leaned back and surveyed him. ‘Looking good, I see. Life as a servant suits you.’

Benjamin’s spine twitched. ‘Not for ever,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’ve got plans.’

Hugo shrugged. ‘Dangerous things, plans, my young friend. We’re sailing into troubled waters. The signs are all around us. In such times be grateful for small things. And remember, small things are only small when we don’t have to go without them. You eat regularly. That’s more than most do. You have a warm bed. Well, as warm as it can be when you sleep alone.’ He raised a wild black eyebrow. ‘You do sleep alone, I take it,
Herr Doktor
and his
Frau
being so bloody respectable, and all that?’

‘Beer!’ shrieked Hugo’s grimy elf, banging his small fist on the table.

A skinny waiter set down six tankards. Benjamin looked to see who else might be joining them but it appeared the harassed fellow was simply saving himself additional journeys. A mild argument over the alleged piss-poor quality of the brew commenced, during which the scrawny boy retired to his corner, retrieving a hunk of bread and some half-eaten sausage from his sleeve. Saved by the commotion from having to defend his sleeping arrangements, Benjamin closed his eyes, hugging to himself a frenzy of fervid imaginings. When he opened them, Hugo had already emptied one of the tankards; a few droplets still clung to the gingery whiskers that refused to grow into the desired leonine beard despite being encouraged by constant stroking and tugging.

‘Fire!’ shouted Hugo. The boy scrambled to throw more logs on to the blaze. A thin dog squeezed between Benjamin’s legs and attempted to snatch the remains of the bread. It was rewarded with a clout that sent it skidding a man’s length along the floor. The boy dipped the retrieved crust in Benjamin’s full tankard before devouring it, and then dropped to the hearth,
showing his bared teeth to the vigilant dog. Hugo regarded Benjamin, who’d pushed away the contaminated tankard, with incredulity. ‘Drink up.’

‘Thanks.’ Benjamin surreptitiously pulled a different vessel towards him and took a long swallow of beer. Every muscle responded to this unaccustomed pleasure. In an instant, all the tension generated by his never-ending struggle against the plague of rats and caterpillars invading the garden, Gudrun’s haranguing, his discomfort at coming back to the area his family had struggled so hard and for so long to leave, drained away. Bliss. ‘Ah.’

‘Panacea,’ said Hugo, reaching for a second dose. He peered between the heavy tankards, searching the table’s battered surface with its ancient scars and carved graffiti into which spilled dregs gathered in puddles, then frowned and directed a ferocious scowl at the dozing chimney-corner elf. Three extravagantly clad girls walked past, examining the two men closely. After a few yards they turned in a flurry of high-pitched giggles and sauntered slowly back again, plumping up their chests and lingering by the side of the settle.

‘Women,’ observed Benjamin in an attempt to guide the conversation to the desired area.

‘Well spotted,’ sniggered Hugo, throwing back his head to drain his second tankard. He made an abrupt dismissive gesture with one hand. The girls scowled, tossed their heads and moved on. One turned to spit contempt over her shoulder, her gaze pointedly moving from Hugo to the small boy.

‘
Schwuel!
’

Hugo shrugged. ‘
Kneipenschlampe!
’ To Benjamin, he said: ‘Tavern sluts. Whores. They pay a hefty percentage of their earnings to the landlord.’

Benjamin scrutinized the three departing rears. ‘They don’t look like local girls.’

‘Czechs, probably, but since women everywhere are born more or less equal in terms of the attributes demanded by their profession, why would they need to be local? We have twelve nationalities or more crowding into this cesspit end of the city, a veritable Babylon of peoples – Hungarians, Turks, Galicians, Moravians, Bohemians, Bukovinians …’ He started ticking them off on his fingers, then abandoned the effort in favour of seizing a fresh tankard. ‘And there’s no accommodation for them.’ Hugo raised his voice. ‘Decent basic housing, that’s what our illustrious Franz Joseph should force the city to spend its money on, not this Secession rubbish. Buildings with owls on … I ask you. And that Majolika Haus covered with flowers and twirly bits. Very nice, I dare say, but who among us can afford an apartment there? Meanwhile, homeless people will freeze to death on the streets this winter.’ He leaned forward. ‘It’s a scandal. If you ask me, the wrong bloody aristocrat shot his few brains out at Mayerling.’

‘Oh.’ Benjamin stared at him, appalled, before glancing quickly at the neighbouring tables to see if anyone reacted to this slur on the monarchy. A blond young man on the other side of the fire sat smoothing his chin as he read a book. The dark-haired one sitting a few feet away seemed to be looking straight at them, but a second guilty glance revealed he was dramatically wall-eyed and could be looking anywhere. The noise level was steadily increasing. With any luck, no one had heard. Benjamin tried to relax.

‘Heading for trouble,’ opined Hugo. ‘Dazzling riches flaunted cheek by jowl with the most loathsome poverty. It can’t go on.’

‘No,’ agreed Benjamin, still ignoring the invitation to get political. ‘As you say, those girls could be anyone, from just about anywhere.’ He paused. ‘They might have run away from home. Or been kidnapped. Lost their memories, even.’

‘Most of them would probably like to, if they’re servicing the scum that comes in here.’ Hugo thumped his drained tankard against the table. He seized another and pushed the remaining one towards Benjamin, belching loudly as he leaned over to clout the boy. ‘More beer!’

Benjamin quickly finished his own drink. This time Hugo ignored the waiter, who slopped a cloth across the table and slammed down more tankards without ceremony. The boy returned with his ragged shirt folded up to form a sac full of gleanings, bread crusts, sausage ends, some sweaty slices of cheese, a
Salzgurke
with a bite taken from one end. His feet were bare. Perhaps Benjamin grimaced, because Hugo narrowed his eyes and leaned forward.