Gretel and the Dark (9 page)

Daniel stands up. ‘I don’t do what everyone else does, either. Why should I? Hit me and I’ll hit you back. I mean it. Just try. You’ll see.’

He’s taller than me, but not much. When we’ve finished staring at each other, he goes back to his digging. I find a small pebble and play
Himmel und Hölle
on the paving stones
.
The
Erde
square is wobbly. I hop on one foot all the way up to the Hell square, not stepping on a line once, only to find that the Heaven one is broken, so I twist in the air and hop back again. Daniel goes on pulling up clumps of grass and pretends not to notice me.

‘Don’t you ever get tired of playing worm-hunting?’

‘I’m still hungry.’

‘Oh.’ Perhaps his family are very poor, like the woodcutter and his wife in ‘Hansel and Gretel’. ‘What would you like best, if you could have anything?’

He stops for a moment. ‘I would like everything to be back the way it was.’

‘Yes.’ I think of Greet and our old house. ‘I mean – to eat.’ Daniel doesn’t answer. ‘If you like I’ll bring my breakfast for you tomorrow. I know where they keep the biscuits, too.’ He shrugs and I can see he doesn’t believe me.

‘Go away, will you? I’ve got to find some more worms. They come up when it rains.’

‘It won’t rain today.’ The sky is bright blue. Not a cloud in sight. ‘We could jump on the grass. Greet says when she first saw a film with Charlie Chaplin tap-dancing it reminded her of worm-charming. Where she used to live the birds hop up and down on the grass so the worms think it’s raining. They come up to the surface because they’re scared of being drowned.’

‘I know a quicker way of making them come up, but you have to go away.’

‘Why?’

He scratches his head and fidgets. ‘Because any water will do.’ After a moment, he adds: ‘I’m going to pee on the ground, that’s why. They’ll think it’s raining. Now go away.’ His hands stray to his trouser buttons.

‘I’ll turn my back.’

‘No.’ He starts to argue but suddenly some bad magic happens because in an instant Daniel becomes smaller and thinner and paler. He stands like a toy soldier with his arms straight down by his sides and looks at the ground.

‘What’s the matter?’ Then I hear the Earth stone rocking. I jump up, too, and turn around, expecting to see Papa looking very angry. But it’s Uncle Hraben and he always smiles.

‘It’s all right, Daniel. It’s only –’

One, two, three big strides – Uncle Hraben is standing over us. He slaps Daniel across the face. Blood pours from Daniel’s nose. He falls without making a sound. It’s me who is screaming. In the same instant Uncle Hraben swings me up in his arms and starts stroking my hair.

‘It’s all right,
kleines Mädchen
, you’re safe now. But whatever are you doing here? This is a very dangerous place.’

‘Papa said I must come to work with him because there was no one to look after me today. He locked me in a little room in the infirmary.’ I try to see what’s happening to Daniel but Uncle Hraben holds my face so that I can’t look back.

‘Did he now? And how did you get out?’

‘Through the window.’

‘Naughty girl, you could have caught anything. Does that pretty head of yours ache? Do you itch? Look at these poor little grazed knees. Let’s have a peep under here. What’s this red mark on your tummy? A bump? Shall I kiss it better?’ I struggle to get free, beat his chest, but he doesn’t put me down. ‘Nothing much wrong with you,’ he says, laughing, and snaps my knicker elastic. ‘You must tell me if you get any aches or pains or itches. Promise?’

‘Yes, but what about the little boy?’

Uncle Hraben looks at me, puzzled. ‘What boy? There is no boy.’

‘His name’s Daniel –’

‘There are no
real
children here, Krysta.’

I look back and there he is, lying very still on the grass. His
eyes are open. He’s watching us. Uncle Hraben turns the corner and marches along the back of the infirmary until we get to the open window. I can see my book on the table and the broken crayons scattered all over the floor.

‘Is this the place?’ He holds me so that I can wriggle back through the bars. ‘Krysta’ – Uncle Hraben catches hold of my wrist as I’m about to slide off the windowsill – ‘we won’t tell your papa about this. It’ll be our special little secret. But don’t do it again. It might not be your nice Uncle Hraben who finds you next time.’

I won’t talk to Papa when he comes at lunchtime. I fold my arms and eat nothing, even when he brings me chocolate ice cream. All afternoon I draw pictures of monsters having their heads cut off. On the way home we have to stand aside for a long line of ladies coming in at the gate. I think they must be a ladies’ choir like the one at home, because they are all dressed the same, except for their badges, but Papa just grunts when I ask him. I expect they’re visiting the zoo. Johanna and some of her friends walk alongside carrying sticks and whips to make sure the animal-things don’t attack them. She stares at Papa.

There are six Pfeffernüsse in Papa’s box, and I take four of them. If he asks me where they’ve gone, I shall blame Elke. By the time he goes upstairs to wash his hands again, everyone else is sitting outside, smoking cigarettes and watching the sun go down. I wait until red-faced Ursel locks up the kitchen and then get the spare key from the secret drawer in the hallstand. At night, kitchens are full of goblin shadows, but they don’t frighten me. I open the oven door and look inside. It’s the same as the one at home: there’s nothing to see. Someone has moved the tin of Lebkuchen to a higher shelf and I have to stand on
the table to reach it, pulling it towards me with a wooden ladle. Greet says it’s greedy to take the last one, so I take a small bite and put it back. The rest go into my pocket.

In the morning, I wrap some cheese and my breakfast egg in my apron, together with a few bread rolls. For late breakfast there would be meat and
Weißwurst
, but Papa never waits for that. I hide everything underneath my colouring-in book.

‘That’s better,’ says Papa, eyeing my empty plate. ‘It’s good to see your appetite improving.’ He’s also pleased that today I don’t make a fuss about being shut in the little room. ‘It’s for your own good, Krysta. There are some things little girls shouldn’t know about.’

Daniel is already waiting, walking backwards and forwards, kicking at the grass and looking everywhere but in the right place. He didn’t know I came out of the window. When I call him, he runs towards me, his eyes fixed on the bundle. Today, his nose and all along the top of his cheeks are the same colour as pickled beetroots.

‘Did you –’

‘Take that.’ His hands tremble as I pass it down. ‘I said I’d bring you my breakfast. Didn’t you believe me?’ Daniel doesn’t answer. He’s too busy smelling the food. ‘Don’t just stand there, sniffing. Help me down.’

Daniel won’t let go of the bundle. He sticks out one arm and maybe he’s not as strong as he looks because we both fall over.

‘
Trottel!
’ Yesterday’s grazes are now covered with dirt; tiny beads of blood seep through, making my knees look like small flower beds planted with bright-red poppies.

‘Who are you calling an idiot?’ Daniel doesn’t wait for an
answer. He’s got no time for arguments. Two bites and the egg disappears – even the shell – then the cheese and biscuits. Last winter, a stray dog sometimes came to our kitchen door; if Greet happened to be in one of her good moods she’d throw it some scraps, otherwise it got boot sandwich. Daniel eats as fast as that dog. He crams the bread in with both hands as though he’s afraid someone will take it away. His cheeks bulge. He can hardly swallow. He doesn’t even stop to draw breath, so that when he finally empties his mouth he has to gasp for air like I did after Greet held my head under the bathwater for splashing her. He eats so fast that his stomach hurts and he falls down, groaning, holding his belly, trying not to be sick. And then he starts to cry.

‘What’s the matter, Daniel?’ There is nothing to be angry about, nobody trying to make him do anything. He isn’t screaming or yelling or kicking or biting – it sounds more like Papa crying after Mama went away. ‘What’s the matter?’ I ask again. He points to the empty apron.

‘I didn’t save any for my little sister.’

‘We’ve got plenty of food. I’ll bring some more tomorrow.’

He dries his eyes. ‘Will you?’

When his stomach feels better, Daniel helps me to climb back into the room. He doesn’t go far: when I look again, he’s lying, curled up, at the corner of the building. After telling Lottie about the way he guzzled his food, we decide he must have been lost for a long time, though not in a deep, dark forest like Hansel in the story. It sounds as if Gretel’s lost, too. Maybe the witch has already locked her in a cage. Or eaten her. Until Papa comes to take me for lunch, I draw pictures of the gingerbread house after the witch has gone. The roof has tiles made of Schweineöhrchen, those twirly little biscuits that look like piglet
ears and the garden is full of more biscuits, Spitzbuben and Zimsterne, on angelica stalks, instead of flowers.

Papa likes my pictures so much he doesn’t notice my knees. We go into his office and he pins the best one up on the wall. While he’s doing that I take a handful of sweets from his assistant’s desk. After lunch, he gives me a new drawing book and some more crayons. I have another bread roll in my pocket, as well as the sweets, but when I look out of the window, Daniel has gone.

Lottie says we should tell the story again. This time a beautiful lady puts her head in the witch’s oven to look at something and forgets to take it out again. I am suddenly very sad and frightened. My knees are hurting and I want Papa, but he doesn’t come, no matter how loudly I shout his name.

Today I ask Papa if I can take my bowl of creamed wheat to the infirmary so that I can eat it later, when I get hungry. He says I’m being sensible at last and encourages me to take more bread and butter, too. All morning I sit by the window waiting for Daniel, but he doesn’t come and my newly bandaged knees are so stiff and sore I can’t climb out of the window to find him. Daniel doesn’t come in the afternoon either. Lottie says he might still have tummy ache but I think it’s because he doesn’t want to be my friend, so I pull the sweets from under the mattress and stamp on each one before throwing them all on to the grass.

After that I do some colouring in with my new crayons, but Lottie wants me to finish yesterday’s story. I can’t do it from the middle, so we have to start again. This time I tell her how bad the witch’s kitchen smelled that day – as if a rude person’s done some really big, smelly blowing-off – so bad that Gretel’s eyes
watered and she couldn’t stop coughing. The beautiful lady didn’t seem to notice. She went on looking inside the oven.

I shout for Papa and kick the wall so hard that new blood comes through the bandages, but the door comes open when I pull on the handle. Something had gone wrong when we came back from the cafeteria and everyone was in such a hurry that he must have forgotten to lock it.

‘
Papa!
’ I yell, running down the corridor. ‘
Papa!
’

A nurse tries to catch me. I duck under her arm, still screaming. Doors open. Another nurse comes out and grabs my frock. The fabric rips and she’s left with the sleeve in her hand. And there’s Papa doing his hand-washing, only he’s doing it with red paint. And someone inside the room is screaming back at me, screaming and screaming, only it’s all muffled because of the blanket over their head. And the red paint is dripping on to Papa’s shoes. And behind him another nurse is holding something terrible –

Greet opens the door, letting cold night air into the kitchen. From my hiding place under the table I can see the big full moon swimming in a sea of stars. She flicks a dish rag at me and I quickly move out of reach.

‘Better do as you’re told for a change and go to bed, or you’ll regret it.’

‘Won’t.’

‘Oh, well,’ says Greet cheerfully, ‘if you won’t, you won’t, I suppose. Nothing more I can do. The
Böggelmann
will be here soon enough and the door’s wide open to let him in.’

‘Papa says there’s no such thing as bogeymen.’

‘Does he? Being an educated man, he’s probably right. You and I will just have to wait and see.’

A
thump
,
thump
,
thump
ing begins and I crawl forward, anxiously watching the back-kitchen steps, almost sure a huge black shadow is pouring down them. Then I realize that the noise is only Greet kneading dough ready for the morning. She clears her throat and sings:

‘
Es tanzt ein Bi-Ba-Butzemann

In unserm Haus herum, bidebum,

Es tanzt ein Bi-Ba-Butzemann

In unserm Haus herum.

Er wirft sein Säcklein her und hin,

Was ist wohl in dem Säcklein drin?

Es tanzt ein Bi-Ba-Butzemann

In unserm Haus herum.
’

I stick my head out. ‘What
is
in the bogeyman’s sack?’

‘Oh, this and that.’ She hums the tune for a bit, then starts again. ‘There’s a bogeyman prowling around our house –’

‘Is it food?’

‘He thinks so. It’s mostly bits and pieces of naughty children – sometimes even whole ones. His other name is
der Kinderfresser –’

‘I’m not frightened.’

‘Good.’ Greet makes a grab and I retreat again, shifting position as she shuffles round the table trying to reach me. ‘Would you like to hear more about the Child-guzzler?’

‘No.’

‘Some people say he’s a monster from the planet Saturn. He’s dark and squat with a big hooked nose and a long black coat. His bottom lip is so big it flaps against his chest. His arms
are very long so that he can reach into doorways and pull little people out. Long ago he did something very bad –’