The True Story of Hansel and Gretel Read Online Free PDF Page B

scarred forehead and cheeks that the Nazis had branded him with a hot iron as a Russian prisoner of war. His Polish was almost unaccented.
    “The NSZ, the AK, the AL, the Greens—who the hell cares? The Nazis wouldn’t care. We could be Jews like you.”
    “Then help us,” her husband said. “In God’s name.”
    “God packed up and left Poland in 1939.”
    There was another man lying on the ground beyond the roofs of the dens. He was tied and moved only his eyes. His face was swollen as if he had been beaten, but she didn’t see that at first. It was the uniform that held her eyes. It was black and silver—the colors of Hell—although she didn’t know if she believed in Hell. But the Christians did, and there were times when she hoped they were right. She could stand everything if only they were right about Hell.
    She waited for an opportunity while the Russian talked to her husband.
    “They died in the ghetto. Typhoid. Last winter. We have no children. None. We—”
    She snatched the pistol from the hand of the man who had caught them and bolted toward the Nazi who lay on the ground. She didn’t hear the shouts. She put the gun to the head of the soldier and looked back at the men.
    “He’s a Nazi?”
    “Yes. We caught him raping a girl in the woods yesterday.” The Russian smiled.
    She didn’t hear anything he said after the word yes. The explosion of the gun filled her ears and she knew joy. One gone. And she had done it. She hadn’t fired a gun since before the war, and she’d never fired at a man.
    They were all screaming at her, and she stood holding the gun limply by her side. She was smiling. Her body was warm all over and bile rose into her mouth. She coughed and spit.
    Murder is warm and it’s bitter, she thought. She had hunted deer with her father, but she’d never killed a human before.
    “Crazy bitch!”
    “Now what?”
    Her husband was crying.
    The Russian looked at the woman and smiled. “Bury the bastard. Deep. Strip him. She can have the coat and pants. She earned them. We’ve got his gun and his cigarettes. That was all he was good for.”
    “And then?”
    The Russian looked at the woman and the crying man. “She can stay if she can keep up.”
    “A woman can’t keep up.”
    “This one will. She could be useful. People don’t suspect a woman. They feel sorry for her, or want to fuck her. She can stay but not the man.”
    She walked to the Russian and put the gun against his gut. She leaned into the gun so he would feel it.
    “Both of us.”
    He looked into her eyes. “I’d call you She Wolf, but I don’t like wolves.”
    She stood with the gun pushing into him. He saw in her eyes that she would never be charmed by anything he could say. He sighed.
    “You have to be sensible. He’s too weak.”
    She thought about this, and no one moved. Then her husband spoke.
    “I have a motorcycle. It has no gas, but it runs well.”
    They stared at him, and he went on more quickly. “I’m an engineer. I can fix anything. Make anything run. You’ll need me.”
    “We don’t have machines,” the Russian said.
    Her husband smiled for the first time since they had gotten on the motorcycle. “One hundred thousand Germans surrendered at Stalingrad. When the Russians come they’ll have trucks, tanks. We’ll get machines later, and I’ll make them run.”
    “You’re an optimist. I like that. Optimism can keep you warm.”
    “Or get you killed,” murmured one of the other men.
    “It’ll have to be Russian trucks. Hitler didn’t send oil for our winter. All the German gears have frozen solid.” The Russian smiled.
    “Why didn’t they send the right oil for winter?” Her husband was interested. It was a simple mechanic’s problem.
    “They thought they’d be in Moscow by October of 1941. They figured that by first snow, the Russians would be supplying their oil. They didn’t know the Russians.”
    The men laughed, but it wasn’t a long laugh.
    “They should have asked