Free The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy

boots and grabbed the man by the shoulders.
    “Help me, God,” he whispered, and then he was angry. He had never believed in the God his father had talked of night and day. He had never believed, and there had been nothing since 1939 to make him believe.
    The body was heavy, but he dragged it behind a tree and rolled it into a depression in the earth. Moving as quickly as he could, the Mechanik threw small pieces of dead wood onto the body and kicked leaves over the white skin of the man’s legs. He wasn’t covered well, but it might give the Mechanik an hour or two.
    Collecting the gun and the boots, the cartridge belt over his chest, he picked up the hard leather pack the soldier had dropped to the ground and moved off through the woods. He had to find his wife.
    The pack had some weight. He opened it, and the smell hit his face when the top flipped back. He kept moving as he turned over the contents.
    Sausage—a good-size piece—and bread, and something that looked like a piece of beef wrapped up, cheese. A flask. A small canteen. And most miraculous of all, an apple.
    He took the bread out and ate it slowly as he walked.
    “I’ll keep the rest for her,” he whispered.
    He finished the bread and then began tearing at the sausage with his teeth.
    “I’ll save the apple and the cheese for later.” He crammed the food into his mouth. He was eating too fast, and he knew it. It could make him sick.
    His need to live was like a murderer rising up in him, killing his good intentions. The apple he ate, core and all. Then the beef. Then the cheese. There was no sound from behind him. They weren’t looking for the soldier yet.
    He unscrewed the flask and poured the vodka down his throat, hardly tasting it. He gulped it all and then threw the flask into the leaves. The partisans might not like it that he hadn’t shared the vodka.
    “If I die, it doesn’t do my wife any good.” He felt the grease of the meat begin to travel through his gut. He knew it would give him the runs.
    He walked on. The gun and ammunition would be enough booty for the partisans to let him live. If not, he would kill the Russian and the others and take his wife and go.
    He walked a little faster now. The vodka had stopped his legs from shaking. If only there had been coffee. He didn’t know if the Germans still had real coffee. A cup of hot coffee would have given him the strength to walk for a week.
    And maybe the children were moving in the same direction. Their bodies were not lying in the road. They were hiding. It was cold, but the girl was smart. She’d find a farm or a village. She’d find a way to get food.
    “I never called out their names,” he said aloud. “I never did.” And that seemed like good luck to him. If you did not name a thing, then it did not exist. There were no Jewish children for the murderers to find in these woods.
    He told himself this as he moved into the forest, deeper and deeper, farther from the road and the dead man. He kept saying it over and over as he walked and jogged onward, and only his eyes betrayed him and leaked bitter water onto his face as he fled.

The Village Piaski
    “ W hat’s your name?”
    “Hansel Cegielski.”
    “Where’s your mother?”
    “Germany. Working on a farm.” Hansel picked up a stone and threw it at a rook who watched them from a fence post.
    “Pay attention.” Magda moved steadily down the narrow road. It was frozen hard so the mud didn’t catch her feet like glue.
    “Our father was killed in September of 1939. He wasn’t a soldier. He was hit by a truck when he was walking on a road pushing a wheel-barrow.” Gretel spoke earnestly as she shifted to her other hand the basket that held their First Communion pictures and the false papers that said she and Hansel had been born in Warsaw and were members of the Karaites.
    “Why did they circumcise you, Hansel?” Magda stopped to catch her breath. She stared into the gray forest and shivered. Perhaps she