The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy Read Free Book Online Page B

about him, and he turned them away quickly when Gretel stared.
    The children were sent outside to help gather wood for the fire while Magda bathed. They piled up wood as fast as they could carry it, and when Nelka called them inside, Magda sat on the sleeping platform, wrapped in a blanket, her hair neatly braided.
    Nelka turned to Hansel, beginning to undress him, but Hansel struggled, and turned so his pants would stay around his bony hips.
    “Magda will die if she has to feed all your lice.”
    “Nobody can see me,” Hansel shrieked.
    “Don’t be shy. I’m your cousin now.”
    Hansel hesitated and Nelka stripped him with a few twists of her hands.
    “Aren’t you scared of me and Gretel?”
    “If I was scared all the time, I’d get constipated. It wouldn’t be good for the baby.”
    Hansel thought about this as he lowered himself into the tub. Then he couldn’t think about anything. It was too wonderful. The warmth of it. He dipped his face in and made little muffled snorts.
    First Nelka rubbed kerosene in his hair. It stung and burned and he shrieked. Nelka laughed and kept rubbing it in. Then he had to sit and wait while it killed the lice, and Nelka scrubbed him all over with the soap until he thought the whole top layer of his skin was going to be rubbed off. But Hansel didn’t care about the burning because by then, Nelka had won him over.
    “Nelka,” he crooned after she had scrubbed the kerosene out of his hair. He pushed his wet head against her bosom. “You can live with us and wash me everyday.”
    “And who would take care of the baby that’s coming if I have to fuss with you, my Lord?”
    “Gretel and Magda can take care of the baby.”
    “Out. You’re done.” Nelka plucked him from the water.
    “More.” He struggled free of the blanket and tried to leap back in the tub. “I can feel my heart, Magda. Thumpa-thumpa-thumpa.”
    “Nelka, you’ll have another one following you. Telek will have to drown him like a kitten.”
    The water was changed again, and Gretel was washed as thoroughly as Hansel until finally all three of them were sitting in smoky blankets on the sleeping platform.
    “We’ll heat your clothes in a pan and drive out the rest of the lice.”
    Nelka patted Magda on the head like she was a child, and Gretel saw that Magda liked it. The three of them sat in a row while their clothes were heated and then they dressed one by one.
    “Now the rest of this pig sty.”
    Telek had been bringing wood and water and carrying steaming buckets until he sweated. He had taken his coat off, and Gretel saw his muscles under the thin shirt. Telek lifted heavy pails of boiling water that had been reheated and had had kerosene and soap mixed into it with the dirt of their bodies and more kerosene added to make it deadly.
    “It isn’t what I’d do if it was warmer, but we have to finish. The sun will go down and freeze us all.” Nelka started to pick up a bucket and Telek laid his hand on her arm.
    “No.”
    He spoke so softly that Gretel barely heard, but Nelka stopped.
    “Then you have to do it all, my hero.”
    Telek picked up the bucket and tossed the boiling water at the walls. It hit with a splash and went in the chinks between the wood.
    “Get them, Nelka!” Hansel screamed. The lice were coming out of the walls and washing down to the floor. “Get the dirty things!”
    Nelka, with skirts pulled up and her boots getting wet, ran into the puddles and dripped the rest of the kerosene onto the lice. They lay dead in pools of water and kerosene. The floor was soaked and the walls steamed.
    Nelka took the broom and swept with such vigor that water and dead bugs and dirt flew in drops and splashes outside onto the mud.
    “Wood, Telek. We have to dry it. And the snow is coming. We’ll sleep here tonight.”
    Even the sun and the clouds mind her, Hansel thought, for as Nelka spoke, the clouds covered the sun and it began to feel colder.
    “We’ll steam for a while and then go to