Gretel on Her Own

Excerpt

Gretel on Her Own
Elna Holst © 2021
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

All her life, Gretel Kindermann had lived in the little village at the lip of the forest. In fact, as far back as anyone cared to remember—for there are always, for one reason or another, periods in the history of a place that no one can rightly recall—the Kindermanns had lived in the village. According to church records, a B. Kindermann, woodcutter, had been in residence sometime in the middle of the sixteenth century. Kindermanns were woven into the very warp and weft of village life, cropping up through the centuries, being christened, marrying, bearing children. Dying. Being born.

So, it was odd, unprecedented even, that on a raw, misty Sunday in early September, when a yellowing leaf here and there heralded the approach of autumn on the trees that lined an otherwise featureless residential street, Bernhard Kindermann was backing a rent-and-go moving van out of the driveway of no. 9, or, as it had been known to neighbours and friends for nigh on thirty years, quite simply ‘the Kindermanns’ place’.

Gretel, the grown daughter of this latest incarnation of a Kindermann paterfamilias, untied her mother’s apron and hung it over her arm, shivering in the nippy air as she walked down the drive to see her father off. Bernhard rolled down the window on the driver’s side and peered out at her, his gaze inscrutable. He picked at his gingerbread-coloured moustache.

“Do you have enough fuel to see you all the way to Dortmund?” asked Gretel, for something to say. She was in a perfect double bind, her hands clasped under the fold of the apron, pressing it to her: she wanted the moment to be over, and she wanted to prolong it indefinitely. They could not be said to have said all there was to say. Nor would they.

Bernhard glanced at the gauge to his left and shook his head. He shrugged his burly shoulders—those shoulders that had carried her through her childhood, it seemed to Gretel now as she was on the point of losing them.

“I’ll need a few breaks along the way.”

Gretel cleared her throat, dipped her head. She came up with nothing. “Well, call me when you get there.”

Her father looked as if something was on the tip of his tongue; but then he appeared to change his mind. He sat back in his seat and began to roll up the window.

“Ich liebe dich, Papi. Gute Fahrt!”

In embarrassment, Gretel heard the strain in her voice, the tear-laced squeakiness of it. She hadn’t called the man in the vehicle in front of her Papi in years. And she certainly was not in the habit of telling him she loved him. It was true—of course it was—but it generally wasn’t a sentiment they put into words.

Bernhard moved his work-worn hand in a gesture somewhere between a wave and the sign of the cross.

“Goodbye, Gretelchen,” he said. Or she thought that was what he said. He had started the engine and was turning the steering wheel to go.

*

“So he’s off then? Good riddance to him. Off to chase that whore of his across the country, I dare say. All I’ll say is he better not come crawling back when she leaves him!” Ursula Kindermann held out her hand, impatient for another smoke. Gretel grabbed the half-empty pack from the outdoor table.

“You smoke too much,” she muttered, endeavouring to distract her mother from the topic of Bernhard. As far as she knew, there was no ‘whore’ in the picture.

“So do you!” Ursula cackled, a canny glint in her eye. Like a rebellious child, she snatched the cigarettes out of her daughter’s grip.

Gretel smiled, despite herself. It was in moments like these, fleeting episodes of astute observation, brief but witty repartees, tiny sucrose crystals of clarity, that she thought—she dreamt—she feared: We got it wrong. This woman’s mind might be salvaged. There’s nothing much the matter with her at all.

Ursula studied her through a haze of smoke. She raised her hand to wave it away and ended up teasing her peroxide curls. “It’s your brother I’m worried about,” she huffed, half ingesting her cigarette with each greedy drag. “He’s gone to the wolves.”

“What wolves?” Gretel asked, placing the pack back on the table beside her, out of her mother’s immediate reach.

Ursula stared out across the empty patch of lawn, surrounded on three sides by a chain-link fence. Beyond it were the woods, and in the distance the iron rumble of a passing train could be heard.

“I can hear them in my bed at night, yipping and yapping, howling at the harvest moon. They’re on his trail, snapping at his heels. I’m telling you, they won’t leave the poor boy alone.”

“There are no wolves around these parts, Mami.” Gretel spoke softly, joining Ursula in gazing into the fir tree forest pressing close to the fence. “They were shot off years ago. It’s a scandal in its own right.”

The French door to the veranda creaked open behind them.

“Frau Kindermann? It’s time for your medication. Oh, hello, Gretel.” The nurse gave her an aloof smile. He carried a metal tray with a jug of water, a glass, and her mother’s tailor-made cocktail of pills in a plastic cup.

Gretel glanced at her wristwatch. “I guess it’s time for me to leave.”

“I know what I hear.” Ursula didn’t acknowledge Gretel’s statement, nor the nurse’s either. Her hand brushed back her hair from her ears, the glowing embers of her fag coming close to singeing the faux-blonde strands in the process.

Gretel rose from her seat. “Thank you, Nurse Richter. Mami, I’ll see you Friday, okay?”

Richter nodded to her as he put the tray aside and gently removed the potential fire hazard out of Frau Kindermann’s fretting hands.

“I know,” Ursula repeated, poking her finger in the man’s chest. “Don’t tell me I don’t know!”

*

Once upon a time, wolves roamed the forest at the lip of the village. The wolves had always been there, or so they thought; as wolves, they were mostly concerned with the here and now. Now that they are long gone, they cannot tell you, but I will: On a moonlit night, the sleek nose of the pack leader—a fine, clove-and-powder-dusted specimen of a bitch—scented the presence of humans on their territory. Two little ones and their mother.

The wolves’ nostrils twitched.

*

For years to come, Gretel knew, it would be said that Bernhard Kindermann had up and left the village of his ancestors—at long last—on account of his mad wife. Although it was before her time, Gretel also knew that in her mother’s youth, it had been said that Ursula Wild would be the undoing of whichever man was unlucky enough to fall under her thrall.

It was unfair, simplistic, evil-tongued slander. Which didn’t mean, Gretel admitted regretfully, it didn’t hold a kernel of truth.

But the reality of the matter was her parents had been legally divorced since their children were five and six years of age. Since their mother’s first, memorable breakdown. If she had had any before that, Hänsel and Gretel were too young to know.

As she passed through the village centre, Gretel readjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder and, out of habit, crossed to the other side of the street to avoid going directly by the confectioner’s shop. It was superstitious of her—she knew that—and it had all been such a long time ago, so much water had passed under the bridge that if it weren’t for her own and Hänsel Kindermann’s continued erratic behaviour around the site, the whole incident might long since have been forgotten.

It would be well if it could be forgotten. The doctors had explained this to them, at length and repeatedly: delusions of persecution and abduction were part of the diagnostic criteria, prominent features of the pathology of their mother’s illness. At no time had there been any threat to the children other than the very real danger they had been put into from being the objects of Frau Kindermann’s mounting paranoia.

The wolves howling in the forest. The witch cooking up a storm.

Gretel darted a glance at the shop window across the street. As usual, Frau Heckscher had adorned it in sickly-sweet opulence. Multicoloured candy canes were suspended from strings. Gumdrops and jelly beans flowed from chocolate-dipped wafer cornucopias. And in prime location, the centre of attention, pride of place: an intricate miniature cottage, built out of Lebkuchen.

A flutter of her old panic attacks stirred in Gretel’s chest. Clenching her fists in her coat pockets, she hurried along the street.

*

“Herr Kindermann has finally moved on, then?” The inquisitive Frau Morgenstern, their next-door neighbour, was leaning over her fence, calling out to Gretel as she returned to the house. “Not a day too soon, if you ask me. You and Hänsel all grown up—nothing left for him here.”

Gretel inclined her head, searching her pockets for keys. She would not be ruffled. She could do this.

“You’ll be selling the place then, I imagine,” Frau Morgenstern went on, stroking the head of her pinscher with blue-coated fingernails.

The dog growled as Gretel glanced over at them. He always did.

“I… We hadn’t thought about it,” she replied, caught off guard. How was it that she could never seem to anticipate people’s questions, however much she prepared herself?

“Why, you aren’t planning on staying on with that unhinged brother of yours?” Frau Morgenstern clicked her tongue. “You need a life of your own, Mädchen. You’re not getting any younger. Take my advice and follow your father’s example. Get out while you can.”

Gretel’s hackles rose, a dark gush of unwarranted hatred bubbling up inside her. The pinscher started barking.

“Pscht! Bad Blaz!” Frau Morgenstern caught the dog’s collar and hauled him off towards her own front step. Over her shoulder, she shrieked, “Think about it, Gretel dear. My only concern is for your welfare. Herr Morgenstern would be happy to help you out, make sure you get a fair price!”

Gretel shut her eyes. I hope bad Blaz bites you in your bed one night, you self-serving old hag. She didn’t say it. Early in life, Gretel had learnt that the daughter of a certified lunatic couldn’t afford to lose her poise, however sorely tempted.

“Danke schön, Frau Morgenstern,” she called, finally closing her fingers around her keys and letting herself in through the damned door. “Have a nice day!”

*

Once upon a time, two small mites were locked out of their house. But you know this story, don’t you? Pardon me.

You know all about the trees in the woods and the pebbles on the road and the white dove on the roof. You have fallen asleep to the sound of the woodcutter’s lullaby, the sweep of the blade caressing your ear. Perhaps you even support your local branch of Save the Children, so that nothing like that can happen ever again.

What you don’t know is that there were circumstances. I’m not saying, necessarily, mitigating ones. But if the bitch is after your offspring, what can you do?

*

Things had always been worse for Hänsel. Gretel wasn’t sure why, but there it was. Perhaps it was because, unlike her, Hänsel retained distinct memories from that time, or so he claimed—the time when all hell broke loose in the sleepy, lip-of-the-forest village, and at the epicentre of it all, somehow, was Ursula Wild Kindermann.

Hänsel could recall the woods. The full moon. The desertion.

And later, to the consternation of their father, who had received full custody of the children pending his ex-wife’s stabilisation at the mental healthcare facility where she had been admitted for treatment, Hänsel had begun to remember Frau Heckscher, the confectioner, pointing his bony, little-boy finger in accusation and crying the proverbial “Witch!”

He may have happened to read about the case in the papers at that point. He could have grown desperate to deflect blame away from their mother. In all likelihood, he had been too exposed to Ursula’s whispered stories, Ursula’s guilt-ridden ravings.

Hänsel had been a bright, sensitive lad, but too susceptible, the team of child psychiatrists working with them had warned their father; too susceptible by far. They held forth on transferred memories, adverse effects of visitation rights. The long and the short of it was, Hänsel was no longer allowed to accompany Gretel on their biweekly visits to their mother at the clinic.

He was deemed unresponsive to therapy. He was put on his own combination of antidepressants and antipsychotics.

The professionals had been hopeful that, given time, Hänsel would make a full recovery. Gretel, looking at her brother, not so much.

Unfortunately, the sister’s intuition had trumped the medical institution’s. Time, it would seem, had only served to exacerbate Hänsel’s living nightmare.