Gingerbread. Robert Dinsdale

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СКАЧАТЬ say a thing.

      ‘Come here, little man.’

      She is in the rocking chair where Grandfather sleeps, and on a pile of newspapers at her side is a pair of silver scissors, a comb, a glass of the burgundy juice that the hospital told her she has to drink.

      ‘I’ll need your help.’

      She hands him the scissors, and unknots the handkerchief that has been hiding her head. The boy can see now, the patches where the locks have been left on the pillow. In places there is hardly any hair at all, in others a tract of downy fluff like a baby might have. From a certain angle, however, she is still the same mama, with her long blonde-grey locks framing her face.

      She puts the scissors in his hands and lifts him onto her lap, which is a place he isn’t supposed to sit anymore, not since the last operation. Showing him how to hold them steady, she runs her fingers in her hair and takes the first strands between finger and thumb.

      ‘Just slide it on, and get as close as you can. See?’

      The boy is tentative about making the first cut, but after that it gets easier. Blonde and grey rain down. Mama cuts his hair, and now the boy cuts hers too. As he takes the strands, Grandfather appears behind him, kneading his hands on a washing-up rag.

      ‘Vika …’

      ‘Shhhh, papa,’ whispers mama. ‘You’ll break his thinking.’

      There is another chair by the fire, a simple wooden thing. Grandfather settles in it, obscuring the pitiful blue flames.

      ‘What about our story, papa?’

      Grandfather says, ‘A story, is it?’

      Though he is concentrating on cutting the next lock, the boy sees his mama give Grandfather a questing look.

      ‘What kind of a story would you like?’ asks mama.

      The boy pauses, too lost in thought to see the scratches he has lain into the papery skin of mama’s scalp, too spoilt to see the way he has beaten back what is left of her hair like a forester managing a fire.

      ‘One of the old stories, papa,’ says mama. ‘Like you used to tell me.’

      This pleases the boy. The scissors dangle.

      ‘Vika, I don’t tell such stories.’

      ‘Please, papa. For your little boy.’

      There is a pained look in Grandfather’s eyes, though what can be so painful about a simple story the boy cannot tell.

      ‘There are other stories.’

      ‘I used to like the woodland tales. Some of them, they’re not so very gruesome, are they?’

      Mama draws back from the boy, letting him stop his cutting.

      ‘Your papa used to have so many stories. Of heroes getting their swords and their stirrups, back when all of the world was wild. He’d tell them to your mama when she was just a little girl. Until … you stopped telling those stories, didn’t you?’

      ‘Peasant stories,’ whispers Grandfather.

      The boy beams, ‘I’d like a peasant story, papa.’

      Grandfather looks like a man trapped. His wonderful blue eyes dart, but there is no escape from the boy’s smile and mama’s eyes.

      ‘Go on, papa. It’s only a tale.’

      Seemingly in spite of himself, Grandfather nods.

      When he speaks, his voice has an old, feathery texture that must work a magic on mama, because she softens under the boy, and when he looks she is beaming. The boy nestles down, half his work not yet done, and listens.

      This isn’t the tale, says Grandfather, but an opening. The tale comes tomorrow, after the meal, when we are filled with soft bread.

      His eyes look past the boy, at mama. Silently, she implores him to go on.

      And now, he whispers, we start our tale. Long, long ago, when we did not exist, when perhaps our great-grandfathers were not in the world, in a land not so very far away, on the earth in front of the sky, on a plain place like on a wether, seven versts aside, there lived a peasant with his wife and they had twins alike as the snow – a son and a daughter.

       Now, it happened that the wife died of frost and the papa mourned sincere for a very long time. One year passed of crying, and two years, and three years more, and the papa decided: I must find a new mother for my boy and my girl. And so he married again, and had children by his second wife.

       But a stepmother can think of old children like thistles in the wheat, and it happened that she became envious of the boy and the girl and used them harshly. They were beaten like donkeys and she gave them scarcely enough to eat. So it went until one day she wondered: what would life be like were I to be rid of them forever?

      Grandfather pauses, with the simpering gas fire fluttering behind.

      Do you know what it is to let a wicked thought enter that heart? he says, with sing-song voice and a single finger pointing to the boy’s breast. That thought can take hold and poison even the very good things in you. So it was for the stepmother. So she brought the boy and the girl to her and one day said: here is a basket, you must fill it with fruits and take it to my Grandma in the woods. There, she lives in a hut on hen’s feet.

       So, the boy and girl set out. They found nuts and berries along the way and, with their flaking leather knapsack filled with wild, wild fare, they entered the darkest wood.

      There is a look shimmering in Grandfather’s eyes that the boy can only describe as wonder. There are forests banking all edges of the city, rolling on into wilderness kingdoms of which the boy has only ever heard tell: the place called Poland, the northern realm of Latvia – and, in the east, the Russias, which once were the whole world.

       On they went, the boy and the girl, and at once they found the hut with hen’s feet. It was a most lamentable thing, and on its head was a rooster’s ruff, with dark sad eyes. Izboushka! they cried. Izboushka! Turn your back to the forest and your front to us! The hen feet shuffled, the hut did as they commanded, and there in the little thatch door stood a witch woman, Baba Yaga, who was truly not a Grandma at all. The children were afraid, but they held to each other as children do, and said: our stepmother sends us to help you, Grandma, and we have brought fruit from our journey. And Baba Yaga, who was as old as the forest and older than that, said: well, I have had children before and I shall have children again, and if you work well I shall reward you, and if you do not I shall eat you up.

      The boy watches as Grandfather says the final words. His throat constricts, and for an instant it seems that he has to choke them out.

       That night, the boy and the girl were set to weaving in the dark of the hen feet hut. And as they wove, the boy cried: we shall be eaten. And as they wove, the girl said: we shall only be eaten if we do not work hard. If we work hard, we shall be rewarded. But a voice halloed them in the dark, and the voice came from a knot in the wall, for in the wall were the skulls of creatures СКАЧАТЬ