Gingerbread

by Robert Dinsdale

  Grandfather places the two birds on the hearth and, with a swing of his axe, takes off their heads. Their sad eyes spin as they roll away. Then it is up and over, and into the pot.

  ‘Did you think I’d forget?’

  It is the night the shaggy old man, Ded Moroz, will come from his wilderness home and bring him presents. Ded Moroz is like Grandfather, for he does not like to go into the cities. He goes but one day a year, to deliver his gifts, and they say it is like he brings the wilderness with him. To go at all, he must bring his grand-daughter, the Snow Maiden, and she must sprinkle pine needles wherever he treads.

  ‘Will he know where to find us?’

  ‘He’ll know,’ grins Grandfather.

  Tonight, the pigeons taste better than ever – and, afterwards, because this is a special night, Grandfather produces a piece of mama’s gingerbread to share. In this cold the gingerbreads have hardened, but Grandfather shows how to hold one on a fork over the fire, and in that way the middles turn soft and the outside singes black. It tastes as good as ever, and the boy thinks that the pigeon sitting in his stomach might even enjoy it too.

  Now there are seven left and, just like before, Grandfather tells him, ‘They have to last.’

  They settle down in the deepening dark, as the fire turns the ruin to russets and red. In the hearth, the boy holds mama’s Russian horse on his lap, and pets its flaking head, while Grandfather settles in the armchair with the shawl on his lap.

  New Year’s night is the night for a story, and from the way he can see Grandfather nestling, he knows that one is coming to his lips.

  This isn’t the tale, says Grandfather, but an opening. The tale comes tomorrow, after the meal, when we are filled with soft bread. And now, he beams, 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, a boy was in love.

  ‘No!’ cries the boy. ‘Not in love! What about another story of the wars of winter?’

  ‘And how do you know this story isn’t of those very same wars?’

  ‘Well, who was the boy?’

  ‘Listen, and you might learn.’

  Now, even though the King in the West was defeated and had smote himself in the barbarian palace where he lived, there was still much darkness in the world. It was called: the coldest war. The babe in the wood was grown up, and never did know her mother was a partisan who had lived under aspen and birch. But, for a certain young man, who had once been a boy, she was beautiful as the berries of the rowan, and this was her name.

  That young man, who had once been a boy, had loved the girl since she was the babe in the woods, for he and his mama had been the ones to rescue her and leave her on the step. For many years he had loved her from afar, but now she was a woman grown, and it so happened that she was in love with him too. They courted in the forest and soon an agreement was reached that they should be married, and that a great celebration should be held. For love out of war is a beautiful thing.

  The boy wants to grumble: there is too much talk of love in this story. Yet something compels him to close his mouth and simply listen on.

  Yet, as we know from the Little Briar Rose, the course of true love never does run smooth. For, even as preparations were begun to join the man and the woman, there arose a terrible darkness in the east. The Winter King, grown mad on power, had vanquished his enemies, but he had spent too long warring to know and love peace. And a King who knows nothing but war is more terrible than demons.

  And so it was that the Winter King began his descent into madness, and sent out word that a great wall must be built to keep all enemies out. The wall was to be made of Iron, and would carve through all the kingdoms he had conquered in the wars of winter.

  So men from all over the land were summoned to build this wall of Iron, and the young man who wanted nothing more than to marry his babe in the woods had to leave his home, perhaps forever, and join the new army of the Winter King.

  This story, thinks the boy, does not make sense. It has no battles, nor heroes, nor ghosts. He thinks: it used to be that the Winter King was a good king, but now he is a terrible one. There ought to be good and bad, but not in the same person, never in the same person.

  Well, the man went to build the Iron wall, and found himself a soldier of the Winter King, the very same as those soldiers who had, once upon a time, come to his town and changed his world. He toiled from north to south, and though he longed to get home to his babe in the woods, always the Winter King sent new orders. And soon he had not been home for many long months.

  Well, the Iron wall was built, and all enemies of the Winter King were locked on the other side, and in that way a peace might have prospered. The soldier thought: now our work is done, we will go home, and I will marry my babe in the woods. But he had not counted on the madness of the Winter King.

  For the Winter King had lived too long surrounded by enemies, and a man like that cannot begin to believe that the world is safe. Even his Iron wall was not enough to let him sleep at night. And, in the Winter Palace where he lived, his wise men began to whisper: our king is hungry for enemies to defeat, and if we cannot find enemies from beyond the kingdom’s walls, we must find enemies within.

  But where are our enemies? whispered one wise man.

  It does not matter where or who, just so long as our king has enemies to defeat.

  So they went out into the world. One, found a farmer. One, found a butcher. And to the farmer they said: you are sending poisoned bread to the Winter King! And to the butcher they said: you have a cleaver in your shop; do you mean to chop off the Winter King’s head? And to both they said: you are enemies of the King. We banish you into the farthest east, to the world of Perpetual Winter. There you must live until the end of your days and toil in your King’s service, in that great frozen city called Gulag.

  Well, for a time, the Winter King was happy. He saw that his wise men had found the enemies in their midst, and rewarded them well. But, soon, the madness came again. And he said to the wise men: if this farmer was an enemy, if this butcher was an enemy, then our enemies are everywhere, in every house and street corner, in every town and farm. Go out into the lands and root out these men, and send them into the farthest east, to the world of Perpetual Winter, and there make them toil until the end of all time, in that great frozen city called Gulag.

  So the wise men came together. And, seeing their King’s thirst for enemies to vanquish, they said: we must go out and find more men to send to Perpetual Winter. We must find them in towns and farms, and offices and … even armies. For who else might turn against the Winter King, but a wicked soldier?

  Well, far away from those wise men, the man who used to be a boy woke up one day and was given a letter, and in that letter it said: you may now go home, back to your babe in the woods, and prepare for a celebration and marry her under aspen and birch. And so that you might go to her, here is a ticket for an iron train, to take you all the way home.

  It was news to fill the man’s heart with joy, so in the morning he boarded that train. And the ticket gave him a carriage, all to himself, and when he went in, he thought: perhaps the Winter King is not so very mad after all, for what kind of madman would be so kind to a simple soldier, who only wants to marry in the forests by which he was born?

  Well, the train rolled on, and home was near in sight. But when the soldier woke from a midnight slumber he heard a rat-a-tat at the carriage door. Let me sleep, he said, for I am a soldier going home, by permission of the Winter King. And a voice on the other side of the door said: no, you are mistaken, for we are wise men sent from the Winter King himself.

  And the door flew open, and in its frame stood three wise men. The first stepped through and sat with the soldier, and the second stepped through and sat with the soldier, and the third stepped through and closed the door behind.


  Did you receive a letter sending you home?

  Yes, said the soldier.

  And did the letter have a ticket to put you on this train, in this carriage, alone?

  Yes, said the soldier, and now he was afraid, for the wise men knew things they should not.

  Then you are not going home to marry your babe in the woods, and celebrate your wedding under aspen and birch. For we wise men sent that letter, and you are an enemy of the Winter King. You have a gun in your pack, and mayhap you mean to murder.

  I am a soldier, and that is why I have a gun. I am a servant of the Winter King, and not his enemy, for I have spent many months building his Iron wall, when I would rather be marrying my babe in the woods.

  Well, smiled the first wise man – for he had woven a trap of words, and caught out the soldier. If you would rather be in the woods than serving the Winter King, you are his enemy. So now you must be banished to the farthest east, to the world of Perpetual Winter, and there you must toil in your king’s service, in that great frozen city called Gulag.

  Grandfather exhales, soft and long. His eyes, sparkling with a vivacity at odds with his story, grow wide.

  And that is how the babe in the wood’s heart was first broken, he says. So ends our tale.

  The boy crawls forward, the hearthfire at his back.

  ‘It isn’t a proper story, papa. A story has an ending. If it was a story, he’d get home. Or he’d get his stirrups and his sword and ride off and kill the Winter King. Well, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, but, boy, sometimes a story doesn’t end the way we think.’

  ‘Is it over?’

  ‘Not yet,’ says Grandfather. ‘But that’s for another night.’

  Silence, thick as the snow.

  ‘Haven’t you forgotten?’ grins Grandfather.

  The boy shifts, uncomfortable. ‘Is it true?’ he whispers.

  Oh, says Grandfather, I know it is true, for one was there who told me of it.

  After the boy has stopped his questions, Grandfather produces another gingerbread and, tearing it in two, hands it to the boy. On the count of three, into their mouths the gingerbreads go.

  Now there are six. In unison, staring at each other in the firelight, the boy and Grandfather say: no more now; they have to last.

  His present, for New Year’s morning, is a board for making fire, one for his very own. Ded Moroz has left it on the step. Scored with black lines, it has a perfect black crater and a brittle stick for twirling. He plays with it as the short days grow long, making countless cauldrons of fire in the garden ringed by forest.

  Some weeks into the New Year, the snows come more softly – but his lessons are not yet done. At the edge of the forest, Grandfather teaches him tracking. Sometimes, a snare is enough to feed a boy and his papa for a day, but in deepest winter the creatures of the forest are few and far between, and bigger game must be stalked. Grandfather shows him the tracks of a deer, the scuff marks of forest pigs, the great swishing stride of the lumbering bison. You don’t see them, says Grandfather. You see the things they leave behind, things like: indentations in the frost; spoor at the side of a trail; branches snapped beneath or sheared from a trunk.

  The boy watches as Grandfather runs his fingers over ground he thinks untouched, and divines in the tiniest disturbance the direction of a boar, or the place where one of the behemoth bison stopped to snout in the forest mulch. Yet, it is not the bison’s tracks towards which the boy’s eyes are drawn. He stares, instead, at the crisp indentations of Grandfather’s jackboots: sharp, pronounced heel, and thick pointed toe. ‘Look, papa. You leave a trail as well!’

  Grandfather draws back to his full height, and looks down. ‘That’s how they could follow me, boy.’

  ‘Follow you, papa?’

  Grandfather shakes his head, like a dog shedding snow. When he speaks again, he seems to have forgotten whatever it was he was dreaming of; probably it was just another fable.

  ‘Do you think you could follow me, boy? If I went into the woods?’

  The boy says, ‘I don’t know.’ Really, inside, he is thrilling – because this sounds like a game. Even so, he isn’t certain he wants to be alone in the forest again. The forest was not kind to him that night he came home, even though he tried his best to be kind to it.

  ‘It’s easy, boy. All you have to do is follow the click of these heels.’

  Grandfather dances away, more light on his feet than the boy has ever known, and disappears behind the broad trunk of an oak. For an instant, the boy is alone. Then, Grandfather’s grinning face reappears from behind the bark. ‘Shall we?’

  Eagerly, the boy nods.

  To play this game, the boy must bury his head in his hands. Then he must count to ten, and after that to twenty – and, then, for good measure, all the way up to thirty too. When he opens his eyes, all around is winter light. He sees the oaks, but of Grandfather there is only one sign: the impressions of those jackboots on the forest floor.

  He listens out. There is no click of jackboot heels. Wherever he is, Grandfather is hiding.

  Sometimes, it is easy to see where the jackboots landed, for there is snow that has been disturbed. At other times it is more difficult, for there is only forest dirt, frozen hard by winter, and the impressions the heels leave are slight. Still, he keeps his head down and follows. Grandfather went up and over a fallen log; here, his heel scuffed up moss and rotten wood. Then he weaved down, along a stand of pine, into clearings where great oaks stand.

  Here, the footsteps seem to stop. Such a thing does not make sense, for the canopy above is open and the snow has fallen more thickly – so Grandfather’s bootprints ought to be plain to see. The boy wonders where he went wrong. Possibly, he has not been following Grandfather’s trail at all. Possibly he has unwittingly wandered off after a forest boar, or some lynx with preposterous paws.

  The heart of the clearing is dominated by an oak much taller than the rest. His eyes follow its enormous roots into a gross, misshapen trunk. Once upon a time, it must have been cleaved apart by lightning, for it grows in a great fork, and branches grope out from each.

  In that fork, he sees furrows in the grain. They have bulged up, and in those bulges are terrified eyes, the gash of a mouth, the scarred mess left behind when an axe hacks off a nose.

  A breath like winter catches in the boy’s throat.

  It is a murder tree, like the ones in Grandfather’s stories. These very roots drank of dead men. He might be standing, even now, on the place where the King in the West led out mamas and papas and boys and girls and fed them to the …

  A cold hand grabs him, closes over his mouth. He wants to scream out, but he has no breath left, his craw filled with old flesh like dirt and leather. His legs kick, but his arms are pinned to his side, and something lifts him aloft. It drags him back, holds him to it.

  The murder tree recedes. The wan light of day passes from him as he is heaved under the branches. Only then does he feel himself clasped less tightly.

  ‘Hush now,’ whispers Grandfather. ‘They’ll hear.’

  At once, Grandfather releases him. The boy staggers forward, but Grandfather snatches him by the wrist and holds him again.

  He finds the old man’s vivid blue eyes. There is such kindness in them that it quells the thunder in his chest.

  ‘Papa, what …’

  Grandfather lifts a finger, reminds him to be still. Then he turns that same finger and points it off, beyond the murder tree. ‘Can’t you hear them?’

  The boy strains. He cannot.

  ‘They’re coming through the wood …’

  Moments later, he knows what Grandfather is talking about. There are other voices, other footsteps. He tries to pick out words, but all he can hear is a low rumble: two voices, a woman and a man. Soon, he hears the crunch of their footsteps too. He listens keenly, for there is something not right about those sounds.

  ‘There are three of them, aren’t there, papa?’

  ‘Hush, boy!’


  The strangers hove into view, beating a path on the other side of the murder tree. He sees them fleetingly through the branches: a man the same age as Mr Navitski, with a scarlet coat flashing red in the trees. Beyond him there is a woman, with hair as blonde as mama’s poking out from a navy woollen hat. To whom the third footsteps belong, the boy cannot see.

  ‘Come on, boy. They’re heading this way …’

  Grandfather is about to lope off, when the boy tugs on his hand. ‘I didn’t hear you sneaking up. I thought you were a … soldier, or a ghost. Why didn’t I hear your jackboots, papa?’

  ‘Oh, your papa can walk silent as the snow, if he has to. It was one of the things the forests taught me, to keep me safe.’

  Grandfather seems to be drifting into one of his bedtime stories again, but there isn’t time to ask, for he whips the boy around and urges him into the trees.

  ‘But … when, papa?’

  The strangers must stop at the murder tree, for there is time to hunker down, with brambles as a shield, and hide as they walk past. Why they must hide, the boy is not quite certain, but he buries himself in Grandfather’s greatcoat and tries to bear the brambles whipping at his cheeks. Grandfather’s heart is a baby bird, squawking for its mother as a lynx climbs the tree.

  The voices grow loud, and now the boy can hear them.

  The papa says, ‘It will be good for us, to be out of Brest.’

  The mama says, ‘This far out? Really?’

  And a third voice, smaller than the others, says, ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t stay. I’ve promised to be good.’

  The boy squirms against Grandfather, but Grandfather holds him fast. The footsteps grow so loud he can hear each from the other, and then they pass into view. From the brambles, the boy can see only their boots. But here comes the papa, with black mountain boots; and here comes the mama, with leather boots of green; and, trailing behind them, come the boots of a little girl: red and rubber, with flowers on top.

  They tramp past, and the last thing the boy hears is the girl trilling a tune, her father barking at her. ‘Some peace and quiet, girl! We’re here for some peace and quiet …’