Page 15 of Hansel and Gerhardt
“I thought we were friends,” the hare whimpered.
“No, you didn’t,” said Gerhardt. “Or you would have told me where the traps were.”
With that, he flung the hare away. But not towards the wolf. He threw it towards a thicket, and he screamed, “Run for your life, little hare!” He grasped Hansel’s hand and dragged him, horrified and stunned, back into the benighted forest.
Clearing
Panting, sweating, exhausted, Gerhardt burst through the treeline and collapsed at the edge of a shadowy stream that blocked his path. They’d been running for hours, again, and he couldn’t take another step. His was the sort of fatigue that felt as though nothing else in the world mattered anymore—as though the jaws of any hungry animal were but a stepping-stone to the whole-bodily craved peace of death.
Leaves crackled beneath Hansel’s boots as he ran up, two steps behind all the way, while Gerhardt had tried to run faster, to flee Hansel and the very words he then delivered breathlessly, doubled over and with hands on his thighs. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Shut up, Hansel!” Gerhardt pushed himself up, but made it all of three steps before his legs began to shake, and he was forced to stop and grip a branch for support. He felt Hansel close behind him, and said weakly, “I wish you’d just shut up for once.”
A hard silence fell between them until, softly, Hansel tried, “We need to keep on. That wolf’s out there—”
“Who cares?”Gerhardtflung at him. “What do you even fucking care?” He turned around, leaning hard against the tree, fingers digging into the rough barktoholdhimselfup.“What are you fighting for? This is it, Hansel. It’s forest, and it’s forest, and it’s more fucking forest, as far as the eye can see. Further than you could ever walk. And all of it empty, bereft of life, except for us and that wolf. You’ll never make it out. You’ll die and your body will rot out here in the open with nothing to eat it, because there aren’t even any bugs left alive. You’ll lie there and you’ll be dead, and we’ll both be better off for it.”
Hansel let out a gasp of breath, just exactly as if he’d been punched in the stomach. He felt as though he had.
His eyes searched Gerhardt’s for as long as he could stand to look into them, and all he saw was defiance. A defiance that lit every splinter of the browns and gold and auburn of his irises with glistening anger that sparked like all the heat and energy of the sun. He was running on pure rage, pure hate. And all of it, Hansel felt, directed straight at him.
Hansel tried to speak, but it took a moment. No sound came from his dry throat until he wet his lips, swallowed, and tried a second time, surprising himself with the calm of his tone. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”
He may have been terrified to be left alone in the forest, but he had his pride, and a near-fatal wound to lick. He felt the tears about ready to burst out of him, and after a statement like Gerhardt had just made, it was the last thing he wanted him to see. To remember him as nothing more than a blubbering mess. Already worth so little, but to be hated even more… To be more pitiful.
Hansel dropped his head, gathering what was left of his dwindling energy. “I’m going this way. I wish you well, brother.Despite everything, I mean that. I hope you make it out, Gerhardt.”
Hansel trod forward blindly, and made it five full steps before he felt Gerhardt’s hand on his arm pulling him back. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”
Hansel’s lips parted, but he neither spoke nor raised his eyes.
Gerhardt gave his arm a firm shake, which rattled his entire body. “You’re leaving me? Just like that?”
“Yes, I’m leaving you!” Hansel shouted back, all the anger and hurt breaking his voice. “You don’t want me here. You want me dead and gone.”
“That’s not true!”
“Yes, it’s true! You’ve always hated me, Gerhardt, from the very first day. I know it, and I’m sorry it was me. I’m sorry I was the one you were thrown together with, in all the world. I’m sorry for every winter you were stuck in that cabin with me, and I’m sorry even now, even as we’re about to die, that it’s me again. Always me, right there in your way. And so I’ll go. And you can die alone, as that’s so obviously preferable to you.”
Again he pulled away, again he was caught, only twice as firmly now, and wrenched back so his face was a hair’s breadth from Gerhardt’s. “I’ve never hated you. I’ve never once, not for a minute, hated you, Hansel.”
“You want me dead,” Hansel seethed. “You just said!”
“Only so I don’t have to watch you die, you stupid boy!” Gerhardt whirled away angrily, then flung two hands up into the air. “Do you think that’s what I want? My only fr-uh-uh-person on earth, dead in front of me, and me left alone to wander this stupid forest? I’d rather that great wolf tear us both to shreds here and now.”
“Don’t call me stupid!” was all Hansel could think to throw back.
“Well, you are stupid, if that’s what you think!” Gerhardt shouted. Hansel turned his head away, so Gerhardt, lowering his hands to his hips, said a little more softly, “I’m here, aren’t I? I haven’t left you.” Then moving closer, almost as if he wanted to place a hand on Hansel’s arm, “I wouldn’t ever leave you. Not unless you wanted me to. And even then— I don’t want you to go, Hansel, I don’t. I want you to-to… Please. Please stay with me.” Gerhardt’s own voice began to crack dangerously, so he turned back to his branch, hiding his face in his hands. “I’m sorry I did that. Both things. I’m sorry I said that, and I’m sorry I killed that hare. I know you’re angry with me… I didn’t know what else to do.”
Hansel took him in, his fiery brother, small and exhausted, barely able to stand up, on the edge of tears. “Gerhardt, is that what you think?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Gerhardt shook his head, leaning on clasped fingers, staring at the ripple of light on the stream. “I saw the way you looked at me. From the moment I picked it up. Do you think I want to be this person? Do you think I ever would have done something like that if I didn’t have to live like this?”
Hansel came to the branch, leaning beside him, hands clasped in just the same way.
“I don’t want to be an animal,” Gerhardt said. “I don’t want to be like this. I never did. I had dreams once, you know? When I lived in the city. When I knew there was a future and a way out.” He lowered his gaze to look at the shards of bark his fingers had begun to splinter off the branch. “And then all of it was gone. One day, one bad choice after another that other people made, and I was blown along with it. Two evil, intolerable fathers.Two! What were the chances of that? Then two dead mothers, both of ours. And now it’s us and no way out. And what did I do to deserve this? What did either of us ever do but just try to survive?”
That touch. That touch that Gerhardt had felt earlier in the forest. That rare press of human solidity.
