Page 26 of Hansel and Gerhardt
Hansel took the description with the desired humour, asking, “Then why did your mother marry him?”
“Because of me.” Gerhardt shifted his position, tearing the meat in his hands. “She got pregnant, and she had to marry him. Her parents made her do it. But she didn’t want it any more than he did.”
Hansel looked confused, as well he might. He’d never been educated in the ways of purity and impurity and public judgement that were so prevalent where Gerhardt grew up.
“The thing you need to understand is…” He sighed again. How to explain? “You know men and women sometimes marry? Like your mother married our father, and then he married mine?”
Still frowning, Hansel gave a nod.
“Well… Sometimes the father doesn’t want to wait until his wife dies to be with other women.”
“So, he has several wives?”
“Oh, no. He isn’t allowed to do that. The law says he can only marry one. But that doesn’t stop him from being with those other women. And a man like my father, who was tired of my mother, or who never liked her very much in the first place…. Men like that collect money by making his wife spend time with other men, who want other women, than their wives.”
Hansel’s head tilted a little. “I don’t understand.”
“There are places you can go. In the city. Places a man can go to spend time with a woman. Or… Or with a man. And that man or woman has to do what he says in exchange for money.” He swept over Hansel’s next attempted question, talking on. “My father took my mother to a place where women do that, and he took me too. It was an old house, enormous and rambling. It was dank, mould on every wall. And I was never allowed upstairs. I had to wait in a very cold, very large room downstairs. And men came and went. And the people who worked there would come and sit with me while they waited for customers to come in.”
He gave Hansel a wan smile. “Some of those people thought I worked there. And they told me things. But my mother wouldnever tell me what she did upstairs, or what it all meant. She told me only to scream as loud as possible if someone tried to make me go into another room.”
Hansel, even if he still didn’t fully understand, shifted forward, all concern. “Why didn’t she leave if she was worried for you?”
Some incredulous note in Gerhardt forced a nervous smile to his face. “She couldn’t. My father sat at the door. Him and some other men. They took turns. For there were others who did not want to be there, and those men did not let them leave either.”
Gerhardt threw another hunk of meat onto the fire. “But the people who worked there, upstairs, they treated me very kindly. Far more kindly than I was treated at home. I suppose they thought I’d end up working there soon enough. So they told me what would be expected of me. They told me how to keep out of trouble. They told me how to make it less painful.”
He blinked fast and looked away, saying quickly, “Came the day, one of them did come for me. He tried to take me upstairs. I called for my mother. One of the women who worked there, she saw me, and she bolted upstairs to my mother. He got me in a room, he closed the door, and I was so scared. And then the door flew open, and he got a knife in his throat.” Gerhardt wiped at the tears that came into his eyes. “She slit it wide, right in front of me. She dropped to her knees and said, run downstairs, and don’t you dare speak a word of this. So I did. I ran back to the couch, and I sat there, crying, but that was nothing unusual. And she went back to work, and the body sat on the floor of that room for three days. They never knew who did it.”
Hansel's leg pressed hard into Gerhardt’s. Gerhardt wanted him to touch him, to take his hand, to hold him. But Hansel only stayed by him, listening closely. Like a brother might.
Gerhardt swallowed down his tears with a mouthful of meat. “Then my mother got sick. Or sicker. She and my father, they had huge fights about it. About how she couldn’t do what hewanted. I used to hide behind my bed, and she would cry and scream in pain half the night. Do you remember how she used to cry?”
A little shocked at being brought into the story, Hansel said, “I do. I remember. But I thought she got sick shortly after she arrived.”
“Not after. She was already sick. She was sicker than even I knew. That’s why my father sold her.”
“Wait… Sold her?”
“Yes. At an auction. Like a sow. Or some magic beans. He sold her for two talers. And he threw me in for free.”
“You’re saying my fatherboughther? Bought you both?”
“And what a bargain. Someone to tend the house, and a boy to chop wood all day.” He gave a short, sharp laugh. “We kept him in money, didn’t we? Between the two of us?”
“Yes. We did. Twice the wood.”
“But never twice the food.” He tore a hunk off the flesh to spite the hunger of the past. “She said I was never to tell you how sick she was. She said she was going to get me a nice home by being the prettiest, busiest little wife she could be. That she would pretend for just as long as she had to.” Again a tear escaped, again he swiped it away. “And I would watch her, how she would turn white with the pain. How she’d dig her fingernails into her palms, and the tears that came into her eyes. The way she’d smile at him through it all. And him such a monster. And she’d say, we couldn’t speak a word of it, because then he’d send me back, and try to get his money back. And no matter how cruel he was to her, or to me, she said it wasn’t half as bad as what I’d face in the city. If I ever had to go up those stairs like she did.”
Hansel was quiet for a time. The story revealed such a different perspective on the boy he’d thought he knew. Such a fresh and harrowing shade to his anger, his resentment, his distrustfulness of Hansel from day one. They’d been set againstone another before they ever had a chance. “I’m sorry. If I’d known… I would have done things differently.”
“You weren’t able to deal with it any better than I was, Hansel. You were just a boy. And I came into your house. And I was awful to you.”
“You were scared.”
“Youwere scared. And now it’s done, and she’s dead, and we can’t change anything.”
Hansel dropped his head, toying with the meat. It was true. And it was sad. Their long and unchangeable past. The horror of Gerhardt’s life before he even met him. Quietly, he asked, “What was up those stairs?”
