Page 64 of Hansel and Gerhardt
Hansel trudged up the chocolate steps, onto the toffee landing.
“Well?” said Herr Candy, holding the door open for him. “Hungry yet?”
Hansel looked him in the eye. He searched for anything—a flicker of humanity. But all he saw was a hunter, more inhumane than the wild wolf in the woods. There was nothing inside that being. No soul, no empathy. Hansel could see it. This thing was not human. This thing was death itself.
Hansel dipped his head low and entered the candy house.
Gerhardt stood on the opposite side of the room, hands forcefully stuck to his lovely hips, trying his best not to drool at the feast laid atop the table between them.
It was all dessert, of every kind conceivable. Things he’d never seen before. Things he couldn’t have dreamed up in his wildest imaginings. Biscuits golden and thick with bright red jam, sparkling beneath their dusting of sugar. Thick raisin buns, wildly torn and soaking in still-bubbling caramel sauce. Soft, wobbling, silken custard tarts, topped with hard sugar or fresh and fat raspberries. Carrot cake, fruitcake, cheesecake, spice cake, marble cake, sponge cakes, pink, white and brown. Yielding vanilla, strawberry, chocolate fondants begging to be squeezed. Jellies, gingerbreads, marzipan in the colours and shapes of every forest animal, carved neatly down to the fur. Schneeballs dipped in icing sugar, chocolate, pistachio cream, rolled in sprinkles of a thousand colours. Strudels thick and folded, sticky with syrup. Puddings deep and creamy,strawberries and cherries dipped in crisp chocolate, pastries soft and flaking, wrapped around stewed fruits and creams.
In the centre towered one magnificent triumph of chocolate cake glowing with fluffy, white whipped cream. Cream and more cream, layered over and over with thick and rich chocolate cake, and dripping down the sides, cherry jam, unctuous, glistening, such an enticing scarlet contrast against the puffy cream. The cake must have been twenty layers high, maybe more, wide and fat and delicious. It was crowned with a garden of cherries, bright red, perfectly ripe, begging to be bitten, dusted with chocolate so fine and delicate it might have floated on the air.
Hansel’s stomach seized him at the throat. His days of hunger, his hours of hard work, his trembling limbs, all of it screamed at him to reach out and take what was offered.
But as though that wasn’t enough, he then saw that each of the three settings was arranged with one small plate to pile high with as much of the feast as they liked, right after the first course, if you could call it that, was done.
For in front of each waiting chair was an amuse-bouche of sorts.
Rare in the display, covetable in their rarity, one each, three golden balls.
Hansel’s eyes fluttered shut, the dark expanse of them lit like a shadow lantern with the memory of Gerhardt eating that golden ball from Herr Candy’s hand. The sounds he made, the unadulterated pleasure on his face… His almost complete subservience from the second he sank his teeth into that dessert.
“I need to wash,” Hansel whispered, eyes still closed.
Not a sound met his comment, so he opened them again to see Gerhardt bereft, mouth wide in shock, as though Hansel had just slapped him. And there was Herr Candy, not even hiding the cruel sneer.
“Are you sure about that?” Herr Candy asked.
Hansel looked into his dead, black eyes. “I will eat. I will wash first, then I will eat.”
Gerhardt spoke then. His voice held a trace of that tenderness that had wrapped itself so irrevocably around Hansel’s heart, gentle beneath a childish hopefulness. “Are you going to get changed?”
His eyes were big and loving, and Hansel was somewhat surprised they rested on him and not on the food. “Would that make you happy?”
“Yes,” he said, a soft smile about his lips. “I would very much like to see you dressed.”
Hansel knew just then, there wasn’t a thing in the world he wouldn’t do for Gerhardt. Even if this was the very last thing he could do. If he had to go, he’d do it with that smile in his heart.
Herr Candy gave one of his gruff, throaty acknowledgements, then walked to his enormous black oven, its innards alight, adding more heat, more pressure, to Hansel’s broken-down body. “Very well, Hansel. I’ll make sure my oven is ready, just in case.”
Hansel eyed the volcanic depths of the thing as Herr Candy pulled it open, the blast of hot air filling the room, ruffling his hair, stinging his skin. “In case of what?”
Hansel jolted involuntarily at the sound of firewood being thrown into the furnace. Herr Candy slammed the door and turned back to him. “You just never know, do you?”
Hansel Must Eat
Hansel took his time washing. He cleaned every part of his body, washed his hair, took enormous care. He worked without thought, like an automaton, buying time, buying time.
But he knew there was no way out.
It was as though he thought an indestructible weapon might fall in his path, perhaps an ancient spell book that would undo all Herr Candy’s evil magic. Perhaps he hoped Gerhardt would grow immune to the enchantment—that he would awaken somehow. That his lovingly spoken words had finally gotten through. But even if they had, what could he possibly do to help?
So there was but one choice available to him. Eat. Become whatever Gerhardt had become. Do whatever it was Herr Candy wanted him to do. Stay here forever in some blissful twilight.
Maybe he could fight it. Maybe he could eat, keeping in mind what he knew to be true—that Herr Candy was no man. That he was whatever demon or monster of the forest Hansel had seen in its true form the night before. Maybe then, even if he ate,he wouldn’t fall under the spell so completely as Gerhardt had, because he knew better.
But then he remembered Gerhardt the night before, so yielding and unguarded in his bedroom. The way he heard, but didn’t hear. The way he was Gerhardt, but the way he also wasn’t. How close Hansel had come to taking advantage of him through sheer folly…
