Midnight Theater, 26.03.09: Hans & Gretta part 1-5

For Clarence, Cyren, and Madonna (in no order of importance), whose birthdays are only a few days apart, and whose given me some of the best time in my life. This is also for the original writer of the story Hansel and Gretel. May you rest in peace (whoever you may be).

Hans and Gretta

1.

All children must grow up, and in order to do so, they must be provided with a generous supply of nourishment, preferably by their parents.

The wood cutter’s wife pondered upon this thought for a while, rolling it around in her mind, trying to circumvent the inevitable deed. In front of her sat her husband, the bread winner of the family – who wasn’t doing a very good job at it. From the look on his face, he too was thinking about the same thing. He had his face buried in his big hands, his hair ruffled and untidy, black bags under his eyes.

The wife counted mentally the years it will take for their kids to be fully grown. Hans was 10, and Gretta was 9. Another six, maybe seven years, and they’ll be able to help their father. Perhaps.

“Six years. We hardly have anything for ourselves for the next winter,” she said nonchalantly.

“Aye, six years,” the wood cutter said, thinking along the same line as his beloved. “By then Hans will be able to help me, or he might find work outside of the village.”

“How are we going to feed them until then?”

The wood cutter did not reply to this question, merely shrugging his shoulder. His frame was broad, and muscles bulged from underneath his dirty shirt. He looked around, taking in the present view of his house. The house was small; there was just enough space to accommodate four people, and that was by the virtue of a complete absence of any furniture.

“We’ve sold everything there is to be sold, without compromising our own means of survival. And we still don’t have enough.”

The wood cutter averted his gaze to his wife. Sometimes he thinks that his wife can read his mind. Most of the times.

“True.”

“So, what should we do?” asked the wife again, shifting on her chair, revealing the swell of one breast from her low cut blouse, and naturally catching the wood cutter off guard.

“I don’t know.”

The wife sighed. She adjusted her blouse, hiding that swell of a breast that made her husband’s groin ache, while saying, “nothing to be done, then.”

The wood cutter looked out of the window, gazing at nothing in particular.

“I’m coming around to that opinion myself. All this time I tried and I tried, but to no avail. If only I can change the seasons through some means.”

“If I can’t do it, you may as well stop thinking about it,” said the wife. She tied her black hair in a bun.

The wood cutter hung his head at that, and said, “Nothing to be done.”

Just then, outside of the house, the wood cutter saw his two children laughing and singing, hand in hand. Hans was already running in long strides, a sign that he will someday grow up to become a strong man. Gretta was running behind him, with an idolizing look on her eyes as she fixed her vision on her brother’s back. She had a long black wavy hair, just like her mother, and a deep set of penetrating brown eyes. She would grow up to be a fine young lady, the wood cutter thought.

But then again, growing up means consuming more food, and food doesn’t come down from heaven, pray as hard as they might.

“Sometimes I wonder if He even exists, and I feel all cold inside,” said the wood cutter, unconsciously wrapping himself in his arms, as if to ward off some obscure chill that only surrounds his body.

“Hush, don’t blaspheme, dearest. Of course he exists. He just doesn’t give a damn,” said the wife as she stood up and strolled over to the kitchen, donning her apron on the way.

The wood cutter smiled at her wife, and looked at her rear as she walked. That particular part of her – and the bulging ones on her chest – shook like a willow tree. He resumed his window gazing, when the door opened and the two children ran into the house.

“Papa, let’s watch the hanging at the market place today!” said Hans with ragged breath, his temple glistening with sweat. Gretta ran straight into her mother’s arms and asked, “Can we go together, please, Mama?”

The wood cutter looked at his wife. She shrugged and said, “Well, we are running out of meat. I can go to the butcher’s while you take them to see the hanging.”

Hans and Gretta looked at the wood cutter with pleading eyes and a smile on their face. The wood cutter smiled at them and said, “Very well, we will go and see the hanging.”

Hans and Gretta exclaimed delightedly, and they held hands and started dancing to a nursery rhyme:

Hang man, hang man, slack your rope awhile,
I think I see my father, riding many a mile,
Father did you bring any silver, did you bring any gold,
Or did you come to see me hanging from the gallows pole,
No I didn’t bring any silver, no I didn’t bring any gold,
I just come to see you hanging from the gallows pole!

The wood cutter was somewhat disturbed by the song they sang, and he told them to stop, and to wait for them outside the house while he and his wife gets ready. They obeyed obediently, and they walked outside merrily. Despite their father’s order, they continued singing outside.

The wood cutter looked at his wife, whose gaze is fixed on her two children.

“Even children find the concept of death fascinating,” she said.

The wood cutter shivered as he pushed a horrible thought aside.


2.

The village centre, doubling as the market place, was already packed with people when the wood cutter arrived. Hans and Gretta practically begged for their father to go closer to the gallows pole, which was placed dead centre in the market. The wood cutter nodded his assent, and walked them closer to that object of death the children were so fascinated with.

There were several boys already at the base, some running around in circles around it, while others try their best to mimic a hanged person’s face, sticking out their tongues and grabbing their neck until their faces turned red. Hans laughed and would have joined the grotesque activity, had his father not stopped him.

“This is as close as we get to the gallows, Hans. No closer,” the wood cutter said, shaking his first finger in front of Hans’ face. Hans dropped his shoulder, but he obeyed nonetheless. Gretta was completely engrossed in watching the clothes of the chattering women of the villafe, most of them housewives who had nothing better to do than to gossip away.

The crowd was restless and excited, just like how it should be in a public hanging such as this, and it did not surprise the wood cutter when the crowd suddenly cheered and sneered and jeered. He turned his eyes to the main gate, which was opened to allow the executioner, the priest, the sheriff and the condemned. This time, he was surprised, and he was not the only one, for the crowd’s derision suddenly stopped. What surprised the wood cutter and the rest of the adult in the crowd was the prisoner himself.

He was a boy of fifteen, and he was a good looking boy at that. He had a long golden hair, and he had a chiselled good look accentuated by a small split on his chin. His body however, was a horrible comedy of the state of his face. He was impossibly skinny - impossibly gaunt - for a boy his age, and he walked with his shoulder drooped down, his shackled hands hanging limply on his sides. He looked up to the crowd, and the wood cutter thought he can see the word ‘defeat’ spelled out within that blue iris. This was the eyes of a man who knows that he was about to die, and there is nothing in the world that can change that fact.

“He really doesn’t give a damn,” the wood cutter muttered under his breath.

There was a low murmur as the prisoner ascended the steps to the stage. The executioner walked behind him, followed closely by the sheriff, and the priest. Usually the crowd would start throwing rotten eggs, cabbages, faeces, and other things that smells something fierce to the prisoner. But not this time. The prisoner was too young; they had expected a criminal with hideous scars on his face, who snarls at the first sight of people. This was completely different. The boy was young, and he did not show any signs of struggling for his freedom. Sympathy welled up in the wood cutter’s heart.

The prisoner stopped at the centre of the stage, where he now stood on the opening that would deliver him to his doom. Once the noose is tied around his neck, one pull from the executioner will activate a mechanism that will open the small door underneath his feet and he will either die from a broken neck, or of suffocation, depending on how tight the noose is.

He looks like he can use the broken neck, the wood cutter thought. Suffocation is too painful to endure, and to watch.

The executioner proceeded by tying a thick and coarse rope around the prisoner’s head, and pulling it harshly to make sure that it’s secure. The prisoner’s lips began to tremble.

The priest then proceeded to open his Holy Book, and found the page he was looking for. He then looked at the prisoner and said,

“You, H------ are to be punished by means of hanging to your death. You are punished so because you have committed the hideous crime of stealing food and wine from the house of God. Before we proceed, any last words?”

The priest delivered the words mechanically, with no feeling whatsoever.

The crowd went silent. Usually at this time, the condemned will plead for his innocence, or in some cases – and more often than not – start cursing at the crowd, or at the priest, and utter blasphemies.

Not so with this young boy of fifteen. Instead, he closed his eyes and he cried. He wailed and wailed; snots came out and hung from his nose; tears streamed down his face like water from an opened flood gate. He cried and sobbed until his whole body shook with tremor. The murmur from the spectators began again.

“This is not a criminal. He is only a deranged young boy who needs some spanking from his mother and father!” an old woman next to the wood cutter exclaimed. A man from the other side of the market uttered the same thing, if not less politely. Hans and Gretta was completely transfixed with the sight of what they thought was an adult crying like a new born baby, and they watched on with that singular curiosity only children can have in their eyes.

The priest looked at the sheriff, who shrugged and said,

“Read the prayer, Father.”

The priest returned to the book he carried in his hands, and began to recite the prayer for the dead. It was a paradox to behold, indeed; there he was, a man of fifty summers, no stronger than the prisoner – gaunt though he may be – who certainly had no power over fate and destiny; and yet, he recited a prayer of the dead for someone who was still living and breathing.

By the time the priest finished his recital, the executioner had put a black hood over the prisoner’s head, who was still crying. The muffled sound of sobbing was still heard when the sheriff nodded his head to the executioner.

The executioner pulled, hard. The sound of a wooden door opening on its hinges rang in the market place, loud and clear. That sound was soon followed by the cracking sound of a broken neck. The deed was done. The prisoner was dead.

The crowd started to disperse, and still that muffled sobbing sound hung in the air like an eldritch miasma. Even the priest looked disturbed.

Hans and Gretta looked at each other, wonder etched on their young faces. The wood cutter stood erect for a moment, thoughts better left unsaid bombarding his head. He caught bits of conversation from a midwife to another, saying,

“At least he doesn’t have to worry about feeding himself any more. God bless the poor soul. So young, and ended up in the gallows for a piece of bread, too!”

His mind went blank after that, and he took his son and daughter’s hands. He strolled to the butcher’s to fetch his wife.


3.

“His parents turned him in,” the wife said as they walked on the trodden path to the secluded house. The forest loomed to their sides, forming an erratic arch way.

The wood cutter turned his head dumbly to his wife at this remark. Her brisk steps easily matched his long strides, and she was carrying with her a small sack only half-filled with a pitifully small piece of meat, some equally pitiful-looking turnips, and a bundle of herbs. He let out a long sigh at the sight of it, and asked,

“What do you mean by that?”

“I meant, his parents turned him in to the sheriff.”

“You mean the prisoner?”
The wife nodded in that careless manner of hers.

“But why?” asked the wood cutter. He returned his gaze to Hans and Gretta, who walked a few paces behind them, hopping hand in hand, still singing that ominous rhyme.

“So they’ll have one less mouth to feed.”

“But what kind of parents would do that?”

“The sensible ones. The kind that subtly urges their son to steal food from the church, and then turns him in so they can keep the food for themselves.”

The wood cutter slowed down his steps, taking in all the facts his wife shoved into his head.

“That is cruel, and shameful,” he said, as he came into a halt, waiting for Hans and Gretta to catch up.

The path ended in the middle of the forest. Only he and the wife knew that they should now continue due west, and follow the white shiny pebbles on the grass, unperturbed by the soil. Absolutely nothing can move the stones away, save for his wife.

The wife slanted her head, and looked at him with that penetrating gaze.

“But they get to fill their stomachs, and survive. At least until winter comes. It makes sense.”

The wood cutter knew that she was telling the truth, and that thought sent shivers down his spine. “Suppose,” he began, “we repented instead?”

“As if He’ll listen to our pleas, dearest. You know He grants nothing to the likes of us,” was the wife’s reply.

“To the likes of you,” he said, not without a bit of edge in his voice.

“Us. You’re in this as much as I am.”

The wood cutter only nodded weakly. “Yes, us,” he said. He looked at the sack on his wife’s back again, estimating how long it will take before the supply finally runs out.

“Is that all you can get?” he asked, not really wanting to hear the inevitable reply. The wife nodded, and said,

“It will suffice for the two of us until winter time. I think by then you should have earned enough money to last us until spring. Then we begin again.”

The wood cutter’s heart stopped beating for a second, and his eyes dilated. He stared at his wife with a look of utter horror.

“What do you mean, ‘for the two of us’?”

His wife returned the stare with a cold expression.

“I meant for you and me. The two of us.”

“You can’t mean to-“

“Hush, the children will hear you. We’ll talk once we send them to bed,” she said with a tone indicating that the conversation was over, at least for now. She extended her free tiny hand, beckoning him to hold it and walk side by side, hand in hand, like the old times.

The wood cutter’s knees grew weak, and he felt a sudden wave of nausea. But still he kept a straight face, took his wife’s hand in his, and motioned Hans and Gretta to hurry along.


4.

Nights in the forest are dangerous, be it for adults or children, so they say. But in that small clearing upon which their house was built, secure in the comfort of their blankets, Hans and Gretta found no reason to be afraid of the nocturnal creatures said to dwell in the forest. Their head supported comfortably by a pillow, they fell asleep immediately after the wood cutter kissed their foreheads, and bid them good night.

The wood cutter watched his children sleep for a moment with a blank expression on his hard visage. Although the years have not been kind to him, there were barely enough lines on his face to warrant calling him an old man. His square jaw still looked as strong as the olden days, and his long hair was still tied back to reveal a forehead lined with unspoken thoughts.

The wife watched, and waited patiently for his husband to come to her. Her brown eyes reflected the low flame of the candle set on the table where she rested one elbow. Her eyes moved from the wood cutter’s face down to his muscular frame, and she felt a longing that has not been satisfied for years, ever since she gave birth to Hans. She had wanted to extend the small house – although a hut is more appropriate to describe their dwelling – so that she and her husband can have their own room, and some privacy. But the wood cutter had been too busy trying to make a living. Always too busy, or too tired, and all of that just to feed two extra mouths that did nothing but play every single day.

“It’s been a long time since we did it, you know,” said the wife.

“Now is not the time,” her husband replied, not averting his eyes from Hans and Gretta.

“It has not been the time for ten years.”

The husband shrugged, and said,

“Nothing to be done.”

“Yes there is.”

The wood cutter turned his head around, and met his wife’s gaze with a level stare. He shook his head, and walked to the table. He pulled a chair carefully so as not to wake his children up. He sat down slowly, and he put his face in his hands.

“Is there no other way?” he asked.

“You know the answer to that.”

“No, I don’t. And I don’t think I want to know.”

“Well then let me spell it out for you. No. There is no other way.”

The wood cutter looked up, and his wife saw tears glistening in his eyes. He looked at her with a pleading look, but he knew deep in his bones that she was right, as always. There really was no other way.

“We have to do what we have to do. We can always have another child, when we are in a more stable condition. You and I, we are not exactly old yet.”

The wood cutter wiped his eyes. He sat up straighter now, and his whole body told his wife that he already resigned to the fact facing him at that moment: they were going to have to kill their children in order to survive.

“But how? I’m not going to send my son and daughter to the gallows,” asked the wood cutter.

“I’m not saying that we’re going to send them to the gallows.”

“Then?”

The wife leaned forward, again revealing the swell of her breasts. The wood cutter caught his heart in his throat.

“Lean closer, so that they won’t be able to listen.”

The wood cutter almost suggested that they go outside to discuss the matter, but the sight of her generous bosom - still firm after all these years – and her beautiful face replaced his despair with desire, so that he kept silent in order to gaze at those mounds longer.

“We should….” And the wife started whispering her plan to her husband, who listened distractedly. The manner in which the wife told her husband how they are going to go about erasing the existence of her children without rousing any suspicions from the villagers were at once upsetting and unsettling, but still the wood cutter’s gaze was fixed on her bosom, and he listened.

When she was finished, she leaned back, and the wood cutter almost let out a disappointed moan. His wife, all the while watching his expression, knew what he was thinking, and she smiled thinly.

“Well?” she asked.

The wood cutter returned to the real world, and looked at his wife’s face.

“Well… That sounds like a good plan, but I don’t know if I can agree with you on the last part… Don’t you think it’s a bit excessive?”

“No, my dear. It’s not.” At that, she shifted on her chair, showing her side to the wood cutter, and the wood cutter thought he saw one bare breast with a pink peak, and all his senses were swept away by a maddening desire to make love to his wife again, which he hasn’t touched for nine years.

“You know what, my love? You were right,” he said.

“About?”

“We have been deprived of that for too long. I think it’s time we get a space of our own.”

The wife laughed lightly, two dimples showing on her round cheeks.


5.

There was a story surrounding the forest which surrounded the wood cutter’s house, and it was not a pleasant story.

One day, they said, there was a young woman who got herself lost in the thickest part of the forest, where the feeble ray of the sun barely penetrates through the woods.

The girl was, they said, a princess, running away from the comfort of her castle because she thought her step mother wanted to kill her. Were you to ask the reason why the step mother wanted to kill the princess, they would most probably tell you that the step mother wanted the princess dead because the princess was more beautiful than she; a highly unlikely reason, for it is at once both foolish and childish. But then again, they talk much, and the story has been passed down from generations to generations by words of mouth.

But whether or not this was the reason (or whether or not there was a step mother in the first place), the princess was still lost in the forest; and this part onwards, at least, is assuredly true.
The princess, you see, had a shoulder length hair that was black as ebony, lips red as roses, and skin White as Snow. She stood as a stark contrast to the gloom of her surroundings. She ran for many leagues, this princess of ours, and it just so happened that she decided to take a rest there, under the shade of the trees, alone in the forest they sometimes call The Border. She spent a considerable amount of time rubbing her long and lean legs while wallowing in self-misery. It was around this time then, that she finally noticed that she was not quite alone in that part of the forest. She felt that she was being watched by prying eyes that were not quite human.

She stood up and looked around her nervously. She began trembling with fear; this was, after all, a spoiled brat of a princess who ran away from her castle (and presumably from her father the king, for we should not consider the existence of a step mother) for some obscure reason. She began imagining things, moving, animate things that watched her every movement, only to realize that she wasn’t really imagining them. She almost screamed, when the things that have been watching her finally emerged from the shadows.

The little squirrels came out first, followed by all kinds of birds, stags, rabbits, and horses. These were in turn followed by all sorts of animal that usually dwells in a forest, some of which you might have never seen before. Lastly, a black crow flew and perched itself on a high branch.

The animals formed a ring around the princess White as Snow, and they stared at her with unblinking eyes.

The princess, who was dumb, thought that the animal were friendly creatures. She began talking to them in a sweet melodious voice;

“Oh, my dear friends! Have you come to help me from this predicament I now face? Are you perhaps, some messengers sent by the gods to cure me of my loneliness in this forsaken forest?”

The animals, creatures that did not possess the ability to speak, did not reply to her questions. Instead they continued to look at her with wide open eyes.

The princess continued, however, and said,

“Tell me, my friends, where can I get a safe lodging, so that I may lie on my back and sleep with my eyes closed and shield myself from the rain?”

A moment after she asked this question, the animal did a singular thing that would have sent a man with more intelligence than our princess running with his tail between his legs; they moved their heads, in unison, and looked at the same direction.

She looked at the direction which they pointed, and saw that the gaps between the trees were wider in that part of the forest. She looked back at the animals, and smiled innocently, while saying,

“Thanks to you, my animal friends! I will never forget your kindness and compassion for me!”
She turned her back to leave and took a few steps forward, when suddenly the crow croaked in a strangely human voice.

“Nevermore!”

She was startled by this, and immediately turned around to see the crow, when she again found herself alone in the forest. The animals were gone, and no foot prints were visible on the ground.

The princess, whose fear was rekindled by the strange event, ran to the direction pointed by the animals. She ran and ran, until she came to a wide opening, with a small house in the middle. She let go a relieved sigh at the sight of the house, and approached it.

The house was quite small, and she found that no body answered her after she knocked the door five times in a row. By then the sun was already setting, and it was getting dark. Out of fear, she tried the door, and was delighted to find that it was not fastened.

She entered the house, and found that for its peculiarly small size, the house was quite normal. There was a kitchen, with a kettle boiling over the hearth; there was a dining table; and there was a hammock tied to posts supporting the roof. She approached the fire, thankful for its warmth, and told herself,

“The owner is not home yet. Maybe I should help myself to some food. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

So she took a bowl from the cabinet, a spoon, and she opened the kettle and found that the content was meat broth. She ate with gusto, finishing the broth in no time at all. The meat was surprisingly tender, and succulent; the princess had never tasted meat like that before, and she wondered what kind of meat it was.

After the splendid meal, our princess felt drowsy. She told herself after a long-drawn yawn,

“I’m sleepy, and I should go to bed. I’m sure the owner would not mind if I were to use his bed for awhile, at least until he gets back.”

So she climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the bed room was located.

The sun had completely set by the time she reached the bedroom, and she was too tired to light up a candle, so without looking, she threw herself on the bed. One thought passed in her head before she fell asleep;

“Why is the bed so long?”

Now our princess White as Snow, after the adventure she had in the forest, and after all that running, immediately fell into a deep slumber. She did not hear the door opened a few hours later. She also did not hear the footsteps that went around the first level of the house, the slow murmurs that accompany them. She did not hear the footsteps climbing up the stairs, and she certainly did not hear the bed room door creaked open. What woke her up, however, was a light coming from a candle held close to her face.

She exclaimed, and drew herself up to the bedpost, and drew the blankets closer to her body. What she saw was indeed the strangest thing she had ever seen in her whole life.

There were, filed up in a line in front of her, seven short men whose height were half of hers. They all had thick beards growing from their chin to their chest, and they wore the same attire. They looked at the princess with sinister eyes, and they did not say a word.

The princess thought that she finally met the owners of the house, dwarves though they maybe, and apologized for her entry. She began enquiring their names, one by one, but they did not reply to any of her questions.

Finally she decided to tell them about the meat broth too, and when she did so, the faces of the dwarves lit up, and they, in unison, put their hands behind their back, and pulled out pick axes from their belts.

Before she could even scream, the seven dwarves had killed the princess, hacked her body into small, small pieces.

Now, if you were to ask them – the story tellers – as to why the dwarves killed the princess, you will not get a definite answer; some say that she was killed because she barged in to their house, and that she was being rude by eating their meal. Some say that they killed her because she was the meal; after all, as we all know, human meat is the best tasting meat in the world, and no one can dispute that fact.

Whatever the reason may be, the fact that the princess was killed is true; and this was the story surrounding the forest that surrounded the wood cutter’s house.

*****************

And with that post, I bid you

Good night.

Sleep

Tight.