And oh! It was good. My stomach roared with approval—so much so in fact that at first it sent the meat right back up again, and I had to swallow it once more, more slowly, to prove to it it wasn’t dreaming. We had a feast that night. I soon overcame my scruples, what else was there for it, when I had the evidence of my own senses? The body had such a variety of tastes: the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the flesh, not a single one bland, not a single one without subtle flavours all their own, we are meant to be eaten, we are designed that way. Pretty soon I even fished the woman’s face out of the fire, and we ate that too, and do you know, the eyes did taste a little like eggs, if you closed your own, and pretended.
I said that the food would give us the strength to find our way home the next day, and Hans agreed. And that night we slept with full bellies—so full that we couldn’t sleep on them, so full that we kept rolling right off the bellies and onto our sides. And in the morning Hans said, But why leave? This can be our house now. And we can dine on the fruits of the forest. Because the forest is full of children, all the children of the world play here at some time, and most will come too far and too unwisely; there are a million cruel stepmothers to escape from, there are a million, million kindly woodcutters who don’t take enough care.
I remember the first child we caught. It looked up at us with such idiot relief. It said, it thought it was going to die alone. Hans said, Not alone—and he broke its jaw fast, because the woman had been right, it was better the child didn’t give its name, you didn’t want to get too attached to the livestock. We broke off a finger each, and sucked on them, and they seemed ripe enough to us, but what did we know? Then we hung the child upside down and it was bawling all the while, and then it stopped bawling and its sobbing was so quiet, and we slit its throat, and then even the sobbing stopped. Childmeat is the best meat of all, it lifts straight off the bone and melts in your mouth—and it tastes of death, and the taste of death is good. You can survive on vegetables but you can’t enjoy them, and feasting on death gives even for a moment the sense we have risen above death, we are gods, we will live forever.
And this went on for some years. And we were never cruel to the children, they never suffered unnecessarily—and that was good too, because an unripe child may taste a little sour, but a suffering child tastes sourer still. And we forgot the face of our father. And we didn’t care, I thought we didn’t care.
One day we found a little girl, sleeping under the bushes. She was just outside the house, no more than a few feet away, it was as if she’d been left there as a gift. At first I thought she was already dead, and there is little worth in a child who is already dead—it’s edible, but where’s the fun in eating the leftovers of crows and worms? Hans turned it over with his foot, and she opened her eyes, and blinked at us, and smiled. She smiled. Hans said, We are going to eat you. And the girl said, I know the way out of the forest. I know the way home.
I said to Hans, This is it—this is our chance to escape. And Hans said, There is no escape for us. We are what we are, and we can never be anything else. We prey upon the weak and the defenceless, and if that makes us evil, why then, so we are evil, but we do our evil honestly. There is no home out there for us, Greta. And he shed a tear, but by now I was sick of my brother’s sentiment. I said, This is not what I wanted my life to be. To eat and pretend what we eat is something else. To shit, and pretend what comes out is not what we have eaten. To fuck, and pretend you’re not my brother. There has to be more to life than that. And Hans said, That is all life has ever been.
And the child. The child never stopped smiling. I swear to you, if the child had caved in, if it had begun to cry like all the others, if it had struggled or begged for its life, I’d have given into my hunger, and eaten it raw right there on the spot. But it smiled. So what else could I do?
I said to Hans, I’m leaving.
And he said, If you leave, we will never meet again.
And I said, So be it. Will you let us go?
Because he held his knife. And we were starving—it had been a cold winter, and the children had been playing safe. And I thought he might eat the girl regardless. And I thought he might eat me too.
And we stood there for a while, all three of us, my brother, me, and the smiling girl. And then my brother turned around, and went back to the house, and went inside.
Come on, said the girl, and she took my hand. And I held on tight, and I tell you, I was blinking back tears, and I don’t know whether it was because someone had rescued me at last, or because I had lost my brother—Come on, she said, I’ll get you home.
And we walked right out of the forest. I got a job in a department store, selling hosiery. That is where I met your grandfather. He was working there as an accountant. He took pity on me. He didn’t mind my coarse ways. He married me, he smoothed off my rough edges. Ach, he took me to his bed, and I gave him children. One of them was your father.
(Sieglinde asked, “What happened to the little girl?”)
And the family accepted me for his sake. Or, if they did not accept me, they tolerated me. They tolerated me to my face. And we lived happily ever after—I never ate another child, I need you to know that. I need you to understand. I never hurt anyone ever again, not after I had left the forest. I paid that price.
(“What happened to the little girl?”)
This suitcase does not suit! Look at this suitcase. It is too big. What is the use of such big suitcases? Who needs to carry so much?
(And for a moment Sieglinde thought her grandmother was going to ignore her question, and then Großmutti Greta sighed, and looked straight at Sieglinde, and said—)
It was a very large forest.
Greta offered Sieglinde another gingerbread man, and Sieglinde didn’t want one, and her grandmother told her not to be silly. Sieglinde said, “What is the special ingredient?” And Großmutti Greta looked shocked for a moment, and saw that Sieglinde was in earnest, and that she was even shaking, a little, and shaking with fear of all things—and she laughed, and said it was cinnamon, just cinnamon. And Sieglinde bit into the head, and now she knew, of course, it was obvious it was cinnamon, but she couldn’t help but taste something fleshy there too. Her grandmother was watching her. Her grandmother would be disappointed if she didn’t finish. She didn’t want that. She wolfed the whole man down, every last scrap of him.
It was a very large forest. The girl had told me she could find her way out of it, and I don’t think that she was lying to me, or if she were, she was lying to herself. We got lost. It was dark. It began to rain. We were hungry. We slept for hours, sometimes complete days, because we were too tired to move. And I said to her, You or I have to eat the other. It’s the only way one of us even stands a chance of survival. And I said to the girl, I think you’ve got a whole life ahead of you, and it’s still sweet and untainted, and you haven’t made any mistakes yet, or if you have, they weren’t of your making. You should be the one who lives. It should be you. I said to her, Eat me.
And the little girl said no. And I told her there was no choice, and I told her it wasn’t hard. And I ran my finger down my breasts and down my thighs, and showed her the best meat she could get from them, and how thinly she should slice, and exactly how long over an open flame she should cook for the most appetizing results. I told her there was nothing to it. I told her that I had done it, and so had my brother, and we were nothing special. Not like her. Not like she could be.
And she begged me. She begged me not to make her go through with it.
Eat me, she said. Eat me. Because you know just what to do. You’ll enjoy the meat so much more than I will. Don’t waste your chitterlings on a palate as weakly sensitized as mine. And she said, Eat me knowing that I give myself to you in full cooperation, I give myself to you as a present; feast on me, and enjoy, and know that I’ll be in heaven looking on. Eat me, and let your last meal of child be the best meal of child you’ve ever had, let me be the a
potheosis of all who have gone before, let me be the reason you can stop afterwards, because there’ll never be a child as succulent as me.
And I said, All right.
And then she told me her name. Her proper name. And I let her.
(Sieglinde asked, “What was it?”)
Ach, what does it matter now?
(“Did she ask you your name?”)
Yes.
(“Did you give it?”)
No. What good would it have done her? I was about to hang her on a tree upside down and slit her throat. I gave her a name. A made-up name, it was a perfectly good name.
(“Is that what really happened?”)
It’s the way that I remember it.
(Sieglinde said quietly, “And was she succulent?”)
Oh yes.
(The grandmother lent forward, and Sieglinde thought she was going to impart some terrible secret, something that would be so dreadful that it would taint her even to hear it—and she lent forward too, she wanted to hear it, she knew she wanted her innocence destroyed, let it be now, she thought, let it be now. Großmutti Greta smiled. And said, softly, “Shall we go up and find that suitcase, once and for all?”)
The dark of the attic was now solid, like a wall; the light from the staircase touched it and died. “You can’t go in there,” Sieglinde said to Greta, and Greta agreed: “No, my dear, now it’s your turn. You go into the attic, and fetch for me the best suitcase you can.” Sieglinde thought it would be impossible—that that solid darkness would knock her back—and she looked at her grandmother’s face, and it was so old, and she saw now how close it was to death. Sieglinde stepped forward, and the darkness pooled around her, and all the light was gone, all the light was gone completely.
There were things there, in the dark—things that feed off the dark, that aren’t afraid of it, that need the pitch black to survive. She felt something leathery, like a bat, but it was too scaly for a bat; something tickled against her hand, a spider? But it was too large for a spider. And the blackness was thick like syrup, and it was pouring out all over her, into every last corner of her body—a syrup, and she could bite into it if she chose, she could eat it, if she didn’t eat it, it would eat her, she knew. But she didn’t want to eat it.
She heard her grandmother’s voice. There was an echo to it. As if it came from a long way away.
“Don’t panic,” she said. “Just listen to my voice. Listen to me, and all will be well.”
And Sieglinde knew nothing would be well again, that she would never more be able to see, or speak, or feel—because if she opened her mouth to speak the darkness would swim down her throat, if she dared to feel, then the darkness would feel at her right back. But she listened to her grandmother’s voice, and to her surprise, it worked—her heart steadied, she stopped shaking, she began to calm.
“You think you now know why I’m leaving your grandfather? Yes? You think it is guilt? It is not guilt.
“Oh, I feel guilt enough. But not for the children I’ve killed. I feel guilt because I married a man I did not love, and have never loved, not one day in all these sixty years. I feel guilt because I never loved my children. I kept popping them out, just to see whether I’d produce a single one I might feel some affection toward. I didn’t. I hate them all. Your father, he’s an especially cold fish. He deserves that bitch of a mother of yours. You do know your mother is a bitch, my dear? And that she has never cared for you?”
Sieglinde didn’t open her mouth to answer. But, yes, she thought. She hadn’t realized it before, and now she did, it didn’t much seem to matter.
“I have spent so many years trying to be what I am not. The scent of childmeat clings to me. I taste it on everything I cook. Just a hint, mocking me, telling me that out there is something tastier, richer, better. And I will be dead soon. And I must not waste another day on this little excuse for a life.
“I need to eat the flesh of innocents again. I was wrong. All these years, I was wrong. I should never have left my brother. I will go to him. I will go, and see whether he will take me back. I shall fall into his arms, and apologize, and beg his forgiveness. He may not recognize me. If he doesn’t recognize me, he will eat me. But if so, ach, well then, there’s an end to this suffering.
“I am so hungry. I am so hungry. I am so hungry.
“Now, get me a suitcase. Come out of the darkness, and bring the best you can find.”
Sieglinde thought she would stay in the dark. It might be safer in the dark, after all. But the dark began to drain away from her—and she tried to cling firm to it, she reached her arms out and grabbed—onto the bat, onto the spider—and then she saw she was clutching onto a suitcase, a nice, neat, little suitcase—and the bat leather was its shell, and the spider legs were its straps.
Großmutti Greta took it out of her hands. She looked it over. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, good choice.” She held it against Sieglinde’s body, as if measuring it against her.
And Sieglinde knew. That she was going to be put into the suitcase. And then her grandmother would take her into the forest, and she would find her brother, and together they would hang Sieglinde upside down and gut her and eat her.
“Please don’t kill me,” said Sieglinde.
And it was as if Sieglinde had slapped her grandmother. It made her step backwards.
“You think I would eat you?” said Greta. “Oh, my darling. Oh, blood of my blood. I could never hurt you. Because you’re like me. You’re just like me. All these years, I’ve been waiting to find someone in this family I could love. And it is you. Don’t be afraid. Be afraid of everyone, but never of me.”
And Sieglinde saw her grandmother was crying, and realized she was crying too.
“The suitcase,” said Greta, “is for you.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sieglinde.
“Ach, you think I need a suitcase? At my time of life? What would I want with a suitcase where I am going? But you. My darling, my blood. You will leave. You will leave this place, thank God, because you cannot stay here, with these people, with these passionless people. And when you do, this suitcase is for you.”
She gave it back to her granddaughter.
Sieglinde weighed it in her hand, and it felt right. Not too heavy, the right size, none of those annoying buckles. The strap fitted snugly in her fist.
“There is no forest anymore, Granny,” said Sieglinde. “They chopped it down. Father said they chopped it down years ago. There are factories there now.”
“I know where my forest is,” said Greta. She bent down, kissed Sieglinde on the cheek. It still felt awkward, uncomfortable, like being brushed by a wrinkled bag of onions.
Greta walked into the attic. The darkness swallowed her.
Sieglinde waited to see whether she would come out. She didn’t. Sieglinde went home.
Sieglinde tried to think of an excuse to explain where she’d been. But when she got home, Father was still in the study, Mother was still in the kitchen; they hadn’t even noticed she’d gone. They hadn’t cared.
She phoned Klaus. He wasn’t in; she got the answering machine. She told him she had never loved him. She told him she would never see him again.
She took the suitcase up to her bedroom, opened it. It seemed so big inside; you could fit a whole world in there, a whole future. She opened up her wardrobes and closets, worked out what she wanted to take with her. There was nothing. She needed none of it. So she closed up the suitcase again, and carried it down the stairs, and out of the house, and into her new life. She would fill it up along the way.
DUMB LUCY
There was little magic left to those dark times. The world seemed cracked somehow, too weak for the magic to hold; latterly, as he’d performed his tricks, he’d begun to doubt they would work at all, he’d stand before his audience behind his patter and his sheen and a beaming smile that was well-oiled and ready practised, and h
e’d felt himself starting to sweat, he’d felt the fear take over—the magic wouldn’t hold, the magic would fail. Lucy never seemed to notice. Lucy never seemed to get nervous. And he supposed that if Lucy couldn’t see how frightened he was, then neither could anybody else. The magic had held. Still, it worried him.
They hadn’t performed for a month. It would be better, he supposed, when they reached the town. The villagers wanted nothing to do with their conjuring. They had no coins to waste on such a thing. But he had strong arms, they said, he could work alongside them in the fields—and the little girl, she could join the other children, there were always berries that needed picking. Sometimes the coins they earned were enough to buy them shelter for the night, and sometimes not.
And in the meantime they’d keep on walking, trying to keep ahead of the darkness. Because what choice did they have? He pulled the cart behind them. It would have been much quicker without the cart, but then they couldn’t have performed their magic. She walked by his side, and matched him step for step, and kept him company, though she never spoke.
“Is this the town?” he said one day, and Lucy of course didn’t answer, and he knew already that this couldn’t be the town, it wasn’t big enough, it was little more than a street with a few houses either side. But maybe it might have grown into a town, one day, had the blackness not come.
One of the houses was marked “Inn.” He put down the cart, and beat upon the wooden door with his blistered hands. There was no reply, but he knew that someone was inside, he could hear breathing just an inch away, someone trying very hard to be quiet, someone scared.
They Do the Same Things Different There Page 16