They Do the Same Things Different There (19 page)

And then Greta emerged, and her hands were tight around another suitcase—this one bigger, greyer, and free of all offending buckles. She looked calm, and matter of fact, as if she hadn’t tussled with the monsters in the black, as if she hadn’t confronted death itself—and maybe she hadn’t. “Some tea,” she said, “that’s what we need, and you can have another gingerbread man, yes? Come along, come along.”

In the kitchen Sieglinde said, “I won’t have another gingerbread man, thank you.”

Großmutti Greta said, “Why not?”

Sieglinde explained she didn’t want to get fat.

Großmutti Greta said, “There was a time when we didn’t worry about such stupid things. It was good to be fat. It meant we might survive the winter.”

Sieglinde said that had been a long time ago, and now it wasn’t good to be fat, and that Klaus wouldn’t want her if she put on weight, he told her he didn’t fancy girls with big thighs.

Greta said, “That Klaus of yours is an idiot,” and she said, “And your thighs are not fat, and believe me, I am an expert, I feel they could do with a lot more fattening. Now eat another gingerbread man, or you will offend me, and we shan’t part as friends.” Sieglinde didn’t want that, and besides, she did like the gingerbread men, they really were quite delicious.

“Won’t you have one?” asked Sieglinde, as she bit off a leg, and Greta waved the offer aside, and instead clasped hold of her teacup, and Sieglinde noticed that there were indeed fingers missing from Greta’s hand, and she’d never seen that before, how strange.

“I liked your story, Granny,” said Sieglinde. “But I don’t understand why you’re leaving Großvatti.”

“That’s because the story isn’t finished yet,” said Großmutti Greta. “Now be quiet, blood of my blood, and listen.”

I said that the air tasted so fresh that it was good enough to eat. Well, you couldn’t. And though Hans and I enjoyed our freedom, and thought we’d escaped certain death at the hands of the old woman, in truth we were still in danger. We walked through the forest as hungry as before, and as lost. We walked for hours, and our feet hurt, and our stomachs hurt, and Hans said, It’s no good, my sister, we were better off as we were. At least before there was a
reason
for our deaths; another would have lived through our sacrifice, and she would have buried our bones, and she would have remembered us, and in the darkness of the night when she was all alone she might have patted her belly for company. Hans shed a tear, because, as I say, he was very sensitive.

Still we walked on, and it was with our last remaining strength that we dragged ourselves to a house. And only as we reached the door did we realize we knew this house; we had spent all this time walking in a circle. We had returned to the cottage where we had been imprisoned, and the bricks were not made of bread, and the cement not made of fudge—but nevertheless, something very tasty smelled from the inside. And we opened the door, and there, of course, was the woman—just as we’d left her, and cooked to an absolute tee.

Oh, how my tummy cried out for that meat. We have no choice, said Hans, and from the oven he took the roast dinner, and broke off one of the woman’s arms, and began to gnaw at it. The woman stared at us through eyes that had browned in the heat and looked like fried eggs. At least close them, I said, and Hans did one better, he tore off her face altogether and threw it into the fire—You have to eat, he said, my dear sister, you know we can’t afford to be picky with our food now—and I said, Could you find me a piece of meat that isn’t
too
meaty, something that won’t look too much like it’s from a corpse?—and he had a rummage, and then produced something that looked a little like chicken, and I put it in my mouth, and I swallowed.

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.