Hans was outside himself. Perched on the edge of a daydream, he looked below, distantly aware of his bustling dinner table. How casually they live, Hans thought; with what feigned clarity they can connect and understand. There were his brothers and sisters; his aunts, uncles, cousins and ah—there was his father. Look at him personifying repugnance, locks of hair falling clumsily on his tattered shirt. Look at him! (Hans could yell only in silence.) Look there and see him cloyingly preparing his knife to hunt, to tear, to slice yet another hunk of meat for his own gluttony. With what excitement—what vivid, forbidden ecstasy Hans would take his father’s knife and turn the hunter into the hunted.
Somewhere in the cluttered abyss there was a sound followed by a warming light. Hans was entranced. And again, a gentle thunder followed by a thread of heat connecting for a moment earth and sky, father, family, and son.
It was goodness and caring, it was a mother’s voice. It was this graceful fluttering in the medium of time that awoke a primitive yearning in Hans, grabbed his throat and stared him lustily in the eyes. What could it be? Hans wondered aloud, what could it be that she desires, for he already knew that he had to be the one to deliver any object she longed for, to slay any beast that tormented her—it had to be him, to be Hans, to be her son.
Please, she said; can someone please pour me a glass of water. Oh how Hans was enraged to find that this whim had not been made solely of a son. It was his right to quench his mother’s thirst; it was his place within the natural order to satisfy her needs. What cruelty and ice! Hans said, but also felt; and in an instant returned to himself below, tumbling violently from the high canopy of his trance to the sight of his father’s filthy hand reaching for the water jug.
In base impulse, Hans jabbed at the jug, forcibly pushing aside the carnal hand. Upon contact, Hans felt an overwhelming calm, an absolute peace. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the handle, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. At once he was joyous, he was spent; he was adrenalized and gloriously dominant. He would be the one to tend to the maternal flower, supplying water for a thirst that he prayed would always be there.