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I arrived at the appropriate time. Young Gretel was in the garden kicking a ball against a tree with her bare feet. She led me upstairs.
"You can't go inside his room," she said. "Only he's allowed inside his room."
He hadn't left his room, I knew, in nearly twenty years. I stood in the doorway and took photographs.
"You want one of me naked?" he called, as if I were far away.
I laughed at his suggestion. Meanwhile, he stripped off his clothes. I took photographs.
"Now with an erection!" he announced.
He couldn't manage one.
"Gretel! Do a dance in the doorway!" he ordered.
I stepped back. When she'd finished a rather clumsy display, clumsy due to lack of space rather than talent, I resumed my previous position and there he was, smiling down at his erection.
Blushing, I took photographs.
Gretel led me downstairs into the kitchen, cut me a slice of cake and a slice of pie and a slice of another pie.
"Why does he never leave his room?" I asked. It was THE question.
Gretel sat opposite me eating pie while she answered. "An old woman who predicted all kinds of things that came true..."
"Frau Loomis?"
"That's right. Her very last prediction was that if my grandfather came out of that room, ever, even once for any reason, then the world would come to an end within five minutes."
My biggest grin. "And he believed, still believes that this will happen?"
"Oh, yes!"
She did a little dance under the table while she thought. Her bare feet spanked the cold lino.
"I don't know if I really do," she said after a bit. "I suppose maybe not."
We devised a plan to get the old man out of his room. Gretel went about wising up the whole neighbourhood to our plan. At eleven o'clock the next morning I appeared roughly dressed, made up like a stage villain. Under the old man's window, on the postage-stamp lawn, I attacked Gretel.
She screamed rape and murder! When I lifted her she kicked her feet in a variation of her little dance. She screamed until she hurt her voice and then she croaked like a sick bird. All the while she resisted my kisses, but in fact put in some of her own. The old man stood horrified at his window.
"HELP!" he shouted. "SOMEONE HELP HER! MY GRANDDAUGHTER! GRETEL! POLICE! HELP!"
But everyone, including the local gendarme, just walked smilingly past, going about their day.
Gretel and I rolled on the grass. She undid her clothing and pulled the buttons off my shirt, still shouting for help in her hurt voice. But the old man stayed put at his window, weeping and wailing.
I grew tired of my stage villain's "ARRRR-HARGHS!" and Gretel of her cracked siren. We just lay kissing on the little square lawn. Gretel was on top, her hair hanging over my face. The old man had been beside us for a minute or more and I hadn't realised.
"Hiya, Pops!" Gretel said, sitting up, her knees under my elbows.
She shook her hair in delight. All the apples fell from the trees and the sky went black. We exchanged just one lingering look. Had she set out to make this happen, or was I the one?
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