Going For a Beer

by Robert Coover

  If hate was the word. Perhaps she’d loved her. Or more likely, she’d had no feelings toward her at all. She’d found her unconscious and so useful. Did Snow White really believe she was the fairest in the land? Perhaps she did, she had a gift for the absurd. And thereby her stepmother had hatched a plot, and the rest, as my father would say, is history. What a cruel irony, those redhot shoes! For it wasn’t that sort of an itch that had driven the old Queen—what she had lusted for was a part in the story, immortality, her place in guarded time. To be the forgotten stepmother of a forgotten Princess was not enough. It was the mirror that had fucked her, fucked us all. And did she foresee those very boots, the dance, that last obscenity? No doubt. Or something much like them. Just as she foresaw the Hunter’s duplicity, the Dwarfs’ ancient hunger, my own weakness for romance. Even our names were lost, she’d transformed us into colors, simple proclivities, our faces were forever fixed and they weren’t even our own!

  I was made dizzy by these speculations. I felt the mountain would tip and spill us all to hell or worse. I clutched for my bride’s hand, grabbed the nose of a Dwarf instead. He sneezed loudly. The mourners ducked their heads and tittered. Snow White withdrew a lace kerchief from her sleeve and helped the Dwarf to blow his nose. My father frowned. I held my breath and stared at the dead Queen, masked to hide her eyes, which to what my father called a morbid imagination might seem to be winking, one open, the other squeezed shut. I thought: We’ve all been reduced to jesters, fools; tragedy she reserved for herself alone. This seemed true, but so profoundly true, it seemed false. I kept my feet apart and tried to think about the Queen’s crimes. She had commissioned a child’s death and eaten what she’d hoped was its heart. She’d reduced a Princess to a menial of menials, then sought to destroy her, body, mind, and soul. And, I thought, poisoned us all with pattern. Surely, she deserved to die.

  In the end, in spite of everything, she’d been accepted as part of the family, spared the outcast’s shame, shrouded simply in black and granted her rings and diadems. Only her feet had been left naked, terribly naked: stripped even of their nails and skin. They were raw and blistery, shriveling now and seeming to ooze. Her feet had become one with the glowing iron shoes, of course, the moment we’d forced them on her—what was her wild dance, after all, but a desperate effort to jump out of her own skin? She had not succeeded, but ultimately, once she had died and the shoes had cooled, this final freedom had been more or less granted her, there being no other way to get her feet out of the shoes except to peel them out. I had suggested—naively, it seemed—that the shoes be left on her, buried with her, and had been told that the feet of the wicked were past number, but the Blacksmith’s art was rare and sacred. As my Princess and I groped about in our bridal chamber, fumbling darkly toward some new disclosure, I had wondered: Do such things happen at all weddings? We could hear them in the scullery, scraping the shoes out with picks and knives and rinsing them in acid.

  What a night, our wedding night! A pity the old Queen had arrived so late, died so soon, missed our dedicated fulfillment of her comic design—or perhaps this, too, was part of her tragedy, the final touch to a life shaped by denial. Of course, it could be argued that she had courted reversals, much as a hero makes his own wars, that she had invented, then pursued the impossible, in order to push the possible beyond her reach, and thus had died, as so many have believed, of vanity, but never mind, the fact is, she was her own consummation, and we, in effect, had carried out—were still carrying out—our own ludicrous performances without an audience. Who could not laugh at us?

  My sweetheart and I had sealed our commitment at high noon. My father had raised a cup to our good fortune, issued a stern proclamation against peddlers, bestowed happiness and property upon us and all our progeny, and the party had begun. Whole herds had been slaughtered for our tables. The vineyards of seven principalities had filled our casks. We had danced, sung, clung to one another, drunk, laughed, cheered, chanted the sun down. Bards had pilgrimaged from far and wide, come with their alien tongues to celebrate our union with pageants, prayers, and sacrifices. Not soon, they’d said, would this feast be forgotten. We’d exchanged epigrams and gallantries, whooped the old Queen through her death dance, toasted the fairies and offered them our firstborn. The Dwarfs had recited an ode in praise of clumsiness, though they’d forgotten some of the words and had got into a fight over which of them had dislodged the apple from Snow White’s throat, and how, pushing each other into soup bowls and out of windows. They’d thrown cakes and pies at each other for awhile, then had spilled wine on everybody, played tug-of-war with the Queen’s carcass, regaled us with ribald mimes of regicide and witch-baiting, and finally had climaxed it all by buggering each other in a circle around Snow White, while singing their gold-digging song. Snow White had kissed them all fondly afterward, helped them up with their breeches, brushed the crumbs from their beards, and I’d wondered then about my own mother, who was she?—and where was Snow White’s father? Whose party was this? Why was I so sober? Suddenly I’d found myself, minutes before midnight, troubled by many things: the true meaning of my bride’s name, her taste for luxury and collapse, the compulsions that had led me to the mountain, the birdshit on the glass coffin when I’d found her. Who were all these people, and why did things happen as though they were necessary? Oh, I’d reveled and worshipped with the rest of the party right to the twelfth stroke, but I couldn’t help thinking: We’ve been too rash, we’re being overtaken by something terrible, and who’s to help us now the old Queen’s dead?

  The hole in the mountain was dug. The Dwarfs stepped back to admire their handiwork, tripped over their own beards, and fell in a big heap. They scrambled clumsily to their feet, clouting each other with their picks and shovels, wound up bowling one another over like duckpins and went tumbling in a roly-poly landslide down the mountain, grunting and whistling all the way. While we waited for them to return, I wondered: Why are we burying her in the mountain? We no longer believe in underworlds nor place hope in moldering kings, still we stuff them back into the earth’s navel, as though anticipating some future interest, much as we stuff our treasures in crypts, our fiats in archives. Well, perhaps it had been her dying wish, I’m not told everything, her final vanity. Perhaps she had wanted to bring us back to this mountain, where her creation by my chance passage had been accomplished, to confront us with our own insignificance, our complaisant transience, the knowledge that it was ended, the rest would be forgotten, our fates were not sealed, merely eclipsed. She had eaten Snow White’s heart in order to randomize her attentions, deprive her of her center, and now, like her victim and the bite of poison apple, she had vomited the heart up whole and undigested—but like the piece of apple, it could never be restored to its old function, it had its own life now, it would create its own circumambience, and we would be as remote from this magic as those of a hundred generations hence. Of course . . . it wasn’t Snow White’s heart she ate, no, it was the heart of a boar, I was getting carried away, I was forgetting things. She’d sent that child of seven into the woods with a restless lech, and he’d brought her back a boar’s heart, as though to say he repented of his irrational life and wished to die. But then, perhaps that had been what she’d wanted, perhaps she had ordered the boar’s heart, or known anyway that would be the Hunter’s instinct, or perhaps there had been no Hunter at all, perhaps it had been that master of disguises, the old Queen herself, it was possible, it was all possible. I was overswept by confusion and apprehension. I felt like I’d felt that morning, when I’d awakened, spent, to find no blood on the nuptial linens.

  The wedding party had ended at midnight. A glass slipper had been ceremoniously smashed on the last stroke of the hour, and the nine of us—Snow White and I and, at her insistence, my new brethren the seven Dwarfs—had paraded to the bridal chamber. I had been too unsettled to argue, had walked down the torchlit corridors through the music and applause as though in a trance, for I had fallen, moments before, into an
untimely sobriety, had suddenly, as it were, become myself for the first time all day, indeed for the first time in my life, and at the expense of all I’d held real, my Princeship, my famous disenchantments, my bride, my songs, my family, had felt for a few frantic moments like a sun inside myself, about to be exposed and extinguished in a frozen void named Snow White. This man I’d called my father, I’d realized, was a perfect stranger, this palace a playhouse, these revelers the mocking eyes of a dying demiurge! Perhaps all bridegrooms suffer this. Though I’d carried my cock out proudly, as all Princes must, I’d not recognized it as my own when the citizenry in the corridors had knelt to honor it—not a mere ornament of office, I’d told myself, but the officer itself, I its loyal and dispensable retinue. Someone, as I’d passed, had bit it as though to test its readiness, and the pain had reached me like a garbled dispatch from the front line of battle: Victory is ours, alas, all is lost . . .

  But once inside the nuptial chamber, the door clicking shut behind me, Snow White cuddling sleepily on my shoulder, the Dwarfs flinging off their clothes and fighting over the chamber pot, I’d returned from my extravagant vagrancy, cock and ceremony had become all mine again, and for some reason I hadn’t felt all that grateful. Maybe, I’d thought, maybe I’m a little drunker than I think. I could not have hoped for a more opulent setting: the bed a deep heap of silken eiderdowns, the floors covered with the luxuriant skins of mountain goats, mirrors on all the walls, perfume burning in golden censers, flasks of wine and bowls of fruit on the marble tables, lutes and pipes scattered decorously about. In the morning, I’d vowed, I shall arise before daybreak and compose a new song for my bride to remember this night by. Gently then, sequentially, as though being watched and judged, as though preparing the verses for my song, I’d embraced and commenced to disrobe her. I’d thought: I should be more excited than this. The Dwarfs had seemed to pay us no attention, but I’d begun to resent them: if I failed, they’d pay! One of them had got his foot stuck in the chamber pot and was clumping about in a rage. Another had seemed to be humping a goatskin. I’d nuzzled in Snow White’s black tresses, kissed her white throat, whence she’d vomited the fateful apple, and wondered: Why hadn’t I been allowed to disenchant her with a kiss like everybody else? Of course, with the apple there, it might not have been all that pleasant . . .

  Her nimble hands had unfastened my sashes and buckles with ease, stroked my back, teased my buttocks and balls, but my own fingers had got tangled in her laces. The Dwarfs had come to the rescue, and so had made me feel a fool again. Leave me alone! I’d cried. I can do it by myself! I’d realized then that Snow White had both her arms around my neck and the finger up my ass certainly wasn’t my own. I’d gazed into the mirrors to see, for the first time, Snow White’s paradigmatic beauty, but instead it had been the old Queen I’d seen there, flailing about madly in her redhot shoes. Maybe it had been the drinking, all the shocks, or some new trick of my brethren, or else the scraping of the shoes in the scullery that had made me imagine it, but whatever, I had panicked, had gone lurching about drunkenly, shaking off Dwarfs, shrouding all the mirrors with whatever had come to hand, smashing not a few of them, feeling the eyes close, the grimaces fade, the room darken: This night is mine! I’d cried, and covered the last of them.

  We’d been plunged into night—I’d never known a dark so deep, nor felt so much alone. Snow White? Snow White! I’d heard her answer, thought I’d heard her, it was as though she’d called my name—I’d lunged forward, banged my knee on a marble table, cut my foot on broken glass. Snow White! I’d heard whispering, giggling, soft sighs. Come on, what’re you doing? I’ve cut myself! Light a candle! I’d stumbled over someone’s foot, run my elbow through a lute. I’d lain there thinking: Forget it, the state I’m in, I might as well wait until morning, why has my father let me suffer such debasement, it must be yet another of his moral lessons on the sources of a King’s majesty. The strange sensation had come to me suddenly that this bride I now pursued did not even exist, was just something in me, something locked and frozen, waiting to be released, something lying dormant, like an accumulation of ancestral visions and vagaries seeking corporeity—but then I’d heard her struggling, gasping, whimpering. Help me! Please—! Those Dwarfs! I’d leaped up and charged into a bedpost. I’m coming! Those goddamn dirty Dwarfs! Ever since the day of Snow White’s disenchantment, when I’d embraced them as brothers, I’d had uneasy suspicions about them I couldn’t quite allow myself to admit, but now they’d burst explosively to the surface, in the dark I’d been able to see what I couldn’t see in full daylight, from the first night she’d shared their seven beds, just a child, to the unspeakable things they were doing with her now beneath the eiderdowns, even their famous rescues had been nothing more than excuses to strip her, play with her, how many years had the old witch let them keep her? Leave her alone! You hear? I’d chased her voice, but the Dwarfs had kept shifting her about. They worked underground, it was easy for them, they were used to the dark. I’d kept pushing toward her muted voice, scrambling over goatskins and featherbedding, under bed and tables, through broken glass and squashed fruit, into closets, cracking my head on pillars and doorjambs, backing my bare nates into a hot oil lamp, recently extinguished. I’d tried to light it, but all the oil had been spilled. In fact, I was sitting in it.

  But never mind, I’d begun to enjoy this, I was glad to have it out in the open, I could beat those Dwarfs at their own game, yes, I’d got a real sweat up, and an appetite, too: Whatever those freaks could do, I could do better! I’d brushed up against a couple of beards, grabbed them and knocked the heads together: Hah! There’d been the popping sound of something breaking, like a fruit bowl. I’d laughed aloud, crawled toward Snow White’s soft cries over their bodies: they’d felt like goatskins. The spirit had begun to wax powerful within me, my foaming steed, as they say in the fairytales, was rampant, my noble lance was at the ready. Hardly before I’d realized I’d begun, I’d found myself plunging away in her wet and eager body, the piercing of her formidable hymen already just a memory, her sweet cry of pain mere history, as now she, panting, breathed my name: Charming! Oh dear dear Charming! She’d seemed to have a thousand hands, a mouth everywhere at once, a glowing furnace between her thrashing thighs, I’d sucked at her heaving breasts, groped in her leaping buttocks, we’d slithered and slid over and under one another, rolling about in the eiderdowns, thrice around the world we’d gone in a bucking frenzy of love and lubricity, seven times we’d died in each other, and as at last, in a state of delicious annihilation, I’d lost consciousness, my fading thoughts had been: Those damned Dwarfs are all right after all, they’re all right . . .

  And we’d awakened at dawn, alone, clasped in each other’s arms, the bed unmussed and unbloodied, her hymen intact.

  The Dwarfs had returned from their roll down the mountain, patched and bandaged and singing a lament for the death of the unconscious, and we prepared to enter the old Queen in her tomb. I gazed at her in the glass coffin, the coffin that had once contained my wife, and thought: If she wakes, she will stare at the glass and discover there her own absence. I was beginning to appreciate her subtlety, and so assumed that this, too, had been part of her artifice, a lingering hope for her own liberation, she’d used the mirror as a door, tried to. This was her Great Work, this her use of a Princess with hair as black as ebony, a skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, this her use of miners of gold! Of course there were difficulties in such a perfect view of things, she was dead, for example, but one revelation was leading to another, and it came to me suddenly that maybe the old Queen had loved me, had died for me! I, too, was too prone to linger at still pools, to listen to the flattery of soothsayers, to organize my life and others’ by threes and sevens—it was as if she’d lived this exemplary life, died this tragic death, to lead me away from the merely visible to vision, from the image to the imaged, from reflections to the projecting miracle itself, the heart, the pure snow white . . . !

  One o
f the Dwarfs had been hopping about frantically, and now Snow White took him over behind a bush, but if this was meant to distract me, it did not succeed. The old Queen had me now, everything had fallen into place, I knew now the force that had driven her, that had freed me, freed us all, that we might live happily ever after, though we didn’t deserve it, weren’t even aware of how it had happened, yes, I knew her cause, knew her name—I wrenched open the coffin, threw myself upon her, and kissed her lips.

  If I’d expected something, it did not occur. She did not return my kiss, did not even cease grinning. She stank and her blue mouth was cold and rubbery as a dead squid. I’d been wrong about her, wrong about everything . . .

  The others had fallen back in horror and dismay. Snow White had fainted. Someone was vomiting. My father’s eyes were full of tears and anger.

  Though nauseated, I pitched forward and kissed her again, this time more out of pride and affection, than hope. I thought: It would’ve helped if the old clown had died with her mouth shut.

  They tore me away from her body. It tumbled out of the coffin and, limbs awry, obstinately grinning, skidded a few feet down the mountainside. The flesh tore, but did not bleed. The mask fell away from her open eye, now milky white.

  Please! I pleaded, though I no longer even hoped I was right. Let me try once more! Maybe a third time!

  Guards restrained me. My father turned his back. The Dwarfs were reviving Snow White by fanning her skirts. The Queen’s corpse was dumped hastily back into the coffin and quickly interred, everyone holding his nose. The last thing I saw were her skinned feet. I turned and walked down the mountain.