by Valerie Volk
Interactive Press
Even Grimmer Tales
Valerie Volk has always been a closet writer, starting as a seven year old with a collection of embarrassingly bad fairy stories. In the intervening decades as a student, teacher, lecturer, examiner, researcher, education program director, wife, mother of four, and grandmother of six, writing has been a secret indulgence.
Now, in this new life as an author, she has published many poems, short stories, and two books: In Due Season, a collection of poems that won the national Omega Writers’ CALEB Poetry award in 2010, and A Promise of Peaches, a verse novel, in 2011. Her third book, Even Grimmer Tales, is a collection of twisted adaptations of the already dark tales of the Brothers Grimm, and her fourth book is nearing completion.
In her lighter moments, she loves reading, film, theatre, travel, classical music, especially opera, jazz and people watching – a never-ending source of interest. Her website is www.valerievolk.com.au.
Interactive Press
The Literature Series
Even Grimmer Tales
(Not for the Faint-hearted)
Valerie Volk
Interactive Press
Brisbane
Interactive Press
an imprint of IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd)
Treetop Studio • 9 Kuhler Court
Carindale, Queensland, Australia 4152
[email protected]
ipoz.biz/IP/IP.htm
First published by IP in 2012
© Valerie Volk, 2012
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Printed in 12 pt Cochin on 18 pt Goudy Old Style.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Author: Volk, Valerie.
Title: Even grimmer tales : (not for the faint-hearted) / Valerie Volk.
ISBN: 9781922120007 (ebk.)
Other Authors/Contributors: Hermanowicz, Leszek.
Dewey Number: A821.4
Other titles by Valerie Volk:
In Due Season: poems of love and loss (Pantaenus Press, 2009)
A Promise of Peaches (Ginninderra Press, 2011)
Cover and internal artwork by Leszek Hermanowicz (www.hermanowicz.net).
For David Harris, with thanks for love and laughter
Acknowledgements
Front Cover Image: Leszek Hermanowicz
Jacket Design: Leszek Hermanowicz
Author Photos: Roy VanDerVegt (www.royvphotography.com.au)
I am indebted to the many friends who have listened to my Even Grimmer Tales with either laughter or raised eyebrows - and sometimes both - and have spurred me on. I have appreciated greatly the encouragement and perceptive comments from the writing groups I belong to, especially Friendly Street Poets, Literati, Poetica, and Hills Poets. The support and interest of Jude Aquilina of the South Australian Writers’ Centre has been invaluable, and contact with her is always stimulating. Useful comments were also made by Geoff Page and Alison Hastie, and the work of David Reiter, as publisher and editor, has been painstaking, precise, and has provided an enormous learning curve during the revision process.
Two other people deserve special thanks: Leszek Hermanowicz, whose witty insights and creative skills have produced the artwork in this book, and David Harris, always my first and most responsive reader. And, of course, the Brothers Grimm, without whose tales two hundred years ago this version would not exist.
An earlier version of the poem ‘Red’ appeared in Poetrix.
Contents
Preface
Little Red Riding Hood
Red
The Frog King
The eye of the beholder
Cinderella
The taste of cinders
Sleeping Beauty (Briar Rose)
Sleeping Beauties
Snow White
A Tiny Tale
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The Bare Facts
Rapunzel
Hairific
Hansel and Gretel
Pre-prandial musings
The Fisherman and his Wife
Of Mice and Men
Thumbling (Tom Thumb)
Rock-a-bye baby
Beauty and the Beast (Bearskin)
De gustibus …
Puss in Boots (The Poor Miller’s Boy and the Cat)
Of Felines and their Footwear
Epilogue
Even Grimmer Tales
(Not for the Faint-hearted)
Preface
The Brothers Grimm wrote many tales.
My volume is a fair bit slimmer.
Their stories were for children’s eyes.
My tales are really somewhat grimmer.
So enter the dark woods with me.
My forests are a different kind.
These verses show what lies within
The caves and crannies of the mind.
Little Red Riding Hood
A young girl in a red cape – pretty obvious how she got her name – is asked by her mother to deliver food to a sick grandmother. She walks through the woods, where a wolf suggests she picks flowers to take with her. While the girl, clearly a gullible child, does this, he hurries to the grandmother’s cottage, where he gobbles up the elderly lady, takes her clothes and her place in the bed. Red Riding Hood is surprisingly convinced by this substitution, though intrigued by the changed appearance of the old woman, and queries the large ears, eyes, and finally, teeth. “All the better to gobble you up,” he says – and proceeds to do so. But all is well! Both victims are saved by a passing woodsman, who uses his axe to free them from the wolf!
Red
“So do you always dream in colour?”
he asks me.
I stare around his office. Typical shrink talk.
Questions, questions, questions.
“How did you feel when …?”
“Have you imagined that ..?”
“When your father beat your mother, did you ever …?”
“And when your little sister died,
how did you...?”
Questions
I won’t talk to you about, Herr Dr Hempelmeier.
Forget it, or I’m leaving.
Except, I can’t.
Not till you tell the guards
to take me back
through corridors of steel
and gratings, locking
me in with my thoughts.
Do I dream in colours?
Yes, red. Blood
red. Maybe blue, black and white,
if she’d worn something different.
We’ll never know.
She knew what she was doing,
tripping through the forest past my hut.
A dozen other paths she could have taken.
But no, always this one. Stopping
at my gate, if I was digging
in the garden.
Her mother must have warned her.
Other children kept well clear of any
scent of sweets.
Not her
daring me with raven curls
above the garden gate.
I tell you that she waited for me.
She knew I’d come.
“Off to Grandma’s.”
Her excuse.
A basket full of cakes and pies.
“Have some?
Mum won’t know.”
And something else besides?
But still no further than the gate.
Well taught.
Easy to follow that red lure
to Grandma’s. Many times.
I’m sure she knew.
Anticipation’s sometimes
better than the act …
The day I got there first
she didn’t even hear
old woman’s muffled feeble cries
behind the wardrobe door.
Bed
was more inviting.
She knew what she was doing.
Lies, all lies.
That story of a woodsman rushing in.
True there was an axe.
But only me. And Red.
Funny really,
the way the stain merged with her cape.
You couldn’t see it till
the pool grew to the lake
that drowns me every night.
Wonder if she’d worn a blue dress …
Different story then.
Perhaps my dreams
would be a different colour?
The Frog King
A handsome king is transformed by a witch into an ugly frog. (It’s risky to cross witches!) One day, when a spoiled Princess’s golden ball is lost in his fountain, the frog offers to return it to her. However, because he is missing his former life, he first makes a bargain with the girl, that she will share her meals and her bedroom with him. Her ball returned, having got what she wanted, the princess, typical female, tries to back out of the deal, but her father insists that she honours her promise. The girl grows surprisingly fond of her new companion and ultimately her kiss releases him from the spell. She discovers, to her amazement and delight, that she is sharing her bedroom with a handsome young man. Though, as they say in these days of internet romances, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get a prince.
The eye of the beholder
Don’t give me that old line,
that looks aren’t everything.
It isn’t true. You know it. So do I.
And if you’re honest, you’ll admit it.
I learned it the hard way.
I’ve never trusted men
who have male model looks.
The sort you see on covers
of women’s magazines.
Or blandly smiling on commercials,
or advertising latest trends
in fashions for aspiring young executives.
Worse still, the bulging biceps lot,
flexing muscles over skimpy briefs.
Fair made me sick to look at them!
Something about those guys
put me right off. I think it was
the smug look on their faces,
the consciousness they showed
that girls would almost certainly
fall at their well-shod feet
and find them irresistible.
Not me!
Not that I ever had to worry.
Pa’s money saw me always
well-pursued. I knew it. So did he.
“Well, Princess, just take care!”
Time after time, he said that,
when yet another blond young hunk
rocked up to take me
(or was it just the family fortune?)
out to dinner. I listened to my dad.
He was a wise old bird. “Good looks,”
he’d say, “are dangerous. You’re lucky,
Princess, ’cos you’ve got it all.
Not only beauty, but good sense,
and being Daddy’s only child
won’t be a disadvantage either.
So take care.”
I did, and anyway,
I always liked the plainer ones.
They often seemed to have
much more to offer. I guess
because they knew they weren’t
god’s gift to women, so saw themselves
as offering much less. In looks, at least.
I specially liked the one
they all called ‘Frog.’ He knew
that he was downright ugly,
but didn’t let it worry him.
I liked that.
He’d never look at me,
just turn away, and blush.
OK. That got me in, and I will be
the first one to admit it.
It piqued me, so I chased him.
Pursued him quite relentlessly,
and caught him. We were married.
Daddy was approving. “Looks – ”
he said it many times to me,
“ – they’re not reliable. I’m glad
you’ve learned that lesson.”
So Frog and I were happy for a time,
until he started to look round
and realise he didn’t have to look
the way he did. I loved him,
so I really didn’t feel at all uneasy
about the money all those doctors
charged us.
And they were worth it.
Boy, the changes that they made.
Those plastic surgeons have so much
to answer for. They do a lot of damage!
I will admit it may not be intended.
You often see him now; his photo’s
in the social pages most weekends.
A different model’s on his arm
each time.
He’s not called ‘Frog’
these days. They’ve nicknamed him
‘The Prince.’ We haven’t seen each other
for a while. He did quite well
out of our breaking up. I don’t regret
the money that it cost.
What saddens me
is what it did to Dad. These days
he doesn’t have so much to say;
he looks a bit confused.
He’s lost his certainty,
and ‘Looks aren’t everything!” is not
a phrase you hear around our house.
Worst of it is the palace pool is empty.
He could at least have given us
some tadpoles for the future …
Cinderella
A widower with one beautiful child marries a proud and arrogant woman with two far less prepossessing daughters. These jealous maidens oppress and persecute their new step-sister, who is forced to do all the housework and live among the cinders in the kitchen. On the night of the Prince’s ball, Cinderella is left at home, but her dreams are fulfilled when a fairy godmother appears and transforms the girl’s rags into a haute couture ball gown. This wonder woman sends Cinderella to the ball in a coach created from a pumpkin (modern transport authorities might well envy this ability) and driven by coachman and horses made from the kitchen creatures that the girl has befriended. She and the Prince are so entranced with each other that she forgets the requirement to leave the ball before the enchantment ends at midnight. When the clock strikes she returns to her rags as she flees, but leaves behind a glass slipper on the palace steps. Although all through the kingdom hopeful girls, including the wicked stepsisters, try to cram their feet into the glass slipper, the prince searches until he finds the girl whose foot fits the object, to be his beloved. They live happily ever after, and we all learn the adage: If the shoe fits, wear it!
The taste of cinders
I get annoyed the way the whole world seems
to overlook what it was like for me.
I married him in good faith
expecting what a woman always hopes for:
to be at least of some importance in his life.
Mind you, the girls warned me. “Are you quite sure – ”
Priscilla’s always been a cautious one,
“are you quite sure that he is really
what he seems?”
Me, I’m the trusting sort.
Plus, desperation’s setting in.
That sick sense of unease
when money matters loomed.
Solo, widow, penniless,
two daughters with no looks –
slim chance of getting rid of them!
He seemed ideal. Thought for sure
he’d be protective, caring,
he’d look after me.
He told me that he had a daughter,
said he loved her very much.
He didn’t say how much.
Somehow that bit is never mentioned
when the story gets retold.
They tell you that she loved her daddy,
and what a rotten bitch I was.
That’s what they say. They leave out
how I tried to make the whole thing work.
They make it sound as if she was exploited.
Stuck inside the kitchen,
slave for everyone. While my girls –
this is what they tell you – swanned round
and treated her like dirt.
Not how it really was.
A clever little minx, that one.
Piteous looks for Daddy
and quick to cuddle up to him.
Often made me feel a little odd,
especially when I saw
just how he looked at her.
Yes, daddy loved his daughter.
Separate bedrooms for us? Not a worry.
I thought it was considerate,
given how he snored. Though I’d admit
I’d looked for something different
when I said yes, I’d marry him.
“I need a wife,” he told me.
Fool that I was, I didn’t hear
exactly what he wanted. And she,
I saw how she played up to him.
Creaking stairs when he went down
so many nights
to get his midnight glass of milk –
it took some time …
Her little room was off the kitchen.
That’s how the story started, I suppose,
how badly she was treated.
Balls and princes – all that silly talk!
As for the story
that I stopped her going out!
Me stop her
doing anything she wanted!
He couldn’t bear the thought that other men
might want her. That’s the truth of it.
