Even Grimmer Tales

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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.

 

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