Voices in the Night (13 page)

In the 1812 edition of the
Kinder- und Hausmärchen
, the discovery of Rapunzel’s secret comes when she innocently reveals her pregnancy by asking the sorceress why her dresses are growing tight. In the second edition, of 1819, Wilhelm Grimm, in an effort to make the stories more suitable for children, altered this passage. The discovery now comes when Rapunzel thoughtlessly asks the sorceress why she is harder to pull up than the Prince.

It happens suddenly, as these things do: a careless word, a moment’s lapse of caution. Everything changes in an instant. Now the sorceress, hideous with rage, stands leaning over Rapunzel, who is falling backward in her chair as she lifts one forearm before her face. The sorceress holds a large pair of scissors wide open—like a beast’s jaws—above Rapunzel’s braid. The braid hangs over the girl’s shoulder and trails along the floor. The sorceress’s nose, like another dangerous instrument, thrusts violently from her face, as if she’s trying to slash Rapunzel’s cheek with it. From the wart on her chin, three stiff hairs spring forward like wires. Her eyes look hot to the touch. Rapunzel’s eyes, above her forearm, are so wide that they look like screaming mouths. Her eyebrows are raised nearly to the hairline. An immense shadow of scissor blades is visible on the bodice of her flowing dress.

It never palls: the feel of the hair in his fists, the sheer wall soaring, the pull of the earth, the ache in his arms, the push of his feet against
stone. No palace behind him, no dream-room above him, but only the immediate fact: hardness of stone, twist of hair, thrust of knee. He is young, he is strong, he is happy, he is alive. The world is good.

With a crunching squeeze of the scissors the sorceress has cut off Rapunzel’s hair, her treacherous hair, and has banished her to a wilderness. It is a place of rocks and brambles, of weed-grown heaths; prickly bushes and twisted trees rise from the parched earth. Sunken paths of bone-dry streambeds hold clumps of thistle. The sun is so hot that toads lie dead in the shadows of rocks. The night will be bitter cold. Rapunzel crouches in the hollow of a boulder. She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes until she sees points of light. She drops her hands, stares out. It is no dream.

He’s there, the evil one, the usurper. The sorceress watches the look of horror come over his face like a shaking of leaves in a wind. Her trick has succeeded: the braid tied to the hook. She sees that he’s handsome, a Prince, a young god; the beauty of his face is like needles stabbing her skin. She howls out her hate. Never see her! Never! Her words scorch her throat, burn his eyes. He has all the world, the handsome one, the god-man, he is rich, he is happy, he needs nothing, and yet he has climbed the tower and stolen away her one happiness. Even as black hate bursts from her like smoke, she feels the power of his face, she is stirred. She wants to scratch out his eyes with her claws. The Prince stares at her with eyes that are changing, eyes that are no longer young, then leaps from the tower.

As he falls, the Prince knows that this is the secret buried in the heart of climbing, climbing’s dark twin. Everything he loves is annihilated in this savage mockery of striving, this climbing-in-reverse. As a child he dropped a ball into a well and watched it fall. Now he is that ball. He’s rushing away from the dream-chamber, which without him is rising higher and higher—soon it will soar above the clouds and be lost forever. And yet this falling, this soft surrender, fills him with such hardness of not-yielding that he can feel a swell of refusal, an upsurge of protest, and in an ecstasy of overcoming he embraces the last adventure: the rush of wind in his eyes, his hair streaming up over him, the sharp scent of green in his nostrils.

On the other side of the high wall, which separates his property from that of the sorceress, Rapunzel’s father is tending his garden. Since the death of his wife two years ago, he spends more and more time pulling out weeds, straightening the vine poles, watering the soil. The garden grows right up to the high wall, which he has crossed only three times in his life: once when his wife begged him to steal a head of lettuce from his neighbor’s garden; once when he returned to steal a second head of lettuce and was caught by the sorceress, who made him promise to give her his child on the day it was born; and once after a year had passed, when he longed to catch a glimpse of his daughter, but found only the sorceress, who shrieked out her rage and told him that if he ever tried to see his daughter again, she’d tear out his eyes and strike his wife blind. Much time has passed since then. Sometimes he thinks of her, the daughter that he gave
away, but it is like thinking of his own childhood: it’s all so long ago that it doesn’t seem part of him. As the Prince falls from the tower, Rapunzel’s father bends over a weed that has sprung up at the side of a string-bean vine.

And the Prince falls into a thornbush. And the thorns scratch out his eyes.

Time passed. Two words, a breath: time passed. Days rush by like wind in your face, weeks are devoured by months, years are gone in the space of two syllables. Time passed. Time passed, and a great thornbush grew up around the tower. Now the stone was entirely hidden, bristling with thorns as sharp as daggers. The casement window, too, was no longer visible behind twisting branches. Every morning, before the sun rises over the forest, a dark figure appears at the foot of the tower. She seizes a thorn branch, which cuts deep into her hand. As she climbs, lines of blood run along her fingers and arms. The thorns rip her dress, catch her hair, slash at her face and throat. The pain eases her a little. At the top she pushes through the thorn-window into the dark chamber. There she washes herself at the basin, sits at the table, and begins to unbraid Rapunzel’s hair. When the hair lies in soft folds on her lap, she brushes it, very slowly. When she is done brushing, she braids the hair carefully, then lays it in winding ropy lines on the bed. All day she sits and gazes at Rapunzel’s hair. Sometimes she unbraids it and brushes it again. The sorceress seeks relief, but there is no relief. There is only the fading light
behind the window of thorns. When the chamber begins to grow dark she pushes herself through the sharp branches and makes her way down the tower, tearing her body on the long thorns, gripping them with her bloody hands.

In the days of the tower chamber, Rapunzel would sometimes dream of another world, an open world, without walls that stopped her at every point. Now, in the wilderness that stretches away in every direction, she seeks only shelter: the walls of a hollow rock, an opening in a rise of ground, the low space under a bramble bush. She listens for the sounds of hungry animals. She wraps her two babies in coverings of branches and dry leaves.

As Rapunzel roams in the wilderness, the Prince wanders in darkness. He has learned which fruits he can eat and which fruits will twist inside him like sharp metal. Sometimes he’s so weak with hunger that he chews on pieces of bark, swallows them down. He has learned to listen for the sounds of creatures who might bite his legs, learned to strike out with his sword and feel the warm blood on the blade. He sleeps wherever he can in the forest, seeking out hollow places behind branches that hang to the ground or feeling his way to shallow openings in hillslopes. Once, waking, he feels a tongue licking his face. His skin is hatched with dried blood, his branch-ripped clothes are smeared with smashed berries and leaf-slime. Bits of leaves cling to his hair. Around his waist he wears a girdle of woven vines. Though he’s still young, a streak of white cuts like a gash through his tangled beard.

In the long nights the sorceress is busy. She draws on her deepest powers, snatches visions out of the dark. Sometimes she wakes to find herself on the hard floor. In the mirror her eyes are wild. She neglects her garden, shuts herself up in the shed behind her cottage. One morning at daybreak she climbs the tower with a bundle on her back. At the top she takes a knife from her pocket and cuts a hole in the branches that cover the casement window. Now she can pass her bundle through without catching it on the thorn-points. In the chamber she unwraps the bundle, lays the figure on the bed. Skillfully she attaches the hair. She slips the nightdress over the figure and steps away. A narrow ray of sunlight strikes the faintly flushed cheek, the closed eyes. The forearm is bared to the elbow. The image of wax and blood is so exact that it seems to be the living and breathing girl. A dark joy floods the heart of the sorceress. She sits watching over the sleeping girl. No harm must ever come to her.

Time passes in the wilderness, where the infants have grown into children, but for the Prince there is no time, only a darkness that is always. In the nothing of his days he comes to a place of rock and brambles. Here, there is sun like flakes of fire. Here, there is hot shade that presses up against him like wool. In the dry ground he digs up roots, sucks their bitter juice. At night the air is cold as snow. He sleeps against stone. When something strikes at his leg, he beats it with a rock. The holes of his eyes hurt. One day, resting among spiky bushes that clutch at his arms, he hears a song. He is shivering with fever. He doesn’t know whether the song is within him or without. He is back at the tower, the hair coming down like fire. He rises shakily.
The song touches his face. He stumbles forward as though pulled by a hand.

In the shadow of her rock she looks up and sees him. His arms hang like broken branches. His eyes are dead, his lips a bitter wound. His wild hair, his beard. From the depths of dream he has come to her, the lost one. He looks like a dying tree. She is standing before him, the stranger. She tries to remember the tower, the braided hair. Now her hair is ragged and full of thistles. The children have sucked at the breasts where he has sucked. Tears scratch at her eyes like thorns. They drop onto the stones of his eyes. In the wilderness, water is rushing between rocks, blossoms are bursting from thorns. Slowly the Prince opens his eyes.

Banners fly from the corner towers. Streamers hang from every window. As the Prince enters the main courtyard with his bride-to-be and their two children, voices of welcome fill the air. The Prince sees the faces of dear friends, lovers, companions of the hunt, but he is curiously unmoved. He wonders whether it’s because, as they cross the courtyard, he can think only of her. It’s as if he fears that at any moment he might lose her again in the dark. But as he moves among the courtiers and ladies, who part before the steps that lead to the Great Hall, he understands that his estrangement will not be temporary. Between him and the faces that welcome him lies the darkness. His wounds are healed, his beard is short and cut to fashion, his cloak is trimmed with ermine, but he is no longer of their world. He turns to look at Rapunzel. He tries to remember the girl in the tower, the
hair coming down like a shower of fire, his feet against stone—it’s all a story in a book. The woman beside him is marked with a fierce beauty of suffering that makes the court faces seem childlike. As they approach the high steps, he touches her arm. The day has tired him a little. He looks forward to the end of the long celebration, when he and she can be quiet for a time.

In the thorn-tower, where Rapunzel lies sleeping, the sorceress sits brushing the hair in her lap. Rapunzel has been tired lately; it is good for her to sleep. A ray of sunlight slants through the space in the thorn-crossed window. It strikes the back of a wooden chair, runs across the stone floor, climbs the bedside, lies across the coverlet. When she is done brushing the hair until it shines, the sorceress will braid it slowly and carefully, feeling the weight of it in her lap. From time to time she looks up at her darling, who sleeps peacefully, safe from harm. Suddenly the sorceress stiffens with alertness. She lays aside the hair, goes to the window, and looks out between branches of thorns. It was only a crow, landing on a pine branch. She returns to the chair and continues brushing. Later she will get up and smooth the coverlet, plump the pillow. When Rapunzel wakes, the sorceress will prepare an herbal drink. She will feel her daughter’s forehead, she will ask if there is any soreness in her throat. But for now she will let her sleep. There’s no hurry. They have all the time in the world.

Walking beside the Prince along the courtyard, toward the steps leading to the Great Hall, Rapunzel is aware of the glitter of many jewels. The costumes are richly colored and catch the sun. On a gallery
above the courtyard, men bearing shields look down. Voices cry out in welcome. She tries to recall her childish fear of these faces, but it is like trying to recall the pictures in an old book. Long ago she lived in a tower, in the middle of a great forest. The sorceress, the high window, her hair falling toward the bottom of the tower, all of it is fading away. In the sunlit courtyard she sees flashes of bright hair, high-arched eyebrows, earlobes with rings. She will study them, she will learn what she needs to learn. The Prince no longer doubts her, as he did in the time before the wilderness. Night after night he came to her in the tower. She can feel his eyes on her face. She turns, sees that he is tired. Soon he can rest. She understands that he is done with trials and challenges, with perilous adventures. She understands one more thing: she is stronger than the Prince. It is good. She will laugh again, she will grow out her hair, she will play. But for the moment, as they approach the steps, she will walk beside her Prince among the courtiers and the ladies, inviting their attention, meeting their glances, looking calmly at them as they observe their Princess.