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Overview
“A strange and enchanting book, written in crisp, winning sentences; each story begs to be read aloud and savored.”—Aimee Bender
"Horse, Flower, Bird rests uneasily between the intersection of fantasy and reality, dreaming and wakefulness, and the sacred and profane. Like a series of beautiful but troubling dreams, this book will linger long in the memory. Kate Bernheimer is reinventing the fairy tale."—Peter Buck, R.E.M.
In Kate Bernheimer's familiar and spare—yet wondrous—world, an exotic dancer builds her own cage, a wife tends a secret basement menagerie, a fishmonger's daughter befriends a tulip bulb, and sisters explore cycles of love and violence by reenacting scenes from Star Wars.
Enthralling, subtle, and poetic, this collection takes readers back to the age-old pleasures of classic fairy tales and makes them new. Their haunting lessons are an evocative reminder that cracking open the door to the imagination is no mere child's play, that delight and tragedy lurk in every corner, and that we all "have the key to the library . . . only be careful what you read."
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781566892476 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Coffee House Press |
| Publication date: | 08/24/2010 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.74(w) x 11.04(h) x 0.48(d) |
About the Author
An artist and fiction writer, Rikki Ducornet has illustrated books by Robert Coover, Jorge Luis Borges, Forrest Gander, and Joanna Howard. Her paintings have been exhibited widely, including, most recently, at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Salvador Allende Museum in Santiago, Chile.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Cuckoo Tale
* * *
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who liked to atone. She especially liked The Day of Atonement. Atoning, she felt at one.
On that glorious day every year, with the leaves in colors like fire, she got to feel bad while wearing her nicest outfit — a calico dress with lace collar, puffed sleeves, and nude nylons — and she also got to not eat. And not only did she get to not eat, but she got to do it in an auditorium downtown. There she would sit and stand and sit and stand and, not eating, become dizzy from the perfumed women around.
They were all not-eating downtown because on Yom Kippur many wanted to fast and pray together. The temple elders rented a hall in a fancy hotel. The actual temple, old and small, used to be a church. It had uncomfortable pews, making praying quite pleasing.
Discomfort is often a virtue. Nevertheless, the perfumed ladies atoned downtown happily, as did the girl.
Neither she nor the perfumed ladies were much interested in God. They were interested in forgiveness and, the girl vaguely understood, people who had been cooked inside ovens.
The girl was also extremely interested in her Catholic friend, Lizzie Murphy, who had perfectly freckled skin. She and Lizzie had identical rag dolls and a favorite game called Confession. They would take the dolls by their limp little hands and go into the bathroom. One girl would step behind the shower curtain and the other one would stand outside it, reach in, and take the doll's hands and the girl's hands. The girl inside the curtain was a priest. There was much talk of sin in general, but never in particular. All was forgiven in an elaborate ritual involving water and chants.
There was no talk of heaven or hell in the girl's household. It was all about pogroms and rape. But on Yom Kippur she got to lean over and kiss her older sister's dry cheek in the auditorium-temple, upon command of the Rabbi, and say intensely, "I'm sorry I said I hate you this year." Dizzy, she'd stare into the sister's cold eyes.
The sisters shared a bedroom and often the younger sister dreamed that a life-sized doll sat on the edge of her bed and scared her. She would whisper, "Help me!" to the cold sister. The cold sister offered no help, just as no one had helped the family up in the attic after they had been discovered, the family with the girl who kept the diary, the girl the younger sister admired and loved, and wrongly envied.
On Yom Kippur the father watched football while the mother prepared breakfast for dinner. Pancakes and bacon, matzoh ball soup, angel food cake. A mysterious name for a cake. She heated the food in the oven until it was night, and when it was overcooked, then they would eat.
The young girl was scared of the oven, and there was a reason for that, which was that her grandmother had told her stories of children who got shoved into ovens and of families that were so overcrowded, the babies had to sleep in pots and pans on the stove. In some of the tales there was a witch who cooked little girls in order to eat them. "Mmm, I smell a Russian bone!" she'd say, and grab at their legs. One of these story-girls wanted to marry her brother. "Think of the sin," her sister warns her. But they do marry, and then four little dolls are placed in the four corners of a room and they cry like cuckoos. Cuckoo, he takes his sister, Cuckoo, for a wife, Cuckoo, earth open wide, Cuckoo, sister, fall inside! After a while a witch shows up and says, "I smell a Russian bone!" She tries to cook the girl who has married her brother. (This sort of witch has quite a longing to eat sinners, you see.) Yes, then the woods become so dark that not even a fly can find its way home. The dolls' heads are chopped off. Then the girl's sister chases the witch into the sky, where she burns. The married brother and sister now are set free. The sister marries a different man, and the brother, his sister's best friend.
As a child the girl would often not eat to get free of sin. Free of someone? That witch, she was always trying to get the dolls and roast the girls. Girls became doves to get away from her, even. And the dolls in the corners cried like cuckoos.
Cuckoo.
CHAPTER 2A Tulip's Tale
* * *
I was but a smallish bulb — a bulbette, really — sleeping cozily beside my mother, when quite to my horror I was wrestled from that safe, underground home and yanked into the face of an unblinking sun.
The shock of blue sky wide above frightened me, and I never grew to my fullest size. Too young for such solitude, I became forever sad.
No longer could I root happily into my mother's company and find comfort in her rounded shape. There was no one to tell me the facts. How much nutrition to pull from the dirt? Would the beetles bring harm? And what of the worms? Friends, foe, or nevermind?
Is it any wonder I was always so silent? Always so small?
No, I was not ready to leave her at all. I was but a tiny bulb — a bulbette, really — quite at home beside my mother, when those wretched hands dug me out of my peaceful slumber and moved me into that cold plot of land. There I had no playmates to speak of, no playmates for miles. It was a bewildering journey from the very beginning.
I cannot say that I have appreciated it at all. No, not at all.
Then one day, nearly a hundred years after the trauma, I became blessed with a friend. She happened upon me and pulled me out of the ground. To me she whispered thoughts of great feeling: "Poor little thing, poor ugly thing," she said. How those words brought me comfort!
She said she could see I had a difficult life, never allowed to see the sun. With my best effort, I communicated agreement. This was not easy because my skin was tough and quite immobile.
She continued, "And we will not pretend to ignore that you are misshapen. Just as my mother taught me when I was young to accept my homeliness, so must you accept yours. My mother and father love me despite the plain features on my face. But none has a plainer face than you! Oh my dearest and ugliest friend!"
When my friend found me, she covered her heart with one hand and rested the other tenderly against my hard little body. She told me that her childhood memories were like those little boxes containing dried nuts, or fruit, that her mother sometimes received from guests she did not seem particularly eager to greet. The guests were men in black garments, clutching tiny books. This was an elaborate narration that she ended simply by trailing off her words, and stroking my spindly roots.
And then my pretty friend put me in such a box, for her to keep. At times she opened the box and licked me. Why, she loved the taste of my dirty skin! And I liked my little box, that wooden box lined with pink paper. It fit in her apron pocket. Unlike heated potatoes — surly relatives of mine — I did not keep her warm.
And then my pretty friend put me in such a box, for her to keep. At times she opened the box and licked me. Why, she loved the taste of my dirty skin! And I liked my little box, that wooden box lined with pink paper. It fit in her apron pocket. Unlike heated potatoes — surly relatives of mine — I did not keep her warm.
She kept me from missing my mother too much.
This was all in the town of Sneek, near the Wadden Zee, just north of the Zuder Zee.
Her father was a fishmonger, her mother a fishwife. Though her father's family trade had been in diamonds, the family was of the Jewish kind. The Fishmongers Guild did not restrict, so he made the switch. From glinting stone to lively flounder!
There is more life in fish than in jewels, though diamonds do glint.
And indeed, her father loved everything alive. It was this love that eventually brought him to ruin, but through no fault of his own. And she, the girl who suffered most badly for his tender spirit, never blamed him. Yes, he and her mother had provided well for the girl from north of the Zuder Zee, a pleasant life that they designed in the meticulous manner of the era.
The mother kept the home as clean as perfection itself. The mother also labored long and hard as a bleaching maid.
(The smell of bleach and fish made the girl swoon for all her days, and still would if she were living.)
When first she found me, my friend and I and her sisters slept in a drawer. The drawer pulled out from underneath the parents' small bed. Together the sisters huddled through hard winter nights, and the sister clutched me in her hand. And the mother, so rosy-cheeked and kind! She kept the drawer warm by piling hot potatoes inside. The potatoes she would remove just before bed. Then the girls would clamber into the drawer and whisper stories and poems.
When you hear the Cuckoo shout, 'tis time to plant your tatties out.
While they slumbered, their parents sat by the fire and ate.
As her sisters and mother and father slept, she would open the lid of the wooden box just a crack and whisper to me. Her hot breath against the pink tissue paper moved it a bit, making a nice, wrinkling sound that made me swoon.
We shall discuss your amusement in time. It interests me because otherwise you appear so small-headed, as I appeared as a child.
My friend had several friends who had to sleep in the oven. Yes, the oven! Poor little Anneke K — —, whose mother forgot she was in there when she fired it up in the morning! But they all rather liked her singed hair. It had the most unusual crimps and curls!
And just because poor little Anneke K — — slept in the oven does not mean her life was bad. Oh no, her life was good, my friend related. Her family lived well, and kept their wooden floors clean and their tiny home scrubbed and finely sparkling. At night there was much drinking of wine, much cheer all around in poor little Anneke K — —'s fine house.
Just like my friend, Anneke K — — eventually was auctioned. This took place at midnight, in the town square. My friend came home for the very last time and she told me.
"There was little interest in me," she said sadly, "I am dried up like a prune at thirteen: they said my face was sour, though inside I feel fine."
"In the end, I was taken for a moderate fee," she told me. "Now I'll be taken to my new home, and to this man who I fear will beat me."
And then she left me.
So now I feel death coming closer each day — 'tis time, I almost can hear him say. But I am here for your comfort. I am here to make sure that you grow. I was surprised to see you sprout from my withered body, but sprout from me you did.
Lying beneath a man — I don't mean to shock with that phrase, it was common in the time to lie with men, you are so sensitive for such a rough one! — I believe she must have often thought of her parents' house. And of me?
The home in which you reside is not forever.
That swept front stoop. That waxed oak door. Even the mother's feet had brushes upon them, on their soles! This pursuit of cleanliness was performed by all of the husbands and all of the wives in all of the homes on that small and oak-lined street.
From the time my friend was five, she created a ruckus. Her poor mother, trying to clean off the door! Always, my friend insisted upon rushing outside, shoving aside her poor mother. And upon her return she always forgot to remove the straw covers that covered her shoes. The filth. What reprimands she received. And deserved.
She cared not so much about cleanliness. I believe this was part of her attraction to me — indeed part of her country's fascination with my type.
It was a pity they auctioned her off so young. But it was a pity for her parents most of all. The Jewish fishmongers. They were not allowed in many trades. They could have made a bundle in tulips, but how could they know?
But they had no idea of our worth, nor of hers.
I was inside the trundle, inside my box, wrapped in pink tissue paper just as she'd left me. They received news of her death. This arrived in a letter she had sent before tossing herself into the icy cold sea. The letter gave strict instructions to plant me in earth.
It has been a long, cold winter. Will the spring never arrive? My dear Jewess, my beautiful friend!
Come back.
Come back.
Come back to me.
CHAPTER 3A Doll's Tale
* * *
Once there was a musician who played ukulele, fiddle, accordion, and banjo with a group specializing in country tunes for weddings. At one such wedding, Jewish in style, he met his future bride. Sitting between a spread of lox and onions and another of herring and cream, she watched him play. He had longish blond hair, a pale blue suit, and an ironic gaze. He looked like a cowboy-cum-criminal-cumangelic deceiver. How they actually got introduced is unknown; and in fact, this is not their story. It is the story of the future bride's sister, who was neither at this wedding nor at their own. This Astrid herself never married.
As a very young child, Astrid had enjoyed many activities along with her sister. They shared a bedroom and had twin beds, and with a sheet draped over the space between the two they played Runaways in Tents. In summer they gathered frogs in a pail, left them in the sun, and shellacked their dried bodies in the basement. They used a tiny oven to make tiny cakes on numerous occasions. They also had great fun playing Little Matchbox Girl, fake-starving.
Yet this all came to a halt on Astrid's ninth birthday, when she received a life-sized doll from which she quickly became inseparable. Astrid named the doll "Astrid," too, though Astrid the doll was far less plain than Astrid the girl. The doll had blond hair made from a horse's mane, pink undies made of silk, and lengthy limbs of Plasticine. Astrid found the Astrid-doll rather haughty and mean. Confused by this feeling — for Astrid was a kind and gentle being — her ambivalence became a kind of devotion. "Oh, my doll! My precious friend!" she'd say, and press her lips on Astrid's own.
However, after not very long, Astrid the doll was lost in a hotel on a family trip. This loss was perhaps Astrid's own fault: a laundry chute was involved. As her mother phoned Miami Beach from home, Astrid held onto the telephone cord, sticking her finger into its coils and drawing it out, keening after the doll. She listened suspiciously as her mother described the scene of the crime as Astrid had described it to her. "She was in the bed," Astrid's mother said. "She is a big doll, the size of my girl." But although Astrid's mother attempted quite valiantly to retrieve the lost doll from Housekeeping's hands, it did not work. Poor Astrid, left alone to swelter in Florida. Poor melting Astrid, Astrid desperately thought, smiling.
Then, out of guilt, or perhaps mere childish loneliness, Astrid soon invented an imaginary friend in exactly the same form as the beautiful doll. This new Astrid accompanied Astrid everywhere she went. Hand in invisible hand, they trundled along in the snow. Eye to unblinking eye, they told tales in bed, tales of madmen and beasts. How Astrid adored this new, imaginary friend! Silently she fell in love. "Oh, Astrid," she would mouth, nearly writhing with joy. Pressing a little ear to an absent voice, she listened as her very own Astrid mutely crooned of love.
Quite disappointingly, Astrid's new and fragile happiness only served to bring about the most unfortunate of consequences. For Astrid's sister now had her own room with a green shag rug and intercom. After listening through the white box affixed to the wall one afternoon, she'd broadcast, "Now entering the Astrid Freak Zone" through the house over and over again. It was no surprise that soon, a tragedy inexplicably occurred: Astrid ran away quite without warning. Not the girl, but the friend. Invisible to begin with, she vanished again. Frantically, Astrid told her parents about the disappearance. "We were lying in bed, and you tucked us in, and when I fell asleep she leapt out the window, I think." She paused, gasping for breath. "She's afraid of the dark," she said. "Of the men that come in," she added, elliptically.
Astrid's parents responded to the disappearance with reason. Her father masterfully guided their luxury sedan throughout their small town, down each and every narrow alley and unpaved road in search of this invisible friend who had been — indeed! — the very best friend for his delicate, odd little girl. Astrid watched her father's hands on the shift, so strong, so masculine. For a long time he steered them around and around. But at dusk he brought Astrid home, completely forlorn.
This second loss proved too much for her, really.
Doll-less, invisible-friend-less, finally more comfortable in fear than in gladness, Astrid began to live in her head. Or rather inside a small tunnel — a hole — in her head, through which she watched everything gaily depart. She nodded this head and pretended to listen. "Bye-bye," she would hear from within, even when grown up and schooled. To outsiders, this inside-conversation lent her a remarkably pleasing air, since she never had reason to interrupt anyone's talking. "Bye-bye" she heard over and over. "Bye-bye, little doll, little friend."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Horse, Flower, Bird"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Kate Bernheimer.
Excerpted by permission of COFFEE HOUSE PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
A Cuckoo Tale,
A Tulip's Tale,
A Doll's Tale,
A Petting Zoo Tale,
A Cageling Tale,
A Garibaldi Tale,
A Star Wars Tale,
Whitework,
What People are Saying About This
"Hauntingly poetic . . . By turns lovely and tragic, Bernheimer's spare but captivating fables of femininity resonate like a string of sad but all-too-real and meaningful dreams. This is a collection readers won't soon forget, one that redefines the fairy tale into something wholly original."—Booklist
"Deep-seated fears find their way into these eight brief, dark adult fairy tales . . . These stories are the product of a vivid imagination and crafty manipulation by their skillful creator."—Publishers Weekly
“Imaginative . . . lean and lyrical writing . . . Bernheimer’s passion for fairy tales is evident in every story she spins . . . [her] work provides a refreshing contrast to most available fiction. It is no stretch to compare her to Aimee Bender or Kelly Link.”—Library Journal
“Quirky, twisted . . . quietly unhinged narratives by an author who reinvents the fairy tale.”—Kirkus
“This is a delightful collection of strange tales. . . . The stories are also accompanied by anthropomorphic illustrations by Rikki Ducornet, which are wonderfully befitting of the tales. This made for a quick read, as once I was pulled into the worlds of these stories, I did not want to stop reading until I found out where Bernheimer was taking me.”—NewPages
"[H]orse, Flower, Bird possesses everything you want to find in remarkable, enchanting, and lasting fairy tales–the delightful, imaginative kind of stories you want to tell in front of fires, or on the phone late at night under the covers, the stories you know you will never tell as well as the original author, the ones about phobias and cages and learning to love cages, but you know you have to try and retell them anyway."–Puerto Del Sol