Ольга Грушина - The Charmed Wife

The more she talks, the smaller I feel, as if my story is just like every other story, a commonplace, and I a lifeless cardboard cutout, in control of nothing, made to go through motions to illustrate some preordained, banal conclusion. A grain of resistance starts to form deep, deep inside me, tiny yet stubborn, insidious like a pea under a suffocating pile of mattresses to which a fellow princess was once subjected in an insulting parochial trial. Oblivious of my mood, the witch carries on. “A better way, by far, is to target the root of the actual problem. Does he treat you with cruelty? We can make you invisible. Does he gamble? We can turn all the coins in his pockets into cobwebs and leaves—a cheap fairy trick, that, but quite effective. Does he drink? Any wine he puts in his mouth from now on will taste like troll piss. Are there other ladies involved? We will cause him great difficulties in this department, if you get my drift, heh-heh-heh, just say the word—”

And I do, after all my years of silence. And the word is “No.”

“No,” I say, in a loud, clear voice. I feel myself flushing, not with embarrassment but with anger. “No, I do not want any of that.”

The witch looks startled, and I am startled, too, for I have never spoken to anyone with such force before, not me, not the sweet-natured girl who never argues.

“No,” I repeat once again, just to prolong the unfamiliar sensation that has awakened in me. This new sensation is heady and large, its edges harsh and defiant, not like any of the plaintive, aggrieved, stealthy sensations I have carried inside me for so long they have grown soft and worn-out with a decade of use, like crumpled old handkerchiefs soggy with old tears. This sensation is one of power—of having him in my power at last, of holding the smiting sword of justice raised above him, not some impersonal fairy-tale justice meting out brides and slugs, but my own, very personal, long-overdue justice, about to crash down upon his handsome curly head.

“Well, it’s your spell,” the witch says cautiously after a pause. “What do you want, then?”

I know just what I want.

“I want him dead.”

A strike of lightning, perfectly timed, accompanies my words. I do not flinch. I see everything clear and frozen in its purple flash—the witch, her scraggly eyebrows lifted in surprise, the cauldron with its revolting blood-tinged concoction, the wolf winds lying in prone submission at my feet. Then the world winks out again.

“It’s your spell, madam,” the witch repeats, but a novel note sounds in her words, one I am not accustomed to hearing from anyone. I wonder if it could be respect. “Well, then. If you’re sure.”

“Do it,” I tell her.

And the night is black and the fire red and the commencing spell long and extravagant and full of awe-inspiring sound effects, complete with growls and howls and rolls of mighty thunder. A dark, stormy stretch of the heart-pounding eternity passes before the witch throws her arms up and screams the closing words of the incantation. Another impeccably timed bolt of lightning strikes the cauldron, and I am blinded. When I can see again, I look at the old woman with a new appreciation. I am grateful to her for matching the magnificent pitch of her magic to the magnitude of my marital disappointment.

Anything less might have made me less certain of my intent.

“Now it’s yours to complete,” says the witch. “Get the lock of his hair. How long have you been married?”

On any given day, I know the exact duration of my marriage as surely as I know my husband’s collar size (sixteen), the ages of my children (eleven and six, soon to be twelve and seven), and my own age: thirty-five, soon to be thirty-six, then forty, then fifty, then—while he grows only more attractive, a graying lion with his imposing stride, commanding gestures, and the fierce geometry of cheekbones—then just another bent and wrinkled hag, not all that different from this warty old woman.

“Thirteen years. Thirteen and a half, to be precise.”

She takes the soaking chestnut curl from me, deftly peels off thirteen single strands, counting under her breath, then breaks another one in half, and tosses away the rest, and drops the thirteen and a half hairs into my readied hand.

They lie on my open palm, wet and seemingly harmless in their insignificance.

“Just throw these into the cauldron, one after another, and when the last half goes in, spit after it. Spit with feeling, mind. And then—poof!—you’re a widow.”

Something seizes within me at the matter-of-factness of her words. My fingers stiff with cold, I separate one hair from the soggy bunch, stretch my hand over the cauldron.

“Well, go ahead, drop it, drop it!”

I release it. Together we watch it drown.

On the surface of the potion, images bubble and flit.

Once upon a time, in a distant land, there lived a merchant who had a wife and a daughter. The wife was soft-spoken, the daughter pretty, and his trade successful, and for a while all went well with him. But then all his deals went sour, his wife took ill and died, and he had nothing left but his little girl. He thought to start fresh and moved with her to a new land, and there married a local woman who seemed kind to him but was not. For in truth, he barely spoke the new language, and he knew the new customs so poorly that he understood very little of what his new wife said and did. Soon the merchant, his spirit broken, sickened and died, and his daughter was left all alone in the world, with nothing to her name but a dried bunch of forget-me-nots from her childhood garden and no one but her stepmother to care for her. The woman had two daughters of her own; like their mother, they had no patience for people different from themselves and disliked the pretty little girl for her heavy accent and her foreign ways. One week had not passed since her father’s funeral when the three of them began to order her about and give her chores around the house. She never complained but worked in stoic silence and, after years of drudgery and obedience, blossomed into a beautiful maiden. And then, as was only proper, came a fairy godmother, and mice that turned into horses, and, at long last, a ball with its handsome prince. The prince fell in love with her, because he had absolutely no reasons not to: she was ornamental, blond and pink, and ever ready with expressions of gaiety, attention, or solicitude, whichever was called for. And so they were married and the envious stepsisters properly chastened, and she came to live in the palace, which looked and smelled like a vanilla cake, white and light, with blue icing.

(In a quick aside, her originally murine, briefly equine, now permanently murine best friends, Brie and Nibbles, moved to the royal quarters with her. Brie was a dainty she-mouse who swiftly acquired a profusion of refinements, such as a taste for sweet cookie crumbs and a habit of wrapping her whiskers in golden foil. Nibbles was of an earthier nature, a jovial glutton whose simple conversation invariably turned to cheese. Whenever he attempted to discuss the gastronomical superiority of camembert over brie, Brie squeaked in mock indignation, “Oh, you beast!” and slapped him with her tiny perfumed gloves. When Nibbles laughed, his entire stomach wobbled like blancmange, and ever more so as he learned his way around the kitchens. He only hoped that their princess was no less at home in her palace life; he worried about her, they both did, and with good reason, and her happiness was the sole subject of contention between them. At least her new father-in-law had welcomed her gladly.)

The old king was kind to her, and she liked the mirrored buttons that were always close to popping on his soup-stained vests and the apologetic manner in which he spoke to his grooms. The courtiers, flamboyant in their flounces, ruffles, and ribbons, were overall interchangeable, employed as they were mainly for atmospheric backdrops and humorous relief. And while it was true that the queen was no longer alive, or perhaps she had vanished—well, something or other had happened to her—her passing (or else disappearance) was not, as everyone was quick to assure her, a cause for melancholy, for it had happened quite a while before and was largely a matter of convention. And in any case, deep feelings were not a likely possibility here, for in this kingdom all souls appeared to be more or less one-dimensional, with just the slightest hollow at the center, for fleeting frustrations (not enough sugar in the morning tea!) and exclamatory enthusiasms (new stockings! new kittens!) to perch ever so briefly, splash in the shallows, then take off again, no depths stirred in their passage.