Steven Millhauser - Voices in the Night - Stories

Waiting

The sorceress, too, is waiting. She is waiting for the long night to begin, so that it can come to an end. In the first light of dawn, she will return to her Rapunzel. She can, at any moment, leave her cottage and make her way through the forest to the tower, but she resists what she recognizes to be no longer a real temptation. After all, she spends the entire day with Rapunzel; the night is for herself. It is better that way. She doesn’t want Rapunzel to tire of her — lately there have been troubling signs — and besides, there are things that need to be done at home. Because she hates the sharp light of the sun, which draws attention to her witch’s face, her demon’s hair, she works in the dark. As soon as the moon is up, she will step outside and tend her vegetable garden, cut dead twigs from her pear and plum trees, water her shrubs and flowers. Then she will carry her clothes in a basket to the stream that runs along the edge of the village. She will wash her clothes under the moon and carry them home to hang on a line to dry. She will bake bread in the oven for Rapunzel, she will fetch water from the well. Only then will she prepare for bed. In the dark she’ll remove her long black dress and slip on her nightdress, which no one has ever seen. She will lie down in her bitter bed and think of Rapunzel, white and gold in her tower. Standing at her dressing table, the sorceress glances again at the mirror. She reaches for it, snatches away her hand. She begins to pace up and down with her hands behind her back, the top of her body leaning forward, as if she is walking uphill.

Helpless

As she waits for the Prince to reach the window, Rapunzel feels the sensation she always feels when he’s partway up the tower: she is trapped, she can’t move, she wants to cry out in anguish. She understands that her feeling of helplessness is provoked by the long climb, by her refusal to stir for fear that she’ll cause the Prince to lose his grip, by the continual tugging at her scalp. What’s taking so long? She reminds herself that only during the climb itself does she feel this way. The Prince’s descent takes place swiftly, nothing could be easier, no sooner has he dropped below the sill than he’s standing at the foot of the tower far below, looking up. The sorceress herself climbs the tower as if she’s walking across a room, even though she carries a sack on her back filled with vegetables and bread. Why oh why does the Prince take so long? He must enjoy making her miserable. Or is it possible that he isn’t taking as long as she imagines, that he’s actually rushing up to her like a great wind, and that only the eagerness of her desire makes his progress seem so slow? Through the open window Rapunzel can see the top of the hook, the little jumps of yanked hair. Will he never arrive?

Disappointment

The window is just above his head, with another pull his face will rise over the sill, but as the Prince grips the window ledge he feels the familiar burst of disappointment. He is disappointed because the climb is about to end, the victory is within reach, already he longs for a new difficulty, a stronger danger — a beast in the forest, an assassin in the chamber. He would like to battle a dragon at the mouth of a cave night after night, as he fights his way to Rapunzel. He is happy of course at the thought that he’ll soon be reunited with his beloved, whom he has imagined exhaustively during the long hours of the tedious day, but he knows that, in the instant of seeing her, he will be startled by the many small ways in which she fails to resemble his memory of her, before the living Rapunzel replaces the imaginary one. As he pulls himself up to the window ledge, he wishes that he were at the bottom of the tower, climbing fiercely toward his beloved.

Suspicion

As the Prince rises above the window ledge, the sorceress pauses in the act of pacing in the dark cottage. Rapunzel has seemed changed lately — or is she only imagining things? Sometimes, when the sorceress looks up from the table in the tower to watch Rapunzel sitting across from her, bent over her needlework, she sees the girl staring off with parted lips. If she asks her what she’s thinking, Rapunzel laughs gaily and replies that she isn’t thinking anything at all. Sometimes the girl sighs, in the manner of someone releasing an inward pressure. The sorceress, whose unhappiness has sharpened her alertness to signs of discontent, is alarmed by these evidences of a secret life. She speaks gently to Rapunzel, asks her if she is feeling tired, reaches into the pocket of her dress and draws forth a piece of marzipan. The sorceress is well aware that she has placed Rapunzel at the top of an inaccessible tower in the middle of a dark forest, but she also knows that her sole desire is to shield the beautiful girl from the world’s harm. If Rapunzel should become dissatisfied, if she should ever grow restless and unhappy, she would begin to imagine a different life. She would ask questions, open herself up to impossible desires, dream of walking on the ground below. The tower would begin to seem a prison. It is not a prison. It is a refuge, a place of peace. The world, as the sorceress knows deep in her blood, is full of pain. She vows to be more attentive to her daughter, to satisfy Rapunzel’s slightest desire, to watch for the faintest signs of unrest.

At Last!

Rapunzel watches as the Prince swings gracefully into the chamber, stares at her as if spellbound, and at once turns to unfasten her hair from the hook in the ledge. Everything about the Prince moves her heart, but she is always disappointed by the way he looks at her at the moment when he arrives. He seems bewildered in some way, as if he’s surprised to find her there, at the top of the tower, or as if he can’t quite figure out who exactly she is, this stranger whose hair he has just been climbing. With his back to her he begins pulling up her hair from below, setting the coils of her braid on the table, pulling faster and faster as the slippery heap of hair slides from the table and drops to the floor, where it quivers and shakes like a long animal. When the Prince turns toward her with his hands still holding her braid, as if he has come to her bearing a gift of her own hair, he no longer wears a look of bafflement but one of tender recognition, and as she rises to meet him she feels her release flowing through her like desire.

Shameless

The Prince lies back languorously on the rumpled bed, watching Rapunzel move about the chamber in her nightdress of unbound shimmering hair, and reflects again on her absence of shame. He knows many court ladies who are without shame in matters of love, but their shamelessness is aggressive and defiant: the revelation of nakedness is, for them, an invitation to enjoy the forbidden. One lady insists that he stand aside and watch as she undresses herself slowly, pausing for him to admire each part as she caresses herself with her hands; at the very end she holds before her a transparent silk scarf, which she then lets fall to the ground. In their desire to outrage modesty, to cast off the constraints of decorum, the Prince sees an allegiance to the very forces they wish to overcome. Sometimes a peasant girl in a haystack reveals a sensual frankness for which the Prince is grateful, but that same girl will carry herself primly to church on a Sunday. Rapunzel is without shame and without an overcoming of shame. She walks in her nakedness as if nakedness were a form of clothing. The innocence of her wantonness disarms the Prince. There is nothing she won’t do, nothing she feels she should resist. Sometimes the Prince wishes that she would tease him with a sly look, that she would cover her breasts with an outspread fan of peacock feathers, that she would lie on her stomach and look at him mischievously over her shoulder, as if to say: Do you dare? The Prince is a fearless lover, but there are times when he feels shy before her. At such moments he longs for her to resist him violently, so that he might force her into submission. Instead he bends down, far down, and kisses, very slowly, each of her toes.