Mirror Mirror (3 page)

“There, you model of beauty,” said the wicked woman, as she went away, “you are done for at last!”

But fortunately it was almost time for the dwarfs to come home, and as soon as they came in and found Snow-White lying upon the ground they guessed that her wicked step-mother had been there again, and set to work to find out what was wrong.

They soon saw the poisonous comb, and drew it out, and almost immediately Snow-White began to recover, and told them what had happened.

Once more they warned her to be on her guard, and to open the door to no one.

When the Queen reached home, she went straight to the mirror and said —

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest fair of all?”

And the mirror answered-

“O Lady Queen, though fair ye be, Snow-White is fairer far to see. Over the hills and far away, She dwells with seven dwarfs to-day.”

When the Queen heard these words she shook with rage. “Snow-White shall die,” she cried, “even if it costs me my own life to manage it.”

She went into a secret chamber, where no one else ever entered, and there she made a poisonous apple, and then she painted her face and disguised herself as a peasant woman, and climbed the seven mountains and went to the dwarfs' house.

She knocked at the door. Snow-White put her head out of the window, and said, “I must not let anyone in; the seven dwarfs have forbidden me to do so.”

“It's all the same to me,” answered the peasant woman; “I shall soon get rid of these fine apples. But before I go I'll make you a present of one.”

“Oh! No,” said Snow-White, “for I must not take it.”

“Surely you are not afraid of poison?” said the woman. “See, I will cut one in two: the rosy cheek you shall take, and the white cheek I will eat myself.”

Now, the apple had been so cleverly made that only the rose-cheeked side contained the poison. Snow-White longed for the delicious-looking fruit, and when she saw that the woman ate half of it, she thought there could be no danger, and stretched out her hand and took the other part. But no sooner had she tasted it than she fell down dead.

The wicked Queen laughed aloud with joy as she gazed at her. “White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony,” she said, “this time the dwarfs cannot awaken you.”

And she went straight home and asked her mirror —

“Mirror, mirror upon the wall, Who is the fairest fair of all?”

And at length it answered —

“Thou, O Queen, art fairest of all!”

So her envious heart had peace — at least, so much peace as an envious heart can have.

When the little dwarfs came home at night they found Snow-White lying upon the ground. No breath came from her parted lips, for she was dead. They lifted her tenderly and sought for some poisonous object which might have caused the mischief, unlaced her frock, combed her hair, and washed her with wine and water, but all in vain — dead she was and dead she remained. They laid her upon a bier, and all seven of them sat round about it, and wept as though their hearts would break, for three whole days.

When the time came that she should be laid in the ground they could not bear to part from her. Her pretty cheeks were still rosy red, and she looked just as though she were still living.

“We cannot hide her away in the dark earth,” said the dwarfs, and so they made a transparent coffin of shining glass, and laid her in it, and wrote her name upon it in letters of gold; also they wrote that she was a King's daughter. Then they placed the coffin upon the mountain-top, and took it in turns to watch beside it. And all the animals came and wept for Snow-White, first an owl, then a raven, and then a little dove.

For a long, long time little Snow-White lay in the coffin, but her form did not wither; she only looked as though she slept, for she was still as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony.

It chanced that a King's son came into the wood, and went to the dwarfs' house, meaning to spend the night there. He saw the coffin upon the mountain-top, with little Snow-White lying within it, and he read the words that were written upon it in letters of gold.

And he said to the dwarfs, “If you will but let me have the coffin, you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it to you.”

But the dwarfs answered, “We would not sell it for all the gold in the world.”

Then said the Prince, “Let me have it as a gift, I pray you, for I cannot live without seeing little Snow-White, and I will prize your gift as the dearest of my possessions.”

The good little dwarfs pitied him when they heard these words, and so gave him the coffin. The King's son then bade his servants place it upon their shoulders and carry it away, but as they went they stumbled over the stump of a tree, and the violent shaking shook the piece of poisonous apple which had lodged in Snow-White's throat out again, so that she opened her eyes, raised the lid of the coffin, and sat up, alive once more.

“Where am I?” she cried, and the happy Prince answered, “Thou art with me, dearest.”

Then he told her all that had happened, and how he loved her better than the whole world, and begged her to go with him to his father's palace and be his wife. Snow-White consented, and went with him, and the wedding was celebrated with great splendour and magnificence.

Little Snow-White's wicked step-mother was bidden to the feast, and when she had arrayed herself in her most beautiful garments, she stood before her mirror, and said —

“Mirror, mirror upon the wall, Who is the fairest fair of all?”

And the mirror answered —

“O Lady Queen, though fair ye be, The young Queen is fairer to see.”

Oh! How angry the wicked woman was then, and so terrified, too, that she scarcely knew what to do. At first she thought she would not go to the wedding at all, but then she felt that she could not rest until she had seen the young Queen. No sooner did she enter the palace than she recognized little Snow-White, and could not move for terror.

Then a pair of red-hot iron shoes was brought into the room with tongs and set before her, and these she was forced to put on and to dance in them until she could dance no longer, but fell down dead, and that was the end of her.

THE END

© Grimm's Fairy Tales. Translated by L.L. Weedon. London: Ernest Nister, [1898], pp. 9-20.

I am a girl who did no wrong

I am a woman who slept with my father the Pope

I am a rock whose hands have appetites

I am a hunter who cannot kill

I am a mercenary with the French disease

I am a girl who lived among stones

I am a woman who poisoned my enemies

I am a rock and my brothers are rocks

I am a cleric who trafficked in curses

I am a gooseboy or am I a goose

I am a girl who did little wrong

I am a gooseboy or am I a boy

I am a farmer who stole something sacred

I am a monster who let the child go

I am a dog with an unlikely past

I am a hunter who followed the coffin

I am a girl who did something wrong

I am the other side of snow

I am a mirror a mirror am I

M
irror mirror on the wall

W
ho is the fairest one of all

D
O PEOPLE
say that I am both your father and your lover? Let the world, that heap of vermin as ridiculous as they are feeble-minded, believe the most absurd tales about the mighty! You must know that for those destined to dominate others, the ordinary rules of life are turned upside down and duty acquires an entirely new meaning. Good and evil are carried off to a higher, different plane. . . .

Remember this. Walk straight ahead. Do only what you like, as long as it is of some use to you. Leave hesitation and scruples to small minds, to plebeians and subordinates. One consideration alone is worthy of you—the elevation of the House of Borgia, the elevation of yourself.

—Alexander VI's speech to Lucrezia Borgia, from Arthur de Gobineau's
Scènes historiques de la Renaissance
(1877), as quoted in
The Borgias
by Ivan Cloulas (1989)

O
NE DAY
some Lombard masons working near the cloister of Sta. Maria Nuova just off the Via Appia had opened a sarcophagus and found the body of a young Roman woman of about fifteen, so well preserved that it seemed alive. A crowd had gathered around and admired the girl's rosy skin, her half-open lips revealing very white teeth, her ears, her black lashes, dark, wide-open eyes, and beautiful hair, done in a knot . . .

—The Borgias
, ibid.

The roofs of Montefiore

F
ROM THE
arable river lands to the south, the approach to Montefiore appears a sequence of relaxed hills. In the late spring, when the puckers of red poppy blossom are scattered against the green of the season, it can look like so much washing, like mounds of Persian silk and Florentine brocade lightly tossed in heaps. Each successive rise takes on a new color, indefinably more fervent, an aspect of distance and time stained by the shadows of clouds, or bleached when the sun takes a certain position.

But the traveler on foot or in a hobble-wheeled peasant cart, or even on horseback, learns the truth of the terrain. The ascent is steeper than it looks from below. And the rutted track traverses in long switchbacks to accommodate for the severity of the grade and the crosscutting ravines. So the trip takes many more hours than the view suggests. The red-tiled roofs of Montefiore come into sight, promisingly, and then they disappear again as hills loom up and forests close in.

Often I have traveled the road to Montefiore in memory. Today I travel it in true time, true dust, true air. When the track lends me height enough, I can glimpse the villa's red roofs above the ranks of poplars, across the intervening valleys. But I can't tell if the house is peopled with my friends and my family, or with rogues who have murdered the servants in their beds. I can't tell if the walls below the roofline are scorched with smoke, or if the doors are marked with an ashy cross to suggest that plague has come to gnaw the living into their mortal rest, their last gritty blanket shoveled over their heads.

But I have come out of one death, the one whose walls were glass; I have awakened into a second life dearer for being both unpromised and undeserved. Anyone who walks from her own grave relies on the unexpected. Anyone who walks from her own grave knows that death is more patient than Gesù Cristo. Death can afford to wait.

But now the track turns again, and my view momentarily spins back along the slopes I've climbed so far. My eye traces the foothills already gained, considers the alphabet of light that spells its unreadable words on the surface of the river. My eye also moves along the past, to my early misapprehensions committed to memory on this isolated outcropping.

The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.

Rest. Breathe in, breathe out. No one can harm you further than death could do. When rested, you must go on; you must find out the truth about Montefiore. Granted a second life, you must find in it more meaning than you could ever determine in your first.