Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups Read online

  (1996)

  ★

  Golden Slumbers

  by Thomas Dekker

  Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,

  Smiles awake you when you rise;

  Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,

  And I will sing a lullaby,

  Rock them, rock them, lullaby.

  Care is heavy, therefore sleep you,

  You are care, and care must keep you;

  Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,

  And I will sing a lullaby,

  Rock them, rock them, lullaby.

  (1603)

  ★

  The late Angela Carter wrote in the introduction to her bountiful Book of Fairy Tales that such stories represent: ‘the great mass of infinitely various narrative that was, once upon a time and still is, sometimes, passed on and disseminated through the world by word of mouth – stories without known originators that can be remade again and again by every person who tells them, the perennially refreshed entertainment of the poor.’

  One holiday, I read to my young son and daughter a range of these fairy tales, all of which centred on a female protagonist, to gauge which they liked best. If we all really loved a particular tale, I told them, I might even put it into this book.

  Carter deftly plucked tales from all corners of the world. Some seemed familiar yet different to my kids (for ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ read ‘Tom Tit Tot’), like a hall of imaginary mirrors. We enjoyed all of them; however, somehow none quite fitted for this collection that you are now reading.

  Then, on the last night, I fixed on reading them a Russian story. My daughter was being mischievous, though, and kept interrupting me. Tired myself, I began to grow impatient, eventually throwing my own ‘toys out of the pram’ by refusing to finish the story, storming out of the room with stern (but entirely faux) finality, like a performer sashaying off-stage before his encore.

  It worked. They piped down.

  Only then did I realize that I had fallen through the story’s trapdoor – and that this was the one to incorporate into this anthology.

  How a Husband Weaned His Wife from Fairy Tales

  There was once an innkeeper whose wife loved fairy tales above all else and accepted as lodgers only those who could tell stories. Of course the husband suffered loss because of this, and he wondered how he could wean his wife away from fairy tales. One night in winter, at a late hour, an old man shivering with cold asked him for shelter. The husband ran out and said: ‘Can you tell stories? My wife does not allow me to let in anyone who cannot tell stories.’ The old man saw that he had no choice; he was almost frozen to death. He said: ‘I can tell stories.’ ‘And will you tell them for a long time?’ ‘All night.’

  So far, so good. They let the old man in. The husband said: ‘Wife, this peasant has promised to tell stories all night long but only on condition that you do not argue with him or interrupt him.’ The old man said: ‘Yes, there must be no interruptions, or I will not tell any stories.’ They ate supper and went to bed. Then the old man began: ‘An owl flew into a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water. An owl flew into a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water.’ He kept on saying again and again: ‘An owl flew into a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water.’ The wife listened and listened and then said: ‘What kind of story is this? He keeps repeating the same thing over and over!’ ‘Why do you interrupt me? I told you not to argue with me! That was only the beginning; it was going to change later.’ The husband, upon hearing this – and it was exactly what he wanted to hear – jumped down from his bed and began to belabour his wife: ‘You were told not to argue, and now you have not let him finish his story!’ And he thrashed her and thrashed her, so that she began to hate stories and from that time on forswore listening to them.

  (1866)

  Translated by Norbert Guterman

  Carter – playing the Mother Goose of fairy-tale tradition with distinction – wrote that ‘the stories women told could not in any way materially alter their conditions . . . [This tale, however,] shows just how much fairy stories could change a woman’s desires, and how much a man might fear that change, [and] would go to any lengths to keep her from pleasure, as if pleasure itself threatened his authority.’

  The story was published in 1866, in a collection of fairy tales by Aleksandr Nikolayevich Afanas’ev (1826–71), the Russian counterpart of the Grimms.

  In the notes to her collection, Angela Carter elaborates: ‘Federal Russia was an extraordinarily rich source of oral literature at this time, owing to widespread illiteracy among the rural poor. As late as the close of the eighteenth century, Russian newspapers still carried advertisements from blind men applying for work in the homes of the gentry as tellers of tales, recalling how, two hundred years before, three blind ancients had followed one another in rotation at the bedside of Ivan the Terrible, telling the insomniac monarch fairy tales until at last he managed to sleep.’

  ★

  Details of the identity (or identities) of that most famous fabulist, Aesop, are scattered among works by the likes of Aristotle, Herodotus and Plutarch. The story of his life and times in Ancient Greece emerges today as a web of apocrypha and legend, derived from such scant sources.

  In this poem, written for children as much as adults, Charles Causley weaves a colourful bedtime story from some of that portraiture. As its title suggests, fittingly, the lively verse rounds itself into a fable.

  Its lesson? That even after we are long gone, the stories we tell each other survive. In Aesop’s case, whoever he may have been, outliving him by some two thousand five hundred years.

  Fable

  by Charles Causley

  I was a slave on Samos, a small man

  Carelessly put together; face a mask

  So frightful that at first the people ran

  Away from me, especially at dusk.

  I was possessed, too, of a rattling tongue

  That only now and then would let words pass

  As they should properly be said or sung.

  In general, you could say I was a mess.

  One thing redeemed me. People marvelled at

  The brilliance with which my speech was woven.

  It was, they said, as if a toad had spat

  Diamonds. And my ugliness was forgiven.

  Soon I was freed, and sooner was the friend

  Of kings and commoners who came a-calling.

  Of my bright hoard of wit there seemed no end,

  Nor of the tales that I rejoiced in telling.

  But there were heads and hearts where, green and cold,

  The seeds of envy and of hate were lying.

  From our most sacred shrine, a cup of gold

  Was hidden in my store, myself unknowing.

  ‘Sacrilege! He is a thief!’ my accusers swore,

  And to the cliffs of Delphi I was taken,

  Hurled to the myrtle-scented valley floor

  And on its whitest stones my body broken.

  ‘This is the end of him and his poor fame!’

  I heard them cry upon the gleaming air.

  Stranger, now tell me if you know my name,

  My story of the Tortoise and the Hare?

  ★

  The Rematch

  by B. J. Novak

  In the aftermath of an athletic humiliation on an unprecedented scale – a loss to a tortoise in a footrace so staggering that, his tormentors teased, it would not only live on in the record books, but would transcend sport itself, and be taught to children around the world in textbooks and bedtime stories for centuries; that hundreds of years from now, children who had never heard of a ‘tortoise’ would learn that it was basically a fancy type of turtle from hearing about this very race – the hare retreated, understandably, into a substantial period of depression and self-doubt.

  The hare gained weight, then lost weight; turned to religion, then another less specific religion. The hare got into yoga; shut himself indoors on a self-imp
osed program to read all the world’s great novels; then traveled the world; then did some volunteer work. Everything helped a little bit, at first; but nothing really helped. After a while, the hare realized what the simplest part of him had known from the beginning: he was going to have to rematch the tortoise.

  ‘No,’ came the word from the tortoise’s spokesperson. ‘The tortoise prefers to focus on the future, not relive the past. The tortoise is focused full time on inspiring a new generation with the lessons of dedication and persistence through his popular speaking tours and his charitable work with the Slow and Steady Foundation.’

  The smugness and sanctimony of the tortoise’s response infuriated the hare. ‘The lessons of dedication and persistence’? Had everyone forgotten that the hare had taken six naps throughout the race (!) – unequivocally guaranteeing victory to anyone – a horse, a dog, a worm, a leaf, depending on the wind – anyone lucky enough to be matched against the hare at this reckless, perspectiveless, and now-forever-lost peak phase of his career, an offensive period of his own life that he had obsessed about and tried in vain to forgive himself for ever since? How could anyone think the tortoise was relevant to any of this? A minor detail of the race, known to few but obsessives (of which there were still plenty), was that there had been a gnat clinging to the leg of the tortoise throughout the entire contest: was this gnat, too, worthy of being celebrated as a hero, full of counterlogical lessons and nonsensical insight like ‘Right place, right time takes down talent in its prime’? Or ‘Hang on to a tortoise’s leg, who knows where it will lead’?

  No – the lesson of this story has nothing to do with the tortoise, thought the hare, and everything to do with the hare. How he had let himself become so intoxicated with the aspects of his talent that were rare that he had neglected the much more common aspects of his character that also, it so happened, were more important – things like always doing your best, and never taking success for granted, and keeping enough pride burning inside to fuel your success but not so much to burn it down. Now, the hare knew these things. Now. Now that it was too late.

  Or was it? What was the lesson again? Slow and steady?

  The hare started running again, every day, even though there was no race planned. He ran a mile every morning, then two, then ten.

  Before long, he added an afternoon run to his training routine – a slower one, with a different goal in mind. On this run, he made a point to start a conversation with everyone he came across. ‘Boy, I sure would love to race that tortoise again someday. You think anyone would want to watch it, though?’ Then he would shrug it off and jog along to the next stranger. ‘Hey, what do you think would happen if I raced that tortoise again? Ya think I’d win this time? Or do you think pride would get the better of me all over again?’ Then he’d shrug and run off again, at a provocatively medium pace.

  Slowly, steadily, anticipation built for a tortoise-hare rematch. After a while it became all that anyone could talk about, and eventually, the questions made their way to the tortoise.

  ‘No,’ said the tortoise, but this time his ‘no’ just led to more questions. ‘No’ now, or ‘no’ ever? Would he ever rematch the hare? If so, when, and under what conditions? If not, why? Could he at least say ‘maybe’?

  No, said the tortoise again; never. They kept asking, and he kept saying no, until eventually, everyone gave up and stopped asking. And that’s when the tortoise, sad and dizzy at having all this attention given to him and then taken away, impulsively said, Yes, okay, I bet I can beat this hare again. Yes.

  I’m undefeated against the hare, thought the tortoise. Actually, I’m 1–0 – I’m undefeated in my entire racing career! How do you win a race? Slow and steady, that’s what they say, right? Well, I invented slow and steady. This is good. This will be good. One time could have been a fluke. Twice, there’ll be no question.

  The race was set for ten days’ time. The tortoise set out to replicate what seemed to have worked the first time, which was nothing in particular: simple diet, some walking around. A little of this, a little of that. He didn’t want to overthink it. He was going to mainly just focus on being slow and steady.

  The hare trained like no one had ever trained for anything. He ran fifteen miles every morning and fifteen every afternoon. He watched tapes of his old races. He slept eight hours every night, which is practically unheard of for a hare, and he did it all under a wall taped full of the mean, vicious things everyone had said about him in all the years since the legendary race that had ruined his life.

  On the day of the race, the tortoise and the hare met for the first time in five years at the starting line, and shared a brief, private conversation as their whole world watched.

  ‘Good luck, hare,’ said the tortoise, as casual as ever. ‘Whoa! You know what’s funny – do that again – huh, from this angle you look like a duck. Now you look like a hare again. Funny. Anyway, good luck, hare!’

  ‘And good luck to you, tortoise,’ whispered the hare, leaning in close. ‘And just so you know – nobody knows this, and if you tell anyone I said it, I’ll deny it – but I’m not really a hare. I’m a rabbit.’

  This wasn’t true – the hare just said it to fuck with him.

  ‘On your mark, get set, GO!’

  There was a loud bang, and the tortoise and hare both took off from the starting line.

  Never, in the history of competition – athletic or otherwise, human or otherwise, mythical or otherwise – has anyone ever kicked anyone’s ass by the order of magnitude that the hare kicked the ass of that goddamn fucking tortoise that afternoon.

  Within seconds, the hare was in the lead by hundreds of yards. Within minutes, the hare had taken the lead by more than a mile. The tortoise crawled on, slow and steady, but as he became anxious at having lost sight of his competitor and panicked over what he seemed to have done to his legacy, he started speeding up: less slow, less steady. But it hardly mattered. Before long – less than twenty minutes after the seven-mile race had begun – word worked its way back to the beginning of the race that the hare had not only won the contest, and had not only recorded a time that was a personal best, but had also set world records not only for all hares but also for leporids and indeed all mammals under twenty pounds. When news reached the tortoise, still essentially under the banner of the starting line, he fainted. ‘Oh, now he’s napping?! Isn’t that rich,’ heckled a nearby goat, drunk on radish wine.

  Those who didn’t know the context – who hadn’t heard about the first race – never realized what was so important about this one. ‘A tortoise raced a hare, and the hare won? Okay.’ They didn’t understand the story, so they didn’t repeat it, and it never became known. But those who were there for both contests knew what was so special about what they had witnessed: slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place.

  (2014)

  ★

  The Moth and the Star

  by James Thurber

  A young and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this and she counselled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. ‘Stars aren’t the thing to hang around,’ she said; ‘lamps are the thing to hang around.’ ‘You get somewhere that way,’ said the moth’s father. ‘You don’t get anywhere chasing stars.’ But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening at dusk when the star came out he would start flying toward it and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home worn out with his endeavor. One day his father said to him, ‘You haven’t burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you were never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and get yourself scorched! A big strapping moth like you without a mark on him!’

  The moth left his father’s house, but he would not fly around street lamps and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star,
which was four and one-third light years, or twenty-five trillion miles, away. The moth thought it was just caught in the top branches of an elm. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying, night after night, and when he was a very, very old moth he began to think that he really had reached the star and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. His parents and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they were quite young.

  Moral: Who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow.

  (1940)

  ★

  Escape at Bedtime

  by Robert Louis Stevenson

  The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out

  Through the blinds and the windows and bars;

  And high overhead and all moving about,

  There were thousands of millions of stars.

  There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,

  Nor of people in church or the Park,

  As the crowds of the stars that looked down on me,

  And that glittered and winked in the dark.

  The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,

  And the star of the sailor, and Mars,

  These shown in the sky, and the pail by the wall

  Would be half full of water and stars.

  They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,

  And they soon had me packed into bed;

  But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,

  And the stars going round in my head.

  (1885)

  ★

  MARINA WARNER

  The Sultan Shahriar has vowed to kill a new wife every morning after their ‘wedding’ but his latest, the vizier’s daughter Shahrazad, has a plan: she will distract him from his purpose by telling him stories. Night after night – over a thousand and one nights – Shahriar postpones her execution because he wants to hear more. In this way Shahrazad uses her wits and her tongue to save her life and that of all other women condemned by her husband.