Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm(2)

So she went back into the house, and after a month went by the snow melted. After two months, everything was green. After three months, flowers blossomed from the ground. After four months, all the trees in the forest grew heavy with leaves, and the green branches were all entwined with one another. And the little birds twittered so that the entire forest resounded with their song, and the blossoms fell from the trees. Then a fifth month had gone by, and she stood again beneath the juniper tree; it smelled so sweet her heart nearly burst for joy, and she fell to her knees and was beside herself with emotion. And after the sixth month had lapsed, the fruit hung thick and plump, and she fell still. At the end of the seventh month, she picked all the juniper berries and gobbled them down so greedily it made her sick and solemn. The eighth month passed, and she called her husband to her. Weeping, she said to him, “If I die, bury me under the juniper tree.” Then she felt greatly relieved and happy, and at the end of the ninth month she bore a child as white as snow and as red as blood, and when she set eyes on the child she was so glad that she died.

Her husband buried her beneath the juniper tree, and he cried and cried inconsolably. In time he felt a little better, and although he still shed tears at least his grief was bearable. And not long after that he took another wife.

With the second wife he had a daughter, but the child he’d had with his first wife was a little son, and he was as red as blood and as white as snow. When the woman looked at her daughter she loved her a lot, but then she looked at the little lad and it gnawed at her heart to see him, as if he would forever stand in the way, and she couldn’t stop thinking how to keep the inheritance all for her daughter. And the Evil One wouldn’t let up, so that she was altogether filled with hatred for the little lad. She kept shoving him around from one place to another, and slapped him here and whacked him there, so that the poor little fellow was frightened all the time. As soon as he came home from school he could find no place of refuge from her wrath.

Once when the woman went up to her room, her little daughter came bounding up the stairs after her and said, “Mother, give me an apple.”

“Yes, my child,” said the woman, and took a luscious-looking apple from the chest and gave it to her. The chest had a great big heavy lid with a large sharp iron lock.

“Mother,” said the little girl, “will my brother not get one too?”

The woman winced, but she said, “Yes, when he comes home from school.” And when, peering out the window, she saw him coming, it was as if the Evil One grabbed hold of her, and she reached out and took back the apple from her daughter and said, “You shan’t have one before your brother.” Then she flung the apple back into the chest and locked it. Whereupon the little lad walked through the door, and the Evil One made her speak sweetly to him. “My son,” she said, “would you like to have an apple?” And she gave him such a nasty look.

“Mother,” said the little fellow, “how cross you look! Yes, give me an apple.”

She felt as if she had to convince him. “Come with me,” she said, lifting the lid, “and pick out an apple.” And when the little boy bent over, the Evil One beckoned, and blam! She slammed the lid so that his head was chopped off and landed among the red apples. Riddled with fear at what she’d done, she thought to herself, I’ve got to find a way to get out of this! Then she went up to her room, opened her chest of drawers, and pulled a white scarf out of the top drawer, set the boy’s head back on his neck, wrapped the scarf around it so that nobody could see that it was severed, propped him up on a stool in front of the door, and put the apple in his hand.

Not long after that Marlenikin came over to her mother in the kitchen, who was standing by the fire, stirring and stirring a pot of hot water. “Mother,” said Marlenikin, “my brother is seated by the door all white in the face with an apple in his hand. I asked him to give me the apple but he made no reply. The sight of him gives me the creeps.”

“Go back to him,” said the mother, “and if he still says nothing, give him a cuff on the ear.”

So Marlenikin went and said, “Brother, give me the apple.” But when he made no reply, she boxed his ear, whereupon his head fell off. Then she panicked and started crying and screaming. And she ran to her mother and said, “Oh, Mother, I knocked my brother’s head off,” and kept crying and crying and would not stop crying.

“Marlenikin,” said the mother, “what have you done! Better be quiet now, if you don’t want anyone to know. No point crying over spilt milk. We’ll boil him up and make a stew.” Then the mother took the little boy and hacked him into pieces, put the pieces in the pot, and prepared a stew. But Marlenikin stood beside her and kept crying and crying, and her tears fell in the pot, so it needed no salt.