The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales (Penguin Classics) (15 page)

A handsome young man named Veri lived in a village, and his beloved was the most beautiful girl imaginable. She was named Anna Mayala, and she was poor. The many suitors who wooed her were a source of grief for both young people, but in the end persistence paid off for Veri and the wedding day was set. Veri had a wild side to him. He was a daydreamer, withdrawn at times, and occasionally he sang shocking songs about the underworld. That’s why he was called Crazy Veri.

On the day before the wedding, he went down into the forest to catch some game for the celebrations. He returned with a magnificent roebuck on his back and was walking toward the village. His thoughts were not on his bride; instead his mind was wandering in the strangest places. While he was immersed in mysterious dreams, he reached a footbridge. The moon had already risen and was shining. He became annoyed with himself for being so late and for missing the chance to spend the evening before his wedding with his bride.

The bridge led him over a sparkling stream, and the moon was reflected in its waters. What he saw slowed him down, and he grew melancholy. He kneeled down and put his ear to the surface of the water, hoping to hear something. He began to hear some sweet melodies. The longer they were, the more beautiful they sounded; the more beautiful they were, the more enchanting they sounded. His ear came closer and closer to the source of the wondrous sounds, and he began to think that it would be lovely to sink down into the waters.

He looked down into the depths of the stream. It seemed as if the most beautiful legs he had ever seen were dancing around
down there. Veri raised his eyes and saw some beautiful, charming young girls form a circle and dance gracefully to the music. They were all lovely, but one was more lovely than the rest. He asked her what it was like down there. She reached up to him, put her pale face on his shoulder, and said mournfully: “Oh, it’s so lovely where we live, so peaceful. And there’s more air and more life where we dwell. Will you come with me?”

He agreed to go. She added: “Well, I once lived aboveground as well. You have a bride. Will you be able to forget her? If you come with me, you won’t be able to think about her any longer. Your desire for the earthly bride would draw harsh punishments.” She looked him in the eye in a manner so charming that he embraced her. The ground gave way under his feet, and he sank down with her into unknown regions. Back at the village his bride waited in vain for her beloved. He did not return. People looked everywhere, and they found nothing but his musket and the roebuck on the bridge.

Many years passed. One Tuesday there was a wedding procession making its way to the church. The bride was beautiful and as delightful as a rose. Her name was Anna Mayala, and her father and mother were walking behind her. The mother looked pale, and it seemed as if she was ailing, although she was not yet that old and retained traces of great beauty.

The procession made its way over a bridge. The mother breathed a deep sigh, and the father tried to comfort her. “Isn’t the present,” he said to her, “better than the past? Isn’t it true that we’ve lived in peace and remained true to each other? And doesn’t your daughter, who has your name, look just like you?” The mother nestled closer to him.

All of a sudden a man appeared, his long hair fluttering wildly in the breeze, and he raced down the mountain right up to the bride. Like a madman he began beating his forehead and then grabbed hold of the girl, claiming that she was his bride. It’s true he had abandoned her, he said, but that was just yesterday, and she must go to the altar with him. The bridegroom pushed him aside with his strong arms. The mother was trembling and near collapse, but the procession kept moving.

Two days later the young woman went to the stream to fetch some water. The wild man reappeared, embraced her, and did not want to leave. The woman’s husband saw what was happening and chased the madman away. There were reports that he was walking around the village asking about folks who had been dead for years. He was seen at the pastor’s house, and after that he was not seen again and no one heard a thing about him.

A Franciscan monk began to appear in the village every year. He was a pale, handsome man who seemed to be ailing, and he liked staying at Anna Mayala’s more than at any other house. Whenever he showed up, Anna had a bad feeling, one that she could not explain.

It came to pass that Anna’s husband died. The monk appeared and he comforted the mourning widow. He spoke the following words: “My dear lady. Life is hard. Look at me and at all I have suffered and then you will not feel as much pain as you do now.”

The woman in mourning looked at him carefully, and she searched his features, paused for a moment, and then became frightened. She recognized Veri, who had long ago recognized Anna Mayala. And now it was his turn to be upset. But he took a deep breath and said: “I lived down there, way down below, in the domain of sprites. I lived with a beautiful, enchanting mermaid as if she were my wife. She was always with me, except on Fridays, when she became invisible to me. I might have been completely happy with her love, but there was always an empty feeling in my heart that could find no satisfaction. For a while the feelings of emptiness tortured me, and I could not find a way to make things better. My wife was simply not a normal woman. Her feet were always bound with ribbons, and she never took them off. She gave birth to six children, and their feet were bound as well. The children grew up quickly. Whenever she gave birth to a child, the one before it was no longer an infant.

“The mystery of the feet tortured me again and again. One evening, while my wife was sleeping, I undid the binding and discovered that she had feet like a goose, webbed with little
claws at the end of each toe. I flew into a rage, cursing and hoping that the seventh child would be a human being and would be born with human feet. And my wish came true.

“When the mermaid set eyes on the child for the first time, she let out a scream of horror that she had become the mother of a crippled being, and she bombarded me with insults. Before long other mermaids came to celebrate the birth of the child. As soon as they saw the child’s feet, they became enraged. They took the child and tore it to pieces, greedily devouring its little limbs, for human flesh endows mermaids with beauty and youth for three hundred years and makes men fall passionately in love with them.

“I could do nothing but watch in silence. My wife touched me with a staff, and I fell asleep. When I awoke, I was on the exact spot at which I had slid into the water many years before. I watched the wedding procession of your daughter. When I saw her, I thought she was you, for everything was like a dream. You know the rest. The pastor was the one who explained everything to me, and he told me that twenty years had gone by, when I thought that only a single day had passed. When I was at the monastery, I repented my sins. I have brought along some pearls and jewels for your grandchildren.”

Anna was on her deathbed sometime later. The monk reappeared. He kneeled down before the dying woman and put her hands in his. His head sank down. Both turned into corpses. Two white doves were seen flying out the window. The larger one had seven black flakes caught on its feet, which fell off at the windowsill when the smaller dove came in contact with it. They turned out to be scraps of paper on which were written the names of the mermaid’s seven children. Their father’s pious ways had earned them salvation, and they, too, were able to enter heaven.

One of the grandchildren went to the stream to fetch some water to wash the two corpses. Prayers had been said already for the evening, when she reached the bridge and met a friend who asked her why she had come for water at such an odd time. “Oh,” she replied, “my grandmother just died, and her beloved Veri as well.” She heard a soft whisper in the air,
asking, “Who died?” And the waters in the stream began stirring, huge waves rose into the air and moved toward the house, and water began to flood the room where the two bodies were lying at rest. The corpses tumbled around in the room. Everyone was terrified, and once some holy water was sprinkled on the corpses, the waters withdrew. But six additional corpses were left behind, handsome boys and beautiful girls between the ages of ten and seventeen, with their feet bound, and holding in their hands scraps of paper with the words: “We have been redeemed.” Among the corpses were the feet of a boy whose body was outlined on the floor as if it were a shadow. Next to it was a piece of paper with this explanation: “The body has been consumed; the soul endures.” It was the mermaid’s seventh child, and the feet were all that was left of it.

On every anniversary of Crazy Veri’s death, the stream begins stirring, and the next day waves ripple toward its banks. Since Veri’s death, the moon no longer appears reflected in its waters.

There was once a village near a large body of water, and many beautiful girls lived there. The more often they swam in the lake, the more lovely they became. Everyone adored them. Girls living in other places heard about them. They came in from many different regions to swim there. But since many were ugly and couldn’t stay underwater as long as the girls in the village, they did not become prettier. In fact, many of them drowned.

Girls stopped traveling there, but suitors from all four points of the compass came courting. All the girls in the village were married on one day. The morning after, there was an enormous uproar. Everyone was running, and the grooms had grabbed their wives by the hair and were pushing and shoving them to the point of exhaustion, and then they raced away.

It turned out that there was something not quite right with the girls—they had fish scales. A judge appeared on the scene with his officials, took a look at the brides, and ordered all of them to be burned at the stake at once. As the flames were licking the stake, tall waves rose up and washed into the village, and a huge head emerged from the waters. It spewed water like a whale and put out the fire. The brides all walked across an arc of water as if it were a bridge leading from the woodpile back to the water and then into the gatelike jaws of the merman. Since that time girls no longer swim in that lake.

A man made a vow to travel to the Holy Land before he died. He was unable to keep this vow, and his wife and three sons—the boys were all hunters—decided to embark on the journey for his sake. The travelers entered the thicket of a dark forest. After they made a meal for themselves, they prepared a bed made from leaves and greenery. One of the brothers had to keep watch at all times, for they did not feel safe in those woods.

The eldest made a fire and kept watch. A bear appeared, raised his paws in the air, and began to lunge at the sleepers. One of the brothers pulled out his hunting knife and cut off the bear’s paws. The bear let out a growl and fled. The hunter took the paws, dried them out by the fire, and put them in his hunting pouch for safekeeping. When the second brother held watch, a wolf came slinking by, and he suffered the same fate as the bear.

Night was falling just when the youngest woke up to keep vigil. He looked around, climbed up a tall tree, and saw a bright fire burning in the distance. He took his musket and aimed it toward the fire. Three giants had gathered around it and were feasting on a deer. One of them raised a joint of meat to his lips, and—
bang
—the tasty morsel flew away from his mouth. The second one was about to take a drink, and—
bang
—it flew away from his mouth. The third giant said: “There is a mighty good marksman around here. Let’s go look for him.”

They soon found the bold huntsman. “You must be a sharpshooter!” they shouted.

“I’ll say,” the young man replied. “The genuine article.”

“Listen to us,” the giants said. “We’d like to hire someone like you, and you could do us a big favor.”

“Let’s hear,” the huntsman replied.

“Not far from here there is a castle built into the mountains, and a princess lies in it. She has been enchanted, along with all her treasures and retinue, men and horses. She is fast asleep, and everyone around her is also slumbering. But you can’t get near the castle, because as soon as you move close to it, a little black rooster lands on the embattlements and starts screeching and squawking and racing around in the castle, fast as the wind, so that everyone in the castle wakes up. We’ve tried to throw stones at the thing, but it never works. Maybe you can land it with a bullet. You won’t regret the chance to enter the castle.”

“So you’re planning to free the princess?” the huntsman asked. The giants nodded and growled: “From her wealth, anyhow.” As they started walking toward the castle, the little rooster was already up on the embattlements, tiny as a mouse and as speedy as a weasel. It crowed, but only one time, for the huntsman hit it. When he picked it up, a key to the gates of the castle fell out of the animal’s mouth. “Let me go in first,” the huntsman said, and he crawled in. A sword was hanging on the wall, and just as the giant was squeezing his way in, the huntsman chopped off his head and dragged his body in. He did the same thing with the second and third giants and then pushed their corpses aside.

Everyone in the castle was asleep. The huntsman threaded his way through a labyrinth of passageways and halls, on past the finery and splendor of the rooms in which people were sleeping. Finally he reached a staircase in a tower, where the princess was fast asleep. Under the spell of her beauty, he gazed at her for a long time. Finally he touched her with his finger, and she woke up. She turned pale and was frightened by the stranger. But once he told her who he was and what had happened, she became less shy. And before long, she leaped to
her feet, embraced the huntsman, and kissed him. She thanked him with sweet words for having broken the magic spell and liberated her from the evil giant. She was so elated that she offered to give him the ring she was wearing. She was hoping to become his wife and wanted him to stay and rule the kingdom with her. He remained in her arms for only a short time, but promised to return once he had finished the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He put the ring in a safe place.

When he returned to his family in the woods, they were all still asleep by the campfire. They woke up with the sun, and without saying a word about the adventures that had taken place that night, he silently began the journey with them to the Holy Land. After enduring many perils, they all returned to the place in the woods where they had once slept. On the street was a sign with the words:
FREE FOR THE POOR, BUT
THE RICH MUST PAY
.

The pilgrims were poor, and they stayed at the inn, where they were given generous portions of tasty dishes. After dining, they entered the garden at the inn, a beautiful spot with all kinds of lovely flowers and greenery. They met the lady innkeeper there, and she was even more beautiful than the flowers in the garden. The young huntsman blushed when he looked at her, for he seemed to see his beloved princess in the eyes of the woman. She came over to speak with the group and asked them who they were, where they had come from, and how they had fared on their travels.

The eldest son described his fight with the bear, and when the others were skeptical, he pulled the paws out of his pouch and showed them to everyone. The second son showed them the wolf paws, whereupon the youngest began to tell about his adventures with the giants and the princess. Everyone started laughing and calling him a liar, but he opened his jacket and took out the ring that was hanging from a string around his neck. He displayed it to prove that everything had really happened as he said it had.

The lady innkeeper stood up and left, but she came back right away and said: “I built this inn for your sake. I heard about your travels and was waiting here for you. In fact I made
up the words for the sign to make sure you would stay here. What the huntsman has said about the giants and the princess is all true. I didn’t recognize him right away, but he has my ring, and I am the princess, and he is my husband. Just take a look; my nursemaid is bringing our son right over here.”

The three huntsmen and their mother were overcome with joy. And if they have not died, they are still living in happiness today.