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I thought something offbeat for Fairytale Sunday might throw you a little. Fairytales not always being what they seem, I mean.
So, the following vignette, An Optician’s Tale, is also from my Juvenilia. It’s about 1100 words, just for the record.
I can probably pinpoint when I wrote it, as it happens, because of the vignette which inspired it and when I read that, which is The Blue Bouquet by the Mexican poet (and Nobel laureate, 1990) Octavio Paz. If you don’t know this piece then I can gift you the delight of reading it for the first time – this link takes you to an English translation by his principal translator Eliot Weinberger. My Spanish is utterly inadequate for telling you whether it’s a good translation but it reads perfectly to me. It’s the translation I first read, put it that way, and the story clearly got to me.
The reason I can tell you pretty much when I must’ve written this is because I received Paz’s Selected Poems (bilingual edition) as a gift from a close friend at University, who wrote a little note inside the cover and dated it as November 1992. So I must’ve written this around or shortly after that time.
I would definitely say The Blue Bouquet is a classic fairytale. It might not seem that way initially, partly because it’s told from first-person narrator and that character is an adult, not a child (yet made to be helpless), and the setting of course doesn’t immediately suggest fairytale land, although the imagery and the evocation is Underworldly. But it has all the elements, including a dose of dark magical realism along with the danger of nightwalking and possibly straying from the path (or the threat crossing into your own path, which is naturally a little more scary). Of course the story is much more than that, being full of the kind of offbeat philosophy I love, but it is, at heart, a fairytale.
My little vignette is likewise, although again it doesn’t seem that way at first. A similar reasoning applies, in that it’s also a first person narration, but in my case the narrator is not the child, but the wolf, if you want to see it that way. It also has the magical realism element, and, just to give you a little warning, it is distinctly dark, disturbing and macabre. And the fact that it may well make you laugh in places despite that disturbing nature will simply add to the discomfort and dissonance. Because you’ll be aware of it, that conscience suggesting to you that it’s no laughing matter. This would be a result of the natural tendency of a reader to identify with the protagonist – from a certain feminist point of view, it would be better to look at, rather than from, whilst still retaining the glimpse inside the mind.
I do not know what became of my intimate friend, sadly enough. That kind of thing seems to happen and it is sad. Whether it was I who left, or him, I don’t know. One day he was there, the next he wasn’t, like some fleeting spirit. I never saw him again. But I do still have the book he gave me, and it’s beautiful. And it’s deep. It’s proper poetry. And it’s not just a book, it’s my own personalised copy. And that means something.
Oh, and if you’ve seen the Robert Rodriguez movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), both this story, and The Blue Bouquet, may spark a little memory of a disturbing scene in that movie. Both stories predate that, however. I would imagine Rodriguez was acutely aware of Octavio Paz, of course, and any Mexican watching the movie would likewise have got the reference.
Anyhow, that’s enough intro from me. Here is my macabre fairytale. And doubtless you’ll be pleased to hear I’ve dispensed with the lower case eyes for this one.
An Optician’s Tale
I am an optician. Eyes are my trade, for eyes are my speciality. I love eyes. Eyes are beautiful. All day long I look at eyes, and at night when I am asleep and my own eyes are closed I dream. About eyes. I love eyes. Blue ones, green ones, brown ones, red ones, it is no matter to me, for I love them all. All types of eyes. I have seen them all, and I love them all. Eyes are gorgeous. I love eyes. Love love eyes eyes beautiful gorgeous glittering eyes.
I even love my own eyes. Whenever I get a moment to myself I rush to a mirror to check on my eyes, always to find the reassurance that yes, they are still there and yes, they are still beautiful. As beautiful as ever. As beautiful as any. Or at least that is what I thought. As I say I have seen all types of eyes, blue ones, green ones, brown ones, red ones, I love them all, and I have seen them all. In fact it can be safely said that I have seen more eyes than there are people in the world. But I have never, in all my years of gazing at eyes, never seen eyes like hers. Never seen eyes as beautiful as hers. Never seen eyes as beautiful as those of the girl who walked into my shop that day. Even before I saw them I knew they were there. For she had an air about her, she seemed to emanate an awesome aura of absolute awe and auguric wonder. Floating in with the audacity of a princess. All dressed in purple and blue and with golden auric hair and brilliant blue eyes. Have you never seen eyes as brilliant blue as these! For I hadn’t. So shocked and stunned was I that I could not do anything but stare for an age. But she did not notice. She walked in, found a chair and sat down, looking blankly out in front of her. I bent down further closer to her face to gaze a little longer at those glistening gorgeous eyes, like blue binary stars, brilliant and bright and blue. They were not endless and wishy-washy, one could not imagine swimming in them. That is to say they did not contain that fractal self-deception of endlessness eternity which so many people seem to fall in love with, but her eyes – these eyes – were so detailed and complex, like a mass of blue electricity in a billion little rivulets, that one could gaze into them forever and give up before one had seen it all. And they seemed to shine on their own, emit a light of their own, under their own power. That of course was the blue brilliance I mentioned earlier. And keep seeming to mention. But as I said before I have never seen eyes as beautiful as these. I wanted them.
Unfortunately she was blind. And that is a pity. For she had never, could never see the wonder and the beauty of her own eyes. She asked if I could help. And in an evil stroke of cunning genius I said that I could. That of course was a lie. But I wanted those eyes. And can you blame me, with their being as beautiful as this? They were the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.
She knew there was no way that she could ever see, that much she had accepted, but what she was concerned about was what her eyes looked like. Perhaps because she was blind, unlike those who had eyes but did not use them (or just didn’t know how to), she had got it into her pretty little head that her eyes were somehow ugly. Uh. Never mention that word again. It is ugly. But anyway I took advantage of this and told her, despite the fact that there was no way she could have eyes more beautiful than the ones she already had, as there were none more beautiful than hers, that I could indeed make her eyes more beautiful than they were at present. I would give her an eyes transplant. But can you blame me? I wanted those eyes so much, I have never seen eyes as beautiful as hers.
And so I laid her down on the operating table and slowly, one by one makes two, so slowly and silently prised out her eyes, then quickly fitted the replacement pair into the empty sockets. They look good, I said, for she had no way of knowing. But that in fact was not a lie, for they did indeed look good. And in the sun they shone just as brightly and brilliantly as her old eyes did. But instead of two brilliant blue binary stars she had now had two sparkling glittering white dwarves. For it was not eyes that I had put into those holes, and nor was it marbles, but diamonds. It was diamonds that I had fixed there. Happy with that, the girl left, while I pondered my prize for a while. Holding those two brilliant blue marble eyes up in the light, and them still shining, for they were the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.
But after a while that staring overcame me, and so I stopped for a while. I replaced them carefully into their little glass boxes, and then back into the drawer with all my other eyes in, rows upon rows of the little colour globes, orbs – eyes of all different types have I in my collection – blue ones, green ones, brown ones, red ones – for I love them all – which I slid carefully back into the chest. I saw that the drawer next to it was open too, and so I shut it. That was the drawer with all my diamonds in, by the way. Because, as all great men know, it is not dogs, or bitches, but girls who are a man’s best friend, and in particular their eyes, and since it is said that diamonds are a girl’s best friend, it obviously follows that diamonds are a man’s best asset. And I love them, diamonds. Diamonds are beautiful, sparkling glittering glistening dust. I could look at diamonds all day long. Some days I do. All types of diamonds, all shapes and sizes. I have seen them all, and I love them all. Diamonds are gorgeous. I love diamonds. Love love diamonds diamonds beautiful gorgeous glittering diamonds…
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Well, this was dark but appealing. I was reminded of the Happy Prince here. Did you ever read that one?