The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [226]
She handed him—they were sitting in his workroom—the sheaf of papers from Olive. She said, expressionless, in German
“Ein Brief von meiner Mutter. Ein Märchen. Ich habe meiner Mutter nichts von Ihnen—von Dir—gesagt.”
He gave her a long, sombre look, and picked up the papers. Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can’t understand, can and can’t accept. Griselda sat pale and vanishing. Anselm turned over the pages, with their little drawings of hedgehogs and frogs and underground kitchens with rows of pannikins. He said to Griselda
“What is this?”
“Tell him—” said Dorothy. “She writes a story for each of us. This is mine. It is a whimsical story about magic hedgehogs.”
“I can’t translate whimsical.” She looked at Dorothy. “Dorothy, don’t cry. Why did you bring it?”
“She’s in this story too. I brought it to bring it together. Don’t translate that.”
But he nodded, as though he had understood. “Higgle,” he said. “Mis-tress Hig-gle. What is Mistress Higgle?” “Eine kleine Frau die ist auch ein Igel,” said Griselda. “Ein Igel,” said Anselm Stern. “An eagle?” asked Dorothy.
“No, no. Igel is the German word for a hedgehog.”
“‘Hans mein Igel.’ That’s a story from the Grimms. He says he played it for her.” She turned to Anselm.
“Für die Mutter?”
“Genau.”
“So. Mrs. Higgle is Hans mein Igel. I have not played it for many years. The Hedgehog-human puppet is one of my finest, I think. We will find him out, and tomorrow I shall perform the story. I think she must have named you Mistress Higgle for Hans mein Igel. The story is strange. It is the tale of a woman who so desired a child that she said she would give birth to anything, even a hedgehog. And in tales, you get what you ask for. Her child was a hedgehog above, and a pretty boy below, and he revolted her.”
Griselda had trouble with “revolted.”
“So he slept in straw by the stove, and rode out into the woods on a fine cockerel, playing the—I can’t translate Dudelsack.” Anselm Stern mimed.
“Ah, bagpipes. He sat in a tree, and played the bagpipes and looked after herds of swine, and prospered. By and by he came to the attention of a king lost and bewildered, to whom he showed the way, and the king promised him whatever first met him on his way, which was of course, as it always must be, his daughter. And the daughter must marry the half-hedgehog swineherd, for promises in tales must be kept. And she was greatly afraid of his spines, and did not respond to bagpipe music. So we move to the bridal chamber and there in secret the hedgehog takes off his hedgehog-skin, and servants of the king rush in and burn it in a fire. This is a fine scene for puppets to play. And then he is wholly human, but black as coal. So they wash him, and dress him as a prince, and the princess runs into his arms and loves him—very much—mightily—and all is well. I think, Dorothy, your mother was thinking of the half-alien child, and the hedgehog—who is a trickster, a clever Hans, a German character—when she named your Mistress Higgle. You are the much-desired child who is half from somewhere else, a different child.
“In this story she sent, someone has stolen the hedgehog-skin. In this story, she needs it, it is magic, it makes her smaller, or invisible.”
Anselm Stern found out the old puppets from “Hans mein Igel,” the spiny-coated changeling, the prancing red cockerel with his golden comb, the mother with her