Once Upon a Time
Author(s): NADINE GORDIMER
Source: Salmagundi , Winter 1989, No. 81 (Winter 1989), pp. 67-73
Published by: Skidmore College
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40548017
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Salmagundi
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Once Upon a Time
A STORY BY NADINE GORDIMER
Someone has written to ask me to contribute to an anthol-
ogy of stories for children. I reply that I don't write children's
stories; and he writes back that at a recent congress/book
fair/seminar a certain novelist said every writer ought to write
at least one story for children. I think of sending a postcard
saying I don't accept that I 'ought' to write anything.
And then last night I woke up - or rather was wakened
without knowing what had roused me.
A voice in the echo-chamber of the subconscious? A
sound.
A creaking of the kind made by the weight carried by one
foot after another along a wooden floor. I listened. I felt the
apertures of my ears distend with concentration. Again: the
creaking. I was waiting for it; waiting to hear if it indicated
that feet were moving from room to room, coming up the pas-
sage - to my door. I have no burglar bars, no gun under the pil-
low. But I have the same fears as people who do take these
precautions, and my windowpanes are thin as rime, could
shatter like a wine glass. A woman was murdered (how do they
put it) in broad daylight in a house two blocks away, last year,
and the fierce dogs who guarded an old widower and his collec-
tion of antique clocks were strangled before he was knifed by a
casual labourer he had dismissed without pay.
I was staring at the door, making it out in my mind
rather than seeing it, in the dark. I lay quite still - a victim al-
ready - but the arrhythmia of my heart was fleeing, knocking
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68 NADINE GORDIMER
this way and that ag
senses are, just out o
as that in the distra
faintest sound, identi
But I learned that I was to be neither threatened nor
spared. There was no human weight pressing on the boards,
the creaking was a buckling, an epicentre of stress. I was in it.
The house that surrounds me while I sleep is built on under-
mined ground; far beneath my bed, the floor, the house's foun-
dations, the stopes and passages of gold mines have hollowed
the rock, and when some face trembles, detaches and falls,
three thousand feet below, the whole house shifts slightly,
bringing uneasy strain to the balance and counterbalance of
brick, cement, wood and glass that hold it as a structure
around me. The misbeats of my heart tailed off like the last
muffled flourishes on one of the wooden xylophones made by
the Chopi and Tsonga migrant miners who might have been
down there, under me in the earth at that moment. The stope
where the fall was could have been disused, dripping water
from its ruptured veins; or men might now be interred there in
the most profound of tombs.
I couldn't find a position in which my body would let go of
my mind - release me to sleep again. So I began to tell myself a
story; a bedtime story.
In a house, in a suburb, in a city, there were a man and
his wife who loved each other very much and were living hap-
pily ever after. They had a little boy, and they loved him very
much. They had a cat and a dog that the little boy loved very
much. They had a car and a caravan trailer for holidays, and a
swimming pool which was fenced so that the little boy and his
playmates would not fall in and drown. They had a housemaid
who was absolutely trustworthy and an itinerant gardener
who was highly recommended by the neighbours. For when
they began to live happily ever after they were warned, by that
wise old witch, the husband's mother, not to take on anyone off
the street. They were inscribed in a medical benefit society,
their pet dog was licensed, they were insured against fire, flood
damage and theft, and subscribed to the local Neighbourhood
Watch, which supplied them with a plaque for their gates let-
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Once Upon A Time 69
tered YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED over the silhouette of a
would-be intruder. He was masked; it could not be said if he
was black or white, and therefore proved the property owner
was no racist.
It was not possible to insure the house, the swimming
pool or the car against riot damage. There were riots, but these
were outside the city, where people of another colour were
quartered. These people were not allowed into the suburb ex-
cept as reliable housemaids and gardeners, so there was noth-
ing to fear, the husband told the wife. Yet she was afraid that
some day such people might come up the street and tear off the
plaque YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and open the gates and
stream in... Nonsense, my dear, said the husband, there are
police and soldiers and tear-gas and guns to keep them away.
But to please her - for he loved her very much and buses were
being burned, cars stoned, and schoolchildren shot by the
police in those quarters out of sight and hearing of the sub-
urb - he had electronically-controlled gates fitted. Anyone who
pulled off the sign YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and tried to
open the gates would have to announce his intentions by press-
ing a button and speaking into a receiver relayed to the house.
The little boy was fascinated by the device and used it as a
walkie-talkie in cops and robbers play with his small friends.
The riots were suppressed, but there were many
burglaries in the suburb and somebody's trusted housemaid
was tied up and shut in a cupboard by thieves while she was in
charge of her employers' house. The trusted housemaid of the
man and wife and little boy was so upset by this misfortune
befalling a friend left as she herself often was with respon-
sibility for the possessions of the man and his wife and the lit-
tle boy, that she implored her employers to have burglar bars
attached to the doors and windows of the house, and an alarm
system installed. The wife said, She is right, let us take heed of
her advice. So from every window and door in the house where
they were living happily ever after they now saw the trees and
sky through bars, and when the little boy's pet cat tried to
climb in by the fanlight to keep him company in his little bed
at night, as it customarily had done, it set off the alarm keen-
ing through the house.
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70 NADINE GORDIMER
The alarm was oft
burglar alarms, in oth
cats or nibbling mic
the gardens in shrill
became accustomed t
of the suburb no mor
ing of cicadas' legs. U
course intruders saw
taking away hi-fi eq
cameras and radios, j
hungry enough to d
paused audaciously t
patio bars. Insuranc
single malt, a loss m
knowledge that the t
preciate what it was t
Then the time cam
not trusted housema
because they were u
weeding or painting
man and his wife re
anyone off the street
with discarded bottl
his wife to drive th
gates. They sat about
jacarandá trees that
was a beautiful subu
sometimes they fell
midday sun. The wif
sent the trusted hou
trusted housemaid s
would come and tie
husband said, She's
encourage them with
their chance... And he
garden into the hou
surely secure, once l
might still be able to
closed gates into the
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Once Upon A Time 71
You are right, said th
higher. And the wise old w
the extra bricks as her C
wife - the little boy got a
tales.
But every week there were more reports of intrusion: in
broad daylight and the dead of night, in the early hours of the
morning, and even in the lovely summer twilight - a certain
family was at dinner while the bedrooms were being ransacked
upstairs. The man and his wife, talking of the latest armed
robbery in the suburb, were distracted by the sight of the little
boy's pet cat effortlessly arriving over the seven-foot wall, des-
cending first with a rapid bracing of extended forepaws down
on the sheer vertical surface, and then a graceful launch, land-
ing with swishing tail within the property. The whitewashed
wall was marked with the cat's comings and goings; and on the
street side of the wall there were larger red-earth smudges
that could have been made by the kind of broken running
shoes, seen on the feet of unemployed loiterers, which had no
innocent destination.
When the man and wife and little boy took the pet dog for
its walk round the neighbourhood streets they no longer
paused to admire this show of roses or that perfect lawn; these
were hidden behind an array of different varieties of security
fences, walls and devices. The man, wife, little boy and dog
passed a remarkable choice: there was the low cost option of
pieces of broken glass embedded in cement along the top of
walls, there were iron grilles ending in lance-points, there were
attempts at reconciling the aesthetics of prison architecture
with the Spanish Villa style (spikes painted pink) and with the
plaster urns of neo-classical facades (twelve-inch pikes finned
like zigzags of lightning and painted pure white). Some walls
had a small board affixed, giving the name and telephone num-
ber of the firm responsible for the installation of the devices.
While the little boy and the pet dog raced ahead, the husband
and wife found themselves comparing the possible effective-
ness of each style against its appearance; and after several
weeks when they paused before this barricade or that without
needing to speak, both came out with the conclusion that only
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72 NADINE GORDIMER
one was worth cons
honest in its suggesti
no frills, all evident e
sisted of a continuou
into jagged blades, so
over it and no way
tangled in its fangs. T
getting bloodier and
and tearing of flesh
right, said the husban
took heed of the advice on a small board fixed to the wall: Con-
sult DRAGON'S TEETH The People For Total Security.
Next day a gang of workmen came and stretched the
razor bladed coils all round the walls of the house where the
husband and wife and little boy and pet dog and cat were living
happily ever after. The sunlight flashed and slashed, off the
serrations, the cornice of razor thorns encircled the home, shin-
ing. The husband said, Never mind. It will weather. The wife
said, You're wrong. They guarantee it's rust-proof. And she
waited until the little boy had run off to play before she said, I
hope the cat will take heed... The husband said, Don't worry,
my dear, cats always look before they leap. And it was true
that from that day on the cat slept in the little boy's bed and
kept to the garden, never risking a tiy at breaching security.
One evening, the mother read the little boy to sleep with
a fairy story from the book the wise old witch had given him at
Christmas. Next day he pretended to be the Prince who braves
the terrible thicket of thorns to enter the palace and kiss the
Sleeping Beauty back to life: he dragged a ladder to the wall,
the shining coiled tunnel was just wide enough for his little
body to creep in, and with the first fixing of its razor-teeth in
his knees and hands and head he screamed and struggled
deeper into its tangle. The trusted housemaid and the
itinerant gardener, whose 'day* it was, came running, the first
to see and to scream with him, and the itinerant gardener tore
his hands trying to get at the little boy. Then the man and his
wife burst wildly into the garden and for some reason (the cat,
probably) the alarm set up wailing against the screams while
the bleeding mass of the little boy was hacked out of the
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Once Upon A Time 73
security coil with saws,
ried it - the man, the w
and the weeping gardener
©Felix Licensing BV.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2
author of The Dialectical Imagination, Marxism and Totality, T.W. Adorno and Per-
manent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to
America.. .MARY KINZIE teaches creative writing at Northwestern University and
is author of The Threshold of the Year... CHRISTOPHER LASCH is Watson
Professor at the University of Rochester. His works include The Culture of Narcis-
sism, The New Radicalism in America, The Minimal Self, The Agony of the
American Left, Haven in a Heartless World, and The American Liberals and the
Russian Revolution... JÜUUS LESTER is Professor of Jewish Studies at the
University of Massachusetts and is author of several books of poems, stories and
essays among which are Do Lord Remember Me, The Knee High Man and Other
Tales, Long Journey Home: Stories From Black History, To Be A Slave and Who I
Am. .JANE MANSBRIDGE is Professor of Political Science and Sociology and a
member of the Research Faculty at the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy
Renewal at Northwestern University. She is author of Beyond Adversary
Democracy and Why We Lost the ER.A...DF. PETTEYS works in the Special
Collections Dept. of the Library at C.W. Post College of Long Island University. His
poems have appeared in such publications as The Literary Review, Confrontation,
and West Hills Review... DAVID RIEFF is a senior editor at Farrar, Straus and
Giroux and is author of Going To Miami and Texas Boots (with Sharon Delano).
His essays have appeared in TLS, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Vanity
Fair, Interview and other publications... ROGER SHATTUCK is University Profes-
sor at Boston University and author of The Banquet Years: Origins of the Avant-
Garde in France, Marcel Proust, The Forbidden Experiment The Story of the Wild
Boy Of Aveyron, Proust's Binoculars, and The Innocent Eye...MAURYA SIMON
teaches creative writing at the University of California-Riverside and Scripps Col-
lege and is author of The Enchanted Room. Her poems have appeared in Poetry,
The Hudson Review, Tri- Quarterly, Grand Street, The Georgia Review and other
journals.. .W.D. SNODGRASS is author of Heart's Needle, After Experience, The
Führer Bunker, The Death of Cock Robin and, most recently, Selected
Poems. ..BARRY SPACKS teaches creative writing at M.I.T. He is author of several
volumes of poems including Teaching The Penguins To Fly and Spacks Street
New and Selected Poems...ELLEN WILLIS is a Senior Editor at The Village Voice
and author of Beginning To See The Light Her essays have appeared regularly in
The Village Voice, Praxis, Social Text and other publications.
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