How dull the apple thuds

A short story inspired by The Juniper Tree, a Brothers Grimm Fairytale.
 
 
How dull the thud, like an apple, against the walls of my dreams. It wakes me, and I look for something that might have rolled onto my head that had been resting on the pillow, and I feel about the darkness for the black fur of my cats. Little fools, playing games with me by rolling a tennis ball, a trick they have performed before, when hungry or bored or both. But nothing. No fur nor rolling ball to tap against my head and wake me from this strange dream of an apple tree that is old, so old, that it could be some two thousand years or more. Its branches reach so far into my nights that it reminds me of things that tickle at my conscience, stirring up memories that I would rather forget.
 
Now awake, I pace about my bedroom, and I see cats in each dark corner, and even though they flatten into mere shadows as I approach, I let myself believe that they are creatures of the night who have been sent to keep me from sleep so I don’t slip back to a time when I was once a man who lived with a beautiful wife, and who loved her as much as she loved me. I don’t want to remember a time when I struggled to share her sorrow for having no children, constantly trying to push aside my contentment for the warmth that we shared so I could also wish for a future that was shaped differently, with more than just the two of us.
 
Another shadow, and this one looks cruel, the edges hardened with malice as it reminds me of the sharpness of that apple tree where my wife stood as she peeled some apples, and how she cut her finger, and the blood fell onto the snow. She sighed as she stood bleeding before that tree, and she wished for a child as red as blood and as white as snow. As she spoke, her heart must have grown light within her because she raced back to the house and told me how glad and comforted she felt. ‘It will happen,’ she insisted, ‘I just know it. We just need to relax and stop willing it, and then we will be granted this one wish.’


We waited all winter, and into the spring, and the earth turned green and white with blossom. Once again my wife stood under the apple tree, only this time something made her leap for joy as she seemed overcome with happiness, and then she fell to her knees with a soft thud. All around her, the fruit was round and firm, and from the ground she pointed at it, insisting that this was a sign of our wish that would finally come true. Someone or something started to cry, and a number of the swollen fruit cascaded around her, and we welcomed the dull thud of the fruit falling to the ground.
 
A month passed, and then another, and my wife was growing and swelling like the ripened fruit, and we were full of joy and distracted from anything else that could trouble our life. ‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ she would tell me as we made the short drive to and from the doctor for checkups and discussions about birth and parenting a child as white as snow and as red as blood.
 
When I looked at my wife during one of those drives, it pierced my heart to think that she might suffer in childbirth, and I resented this unborn child of snow and blood. This evil thought took possession of me more and more, and made me behave unkindly during our visits to the doctor. Each time I drove, it was there, thudding about my mind, as if an apple were rolling about in the back of the car; this newcomer, this imminent arrival, seemed to threaten nothing but suffering, and without an end.
 
During one of the drives home from the doctor, my wife turned to me and said, ‘Give me an apple, this baby is making me so hungry.’ ‘Not now,’ I snapped, for fear of distraction from the road, but also resentment that this unborn child was already dominating our world. The bag of apples was behind my seat, so I was better placed to reach for them, but I knew it was dangerous when the traffic was so frenetic. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ my wife sighed as she struggled to reach behind my seat, ‘but the clip won’t open. Did you fasten it with an iron lock or something?’ she added with a laugh.
 
I think of that time now, as I pace about my darkened room, and I surmise that an evil spirit entered our car, for something made her cry out before I swerved, and I heard her scream ‘No!’ but all I could think about was whether she had reached that shiny apple in time. She must have been bending far behind my seat when the framework of our car crashed through her sweet body and severed her neck. I was hunched over a steering wheel and, overwhelmed, I thought about taking a handkerchief and setting her head again on her shoulders, and bounding it with the handkerchief so that nothing could be seen, and placing her on the passenger seat so that we could wait for help.
 
Soon after this, help arrived in the form of a woman who gasped, and then cried, and then screamed into her cell phone for paramedics. ‘Why does she look so pale?’ I asked the woman, ‘she looks so frightening.’ The woman did not answer, so I asked my wife, ‘Why do you look so pale?’ and she didn’t answer, of course she didn’t, but I did not realize at the time. So I touched her shoulder, very gently, and her head rolled off. I was so terrified at this that I scrambled about in my seat, despite the metalwork holding me fast. I felt tearing and moisture that I realize now was my own blood. I was cut up, ready to be made into a pudding or put into a pot, but still, I could not sit there and watch this and wait for the rest of my life.
 
I was taken to the hospital, and they promised me that my wife would follow, but I never saw her arrive. ‘Where is she?’ I kept asking without getting any reply until they wheeled me to a quiet room and told me that she was laid out beneath a sheet. They waited for me to ask more, and I knew what they were expecting to hear, but I was still possessed by an evil that viewed this unborn child of snow and blood as a threat that promised nothing but suffering.
 
They told me I could bury my wife and unborn child, and I thought of the apple tree and how their remains might feed it and sustain new life. No sooner had I done this, then all my sadness seemed to leave me, and I wept no more. And then the apple tree began to move, and the branches waved backwards and forwards, and a mist came round the tree, and in the midst of it there was a burning as of fire, and out of the fire there flew a beautiful bird, that rose high into the air, singing magnificently, and when it could no more be seen, the apple tree stood there as before.
 
At night, I tried to sleep but all I could hear, but not see, that bird and its song:
 
‘My husband killed his little child,
My husband killed his wife.
I wonder if he grieves for us,
Or if he prefers this other life
Underneath the apple tree
Too-wit, too-wit, what a beautiful bird am I!’
 
Neighbors visited and expressed their shock and dismay, but I knew their wide eyes showed a fear for their own welfare rather than any concerns about me. Each neighbor who visited paused when they heard the bird song, and they remarked how beautiful the sound was, but they did not hear the words that spoke of my guilt, the same words that I can hear now, this night, as I pace about my darkened bedroom. The distress and unease, how it makes my teeth chatter, and how it sets my veins on fire, it makes me want to tear up my bedsheets in search of some corner of peace.
 
I pull back my curtains and I see it there, that singing bird, sitting on the apple tree.
 
‘My husband killed his little child,
My husband killed his wife.
I wonder if he grieves for us,
Or if he prefers this other life
Underneath the apple tree
Too-wit, too-wit, what a beautiful bird am I!’
 
I shut my eyes and my ears, but there was a roaring sound in my ears like that of a violent storm, and in my eyes a burning and flashing like lightning. I felt in such trouble that I fell to the floor, and my head was throbbing, burning like flames of fire. ‘I need it to stop,’ I cried, ‘I must have peace if I am to sleep!’ and I clawed my way up from the ground and flung open the window, and thud the windows went against the brickwork of my house.
 
‘Quiet!’ I screamed at the bird but of course it would not stop singing from the apple tree:
 
‘My husband killed his little child,
My husband killed his wife.
I wonder if he grieves for us,
Or if he prefers this other life
Underneath the apple tree
Too-wit, too-wit, what a beautiful bird am I!’
 
So I threw myself from the window, down onto my head, and I thought I might be crushed to death. A neighbor heard the sound and ran out, but they only saw mist and flame and fire rising from the spot, and when these had passed, there I stood, and I took my wife by the hand, and she cradled our child as red as blood and as white as snow; and we all three rejoiced for we were together again.
 
BB Clifford