There was once a princess who was loved by many men. One
of those who loved her was her chauffeur who was actually a book of
fairy tales, which, as every knows, are not true, one of which
contained the princess as a character, which is true. The princess was
also loved by her father, a rich and powerful man, who owned not one,
but many estates. This meant they had to travel frequently from site
to site which often put the princess in the company of the chauffeur.
The father found this unsettling but there was nothing that he could
do about this for, in truth and in fiction, the chauffeur drove the
vehicle that contained his daughter.

One day, the father invited many of his friends to his island
retreat. This island had storybook weather with a gentle breeze,
cloudless skies, and a temperate climate. Here were beaches
populated with fronds of palm trees instead of bodies, pure white
sand and clear blue seas. The only entrance to the island was closely
guarded by heavy escarpments. Entry could only be gained through a
single heavy, oak door with a trap door at the eye of the Sargeant-at-
arms. Through this portal passed many would be suitors of the
princess for though the father wished to share the princess with no
one else, he found a disquieting pallor in her cheeks that grew with
each day if he tried to isolate her. The suitors, upon entry to this
magical island of solitude and splendor, would become more and more
enamored of the princess, whose beauty seemed to glow in the
absence of tasks of the real world. They never, however, dared
express their enamorement of the princess in polite deference, as well
as fear of their host. On the other hand, the chauffeur, in this story
land, with its absence of the constraints of reality, lost his head. On
the second day of the retreat, in the middle of the day, he accosted the
princess in the library of the mansion (inflamed by the presence of
books which were to his world what rivers, rocks, and trees are to
ours), passionately declaring his love for her, saying that she, in truth,
belonged to him, and that he could not exist without her. Another
suitor, driven to jealously by a competitor of such low station as the
chauffeur, could not help overhearing this scene as well as the pitiful
protestations of the princess as to her substance and reality, and
reported this transgression to the father.

As soon as he heard about this, the father ran into the library
and seized the chauffeur in an uncontrollable fury and began to lash
at him not only with words but with his fists as well. He
gripped the chauffeur's driving coat with one hand, making it
impossible for the chauffeur to escape, and pounded his face with the
other hand in the manner of hockey players who seize and pummel
their opponent at the same time, forcing them to fight back in self-
defense. Except, in this case, the chauffeur, being nothing more than a
work of fiction, didn't have the substance of reality that would give
him the strength to defend himself so that he was helpless in the
hands of the father who soon had the chauffeur to the ground and was
pounding his body as well as his face. But as he beat the chauffeur,
did blood run from the limp sack that was the chauffeur's body? No,
instead of blood, streams of titles oozed out - Hansel and Gretel,
Rumplestilskin, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella - all the favorites of
our childhood - a Grimm sight indeed. As the last title, A Grimm Tale,
was beaten out of the chauffeur, the princess, realizing the truth
of the chauffeur's words cried out to her father, "Ah, father not only
have you destroyed the love of my life, you have destroyed me too!"
as she stared at her fading hands. The princess then sat down on the
floor and took the dying chauffeur's head in her hands. As they faded
away, the last thing their father heard her say to the chauffeur was:

"Take leave of me my love,
your casket to float apon the waters,
our love to drift rudderless where it may."

So if, someday, you should visit the father's island paradise and,
while walking his white beaches beneath azure skies, stumble apon a
plain gravestone of white marble with these words carved upon it,
you will know the story behind them.


Brandywine
5/3/95