Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online Page B

Rapunzel got in by nailing a wig to the floor and shinning up the tresses flung out of the window. Both of them could have used a ladder, but they were in love.
    One day the prince, who had always liked to borrow his mother's frocks, dressed up as Rapunzel's lover and dragged himself into the tower. Once inside he tied her up and waited for the wicked witch to arrive. The moment she leaped through the window, bringing their dinner for the evening, the prince hit her over the head and threw her out again. Then he carried Rapunzel down the rope he had brought with him and forced her to watch while he blinded her broken lover in a field of thorns.
    After that they lived happily ever after, of course.
    As for me, my body healed, though my eyes never did, and eventually I was found by my sisters, who had come in their various ways to live on this estate.
    My own husband?
    Oh well, the first time I kissed him he turned into a frog.
    There he is, just by your foot. His name's Anton.

    On New Year's Day, walking through the deep lanes slatted with light, I saw my husband on horseback, wearing hispink coat. He held his hunting horn to his lips and stood in the stirrups. The hunt rode off; soon they were only as big as holly berries hidden in the green.
    I walked on, away from the path, through bushes and brambles, frightening partridges and threading a route between the patient cattle whose hooves in the mud were braceleted with beads of water. My boots were thick with mud. Every step was harder and harder to take. Soon I was lifting my feet as you would to climb a ladder. I was angry and sweating. I wanted to get home but I couldn't hurry. I had to get home to fetch the punch into the great hall and fire it with bright blue flames.
    Coming with much difficulty to the top of a hill I looked across the widening valley and saw where the snow still patched the fields like sheets left out to dry. I love the thorn hedges and the trees bare overnight as though some child had stubbornly collected all the leaves, refusing to leave even one for a rival.
    I saw my own house, its chimneys smoking, its windows orange.
    Another year.
    Then a stag and five deer came out of the wood and across the fields in front of my eyes. The fields were fenced and the stag jumped over, turning his head to bring the others. Just for a second he remained in the air, but in that second of flight I remembered my past, when I had been free to fly, long ago, before this gracious landing and a houseful of things.
    He disappeared into the dark and I turned my back on the house. The last thing I heard was the sound of the hunt clattering into the courtyard.

    I never wanted anyone but her. I wanted to run my finger from the cleft in her chin down the slope of her breasts and across the level plains of her stomach to where I knew she would be wet. I wanted to turn her over and ski the flats of my hands down the slope of her back. I wanted to pioneer the secret passage of her arse.
    When she lay down I massaged her feet with mint oil and cut her toenails with silver scissors. I coiled her hair into living snakes and polished her teeth with my saliva.
    I pierced her ears and filled them with diamonds. I dropped belladonna into her eyes.
    When she was sick I wiped her fever with my own towels and when she cried I kept her tears in a Ming vase.
    There was no separation between us. We rose in the morning and slept at night as twins do. We had four arms and four legs, and in the afternoons, when we read in the cool orchard, we did so sitting back to back.
    I liked to feel the snake of her spine.
    We kissed often, our mouths filling up with tongue and teeth and spit and blood where I bit her lower lip, and with my hands I held her against my hip bone.
    We made love often, especially in the afternoons with the blinds half pulled and the cold flag floor against our bodies.
    For eighteen years we lived alone in a windy castle and saw no one but each other. Then someone found us and