Excerpt

kassandra Kassandra and the Wolf

by Margarita Karapanou

Three Blind Mice
One day, I was very sick. I started making noises and swinging from the chandelier in the dining room. I bounced up and down, singing “3 Blind Mice” with 2 forks in my hair.

Mother was away, so Grandmother and Miss Benbridge consulted Peter, and Peter told them to call Father over immediately, and Father came to pick me up. He had a furry hat on his head and a black umbrella in his hand.

“My child, I’m taking you somewhere to rest,” he said, trembling a bit.

Peter smiled, took the forks out of my hair, put my hat with the little cherries on my head, and kissed me.

“Bye, Miss Benbridge. Au revoir, House,” I sang out.

With Father getting more and more trembly, we took a taxi. He was in such a state he forgot the address.

“We’d like to go to the Holiday-House-for-the-Good-People-that-Hang-from-the-Ceiling,” I told the driver, and he took us there directly. The sly old thing—he knew the address without me telling him, and as soon as we got out, he disappeared—we didn’t even have time to pay him.

I was standing in front of this House with Father, when 3 Gentlemen with toothbrush hair grabbed us, and before we knew what, we were in a white room, standing in front of a table. A fat Gentleman with a pencil was sitting at the table, and he immediately started asking Father all these questions.

Father burst into tears, saying over and over again, “The child, the child, the child,” and chewing his hat, so Mr. Fat called in 3 snow-white Ladies with red crosses on their chests to sit around him so he wouldn’t be so scared.

Then he asked Father why he’d got married, why he’d left his wife (Mother), if he dived into bed with other Ladies, why he was crying and eating his hat, and if he preferred a room with a bath or one with a shower.

I was beginning to feel upset about things, since it was me Father had brought to the House to rest and sing as much as I wanted, so I started crying. I knew it was my fault that Father was sobbing and leaping on the table and chasing the 3 crossed Ladies around the room and grabbing their chests and bottoms and tearing off his shirt, and so I joined in the shouting.

“It’s me, me, me, me!” I hollered.

But nobody paid any attention to me. They grabbed him and put him in this ancient robe and tied him tightly behind. Father had turned into a kind of caterpillar. He disappeared with the 3 Ladies, who were holding him in their arms, and all the time I was sitting there, with my finger pointing to my chest, yelling:

“It’s me, me, me, me!” and singing “3 Blind Mice” to them, and even doing my somersaults, and pulling my faces, but Mr. Fat just looked at me sweetly and said:

“Your Father will be staying with us for some time, my little girl,” and he straightened my hat on my head and gave me some money to get a taxi.

I found one, got in, and sat back looking very serious. Then I wound down the window and took some gum from my bag to pretend I was smoking.

“Where are you going, little girl?”

The driver was laughing and I thought he was laughing at me. I was not going to stand for that sort of thing. I’d show him. So I kept him waiting a bit, sighed indifferently, just like Grandmother, looked absentmindedly out of the window, and said: “Home, please.”