The Nutcracker and
the Cheese Ball
A Modern Take on
E.T.A. Hoffmann’s
Classic Fairy Tale
The
Nutcracker and the Mouse King
The story begins on Christmas Eve at the
Wing house …
J.C. sits in her living room speculating
about what kind of present her godfather, Drosselmeyer, a very talented
clockmaker and inventor, has made for her. The guy is a little off, and she’s
believed this the entire time she’s known him. Still, he gives great gifts, and
he has a wicked sense of humor. Humor, in J.C.’s opinion, is a very important
thing.
The wait is long and she almost falls
asleep. Christmas is a busy time of year and J.C. is a bit worn out. At last
Drosselmeyer arrives. She perks up when she is presented with his gift, which
turns out to be a nutcracker. She has no idea why he decided to make such a
thing … but the doll intrigues her with his unusual face and his jacket the
color of candied cherries. Even more than that, though, she is thrilled with
the fact that he will provide her with a snack. She has been so busy wrapping those
last-minute presents and baking cookies for the families that live in her cul
de sac that she forgot to eat a proper dinner. Her stomach growls in protest. She
finds a bag of mixed nuts—where did those come from?—and begins to put
Drosselmeyer’s gift to good use. Unfortunately, she tries to crack one that is
too hard and the nutcracker's jaw breaks. After some very colorful (and quiet—it
is Christmas Eve, after all) swearing, J.C. heaves a frustrated sigh and pulls
an old ACE bandage from the depths of her bag. It’s bedraggled and hasn’t been rolled
up properly, but it will have to do. She carefully wraps it around the wounded
nutcracker, keeping his lower jaw snug against the top, lining up the painted
white teeth. She shakes her head sadly as she pats his shiny, wooden hat. So
much for snack time.
When everyone has left the living room and
it is finally time for bed, J.C. knows she should probably do a quick clean up.
She looks around the space, her mood on this side of defeated. She is so
exhausted. The house is always a little messy. Okay, maybe even a tad more than
a little. She has several talents, but housekeeping has never been one of them.
She looks around and spots the nutcracker.
Feeling a bit guilty for breaking him, she reaches out and runs her fingers
over his soft, feathery beard. She tells him in a quiet voice that she will ask
Drosselmeyer to fix his jaw, hoping the old man will be able to find some time
in his busy life as a retiree to make the repairs. Honestly, she is surprised
he opted for homemade gifts this year instead of doing his shopping online. She
knows he is on a bowling league, and she overheard him talking earlier in the
evening about the trips he was making to coast. He’d tried surfing not long ago
and found it rather entertaining. It seems odd that he would spend so much time
on strange little gifts such as this wooden soldier, but to each his own. J.C.
studies the nutcracker before giving him a smile and a shrug. He is strange,
but handsome—in an odd and unexplainable way. As she tells the nutcracker this,
his face seems to come alive momentarily. J.C. blinks, surprised. Then she
shrugs it off. What’s crazier? The fact that she thought she saw a wooden
soldier smile at her, or that she was talking to one in the first place?
Perhaps she has imbibed in one too many glasses of wine, she reasons, lying back
against the couch.
The grandfather clock begins to chime.
Wait. She doesn’t have a grandfather clock. Still, as J.C. stares across the
room, she is almost sure she sees one there—and that Drosselmeyer is perched precariously
on top of it, refusing to let it strike. Okay, maybe she has had a few too many
glasses of wine.
She hears a scratching noise. It’s coming
from below the ground. It starts out soft, then gets louder, and soon, J.C.
sees mice begin to emerge from beneath the floor boards. She’d been meaning to
get them redone, but she had no idea they were in this state. When she spies a
seven-headed Mouse King rise from the honey-stained slats, she shakes her head
in disbelief.
Wow. It was true what they said. The
holidays really could bring about some serious stress.
A sudden movement to J.C.’s right makes
her jump. She turns to see a dozen dolls stored in a toy cabinet come to life.
Toy cabinet? J.C. shakes her head. That must have come from the same place the nuts
and the clock did. The dolls? She thought those had all been stored away years
ago, but here they were—and they seemed to be taking direction from the
nutcracker, who was forcefully taking command and leading them into battle with
the mice. The wooden soldier held the old ACE bandage in one hand and turned
his body so that his painted eyes could focus on J.C. “A token” he said in a
strange, deep voice, then he forged ahead to take on the army of rodents.
He and the dolls seem to be winning, at
least at first, but soon they are overwhelmed by the mice. J.C. watches as the
nutcracker is trapped. He is about to be taken prisoner. For reasons she can’t
explain, J.C. feels as though she needs to save him. She takes off her New
Balance sneaker and aims it at the Mouse King’s head. Or one of them, anyway.
The sudden movement makes her alcohol soaked brain swim and she loses her
balance. She isn’t sure if she’s hit the large rodent because a sharp, stinging
pain diverts her attention. She’s put her arm clean through the glass of the
toy cabinet, cutting it badly. The last thing she sees before she faints and
falls back to the couch is deep, red blood dripping from the wound. Oh, well,
she thinks. The floors were ruined by the mice, anyway.
J.C. falls into a deep sleep. In her
dream, Drosselmeyer comes to visit her. She is in her bed, her arm wrapped in a
length of snow white gauze. Memories of a year-long battle with wrist surgeries
causes her unease, but when her godfather brings to her the nutcracker, she
realizes she is dealing with something far stranger than orthopedic distress.
The nutcracker’s jaw has been rehinged, and there is no sign of the ACE bandage
anywhere. J.C. expects Drosselmeyer to leave right away, what, with his busy
social schedule and all, but the older man sits on the edge of the bed and
begins to tell her a story about Princess Pirlipat and Madam Mouserinks—also
known as the Queen of Mice—instead.
According to Drosselmeyer, The Mouse Queen
was a nasty, underhanded rodent. She tricked Pirlipat's mother into allowing her
and her children to eat up all the lard that was meant for the King’s sausage
supper. Of course, this enrages the king, and because he’s angry, the queen is
unhappy as well. The king, hungry and disgruntled, orders his court inventor to
create traps for the Mouse Queen and her fat and well-fed children.
The inventor, who happens to share the Drosselmeyer
name, does as he’s asked. His traps are successful. He manages to kill all
Madam Mouserinks’ children, which makes her very mad indeed. She swears to take
revenge on the King’s daughter, Princess Pirlipat.
Pirlipat’s mother, terrified that harm
will come to her child, surrounds the princess with many cats. These cats like
to nap, as cats are known to do, so the child’s nurses are instructed to
constantly stroke the felines. Unfortunately, even nurses get tired, and
they—as well as the cats—fall asleep. The Mouse Queen takes advantage.
She uses magic to turn Pirlipat, who is
known to be quite beautiful just as most children are, into something hideous. Her
head is now enlarged. She is given a wide, grinning mouth, and from her chin sprouts
a cottony beard. She resembles a nutcracker more than she does a little girl, and,
understandably, this makes the King furious. He blames Drosselmeyer and gives
the inventor four weeks to find a cure for his stricken daughter. When a month
passes and Drosselmeyer has not come up with a way to bring Pirlipat back to
herself, he begs his friend, the court astrologer, for help.
Together they read Pirlipat's horoscope
and find that the only way she can be cured is if she eats a Crackatook nut. As
if that isn’t difficult enough, this nut must be cracked and given to her by a
man who has never worn a pair of boots or taken a razor to his face in his
entire life. It gets worse than that, though. This man also must hand her the
nut without opening his eyes, then take seven steps backward without so much as
a stumble.
I have always known finding a good man is
a difficult task, but poor Pirlipat … Not only did she have a really messed up
name, but the man she was looking for? Well, I wasn’t sure she was going to
have any sort of luck finding him.
The King obviously feels the same way
because he is beside himself at the news. The odds seem slim to none, but this
is his little girl. He can’t sit around and do nothing. Well, he can sit around
and do nothing. He’s the King. He finds someone to do his bidding for him.
He calls Drosselmeyer and the astrologer
and demands that the two of them go out and search for both the Crackatook nut
and the man they need to give that nut to his daughter. The pair leave with the
King’s threat of a very long and painful death should they return to the castle
without both the things they’d been sent out to find hanging heavily over their
heads.
For many years, the men travel without
finding either the Crackatook or the man. During their journey, they find
themselves in Nuremburg and take shelter with Drosselmeyer’s cousin who is a
puppet maker. They think they have failed in their search and tell the puppet
maker why they have been away from the castle for so long. Surprised, the
artisan pulls from a small pouch the very Crackatook nut they have been looking
for. Later, when the astrologer and the inventor meet the puppet maker’s son,
they realize this is the man they need to crack the nut and present it to the
woefully ugly Pirlipat.
The three of them arrive at the castle and
the King is overjoyed. He tells Drosselmeyer’s nephew that if he can crack the
nut and give it to his daughter, he will give him Pirlipat’s hand in marriage. The
young man raises the Crackatook up to his bearded face, pops it into his mouth
and crack! The hard shell splits open
as easy as you please. He closes his eyes, hands the kernel to Pirlipat and
takes seven steps backward with his bootless feet. The princess swallows the
nut and presto, chango! The big head disappears. The beard vanishes, and the
wide grin is replaced by a beautiful, girlish smile.
Unfortunately for Drosselmeyer’s nephew,
that seventh step is a doozy. His heel comes down right on top of Madame
Mouserinks, the Mouse Queen, causing him to stumble. The curse that is lifted
from Pirlipat then falls on him. His handsome visage changes, and he becomes
the nutcracker. Although the princess is once again beautiful on the outside,
her soul proves to be surprisingly ugly. Seeing the changes that overcome him,
Pirlipat banishes young Drosselmeyer from the castle instead of becoming his
wife. She is the princess. She has options, especially now that the spell has
been lifted.
How rude.
J.C.’s godfather, seeing that he has tired
her out with his tale, leaves her bedside so that she can rest. Her sleep is
not deep and is colored by strange images. She blames it on the painkillers she’s
been given for the nasty cut on her arm, but in her dream, the visions come
from another source. It’s the seven headed Mouse King, and he’s whispering into
her ear, threatening to bite the newly mended nutcracker that stands at her
bedside to pieces unless she gives him sweets … and the recipe for the
cheese ball she served on Christmas Eve.
For the nutcracker's sake, she sacrifices
both her candy and the recipe, but the Mouse King is a greedy liar. He
continues to threaten J.C. until the nutcracker intervenes, telling her that if
she will find him a sword, he will finish the seven-headed menace off once and
for all. She finds a sword among the debris left when the toy cabinet fell and
crashed to the floor and gives it to the nutcracker.
Let’s be honest here. Even if this wasn’t
a dream, the mess would most likely still be there. J.C. isn’t the best
housekeeper, remember?
She drifts in her restless sleep, and when
she sees the nutcracker in her thoughts again, he has with him all the Mouse
King’s seven crowns. The hideous rodent has been conquered!
The nutcracker takes J.C. with him to the Land
of Sweets where the Sugar Plum Fairy rules. They are offered chocolates from
Spain, coffee from Arabia, tea from China, and candy canes from Russia. While they
eat and drink, Danish shepherdesses perform on their flutes and Mother Ginger,
a rather odd looking woman, introduces them to her twenty or so offspring.
There is much dancing, but J.C. feels a bit sick from the sugar and caffeine overload
and begs to be taken back to her bed.
It’s amazing how odd Percocet laced visions
can be.
It is several days before J.C. is released
from the hospital. She steps into her home and realizes that the mess she left behind
has been cleaned up. The dishes have been done and, as she suspected, there is
no toy cabinet, broken or otherwise in her living room. What she cut her arm on
is still a mystery, but she is sure, in time, she will figure it out.
She hears a knock on the door and opens it
to find her godfather, Drosselmeyer, standing on her porch. He says he has come
to fix the clock. She tells him there is no clock to fix, unless he wants to look
at her microwave, but the last time she checked, that one was working just
fine. Drosselmeyer brushes past her and steps inside.
Drosselmeyer tinkers with the unbroken
microwave and J.C. spies the nutcracker that is now resting upon the
bookshelves. Her mind wanders to the story her godfather told her. He watches
her as she lifts her hand to touch one of the nutcracker’s wooden boots. He
smiles and tells her that he’s glad she is nothing like Pirlipat. He knows had
she been in the princess’s rather expensive silk shoes that she would have
loved the man who had saved her no matter what he looked like. He smiles and
asks her if his assessment is correct.
J.C. shrugs. Sure, she tells him. It’s
what’s inside that counts. Besides, this question is purely hypothetical. And
that Percocet has been hidden deep inside the medicine cabinet.
The conversation is interrupted when
Drosselmeyer’s cell phone sounds from the pocket of his jacket. There is talk
of an arriving flight. From where, J.C. asks. Nuremberg, her godfather
responds. Who is coming to visit? It’s Drosselmeyer’s nephew.
J.C. cocks a disbelieving eyebrow in his
direction.
She shoos him through her kitchen, down
the stairs and out the front door. She tells him he best be on his way. It’s a
long drive to the airport. Before she shuts the door on him she gives him a
smile and reminds him that she doesn’t care how handsome his nephew is. She’s
happily married, and the only nuts she likes to eat are already shelled and
come in a can.
The End
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