In the Suicide Mountains

by John Gardner

  The prince sighed profoundly. “Not in my case,” he said.

  The abbot, too, heaved a sigh, and once more, for an instant, a tremble seized his lips. “Yes yes, I can see it’s desperate, in your case. And yet I wish—I hope not out of sinful curiosity—I wish I knew more of the particulars. It’s many a grief for which God is relief and perhaps one or two for which I am.”

  “The tale can be quickly told,” said the prince. “My father has sent me to hunt down the six-fingered man.”

  The old abbot’s mouth dropped open in dismay. Startled out of his normal tranquillity, he seemed for an instant a completely different man. He waved his hand, as if quite involuntarily, in the direction of his eyes, and Armida, looking up past her own hands, that instant, noticed through her tears, or thought she noticed (but it was dark, as I’ve mentioned), that the long, pale, delicate fingers numbered six, not five! But she couldn’t quite believe it, or failed to register—lost, as she was, in her own unhappiness and eagerly siding with the abbot’s arguments, since he was trying to persuade Prince Christopher to continue living. Seeing (or imagining she saw) that sixth finger, Armida merely shivered, as if a bad dream had slipped into her mind and out again. And now the abbot’s face was more gentle than ever, the tilt of his head more concerned.

  “The six-fingered man!” he breathed. “God be with you, dear Prince!”

  “I’m no fighter,” said Prince Christopher. “I’d never have a chance, and my death would be vile and ignominious. I won’t have it; I won’t go to him. I’d far rather die by my own hand. I may not be free to live like a poet, but I can die like one!” He stood with his right hand pressed against his chest.

  “Yes, I see,” said the abbot. With sad eyes the abbot looked over in the direction of Armida and the dwarf (the dwarf was fast asleep), sitting in the darkness with their hands covering their faces. “Yes, you’re right,” said the abbot with a kind of groan, and began once more to pace. “You really do have no chance against the six-fingered man. How would you even find him? I understand he’s very clever—murders people, or so rumor has it, and steals their identities. How’s a man even to locate a fiend like that?” He shot a glance at the prince. “You have a clue?”

  “Nothing,” moaned the prince.

  “Well, no matter anyway. You’re right about this business, though it grieves me to say it. Heaven knows there’s no percentage in your facing that man.—Of course he’s not as young as he used to be, and there are always aspects of the situation that we’re not aware of. But you’re right, yes. Safer to do battle with a thousand-year-old dragon.”

  The abbot stopped pacing as if he thought he’d heard a distant cry or something, and then his eyes lit up. He began to smile, excited, and came hurrying across the thick carpet toward the prince. He stopped a few feet short and looked up toward the corner of the ceiling, rapt, as if seeing a vision. “Now there’s an idea!” he said.

  Christopher the Sullen turned and looked doubtfully up in the direction in which the abbot was looking.

  “Listen to me,” the abbot said, moving closer and peering into Christopher’s eyes. “No one could call it ignominious, now could they, if you lost your life in battle against a dragon? A man’s not really expected to have a chance against a dragon. On the other hand, even while you’re dying”—he rolled his eyes, made his voice more dramatic, waved the silhouette of an arm then quickly returned it to his cassock, “—even while you’re gasping out your final breath, locked in mortal combat, you just conceivably might get in a lucky stab and leave the dragon so sorely wounded that—” His eyes flashed lightning and he gazed once more up at the corner of the room: “—so sorely wounded that he would eventually die. In a week or so, perhaps. Think of it! The lot of mankind would be significantly improved. You’d be famous throughout the world, throughout all history like Saint—” He pursed his lips; the name had slipped out of his memory. “Never mind, you get the drift.”

  “I,” said Christopher the Sullen, and touched his collar-bone, “should fight a dragon?”

  “Come come,” said the abbot. “Use your imagination.” He began pacing in a circle, into the hearth’s glow, out of it again, into it, out of it. “You say you want to kill yourself. I disapprove, naturally, as a man of the cloth (though I might make exceptions for a terminal illness that involved great pain), but on the other hand I can readily see your point, now that you mention the notorious six-fingered man. Very well, if you feel you must kill yourself, why not do it nobly, as Lycurgus did, for the benefit of mankind? Moreover—pay attention now—you may be wrong about everything, as I’ve said to you before. For all you know, the six-fingered man may have died way last January, from stepping on an icy patch and falling on his head. Ha! You hadn’t thought of that, had you, Prince Christopher! You’ll never win your rightful place in history by choosing self-destruction rather than confrontation with a man who’s in fact been dead for months. I don’t say he is, mind you. Very well, though. Excellent. Now we’re on the track.”

  The circle he was pacing became tighter.

  “Dying in conflict with a dragon would be heroic, my boy!—And come to think of it, I know just the dragon for you, and not far off. You ever hear of Koog the Devil’s Son?”

  “Koog!” the prince whispered. The room went suddenly cold as ice. Armida gasped.

  “You’ve heard of him I see,” said the abbot. “Excellent! Excellent! Now we’re on the track! He’s old, this Koog, and crafty as the serpent he is. No question! On the other hand, his age is not all an advantage: he’s hardly the dragon he once was, take my word! It’s just barely possible—this is merely an opinion—that a man might take him, if he went at it right.” He shot his face close to the face of the prince and whispered, looking back over his shoulder, “Old Koog’s got a magic charm on him, you know.”

  “A charm,” said Christopher the Sullen. His mouth was slightly open. He noticed this and closed it.

  “Exactly. Nothing can harm him when he’s in the dark of his cave. There was never a sword ever built that can scratch him. But out in the sunlight, ha!, that’s quite another story! The question, of course, is how do you get a smart old dragon to come out in the sunlight where he’s vulnerable?” The abbot stood nodding, fascinated himself by this conundrum.

  Prince Christopher cleared his throat. He said, “Fighting dragons isn’t basically my nature.”

  “Nonsense, my boy,” said the abbot, almost nastily. Something crossed Armida’s mind, too quickly for her to catch it. “This suicide was your idea, not mine,” said the abbot. “I’m merely suggesting—”

  “I’d been thinking of something rather quicker,” said the prince, “and not too painful. Standing there in chainmail at the mouth of a cave, and taking the flame of a dragon head on—” He winced. He decided to pour himself more brandy, crossed quickly to the low, round table (the bottle and glasses faintly glinted in the starlight), and filled his brandy snifter.

  The abbot came over to him. Armida could barely make out their two dark forms. Like a kindly old uncle the abbot put his arm around the prince, unless Armida was mistaken. “Come now, Prince,” he urged, “let’s think this through. I won’t deny it could be painful. Of course it would be painful! Glory’s not cheap!” Now both of them were pacing in a circle, into the hearth’s dim light, out of it, in again … Armida strained to see. “But let’s not fool ourselves, my friend, about diving off a cliff. Believe me, I know about these things! First of all, there’s the unspeakable terror involved. You may say it’s more frightening to go charging against a dragon, but my friend, my dear friend, I doubt it. Think how it feels on the cliff-edge, standing looking down. True, we’ve all had the urge to fall. But how grim, how ghastly the actuality! How excruciatingly dreadful! And then there’s the fall itself—first the unexpectedly painful banging of the heart. Many people, you know, die of heart attack long before they hit. And then the gasping for air. It’s difficult to breathe, believe you me, hurtling down thousands of fee
t toward the rocks. And then the landing! Aie! How would you choose to hit? On your head—? Over in an instant, true, but can you actually conceive of— But landing on your feet would be no better, of course. Smash! In a split second your feet and legs are as nothing, fragile as glass, two blood explosions!, and the rocks are rushing toward your pelvis. Your back breaks—wang!— in a thousand places, your organs crash downward and upward and inward … Dear me! Bless me! Perhaps we should speak of drowning.” The abbot stood stock-still, and the prince, too, stopped pacing.

  “Drowning!” the abbot whispered. “The mind boggles! Are we seriously to believe that it’s brief, painless? Behold the drowned fisherman’s bugged-out eyes, his tightly clenched fists—though he floats, you may argue, like a babe in the womb! Time is subjective, as we’ve all observed. An instant can stretch out to a thousand years. And surely that’s one vast interminable instant when the lungs wail for air and the water starts ringing and thundering in the drowning man’s ears! Let us speak of poison.”

  When the prince interrupted, his voice was weak. “I realize it’s difficult to kill yourself. You have to, you know, sort of trick yourself into it, one way or another, lie to yourself, become your own worst enemy, sneaking and shyly conniving against yourself, and even then it takes courage, a touch of craziness. Nevertheless, to walk up to a dragon, cool as you please—”

  “Yes, good,” said the abbot, “good, clear thinking. But let’s consider that. We’re assuming that to attack a dragon like Koog the Devil’s Son is suicide. That may be our first mistake. It may very well be that you’ll kill this Koog—that dwarf over there may know a trick or two, and our friend Armida may well have resources you haven’t yet guessed. She told us herself that she’s cunning and unnaturally strong. We must remember that. We must both of us always remember that, ha ha! So the dragon may prove a mere trifle after all. What do we really know, we poor finite mortals? You may find yourself slicing off the dragon’s head—and dragging it back here for all of us to see—with such ludicrous ease that you’re forced to guffaw—you and all your friends—at more ordinary mortals’ trepidations. That’s the thing, you see: the man who does battle with a dragon is, by definition, an exceptional man, necessarily a species of saint—indifferent about himself, a man concerned only about his brethren. Otherwise he wouldn’t be there, you see. Precisely! He’s a man ‘born again’ in a certain sense: a man who has learned that classic secret, that to save his life he has to throw it away. Now there’s a new twist on suicide, my prince! You don’t really throw away your life at all; instead you kill, as St. Paul says, the ‘old’ man—the carnal man, the self-regarding man—to give abundant life to the ‘new.’

  “Put it this way: why not try it? If you fight Koog the Devil’s Son and win, against your wish—if you still even then, after that thrill, that glory, wish to end it all—come back to the monastery and I’ll suggest some adversary more fierce yet, perhaps even— Monsters, sad to say, are never hard to come by. On the other hand, you owe it to yourself to take a crack at old Koog. That indifference to life that’s gotten into you can be a powerful weapon for God’s side. God loves the man who’s indifferent about himself, the charitable man. That’s the kind of fellow God looks after. Let me tell you a story.”

  Armida watched through spread fingers, more and more suspicious.

  Chapter Ten

  The Abbot’s Second Tale

  A certain king in a certain land had twelve daughters, each more beautiful than the last. Every night these princesses went away, no one knew where; and every night each of them wore out a new pair of shoes. The king could not get shoes for them fast enough, and he wanted to know where they went every night and what they did. So he prepared a feast, summoned kings and princes, noblemen, merchants, and the humblest tradesmen, and, when they were assembled, said: ‘Can anyone solve this riddle of my daughters’ shoes? He who solves it will receive his favorite princess in marriage and half the kingdom as her dowry.’ However, no one had the nerve to undertake to find out where the princesses went, except one needy nobleman, who said: ‘Your Majesty, I will find out.’ ‘Very well, find out.’

  “Soon the needy nobleman began to doubt and thought, ‘What have I done? I have undertaken to solve this riddle, yet I do not know how. If I fail, the king will put me in prison.’ Thus he walked along with a sad face. He met an old woman who asked him: ‘Why are you so sad, my good man? Christ has died for us, and God is in his heaven.’ He answered, ‘Little mother, that’s all very well, but how can I help but be sad as I walk? I have undertaken to find out for the king where his daughters go each night, and if I fail he will put me in prison.’ ‘Yes, that is a gloomy prospect,’ said she, ‘but not much more gloomy than continued poverty, and not much more gloomy than marriage to an obdurate princess. Make your peace with God, for earth is at bottom a silly place.’ ‘That is good advice; I will follow it.’

  “The man went home in his threadbare cloak to his threadbare castle and called a priest and made his peace with God, and after that he felt more cheerful. The next day he met the old woman again, and she addressed him saying: ‘I see you have made your peace with God.’ ‘Little mother,’ he answered, ‘so I have, and as the world rolls on, he has granted me his humor. I have a suspicion that the king will not be pleased to learn where his daughters have been going and wearing out their shoes, once he finds out; and though I may be miserable, so is the king, and surely an ordinary nobleman should smile and be cheerful when he has the luck of a king. It is true, however, that I’m no closer to solving the riddle than I was before.’ ‘Yes, that is a difficult task,’ said the old woman. ‘But it can be accomplished. Here is Saint Krasna’s invisibility cap; with its help you can find out many things. Now listen well: when you go to bed, the princesses will give you a sleeping potion. Turn your face to the wall and pour the drops into your bed, and do not drink them.’ The nobleman thanked the old woman and returned to the palace.

  “At nightfall he was assigned a room next to the bedroom of the twelve princesses. He lay on his bed and made ready to watch. Then one of the princesses brought him sleeping drops in wine and asked him to drink her health. He could not refuse, took the cup, pretended to drink, then turned to the wall and emptied the cup into his bed. On the stroke of midnight the princesses came to see whether he was asleep. The nobleman pretended to be sleeping so soundly that nothing could rouse him, but actually he was listening to every rustle. ‘Well, little sisters,’ said one of them, ‘our guard has fallen asleep; it is time for us to go to the ball.’ ‘It is time,’ said the others, ‘high time!’

  ‘They dressed in their best garments; the oldest sister pushed her bed to one side and disclosed a passage to the underground kingdom, realm of the accursèd king. They began to climb down the stairs. The nobleman quietly rose from his bed, donned his invisibility cap, and followed them. Accidentally he stepped on the youngest princess’s dress. She was frightened and said to her sisters: ‘Ah, little sisters, someone seems to have stepped on my dress; this is a bad omen.’ But her sisters scoffed. ‘Don’t worry,’ they said, ‘nothing will happen to us.’ They went down the stairs and came to a grove where golden flowers grew. The nobleman picked one flower and broke off a twig, and the whole grove rumbled. ‘Ah, little sisters,’ said the youngest princess, ‘do you hear how the grove is rumbling? This bodes no good!’ But again her sisters scoffed. ‘Fear not,’ they said, ‘it is the music in the accursèd king’s palace.’

  “They came to a palace with a hundred rooms, each more evil than the last, and were met by the king and his demonic courtiers. Infernal music began to play and they began to dance; they danced till their shoes were torn to shreds. The king ordered wine to be served to the guests. The nobleman took a goblet from the tray, drank the wine, and put the goblet in his pocket. At last the party was over; the princesses said farewell to their demon cavaliers, promised to come again the next night, returned home, undressed, and went to sleep.

  “The next morn
ing the king summoned the needy nobleman. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘have you discovered what my daughters do every night?’ ‘I have.’ ‘Then where do they go?’ ‘To the underground kingdom, to the accursèd king, and there they dance all night.’ The king went pale with rage and fear and summoned his daughters and began to question them: ‘Where were you last night?’ The princesses denied everything. ‘We did not go anywhere,’ they said. ‘It must be that mice have destroyed our shoes.’ The king said: ‘Have you not been with the accursèd king? This nobleman testifies against you and is ready to offer proof.’ ‘Father, he cannot offer proof, for he slept all night long like the dead.’ The needy nobleman drew the golden flower and the goblet from his pocket. ‘Here is the proof.’ The princesses had no choice but to confess everything to their father. He ordered the passage to the underground kingdom to be bricked up, and married his youngest daughter to the needy nobleman. From the beginning, the nobleman expected nothing of his wife, but as the years passed she gradually became all that his heart could have asked for.”

  Chapter Eleven

  No one spoke for a time when the abbot’s tale ended. At last the abbot said, his voice slightly quaking, his gentle lips atremble, “There are three basic theories about the world, Prince. One is that it is essentially good, one is that it’s essentially evil, and one is that it’s neutral. What a wise man understands is that none of that is true. The world is a hodge-podge. Our human business, therefore—since our chief attribute is consciousness, and our greatest gift from God is, as Dante said, free will—our human business is to clarify, that is, sort things out, put the good with the good and the evil with the evil and the indifferent with the indifferent. Only when reality is properly sorted out can there be stability or hope for the future in either the individual or the state.”