In the Suicide Mountains

by John Gardner

  “That’s wonderful!” cried Armida. “Oh, Prince Christopher, that’s wonderful!”

  “And I don’t want you to kill yourself either, all right?”

  “Anything you say,” said Armida, and put on her silly look. “You know I wouldn’t dare disobey you.”

  Chudu was so happy he forgot that he too had intended to kill himself.

  When they were almost at the gate of the monastery, Armida said, “There’s something I ought to tell you two, too.”

  The prince twisted around to look at her.

  “I think the abbot,” said Armida, “has six fingers on each hand.”

  The horse began to tremble.

  “But don’t be frightened,” she added quickly, and gave them a wink. “I have a plan.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  They found the abbot reading and thoughtfully pondering a book about a murderer. The abbot, as it happened, had hundreds of such books. He quickly put it down and stuck his hands into his cassock and asked the travelers their news.

  “So you’ve killed the dragon,” said the abbot when they’d told him. “Incredible!” He looked at Prince Christopher with new respect, then called one of his monks to him. “Brother Will,” he said, his old eyes bright and his gentle lips trembling, “gather the brothers together and get all the monastery wagons,” and go to the cave where old Koog used to be, and gather up all his treasures and bring them to the monastery.”

  “So that’s why you wanted the dragon dead,” said Christopher the Sullen.

  “Naturally, my son,” said the abbot, smiling. “But it’s not for ourselves, it’s for the poor and needy. Of course it all rightfully belongs to you, I’m well aware of that, and however much or little you may want of it—”

  “No no,” said the prince with a wave. “I have everything I need back at the palace. Greed’s the root of all evil.”

  “You’re a wise young man,” said the abbot. Then he said, “Come, let’s get you out of that armor and into something softer.”

  After they had all changed, he took them to the stone-walled chamber with the fireplace—for suppertime was past—and nodded toward the wine and warmed-up food the holy brothers had laid out for them. The three ate and drank to their hearts’ content, and the abbot looked on approvingly. Armida used her knife and fork and spoon with such delicate grace no one would have believed, who had not seen it, that such a frail wisp of a girl could have slain a dragon. It seemed unlikely that she could lift an iron dagger, let alone a knight’s long lance. When the abbot tried politely to engage her in conversation, her answers and comments were so shy and foolish that even Prince Christopher the Sullen was forced to smile.

  After they’d finished eating, the abbot nodded in the direction of the brandy and invited them to help themselves. “Would you pour it for me?” asked Armida in a whispery, girlish voice, and smiled prettily. “I never know how much is proper.”

  The abbot, who preferred to keep his hands where they were, buried in the folds of his cassock, smiled at her and said, “I’m unworthy of such an honor! Let the prince pour. That would be more fitting.”

  “I’ll be glad to pour,” said Prince Christopher, and gave Armida a solemn wink.

  When they all had their brandy, except of course the abbot, the abbot said, with such warmth and good-heartedness that even the dwarf was momentarily persuaded that Armida must surely be mistaken about the monk’s six fingers, “Tell me how you accomplished this great feat, my dear prince, root of all my happiness! How I wish I’d been there to see it! Is it possible—” He smiled and leaned confidentially toward the prince. “Is it possible you had help from the dwarf? I suggested myself, if I remember correctly, that the dwarf might conceivably know a trick or two. A little shape-shifting, perhaps? A little bumble and confusion?”

  Prince Christopher chuckled, though his look was still mournful. “Oh, he’s not that kind of dwarf. He may have done such things on rare occasions in his youth, but magic is against his principles. He’s the soul of gentleness and reason, as you’d know if you traveled with him. He refuses even to play chess—game of too much aggression.”

  “How odd,” said the abbot, and critically studied the dwarf. “Yet surely he told us in this very room that his reason for considering suicide was his potential destructiveness!”

  “That’s always been his one great fear, yes,” the prince said, gazing sadly and kindly at the dwarf. “That’s why it’s so important to him never to let go. I admire him for it, though I confess, when I was fighting the dragon there were moments when I would have been grateful for a little noisy magic. But no matter! Here we are, safe and sound.”

  “So you are,” said the abbot with satisfaction. “And has my little cure worked?”

  “Cure?” said the prince.

  “Surely you’ve realized by now why it was that I proposed that mission. I predicted, didn’t I, that you might come out of it unscathed, thanks to your indifference to your personal welfare and your princely concern about others?”

  “I believe you did predict that.”

  “Exactly! My thought, you see, was that if you succeeded with the dragon you might shake off that notion of suicide.”

  The prince glanced at Armida. “So that was your game.”

  “I can’t deny it,” said the abbot. “And I hope you’ll tell me I was successful.”

  Prince Christopher laughed with him, a trifle morosely, and studied the abbot’s face. “Surely Armida must be wrong this once,” he thought. “Yes,” he told the abbot, “you were successful; we’ve abandoned the idea.”

  “Bless you!” said the abbot. “Perhaps you’d reward me for my favor, then, with a little violin music.”

  The prince sneaked a glance at Armida; she just perceptibly nodded. “If you insist,” said the prince with a troubled frown. “I no longer think of myself, to be truthful, as a violinist. I’m a swordsman, basically, as the six-fingered man will soon learn to his grief. But since you ask, I’ll go get my fiddle.” He went off at once and before long returned with the instrument. Deftly he screwed the bow tight and tuned the violin-strings, then looked off into space for a moment, deciding what to play. At last he put the instrument to his chin and, with a long sweet note on the D-string, began.

  “Beautiful,” murmured the abbot when Christopher the Sullen had played a phrase or two, and he closed his eyes, wagging his head with the music, and listened with all his heart.

  Christopher the Sullen played for hours that night, and the following day he played again for the abbot, a long time or a short time, all the while insisting that he was really a swordsman, and sometimes, between rhapsodies, he would make what seemed an absent-minded little thrust or parry with the bow. Though he was the worst of swordsmen in actual combat—mainly because he had no courage and no interest—he’d had excellent training and looked thoroughly professional, so that the abbot, watching, could not be at all certain that the prince wasn’t dangerous. The dwarf all the while sat placidly smiling, stroking his long beard, sometimes bumping his watch on the chair-arm, as if trying to get the thing going and refusing to use magic. Armida smiled and simpered and batted her eyelashes and once, pretending to have seen a mouse, screamed and panicked.

  These ruses worked so well that, despite all they’d told him, by the third day the abbot paid attention to no one but Prince Christopher—gently, mystically smiling at the prince, but watching like a hawk. On that day the brethren returned with their wagonloads of treasure. There were more precious jewels, more gold coins and silver coins, more beautiful works of art than even Chudu the Goat’s Son had ever before seen, though it is part of the business of a dwarf to keep track of old treasures. The monks parked the wagonloads of treasure in the barn, held mass, then began to prepare supper.

  Meanwhile, the saintly old abbot prayed for the crippled and sick until all of them were cured. Armida, the prince, and the dwarf observed. “Notice,” Armida whispered, “how he holds his hands to pray.”

>   The prince bent forward and did as he was told. As the abbot prayed, only four fingers and a thumb on each hand peeked out from the darkness of the cassock’s sleeves; but the prince was almost certain that one more finger on each hand was tucked under, out of sight. Nevertheless, whether or not he was the six-fingered man, the abbot was curing the sufferers. If he was truly that master of disguise, that notorious murderer, how could this be? Armida herself was inclined to doubt, for the hundredth time, that she was right. She cursed, too softly for the others to hear, and bit her knuckles and waited for a sign. If her plan was successful, it would come.

  That night, as usual, the abbot retired with the three friends to the stone-walled chamber for brandy, talk, and music. The prince played his fiddle for an hour and more; then he said—for it was part of the plan that the prince do most of the talking, saying exactly what Armida had coached him on, so that he might seem to the abbot to be dangerously clever—“Father, we’ve immensely enjoyed your hospitality; but I’m afraid we must leave tomorrow. I must hunt down the six-fingered man.”

  The abbot smiled with his usual gentleness. “I hardly know whether to wish you luck or not,” he said. “Surely if you find him he’ll kill you on sight. But then, how can you find him—unless he, God forbid, should find you?”

  “That’s an interesting thought,” said the prince, “and I admit I’ve thought it. It’s his way, I’m told, to study a man for a few days, then steal his identity. It’s entirely possible that from some nook or cranny he may be watching me even now, preparing to slaughter me like a goose. But I’m no child. I must take my chances.”

  “You’re a brave young man, my dear prince, glory of my life,” said the abbot. “I admire you for it. Perhaps you’ll get together after all, this fiend and you, and perhaps you’ll actually kill him somehow, though I doubt it. The six-fingered man will be thankful that finally it’s over, if he has any sense.”

  “I doubt that he’s feeling that much misery,” laughed the prince.

  “Perhaps not,” said the abbot. “If he does, it’s nobody’s fault but his own. That man should have ended it all long since. The older he gets the more surely he must see that he’s detestable.”

  “I really do doubt that he thinks that way,” the prince said.

  “Perhaps not, perhaps not,” the abbot agreed, nodding. “Yet he’s a master imitator, we’re given to understand. Surely he’s imitated good men, from time to time, and accidentally picked up at least a touch of decent conscience. Imitate anything long enough—gaze at anything long enough with a careful eye—and you have a tendency to become it, or at very least a tendency to respect it. I might take the case of painting. There was a time, you’ll remember, when people hated Nature. When they found Nature unavoidable, in a particular painting, they transmuted all that garish green to brown. Forced to live in the country, they transformed lawless Nature into formal gardens. Then an outlaw generation of young painters came along and painted mountains ‘as they are’; and a gasping generation of young poets came along and wrote sweet love-songs to Mont Blanc. Rich merchants with big houses in the centers of their villages learned the subtle art of turning half an acre to a forest—‘natural’ pools, concrete reindeer. What had happened? Exactly! Painters had begun imitating the world as they saw it, a world of—incredible!—fat ladies with their clothes off, green mountains, majestic bears—and the world began to imitate the paintings. Make no mistake, make no mistake! The mimic is doomed to become what he mimics, or doomed unless a miracle of good fortune intervenes. It’s like the story of the miser.”

  “Miser?” said the prince.

  Armida sighed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Abbot’s Last Tale

  There was once a wealthy merchant named Nikita the Mean. One day as the world rolled on he went out for a walk and on his way saw an old beggar who was asking for alms. ‘For Christ’s sweet sake, good merchant, give me at least a little pittance!’ cried the beggar. Nikita the Mean tipped his nose up and passed him by.

  “But a poor peasant who followed behind him felt pity for the beggar and gave him a kopek. Rich Nikita saw that everyone was watching and felt horribly ashamed; so he stopped and said to the peasant, ‘Listen, little brother, lend me a kopek. I want to give something to the beggar but I have no small change.’ The peasant gave Nikita a kopek and asked: ‘When shall I come to collect my loan?’ ‘Come tomorrow.’

  “The next day the poor man went to the rich man for his kopek; he entered the broad courtyard. ‘Is Nikita the Mean at home?’ ‘He is,’ said Nikita’s wife. ‘What do you want of him?’ ‘I have come for my kopek.’ Nikita the Mean heard this and went and hid under the bed and told his wife to tell the peasant that now that she looked she found he wasn’t home after all, the peasant should come tomorrow. ‘Come tomorrow,’ said Nikita’s wife; ‘now that I look I find he’s gone.’ So the following day the peasant came again, and this time he came upon Nikita himself, standing by the gate, for there was no time for Nikita to run away. ‘I have come for my kopek,’ said the peasant. ‘Ah, little brother,’ said Nikita, ‘come and see me some other time. I have no small change just now.’ The poor man bowed low and said: ‘I will come next week.’ The following week he came a third time and was told: ‘Forgive me, dear brother, but again I have no small change. If you have change for a hundred rubles, I can give you a kopek. If not, come next month.’ A month later, the poor man went again to the rich man. When Nikita the Mean saw him through the window, he said to his wife: ‘Listen, wife, I will undress completely and lie under the ikons; and you cover me with a shroud and sit down and lament me as though I were dead. When the peasant comes for his loan, tell him that I died today.’

  “The wife did as her husband commanded; she sat down and shed burning tears. The peasant came into the room and she asked, ‘What is it, dear brother?’ ‘I have come to collect my loan from Nikita the Mean,’ answered the peasant. ‘Ah, little peasant, Nikita the Mean wished you a long, happy life! He has just died.’ ‘May angels carry him to heaven!’ said the peasant. ‘And since he was a good man and gave money to beggars, let me do something for him. Permit me to wash his body.’ Before the wife could object, the peasant snatched a kettle of boiling water and poured it over Nikita the Mean. Nikita could hardly stand it; he gritted his teeth and jerked his feet. The peasant pretended not to notice and washed the body and prepared it for burial. To the wife he said, ‘Buy a coffin and bring it here, and we will put the body in it. And if I know anything at all about my friend Nikita he would not want to be buried without his money, so we will also put all Nikita’s money in the coffin, packed around his body, and then we will bear it to the church.’ The wife had no choice but to go and get a coffin, and the peasant did as he had said he would. He crammed in Nikita’s gold and jewels and his ivory boxes and silver clasps, and he placed Nikita’s golden saber over the body, and closed the lid. They carried the coffin to the church and the peasant began to groan and read the psalter over him. And Nikita’s wife stood beside him and wept burning tears.

  ‘Dark night came. Suddenly a window opened and thieves broke in, bringing with them all that evening’s loot, silver coins and gold coins, silver and gold candlesticks, and cups of solid amber, treasure enough to keep a king. The thieves ran straight to the casket to use it for a counting table. The peasant and Nikita’s wife ducked down quickly behind the altar while the thieves counted their treasure and put it all in sacks. Then the thieves opened the casket and discovered, to their surprise, the wealth of Nikita the Mean, all packed around the body. ‘This is a lucky night for us,’ they cried. ‘Praise God!’ And they sent out for more bags and began putting into them all Nikita’s treasure. Nikita gritted his teeth in agony, but he would not cry out because there was always the chance that the thieves might be taken and the treasure recovered, whereas that kopek would be gone forever if that peasant got ahold of it. Soon the treasure was all bagged and tied except for Nikita’s golden saber, and this the
thieves began to quarrel about. The peasant suddenly jumped out and cried, ‘Let me settle this dispute! Whoever cuts off the dead man’s head shall have the saber!’

  ’At this Nikita the Mean jumped up, beside himself with fear, and just in the nick of time, too! If he’d played dead another half second he would have been deader than he wanted. The thieves, too, were frightened, and abandoning the money, both Nikita’s and their own, they took to their heels. ‘Now, little peasant,’ said Nikita, ‘let us share the robbers’ money, and since I worked the harder for it, I shall have the most.’ They shared it as Nikita the Mean thought right, and even so, both of them got a great deal. ‘And how about my kopek?’ said the poor man. ‘Ah, dear brother,’ said Nikita, ‘you can see for yourself I have no small change.’ And Nikita the Mean never did return the kopek, but lived happily ever after.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It’s an interesting story”, said the prince, after a nod from Armida, “but I’m not sure why you tell it.”

  “Well, not solely for the moral,” said the abbot with a smile. “As the world rolls on, I grow less and less interested in the moral. But it’s true, as the story teaches us, there’s a curious rigidity in human nature, especially when we get older. It’s easier to heal the sick or give blind men sight than it is to part a miser from his kopek—or a murderer from his knife. The miser may hate himself, as did Nikita the Mean; the murderer, if he has any sensitivity at all, may become, in his own eyes, so thoroughly repugnant that he spends half his days and nights out at the edges of cliffs, praying to God for the nerve to jump. Nevertheless, you know, a habit’s hard to break. You get a vision, one way or another, of what you’d like to be—perhaps a vision of yourself as the world’s greatest monster, if you happen to encounter the right books and friends. If you decide, for one reason or another, you don’t like that, you discover to your sorrow, if you’ve worked very long at becoming what you are, the new vision’s impotent to change you.”