The Princess Bride

by Уильям Голдман

  Westley shook his head. "I am dry of notions."

  "Child's play," of all people, Buttercup said, and she led the group toward Yellin. "The Count is dead; the Prince is in grave danger. Hurry now and you may yet save him. All of you. Go."

  Not a Brute moved.

  "They obey me," Yellin said. "And I am in charge of enforcement, and—"

  "And I," Buttercup said. "I," she repeated, standing up in the saddle, a creature of infinite beauty and eyes that were starting to grow frightening, "I," she said for the third and last time, "am

  the

  QUEEEEEEEEEEEEN."

  There was no doubting her sincerity. Or power. Or capability for vengeance. She stared imperiously across the Brute Squad.

  "Save Humperdinck," one Brute said, and with that they all dashed into the castle.

  "Save Humperdinck," Yellin said, the last one left, but clearly his heart wasn't in it.

  "Actually, that was something of a fib," Buttercup said as they began to ride for freedom, "seeing as Lotharon hasn't officially resigned, but I thought 'I am the Queen' sounded better than 'I am the Princess.'"

  "All I can say is, I'm impressed," Westley told her.

  Buttercup shrugged. "I've been going to royalty school three years now; something had to rub off." She looked at Westley. "You all right? I was worried about you back on the bed there. Your eyes rolled up into your head and everything."

  "I suppose I was dying again, so I asked the Lord of Permanent Affection for the strength to live the day. Clearly, the answer came in the affirmative."

  "I didn't know there was such a Fellow," Buttercup said.

  "Neither did I, in truth, but if He didn't exist, I didn't much want to either."

  The four great horses seemed almost to fly toward Florin Channel.

  "It appears to me as if we're doomed, then," Buttercup said. Westley looked at her. "Doomed, madam?"

  "To be together. Until one of us dies."

  "I've done that already, and I haven't the slightest intention of ever doing it again," Westley said.

  Buttercup looked at him. "Don't we sort of have to sometime?"

  "Not if we promise to outlive each other, and I make that promise now."

  Buttercup looked at him. "Oh my Westley, so do I."

  ***

  'And they lived happily ever after,' my father said.

  'Wow,' I said.

  He looked at me. 'You're not pleased?'

  'No, no, it's just, it came so quick, the ending, it surprised me. I thought there'd be a little more, is all. I mean, was the pirate ship waiting or was that just a rumor like it said?'

  'Complain to Mr. Morgenstern. "And they lived happily ever after" is how it ends.'

  The truth was, my father was fibbing. I spent my whole life thinking it ended that way, up until I did this abridgement. Then I glanced at the last page. This is how Morgenstern ends it.

  ***

  BUTTERCUP LOOKED AT him. "Oh my Westley, so do I."

  From behind them suddenly, closer than they had imagined, they could hear the roar of Humperdinck: "Stop them! Cut them off!" They were, admittedly, startled, but there was no reason for worry: they were on the fastest horses in the kingdom, and the lead was already theirs.

  However, this was before Inigo's wound reopened, and Westley relapsed again, and Fezzik took the wrong turn, and Buttercup's horse threw a shoe. And the night behind them was filled with the crescendoing sound of pursuit....

  ***

  That's Morgenstern's ending, a 'Lady or the Tiger?' type effect (this was before 'The Lady or the Tiger?,' remember). Now, he was a satirist, so he left it that way, and my father was, I guess I realized too late, a romantic, so he ended it another way.

  Well, I'm an abridger, so I'm entitled to a few ideas of my own. Did they make it? Was the pirate ship there? You can answer it for yourself, but, for me, I say yes it was. And yes, they got away. And got their strength back and had lots of adventures and more than their share of laughs.

  But that doesn't mean I think they had a happy ending either. Because, in my opinion anyway, they squabbled a lot, and Buttercup lost her looks eventually, and one day Fezzik lost a fight and some hotshot kid whipped Inigo with a sword and Westley was never able to really sleep sound because of Humperdinck maybe being on the trail.

  I'm not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

  New York City

  February, 1973

  BUTTERCUP'S BABY

  AN EXPLANATION

  YOU'RE PROBABLY wondering why I only abridged the first chapter. The answer is simple: I was not allowed to do more. The following explanation is kind of personal, and I'm sorry for putting you through it. Some of this—more than some, a lot—was painful when it happened, still is as I write it down for you. I don't come out all that well a lot of the time, but that can't be helped. Morgenstern was always honest with his audience. I don't think I can be any less with you....

  MY TROUBLES BEGAN twenty-five years ago with the reunion scene.

  You remember, in my abridgement of The Princess Bride, when Buttercup and Westley have been reunited just before the Fire Swamp, I stuck my two cents in and said I thought Morgenstern had cheated his readers by not including a reunion scene for the lovers so I'd written my own version and send in if you want a copy? (Pages 178—79 in this edition.)

  My late great editor Hiram Haydn felt I was wrong, that if you abridge someone you can't suddenly start using your own words. But I liked my reunion scene a lot. So, to humor me, he let me stick that note in the book about sending in for it.

  No one—please believe this—no one thought anyone would actually request my version. But Harcourt, the original hardcover publisher, got deluged, and later Ballantine, the first paperback publisher, got deluged even more. I loved that. Publishers having to spend money. My reunion scene was poised for mailing—but not one was ever sent.

  What follows is the explanatory letter I wrote that was mailed to the tens of thousands of people who had written in over the years asking for the scene.

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for sending in and no, this is not the reunion scene, because of a certain roadblock named Kermit Shog.

  As soon as bound books were ready, I got a call from my lawyer, Charley—(you may not remember, but Charley's the one I called from California to go down in the blizzard and buy The Princess Bride from the used-book dealer). Anyway, he usually begins with Talmudic humor, wisdom jokes, only this time he just says, "Bill, I think you better get down here," and before I'm even allowed a "why?" he adds, "Right away if you can."

  Panicked, I zoom down, wondering who could have died, did I flunk my tax audit, what? His secretary lets me into his office and Charley says, "This is Mr. Shog, Bill."

  And there he is, sitting in the corner, hands on his briefcase, looking exactly like an oily version of Peter Lorre. I really expected him to say, "Give me the Falcon, you must, or I will be forced to keeel you."

  "Mr. Shog is a lawyer," Charley goes on. And then this next was said underlined: "He represents the Morgenstern estate."

  Who knew? Who could have dreamed such a thing existed, an estate of a man dead at least a million years that no one ever heard of over here anyway? "Perhaps you will give me the Falcon now," Mr. Shog said. That's not true. What he said was "Perhaps you will like a few words with your client alone now," and Charley nodded and out he went and once he was done I said, "Charley, my God, I never figured—" and he said, "Did Harcourt?" and I said, "Not that they ever mentioned," and he said, "Ooch," the grunting sound lawyers make when they know they've backed a loser. "What does he want?" I said. "A meeting with Mr. Jovanovich," Charley answered....

  It turned out that Kermit Shog did not just want a meeting with William Jovanovich, the brilliant man who ran the firm. H
e also wanted amazing amounts of money and he also wanted the unabridged The Princess Bride version printed with a huge first printing (100,000), and, of course, the idea of little me sending out the reunion scene died that day.

  But the lawsuits began. Over the years, a grand total of thirteen—only eleven directly concerning me. It was horrible, but the one good thing was that the copyright on Morgenstern ran out in '78. So I told everyone who sent in for the reunion scene that their names were being put on a list and kept and once '78 rolled around, voila...but I was wrong again. Here is part of the next note I sent out to all people requesting the reunion scene.

  I'm really sorry about this but you know the story that ends, "Disregard previous wire, letter follows"? Well, you've got to disregard the business about the Morgenstern copyright running out in '78. That was a definitely a boo-boo but Mr. Shog, being Florinese, has trouble, naturally, with our numbering system. The copyright runs out in '87, not '78.

  Worse, he died. Mr. Shog, I mean. (Don't ask how you could tell. It was easy. One morning he just stopped sweating, so there it was.) What makes it worse is that the whole affair is now in the hands of his kid, named—wait for it—Mandrake Shog. Mandrake moves with all the verve and speed of a lizard flaked out on a riverbank.

  The only good thing that's happened in this whole mess is I finally got a shot at reading some of Buttercup's Baby. Up at Columbia, they feel it's definitely superior to The Princess Bride in satirical content. Personally, I don't have the emotional attachment to it, but it's a helluva story, no question.

  It's funny, looking back, but at the time I had really zero interest in Buttercup's Baby.

  Many reasons, but among them this: I was writing my own novels then. To make sense of that, I suppose I ought to tell you what I did with The Princess Bride. I know the book cover just says "abridged by" and, yes, I jumped from "good part" to "good part." But it was really a good deal more than that.

  Morgenstern's The Princess Bride is a thousand-page manuscript. I got it down to three hundred. But I didn't just cut out his satiric interludes. I made elisions constantly. And there was all kinds of stuff, some of it wonderful, I got rid of. Example: Westley's terrible childhood and how he came to be the Farm Boy. Example: How the King and Queen went to Miracle Max because they knew they had somehow given birth to a monster (Humperdinck), and could Max change that? Max's failure is what led to his firing, which in turn, caused his crisis in confidence. (His wife, Valerie, refers to it when she says to Inigo: "He is afraid he's done, that the miracles are gone from his once majestic fingers..." ([>] in this version.)

  I felt all this, exciting and moving as a lot of it is, to be off the spine of the story. I went with true love and high adventure and I think I was right to do that. And I think the results have proved that. Morgenstern never had any audience for his book—except in Florin, of course. I brought it to people everywhere and, with the movie, to a wider audience still. So, sure, I abridged it.

  But, I'm sorry, I shaped it. I also brought it to life. I don't know what you want to call that, but whatever I did, it's sure something.

  SO BUTTERCUP'S BABY was just not for me at that time. The workload was one thing. It would have meant thousands of hours of labor. But that was nothing compared to the constant attacks by the Shogs. Lawsuit after awful lawsuit, and each time I had to defend myself, had to give depositions, which I frankly found hateful because they were all attacks on my honesty.

  I had had, then, enough of Mr. Morgenstern for a while.

  I didn't actually read Buttercup's Baby, either. I happened to be at Columbia University one afternoon—I gave my papers to Columbia—and some Florinese kid stopped by, handed me a rough translation to glance at. The full title of the book is this: Buttercup's Baby: S. Morgenstern's Glorious Examination of courage Matched Against the Death of the Heart. Had a great opening page, a real shocker, but that was mostly what I remember. It was just another book to me then, you see. It had not become lodged in my heart.

  Yet.

  ***

  SO WHAT CHANGED things?

  To tell you the truth, and I might as well, my life the last dozen years has been, how can I put it, what's the reverse of giddy? Oh, I've written plenty of screenplays and some nonfiction, but I haven't written a novel, and please remember that that's painful for me because in my heart that's what I am, a novelist, a novelist who happens to write screenplays. (I hate it when I sometimes meet people and they say, "Well, when's the next book coming out?" and I always make a smile and lie that I'm on the homestretch now.) And the movies I've been involved with—except for Misery—have all brought their share of disappointment.

  I live alone here in New York, in a nice hotel, room service twenty-four hours, all that's great, but I feel, sometimes, that whatever I wrote once that maybe had some quality, well, maybe those days are gone.

  But to balance the bad, there was always my son, Jason.

  You all remember how when he was ten he was this humorless blimp, this waddler? Well that was his thin phase. Helen and I used to fight about it all the time.

  He had just passed three hundred biggies when he turned fifteen. I had come home from work early, hollered my presence, was heading for the wine closet when I heard this heartbreaking sound—

  —sobbing—

  —coming from the kid's room. I took a breath, went to his door, knocked. Jason and I were not close at this point. The truth is, he didn't care for me all that much. He barely acknowledged my existence, pissed on the movies I wrote, never dreamed of opening any of the books. It killed me, of course, but I never let on.

  "Jason?" I said from just outside his door.

  The awful sobbing continued.

  "What is it?"

  "You can't help—no one can help—nothing can help—" And then this forlorn wahhhhhh....

  I knew the last person he wanted to see was me. But I had to go in. "I promise I won't tell anybody."

  He came rolling into my arms, his face fiery, distorted. "Oh, Daddy, I'm ugly and I've got no friends and all the girls laugh at me and make fun because I'm so fat."

  I had to blink back tears myself—because it was all true, y'see. I was trapped there in that moment. I didn't know if he wanted to hear the truth from me or not. Finally I had to say it. "Who cares?" I told him. "I love you."

  He grabbed me so hard. "Poppa," he managed, "Poppa," the first blessed time he ever called me that, his hot tears fresh on my skin.

  That was our turning point.

  For the past twenty years, no one could have asked for a better son. More than that, Jason's the best friend I have in the world. But our real clincher happened the next day.

  I took him down to the Strand Bookstore, on Broadway and 12th Street, where I go a lot, research mostly, and we were about to enter when he stopped and pointed to a photograph in the window, the front cover of a book of photographs.

  "I wonder who that is?" Jason said, staring.

  "He's an Austrian bodybuilder, trying to make it as an actor. I met him when I was in L.A. last. He wants to be Fezzik if The Princess Bride ever happens." (This was the late '70s now, twenty years back. Schwarzenegger was nothing then, but when The Princess Bride did finally happen, he was such a huge star we couldn't afford him in our budget.) "I liked him. Very bright young guy."

  Jason could not take his eyes off the picture.

  Then I said what I guess turned out to be the magic words: "He was pudgy once too."

  Jason looked at me then. "I don't think so," he said.

  I didn't think so either, but it didn't hurt to say it.

  "It came up in conversation." I said. "He said he thought he had gone as far in the bodybuilding world as he could. What drove him was he didn't like the way he looked when he was young." An aside about Arnold, which I bet you didn't know: he was friends with Andre the Giant. (I guess strong guys all know each other.) Following is a story he told me. I used it in the obit I wrote when Andre, alas, died.

  Andre once in
vited Schwarzenegger to a wrestling arena in Mexico where he was performing in front of 25,000 screaming fans, and after he'd pinned his opponent, he gestured for Schwarzenegger to come into the ring.

  So through the noise, Schwarzenegger climbs up. Andre says, "Take off your shirt, they are all crazy for you to take off your shirt, I speak Spanish." So Schwarzenegger, embarrassed, does what Andre tells him. Off comes his jacket, his shirt, his undershirt, and he begins striking poses. And then Andre goes to the locker room while Schwarzenegger goes back to his friends.

  And it had all been a practical joke. God knows what the crowd was screaming for, but it wasn't for Schwarzenegger to semistrip and pose: "Nobody gave a s——if I took my shirt off or not, but I fell for it. Andre could do that to you."

  "I wonder how much that picture book is?" Jason said then. (We're still outside of the Strand, remember, and we didn't know it, but the earth has moved.)

  Are you surprised to learn I bought it for him?

  This is what happened to Jason in the next two years: he went from 308 to 230. He went from five-foot-six-and-a-half to six-foot-three. He had always been tops in his class at Dalton, but now, ripped and gorgeous, he was popular too.

  This is what happened to Jason in the years after that. College, Medical School, the decision to be a shrink like his mom. (Except Jason's speciality is sex therapy.) New York magazine rated him tops in the city and he also met this lovely lady Wall Streeter, Peggy Henderson, and they got happily married.

  And and and had a son.

  I went to the hospital as soon as he was born. "We're calling him Arnold," Peggy told me, holding him in her arms.

  "Perfect," I said. The truth is, obviously, I was hoping they might remember me too, somehow. But down was down.

  "That's right," Jason said. "William Arnold." And he took Willy and put him in my arms.