In the Suicide Mountains

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.”

Prince Christopher sipped his brandy, his eyebrows raised. “And this may have happened, you think, to the six-fingered man — that is, he’s become, to himself, repugnant?”

“I could swear to it, my prince, happiness of my days! Not that that makes him less dangerous, of course. On the contrary, despair gives a murderer an advantage. We spoke earlier, you recall, of the advantage indifference to life might give you with the dragon. But a murderer who’s broken all God’s laws and man’s and has no hope for his soul — who has, in fact, no soul — that murderer has the same advantage you had. Had, I must add, and have no longer. You’ve gotten interested again; you’ve abandoned your idea of committing suicide. That makes you vulnerable. He, on the other hand, the six-fingered man, of what concern is it to him which one of you dies, whether you die or he dies? His hand, therefore, will not tremble. His eye will not misjudge.”

He glanced at Armida, who sat watching in what seemed worried silence, with her eyes now on Prince Christopher, now on the abbot.

“Nor is that all,” said the abbot. “The six-fingered man is more solitary even than Koog the Devil’s Son. Oh, he has his men. Cutthroats, purse-snatchers. He could see them all hanged in a minute and never blink an eye. He has no kind, stern father, concerned, as yours is, that his son be worthy of the world’s respect and friendship. No mother, such as yours, who fusses over him, praising his weaknesses, begging him to put on galoshes when it rains, swooning with pride and pleasure when he plays the violin or composes a lyric. The six-fingered man has nobody; nothing snarls his feet. In the blackness of his despair he has cut away all ties. You, on the other hand, have not only your parents and Armida and the dwarf, you have a whole wide kingdom of admirers who love you as I do. You have more friends than most men to worry about. So you’ll glance around behind you, when you meet with the man, making sure that Armida’s out of reach and the dwarf not sleeping. Your hand will tremble, my son; your eye will misjudge.”

“Perhaps that’s so,” said the prince. “We’ll have to see.” Armida said, “He’ll just have to do his best, father.” “Yes he will,” the abbot said and smiled. “He certainly will.” Now he turned away and walked to the window to look out, whether at the stars and the full moon or down at the cliff I cannot say. It’s a beautiful night,” he remarked. “Would anyone care to walk out in it?”

“ That would be lovely!” Armida said. She sat forward in her chair, ready to get up.

“Let’s do it then,” the abbot said. “We could walk out by Suicide Leap, if you’re interested, and you can gaze down at the boulders and be thankful you’re not jumping.” He laughed oddly, then moved across the room toward the door. Armida and the dwarf rose behind him to follow, and the prince came last. Soon they were at the rear of the monastery, at the edge of the cliff. The stars were like thousands of bits of ice in the sky; the wind at their backs was cold. “I should have brought a wrap,” thought Armida, for her long white dress was thin. She walked with the dwarf close to the edge and peeked over— the dwarf reached up and caught hold of her hand — then backed away again, dizzy. The prince stayed where he was, several paces from the edge.

Safe in the darkness of a cypress hedge, the abbot took Prince Christopher’s arm. “I want you to know, my prince, light of my life, I’ve enjoyed these few hours we’ve had together. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed anything more. I like a conversationalist who makes me think, but that is the least of it. I’ll say no more. And you, my two friends—” he nodded to Armida and the dwarf—“you’re wonderful company, both of you. I’ve never known better. I wish this time we’re having could last for all eternity. For various reasons, however — sad, sad reasons! — I must say—” He broke off, dropped Prince Christopher’s arm, and moved away a little. Almost imperceptibly, Armida drew more erect, and Chudu the Goat’s Son — his lips moving, for he was counting like lightning — tipped his head forward, ready to charge like a bull. (None of this, unfortunately for him, did the abbot see. Fool that he was, he was carefully not looking, watching no one at all but Prince Christopher.)

When he had walked five or six paces from the prince, up the hill from him, toward the dark, looming monastery, the abbot turned around. In the moonlight his smile seemed no longer kind and gentle but transformed to a ghastly grimace. Me had his hands at his sides, unhidden now. “There is one thing more I can do for you, Prince,” the abbot said. “You’re looking for the notorious six-fingered man.” He paused dramatically (he’d spent years on the stage), then stretched his hands out so the three of them could see. “Here he stands!” he said. He held his hands out a moment longer, making sure the shock registered. Then, as if casually, he moved his right hand to the front of his cassock, reached down inside the collar and, with a lightning-quick motion, drew out a sword. Armida gasped in spite of herself and clasped her hands together at the waist. With her left hand she reached two fingers down into her belt for the penknife she’d hidden there.

“You can’t do this!” cried Prince Christopher, stepping back from the abbot’s sword. “I’m defenseless!”

“How thoughtless of you,” said the six-fingered man, and laughed. He began moving toward the prince, backing him toward the cliff. Still Armida and the dwarf hung fire.

“Tell me just one thing,” said the prince. “What happened to the real abbot? And also, how does it happen that you can cure the sick?”

The six-fingered man continued slowly toward him, smiling eerily and moving the sword from side to side with a swing of the wrist. “The saintly abbot and all his holy monks are dead. All dead. They await you at the bottom of the cliff. Our band has replaced them. As for the miracles, the old man never knew himself how he did them, so how should I? I simply mimic: I do exactly what he did, to the last microscopic tremor.” He made as if to lunge, and the prince glanced behind himself and made a whimpering noise. Up the hill, above them, the evil monks were gathering at the corners of the monastery, and every one of them had a sword or a mace, glinting in the moonlight. When they were all assembled they began to come down toward the cliff-edge, walking slowly, more silently than owls.

“Tell me this,” said the prince. “Why do you heal the sick? It seems a queer thing for a murderer to do. ”

It seemed to Armida that the false abbot blanched. His mouth gave a jerk — a fierce nervous tic. “Don’t ask me that,” he said.

“But I do ask it,” said the prince, and stopped backing up. He’d reached the edge.

The six-fingered man said, swinging the sword from side to side more quickly now, switching it, in fact, “I don’t know why I heal the sick. It’s just one of the things the old abbot used to do, so it’s necessary, a part of my act. And I like it.”

“You like it?” Chudu the Goat’s Son broke in. “You? — a homicidal maniac?”

The six-fingered man glanced at him, then back at the prince. Armida now began to move, very slowly, her white dress rippling in the mountain wind. Little by little she was working her way around behind the man. The six-fingered man said: “It makes me feel good. I don’t pretend to understand it. I feel light, as if in a minute I might levitate, and sometimes I hear music — a women’s choir. I feel myself getting warm, practically burning up; but it’s pleasant, downright glorious. Sometimes I smell incense. Don’t ask me any more, I don’t want to think about it. When it’s over and I’m my normal self again, it’s terrible — terrible! All I can think about is jumping off the cliff.”

And now, as if at some signal from Armida, Chudu the Goat’s Son rushed straight at the murderer, bellowing with gleeful, boundless rage, and the exact same instant Armida screamed “Yi!” like a wild insane savage and leaped six feet onto the murderer’s back. The Goat’s Son turned into a huge anaconda and wrapped his fat body around the murderer’s two arms, and squeezed and constricted till the six-fingered man dropped the sword. Armida, by this time, had her knife at the man’s throat, and the prince, by this time, had picked up the sword and was stabbing him with it. (He had no choice; no jail in the world could hold the six-fingered man.)

“Tricked!” cried the six-fingered man, and burst out crying. “The dwarf did do magic, and it was the girl that killed the dragon! I knew it all the time!”

To hush him before anyone could hear what he was saying, Christopher the Sullen cut his head off and — with the same swipe, by accident — cut off one six-fingered hand. He put the hand in his pocket. The head, as soon as it hit the ground, cried: “Praise God!”

For an instant, the Suicide Mountains fell silent, as if holding their breath, amazed.

Now the monks all came running, shouting and swearing oaths. “Let them all be mules!” shouted Chudu the Goat’s Son, and at once they were all mules, and their weapons fell clattering. They stopped running and turned and stared at each other and a few began to kick.

“Good thinking,” cried Armida. “We’ll hitch them up to the treasure wagons and drive them to the palace, and when we get there we can change them back to people and chuck them in the dungeon!” The prince, Armida, and the dwarf began rounding up the mules. Even with Chudu’s magic they were hard to catch, but by the time the first cock crowed and the sky began to light, the last of them was captured and hitched securely to his treasure wagon.

“There’s one last thing we must do before we leave,” said the prince. “We must bury the six-fingered man.”

“That’s true,” Armida said. “For all his evil, he had good in him, too, and he relieved the suffering of as many people as he murdered. It would be wrong to leave his bones for the crows to pick.”

So they left the mules to stand waiting in the barn, chewing oats and hay, and walked around to get the body and carry it to a burial place. Lo and behold, when they reached the green slope where the body had lain there was no sign of it, neither clothes nor blood; but there was a new-born babe sitting picking the grass and trying to eat it, getting dirt in its mouth but not minding in the least, burbling and larbling and chirping like a sparrow. When they picked it up it laughed at them happily, and they noticed it had only one hand, and the hand had six fingers.

Much puzzled, they carried the babe along with them and set him down under a tree while Armida and the dwarf got out the wagons and Prince Christopher the Sullen went to the horsebarn and saddled his horse. When Boy was saddled the prince got up in the saddle with the babe, and Armida and the dwarf climbed up into the seat of the lead wagon, with the rest of the mules and wagons tied one after another behind, each wagon richer than the last, and they started for the palace.

“Does it talk yet?” Armida called forward to the prince.

“I don’t know.” He asked the baby: “Can you talk yet?”

The baby smiled merrily and nodded and began to talk: