In the Suicide Mountains

Chapter Nine

When the abbot finished telling his story he smiled and stood up, as if thinking of going to his bed now; but instead, with his head bowed, his right hand pushed inside his flowing left sleeve and his left hand pushed inside his flowing right sleeve, as he always stood except when he was praying, he walked over to the high, arched window that looked out at the stars above Suicide Leap; or perhaps it was the Leap itself he looked at, thinking about what the three of them had told him earlier. By the starlight one could see that his lips were trembling — it was quite pronounced — and one noticed that his head was slightly drawn in, like a turtle’s or a chicken’s, as if something had made him wince. He gave an abrupt headshake, as if in argument with himself; but precisely what the abbot might be thinking not even Chudu the Goat’s Son, who was half asleep anyway, with his pipe in his fist and his hat on his knees, could guess.

Prince Christopher the Sullen, still leaning on the mantel, toying with his brandy glass, said thoughtfully, glumly, “It’s an interesting story. Yet one thing I don’t understand, father.”

“Yes?” said the abbot, turning from the window for a moment to scrutinize the prince. Armida, too, was watching Prince Christopher, for whatever she might think about poems and stories, she loved the sad shine she’d seen in the prince’s eyes while he was listening.

“I don’t understand why you’ve told it to us.”

“Ah, that,” said the abbot.

The fire in the hearth had died down to red coals, and there was no longer any sound of life outside the stone-walled room. The walls and beams had settled into blackness, so that the night sky beyond the high window was now brighter than where they sat. It was like looking out (Armida thought) from a funeral crypt, after everything has been decided; and the abbot’s voice, for all its gentleness and kindness, was like some nagging, troublesome memory calling a ghost back, making things difficult again, confusing. She was inclined to rise to it, for the sake of the prince. For the sake of the prince she would happily reconsider everything. As for the dwarf, though he smelled like old laundry in an abandoned chickenhouse where there was garbage on the floor and the body of a cat, she would not be heartbroken if he should kill himself; but all the same it would be a loss to the world, there was no denying that; an incalculable loss, like the death of the last redwood. She tapped her lips with her fingertip, musing.

The abbot was saying: “I tell you the story — among other reasons — to remind you, dear friends, lanterns to my darkness, of a point that may possibly have slipped your minds — the moral, that is, that I called your attention to earlier: Things are not always as they seem.” He began pacing back and forth by the window, head bowed. “I know very little about the world, of course—” The abbot glanced shyly past his shoulder at them, gauging the effect his words were having, then started again: “I know, I say, very little about the world, cut off from things here on my mountain, so what I say may be foolishness. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there’s a great truth in that tired old saw.” He spoke the tired old saw one more time, lovingly, separating the phrases, and it came to Armida that he’d no doubt said it from the pulpit many times, if abbots did, as she was inclined to believe, sometimes preach: “Things… are not always… as they seem.”

Gazing up at the prince, his face just visible in the red coals’ glow, Armida was surprised that she should see, even now, no trace of a smile. If he had any intelligence at all, it seemed to her, he’d see the humor in the abbot’s old-womanish maunderings. Yet on the other hand it was touching to her that Prince Christopher should take in this hackneyed lecturing with such solemn innocence, such— what should she say? — sweet openness of soul. She was surprised— shocked — by the sudden recollection that the prince had spoken of suicide. “I mustn’t let him,” she thought. “That’s all there is to it!”

She remembered all at once how the dwarf had bawled after her on the mountain road, “Armida, don’t do it! Don’t kill yourself!” and how he’d whooped and sobbed. She remembered his bellowing, “It is my business. It’s very much my business!” She understood that now more clearly than she had at the time — and felt ashamed of herself. The tables had been turned on her: it was now Armida prepared to run shamelessly after the creature she loved, prepared to wail, as the dwarf had wailed, “Think of the people who love you! Think of how they’ll feel!” Yet could she stop him from doing it? She was stronger than he, she had no doubt of that, and she was sure she could easily outsmart him. But her love for him put a constraint upon her: because she loved him, respected him as he couldn’t respect himself, she was blocked, strange to say, from interfering. To control him, even for his own benefit, would be to diminish him, cheapen the value of his life — in his own eyes and even in hers. None of which was to deny that the prince’s desire to kill himself was a sickness, as certainly a disease as those coughings and witherings and jerkings which the abbot each night knelt to cure. Nevertheless …

Armida wrung her hands, squinting into the glow of the coals beyond his legs. Because she loved him it was imperative that she be worthy of him, yes — be, insofar as was possible for her, the Dream Woman every man desires: soft and tender, gentle, shy as a violet in the woods. O cruel irony! Such a woman, of course, would have no possible means of preventing his self-destruction. He would brush her away like a feather, outwit her and storm off, wild-eyed, and be gone. Only if she could cause him to love her in return, spare his life for her sake …

Suddenly, looking up at his face, the features as still as the features of a lighted marble statue, Armida once again began to weep. No one noticed except Chudu the Goat’s Son, and instantly he too began to cry. They both bent forward and shook with silent sobs, covering their faces with their hands, unaware that they were practically invisible in the room’s thick darkness.

The abbot was droning on, just perceptibly smiling in the pale light the stars cast, occasionally gesturing with a mild little tilt of the head, the slight movement of a silhouetted arm. “That’s the trouble, you see, with suicide. It may be that one has misapprehended the situation, that what seems so terrible and bitter in life as to make the race not worth the candle is in fact nothing more than some particularly seductive illusion, perhaps mere bad chemistry. A ripple of breath across the letter might in fact change all the writing. A little kick at the base of a tree might illuminate new golden options!”

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 feet 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.