In the Suicide Mountains (11 page)

“Miser?” said the prince.

Armida sighed.

Chapter Fourteen

The Abbot's Last Tale

T
here 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

I
t'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.”