He began shaking his head, slowly and thoughtfully, like a country doctor who has encountered a case beyond his learning. “Who can say who might have been a passenger on that train?” he asked himself. After a minute he added, as if scolding, “Perhaps the king himself, or the queen, or the crown prince, Christopher the Sullen. Who can say how close I came to snuffing out their lives, snipping the thread of their destiny without even knowing it, mindlessly waving my scissors about like some reckless, drunken tailor?” The dwarf was moved by this poetic image — horrified, in fact — and again he saw in his mind’s eye the coaches of the train falling slowly, gracefully, gradually separating, yellow lights gradually sinking in the abyss. It was all, in the dwarf’s mind, as silent as the end of the universe, just a few distant screams. “In potential, at least,” the Goat’s Son thought, “I’m as dangerous as the nastiest of the villagers maintain. What am I to do?” It crossed his mind that when a dog went mad, or an ox or a rooster, one chopped off its head. Chudu the Goat’s Son gave a shudder, turned on his heel, threw a quick look over his shoulder, and started for home.
All that night, though he struggled against it, the dwarf was troubled — both awake and asleep — by the awful idea of suicide. His dreams, which came thick and fast as snowflakes, were unspeakably frightening and left his teeth chattering. In the morning, determined to get the better of himself, he snapped his eyes wide open abruptly, as if the lids were on springs, gritted his teeth, threw his crooked legs over the side of his small and splintery wooden bed, and began whistling as if cheerfully, even before he had his nightshirt off and his clothes on. He whistled as he fixed himself breakfast, whistled more cheerfully still as he put on his overcoat and mittens, and whistled as he stepped onto the drifted porch with his snow-shovel. The world was blinding white, beautiful and crisp, but on the road in front of his house there were two old women in heavy black overcoats and heavy black shawls, looking up in alarm at him. They ducked their heads and began to run, fearing his black magic, and the dwarf stopped whistling and began shaking all over, for he’d been tempted, indeed, to use it on them, had been tempted to snap them into two fat sows, or two hot pies on a bakery cart. There could be no escaping it, he saw now: he would have to kill himself. For what the priests said was true: “Life follows art; words can grow teeth and eat tigers.” He went back inside where it was warm, put the shovel in the corner, and sat down to think.
Speedily a tale is spun; with much less speed a deed is done. The following morning, which was the day he’d decided on, the dwarf changed his mind. The day after that he changed it back again, but then once again he reconsidered, and then again reconsidered, and so the dwarf continued, vacillating between life and death, now resolving once and for all to be done with it, now reflecting that, after all, one’s luck might change, nobody knows what tomorrow may bring, and so on and so forth, endlessly, drearily torturing himself, until finally spring came and the dwarf discovered that, for no clear reason, the matter had in some way settled itself without his help: he was going, so to speak, to make the jump.
He wrote a sad but businesslike note and laid it on his kitchen table, one corner tacked down by the sugar bowl, then on second thought decided, no, he would not leave a note, it was a petty and vindictive thing to do; since no one loved him, no one would miss him — in all probability, no one in the village would even know he was gone until the shack fell in, and crooked and ugly as it might be, it was solidly built. He crumpled up the paper and threw it in the stove, then stood pulling at his beard, trying to think what he’d neglected; but there was nothing, he owed nobody. At last he sighed and stepped out on the porch and locked the door behind him and prepared to start his journey. His plan was simple, though indefinite. He would walk until he found the perfect place — in the Suicide Mountains there were many good places — and then quickly, before he had time to reconsider, he would do it. Chudu the Goat’s Son nodded, trying to convince himself that this was indeed what he intended. A muscle in his cheek twitched, causing him to appear to wink like a conspirator. His winter of soul-searching had made him a wreck.
Nevertheless, he put his left foot down, and then his right foot, and soon he was in the mountains. The trees were so thick with birds that their music filled the road like fallen yellow apples and he could barely pass. But he remembered his purpose and continued to put his left foot down and then his right foot, and after a time he became aware that on the road ahead of him, walking all alone, there was a woman. She was tall and slender and had hair like yellow straw, and every now and then she would pause for a moment and lean against a tree to sigh. “How curious,” thought the dwarf. Once, in a fit of what seemed sudden fury, the woman struck the tree with the sides of both fists, and the blows had such force that the treetrunk broke, exactly where she’d hit it, and the top sagged over, withering. “Stranger and stranger,” thought the dwarf to himself. He hurried closer, studying the woman to see if he’d be wise to overtake her.
Chapter Two
When Chudu the Goat’s Son came even with the woman who’d been walking ahead of him, he found that she was young and beautiful, each feature more beautiful than the last. But what struck him most forcibly was the contradiction between what he’d seen with his own eyes, when she’d broken a beech tree with her two bare hands, and her appearance now — her complete transformation to flimsy elegance. She appeared to be a princess. Her wrists, though not small, seemed barely to hold the weight of her hands; her throat — blue-white and encircled not by jewels, as one might have expected, but instead by a simple peasant’s chain — seemed barely to sustain the weight of her head; and her waist, as dainty in relation to the rest as the waist of an hourglass, seemed a structure too delicate by far to support her bosom and broad, sloping shoulders.
Despite this general feebleness, or limpness, or, to put it in a kinder light, airy grace, the young woman walked with long, quick strides, so that the dwarf, to keep up with her, had to trot and even, occasionally, break into a run. She was, like everyone else, much taller than he, and like everyone else she disliked him, or gave him that impression. She never turned her face or acknowledged his existence by word or glance, but strode on, chin lifted, lips pouting, her hair streaming behind her like a golden flag.
She was not in the least alarmed by him, it seemed, and Chudu the Goat’s Son was puzzled by this. His appearance, he knew by experience, struck fear into the heart of the boldest desperado, yet this wisp of a maiden was as indifferent to his ugliness as an ostrich would be to an oyster. This made the dwarf so curious he began to forget his natural timidity — his hatred of getting his feelings hurt. He began, indeed, to forget himself entirely. He pursed his lips and beat his fists together and fell into such a serious fit of concentration that his head tipped sideways of its own volition and little by little his eyes crossed. Then, suddenly having reached his decision, the dwarf churned his crooked legs faster than before, moving out in front of her, where she’d find it more difficult to pretend not to see him, and abruptly stopped short, whirled himself around, grandly swept his hat off and bowed from the waist, so low that his forehead bumped the roadway. As he brought himself erect again, he saw the most puzzling thing of all — just barely glimpsed it from the corner of his eye as she came barging past: though she was gliding like the wind, on strides as powerful as an antelope’s, she tipped him a timid little feminine smile, whispered some inaudible, timid little greeting, and took a limp, quick swipe past her nose with an invisible fan. So pleased to meet you, her lips seemed to mouth. But her eyes — and this greatly startled him — her eyes were furious with hostility, and tears sprayed out of the corners like drops of winter rain.