In hardly more time than it takes to tell, Armida became — to her step-mother’s horror, to say nothing of the horror of her jealous stepsister — the most sought-after eligible young lady in the Suicide Mountains. Her father was neither pleased nor displeased, so far as one could tell; he merely drank his ale, fondling his dented tin cup as if it were his one last possession, and the more Armida watched him — furtively peeking out past the flowered chintz curtains on the kitchen window while she scrubbed the pots and pans — the more fearful she became in her heart. Then one night, by accident or not, her father fell into the forge which he’d fanned with his bellows to its hottest, and all that was left in the morning was the soles of his shoes.
Poor Armida! If her life had been terrible before, it was now ten times more terrible. When suitors came to visit, her cruel step-mother and cruel step-sister would listen critically at the door, and whenever she made some mistake, they would cackle like two witches. Nevertheless, the suitors kept coming until the whole house reeked with their flowers and was piled like a granary with their greeting cards and favors.
“Disgusting!” said her step-mother, picking up a love locket, newly delivered, between her long, pale, lumpy fingers.
“Well hello! It’s the walking honey pot,” said her step-sister, and gave a quick jerk to Armida’s yellow hair.
Poor Armida could well understand their scorn, for however she might hide it, her intelligence grew keener every day. She was a living lie, that was the heart of it. It was that, she could see, that lured those admirers to her door like ants: the aura of mystery that, in spite of her best intentions, she gave off like a scent of sachet. Little did they dream, those innumerable admirers, how simple, how unspeakably vulgar, was that mystery at the core: behind her elegant, filagreed facade, her studied femininity, those shoddily stolen little tactics of her step-sister’s — the fluttering lashes, the shy gazelle eyes — she was manlike, firm of flank as a farmer. They wrote her sonnets and graceful, silly sestets, gave her thimbles and real-silver sealing-wax sets, invited her to ride in their canoes by the summer’s moonlight. What would they have thought if she were suddenly to reveal that beneath the pink ribbons of her lacy dress she had the muscles of a drafthorse, and under her burst of yellow hair the acumen of a banker? Yet it was so.
“Ah, mother, father, how unhappy I am,” she would sometimes whisper, lying in bed beside her sleeping step-sister, and a tear would trickle down her cheek. The more she was loved, the more she hated herself, and also the more she hated everyone around her. It began to be the case that, however soft her gestures, however unintelligible her murmured words, her blue eyes had moments of sparking like the eyes of an anarchist. Though admirers kept coming — she had never a free minute — she could see that they were jumpy, suspicious as cows on the train to the slaughterhouse, in the presence of her choked-in violence. The number of her admirers increased as the frightening sense of mystery increased, and she grew still more unhappy. Moreover, she could not help feeling sometimes, rightly or wrongly, that on rare occasions — but now increasingly often — the admirer sitting primly in the plush chair across from her, speaking lightly, amusingly (with slightly trembling fingers) of the bloodthirsty exploits of the “six-fingered man” (of whom she’d never heard and in whose bloodthirsty exploits she felt no slightest curiosity or interest) — or the admirer standing heavy-footed as a mule, pretending to listen as she played for him Für Elise—was glancing furtively past her in the direction of her step-sister. How much happier her admirers would have been with Clarella, had they only the sense to see it — Clarella whose femininity had been nurtured from her earliest childhood, so that by now it was as real, as whole and translucently unmysterious as a china dish or, say, a potato sprout.
The world rolled on, and things went from bad to worse for Armida, and she began to despair. A tragic realization had come to her by now: She hated her admirers for being fooled by her sham; and she hated and envied her step-sister Clarella, for whom the sham was second nature, as it would never be for poor Armida. She hated, in a word, everything. Lying in the wooden bed, irritably listening to her step-sister’s snoring, Armida began to dream up schemes. Perhaps she would travel to some distant village and “cross over,” as they say — put on the trousers and jacket and heavy leather apron of a blacksmith, and start up a blacksmith’s shop. But the thought at once sent cold shivers up her back. There’d been a time when the idea might have appealed to her, but the memory of her former, farmhorse ways was repulsive to her now. She thought then perhaps she would run off to Russia and become a bear tamer, with gleaming boots and a whip and fur hat — feminine but fierce, barbaric but not downright masculine. And maybe in the middle of a performance, a great, black bear would grow unexpectedly rebellious, would lash at her throat in his lightning-fast rage …
Tears brimmed up in Armida’s eyes and she found herself thinking about suicide.
It might have ended there, for in the morning she felt better; but the following afternoon, young Gnoff the Miller’s Son, her stepsister’s only suitor, brought Armida a rosewood box and Clarella nothing. After supper she heard her step-mother and step-sister whispering, and on tiptoe she went over to listen, bending down beside the door.
“Mother,” said her step-sister, sobbing into her hankie, “I’ve had all I can stand. Armida imitates me day and night — she’s like a walking mirror — and now she’s stolen from me my one and only suitor!”
“Hush, dear, Mama knows,” the wicked step-mother said. “Buck up, my child. Do as I say and your troubles will all be over.” Then, whispering still more softly, covering her mouth with her two milky hands (peeking through the keyhole Armida saw it all), the stepmother said, “Tonight when Armida’s fast asleep, you push her clear over to the edge of the bed, and then stay back out of the way, and I’ll come and chop her head off.”
Armida listened in horror to these words, then hurried back to scrub the pots and pans.
That night she lay awake at the edge of the bed until she heard her step-sister’s snoring, and then she got over on the side against the wall and pushed Clarella to the edge and lay perfectly still, waiting. Sure enough, in came her wicked step-mother carrying an ax. She groped about in the dark with her hand until she found Clarella’s ear, and she felt for where the neck was, and then down she came with all her might with the ax and so chopped her own daughter’s head off. Then she groped back to the stairs and went down to her bed.
“What a sinner I am,” thought Armida. It was as if she’d awakened from a witch’s spell and could suddenly see things plainly. She sat bolt upright, then crawled out of the bed before the blood could get all over her, and she hunted till she found an old birthday candle, and with trembling hands lit it, and as she held it up to look into the staring, once lovely gray eyes of Clarella she thought, bursting into tears, “I might as well have murdered my poor step-sister myself! What’s become of me? I must be mad!”
And now in a rush all the nice things Clarella had ever done for her came leaping — once, for instance, Clarella had shared her sandwich with Armida, after someone had stolen Armida’s lunch. Armida stepped away from the body, sickened, the back of one pale hand pressed against her forehead, tears streaming down her nose and cheeks. As she was stepping back another step, and after that another, she caught a glimpse of her frail white reflection in the mirror, and the image made her skin crawl. It seemed not the image of herself at all, but the image of feeble, nigh-transparent Clarella, all gossamer shimmies and expiring fibrillations, all rolled-up eyes and drooping sighs, but with manly shoulders and powerful thighs.