The Princess Bride

by Уильям Голдман

  "I was mostly interested in the story, you know, the plot." And that's when I broke it to him. "I never went there. To Florin. What was so important about going?"

  "What was so important? You flew up here just to check out things for a screenplay adaptation."

  I didn't say anything then because I could feel this terrible wind coming and I knew it would blow me away.

  "That's why I want to do Buttercup's Baby" he said. "Get things right this time."

  I was dead in the water. I stood, thanked him for his time, started out, devastated.

  "I'm really sorry," he said.

  I made a smile. Not the easiest thing for me to pull off at that moment, but I liked King, didn't want him of all people to see me fall apart.

  He called after me: "Bill—wait—I just had an idea. Listen—I'll do the abridgement and you can do the screenplay. I'll make that a deal-breaker in my contract." King was trying to be helpful, I understood that, but right there in the airport I told him about my dad reading to me and Jason not liking it and me realizing how I had only been read the good parts and now Jason was me and he had this kid, Willy, this wonderful child named after me, and Willy wanted me to read it to him and none of this abridgement business would have happened if I hadn't started it and what would he do if he ever lost it, his power, storytelling, as I'd lost mine, and how would he like to spend the rest of his life writing perfect parts for perfectly horrible people who happen to be movie stars this week, with all that power—

  —and I was what I most didn't want to ever be, humiliated, so I left him there, forcing myself not to run out the door, gone....

  THE PLANE BACK TO New York left in three hours and I grabbed a cab, hid in Bangor 'til it was time, cabbed back to the airport.

  Late. Weather problems.

  I sat on a bench in the airport, leaned back, closed my eyes until King asked, "You had to come all the way to Maine to have a nervous breakdown?" He was sitting alongside me. "You did make one good point, and I've thought a lot about it—none of this abridgement business would have happened except your dad kept skipping stuff. So in a way you're very much right, it is your baby, you began it."

  Pause.

  Then he said it.

  "Try the first chapter."

  He could tell from my expression that I didn't quite understand what he meant. I guess I was like Kathy talking to Rob. "Look, this is the twenty-fifth anniversary year of The Princess Bride, right? Your version." It was. "Well, probably your publisher will want to do something, maybe reprint it in hardcover." I nodded. We'd already talked about that. "Well, abridge the first chapter of Buttercup's Baby. Include it if you want. You probably ought to write an introduction to the chapter, explaining why you're not doing the whole book. I'll call the Shogs, tell them my decision. They won't like it but they'll go along. They've been wanting to be in business with me for years. Florinese rights to my stuff are coming due in the next couple of years."

  For a moment then he hesitated, and I wondered if he was changing his mind. I just waited, hoping not. Next he shook his head, and there was a look on his face that might have said "Am I nuts to do this?" Then these wonderful words: "Bill, I expect you to really try this time."

  "I'll research the hell out of it," I told him. (And have I ever.) "But what happens after I publish the chapter?"

  "Let's go one step at a time," he answered. "You write it, I'll read it, Morgenstern's public will read it. I'll send a bunch of copies to all my cousins in Florin, see what they think." He stood, looked at me. "I guess the most important thing is really Morgenstern. He was a master and it would be nice if we could please him, don't you think?"

  "That would be best of all," I said, God's truth.

  We shook hands, said good-bye, he started away, glanced back. "You haven't read Buttercup's Baby yet, have you?"

  "Not yet."

  "It's a pretty amazing story."

  "What are you saying? That even I can't screw it up?"

  "You got that right," Stephen King said, and he smiled....

  ***

  I LEFT FOR Florin immediately. (I didn't get to Florin immediately, of course—Florin Air's scheduling geniuses saw to that. I took the Air France night flight to Brussels, where you connect with InterItalia, which lets you out in Guilder, and then just the short hop to Florin City.) I'd made out a list of places to see. Royalty School, obviously, because King put such emphasis on it, the Cliffs of Insanity—I phoned ahead and made a booking, the place is insane with visitors now—the forest where the Battle of the Trees took place, on and on. King had given me a list of friends and scholars who he thought might prove helpful. One wonderful cousin ran the best restaurant in Florin, a blessing, because Florin, as you may know, is the root vegetable capital of Europe, good for their farmers, but rutabaga is their national dish and you can get sick of it pretty fast unless a skillful cook is around.

  It was odd, those first days, looking at real places that I thought were made up when I was a kid. I was worried that they might not live up to my fantasies. (Some of them didn't, most of them did.)

  The Thieves Quarter where Fezzik reunited with Inigo, I saw that, and the room where Inigo finally finally killed Count Rugen—it's on the castle tour. Buttercup's farm has been kept pretty much intact, but what can I tell you, it's a farm. And of course the Fire Swamp is still as deadly as ever, no one's allowed in, but I did see the spot not that far away where local scholars believe that Buttercup and Westley held each other after she pushed him off the cliff. (It's where the reunion scene took place, and let me tell you, it was strange, me standing there, looking at that patch of ground.)

  You still can't get to One Tree Island by boat because of the surrounding whirlpool, so I rented a helicopter, wandered. (One Tree is where they went to get their strength back.) It's where Buttercup and Westley first made love, where poor Waverly was born. Probably I shouldn't call her "poor" Waverly, she had a great time for a while, parents who loved her, the world's greatest fencer as her guard, the world's strongest man as her baby-sitter. Can't ask for a whole lot more.

  Of course, everything changed with the kidnapping, but I better shut up now, before I get ahead of the story....

  BUTTERCUP'S BABY

  S. MORGENSTERN'S GLORIOUS EXAMINATION OF COURAGE MATCHED AGAINST THE DEATH OF THE HEART

  ABRIDGED BY WILLIAM GOLDMAN

  One

  Fezzik Dies

  1. Fezzik

  FEZZIK CHASED the madman up the mountain, the madman who carried the most precious thing, for Fezzik, ever to be on earth, the kid herself, Buttercup's Baby.

  "Chased" was perhaps the wrong word. "Lumbered after" might have been more accurate. However you wanted to put it, the news was not good, because Fezzik, try as he might, was falling farther and farther behind. There were two reasons. The first: size. They were fifteen thousand feet in the air, the rise was sheer, and Fezzik had terrible trouble finding footholds that might make him secure. His huge clumpy feet would touch here or there, seeking sanctuary, but it took too much time.

  And the madman used that time to his advantage, increasing his lead, occasionally glancing down with his skinless face, to see how much farther Fezzik had fallen behind. Even to Fezzik, his plan was clear: get to the crest, run across the plateau, start down the far side, leave Fezzik helpless, still trying for the ascent.

  The second reason for Fezzik's lack of success was this: fear. Or, to be more specific, fears. Being the biggest and strongest, no one realized he also had feelings. Just because he could uproot trees, people didn't want to know that the little squirmy bugs that lived in the roots spooked him. Just because he had defeated the wrestling champions of seventy-three countries, people didn't believe that his mother had to keep candles burning all night long when he was (comparatively speaking) little. Of course, the idea of public speaking was beyond thought. But Fezzik would rather have spent the rest of his years in constant speechmaking than face what was staring at him now. The possibility of
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  With nothing but rocks to crush his body at the end.

  True, he had climbed the Cliffs of Insanity, but that was different. He'd had a rope to hold on to so he knew which way to go, and he'd had Vizzini insulting him, which always made the time pass more pleasantly.

  If only the madman possessed some other baggage, Fezzik would have stopped and crept back down to safety. If only it was all the silver in Persia or a pill that you only took once and you weren't a giant anymore.

  Easy to stop the chase then.

  But this was Waverly, his blessing, and though he knew in his great heart he would lose this pursuit, knew he would somehow slip, Fezzik lumbered on.

  He glanced up. She was rolled in the blanket she had been kidnapped in—and how long ago was that now? Fezzik chose not to remember because the kidnapping had been his fault. He had allowed it somehow—it had happened on his watch. Fezzik blinked back quick tears of remorse. Her body was still. The madman probably gave her some potion. To make her easier to carry.

  Above him, the madman stopped, pushed, kicked out—

  —and giant rocks were coming down toward him.

  Fezzik did his best to get out of their way, but he was too slow. The rocks grazed his feet, knocking them loose from their holds, and now he, Fezzik the Turk, was swinging high in space, holding on by just the strength of a few fingers.

  The madman cried out with delight, then climbed on, rounded a mountain corner, was gone.

  Fezzik hung in space. So very afraid.

  The winds picked at his body.

  His left hand began to cramp so Fezzik took it out of the hold, reached a yard up to a better one.

  He hung there, thinking, and what he thought was not how very afraid he was but that he had just gone up three entire feet, using only his hands. Could he do that again? He reached up another yard, found another hold. This is all very interesting, he told himself. I actually went up without using my feet. I went up faster than before, without using my feet.

  Hmmm.

  And then suddenly he was moving. Just using his hands to reach, grab, then the next, reach, grab, and never mind using all fours, just use the upper twos—

  —and then he was moving fast.

  Fezzik flew up the mountain now. Somewhere on the other side was the madman, probably taking his time, feeling sure that Fezzik was gone. Fezzik increased his speed, up to the crest, then to the plateau, racing across it with enormous strides, and when the madman got there with the babe, Fezzik was waiting.

  "I would like the child," Fezzik said softly.

  "Of course you would." The madman had no mouth. The sound came from somewhere inside his skinless face. He still held Waverly's body.

  Fezzik took a step nearer.

  "I can breathe fire," the madman said.

  Fezzik knew that it was true. But he was unafraid.

  Another step closer.

  "I can change shape," the madman said, louder now, and Fezzik knew that it was true. But he also knew this: fear had entered the heart of his enemy.

  "These are my final words," Fezzik said. "When I tell you to give me the child, you will give me the child."

  "I will use all my magic on you!"

  "You can try," Fezzik said softly. "But even though you have no face, I can see how frightened you are. You are frightened that I will hurt you." He paused. "And I will." He paused again. "Badly."

  The fear inside the madman was pulsing now.

  Fezzik's great hands reached toward the blanket. "Give me the child," he said, and the madman started to do that very thing, but then, instead, he flipped his hands so that Waverly rolled out of her blanket, spun high into the mountain air—

  —the momentum carried her over the edge where the two men were standing, and as she spun, her eyes fluttered open, and she looked around wildly, saw Fezzik, reached out toward him as she fell from sight, said the word she alone called him: "Shade."

  Fezzik had no choice. He dove into space after her, gave up his life for the child....

  ***

  Well, what do you think?

  It's exciting, I'll give Morgenstern that. A 'grabber,' as TV guys say. But this is a novel, you have time to develop plot and character, no one's changing the channel here. So I'm not nuts about it. I also don't like calling Chapter 1 'Fezzik Dies.'

  Do you believe that Morgenstern's really going to kill Fezzik? I sure don't, not for a New York minute. Forget that he's my favorite. But think what he did for Buttercup and Westley: he let himself get set on fire, just before the castle storming; he found the four white horses they all rode to freedom on; and don't think for a minute Inigo would have made it down through the Zoo of Death without Fezzik right there with him, so in a way, he saved Westley.

  And, I'm sorry, you don't knock off someone like that. It's wrong. Just to get your story off with a bang.

  In other words, I disapprove of this opening. There are, in fact, a number of things I'm not happy with in this chapter. But you know the reasons I have to go along.

  And I'm also not sure I should be including this next section about Inigo. I had a big fight with my publisher, Peter Gethers. He's against putting it in, finds it confusing. Before I give my reasons, I think you better have a chance to see for yourself what we're arguing about.

  2. Inigo

  INIGO WAS IN Despair.

  Hard to find on the map (this was after maps) not because cartographers didn't know of its existence, but because when they visited to measure its precise dimensions, they became so depressed they began to drink and question everything, most notably why would anyone want to be something as stupid as a cartographer? It required constant travel, no one ever knew your name, and, most of all, since wars were always changing boundaries, why bother? There grew up, then, a gentleman's agreement among mapmakers of the period to keep the place as secret as possible, lest tourists flock there and die. (Should you insist on paying a visit, it's closer to the Baltic states than most places.)

  Everything about Despair was depressing. Nothing grew in the ground and what fell from the skies did not provoke much happy conversation. The entire country was damp and dank, and why the locals all did not flee was not only a good question, it was the only question. Locals talked about nothing else. "Why don't we move?" husbands would say each day to wives, and wives would answer, "God, I don't know, let's," and children would jump and shout, "Hooray hooray, we're out of here," but then nothing would happen. Bindibus live in more hideous conditions but they don't travel a lot either. There was a certain comfort in knowing that no matter how bad things were, they couldn't get worse. "We have endured everything," the locals would tell themselves. "Whereas if we pick up and go, say, to Paris, we would get gout and be insulted by Parisians all day."

  Inigo, however, had a warm spot for the place. For it was here, years and years ago, that he had won his first fencing championship. He had arrived shortly before the tournament was to begin, and he had come with a heavy heart. Tears always behind his eyes. He could not shake his mood, because of what had just happened to him in Italy, on his first visit there. A journey he had begun with such hopes....

  BY THE TIME he turned twenty, Inigo Montoya of Arabella, Spain, had spent his last eight years wandering the world. He had not yet begun the hunt for the six-fingered man who had killed his beloved father, Domingo. He was not ready and would not be until the great swordmaker, Yeste, pronounced him so. Yeste, his father's dearest friend, would never send him out if there were flaws. Flaws would not only bring death but, far worse, humiliation.

  Inigo knew one thing and that only: when he finally found his tormenter, when he was at last able to face him and say, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die," there could be no question in his mind of defeat. The six-fingered man was a master. And so, preparing for such a master, Inigo had wandered the wo
rld. Getting stronger as he grew, learning from whoever could teach him mysteries that needed solving. Lately, he had begun to specialize. His talents were past phenomenal, but still not good enough to get the blessing of Yeste.

  He had recently been to Iceland, to spend months with Ardnock, the great frozen terrain expert. Inigo had already mastered fighting from below and from above, fighting from trees, from rocks, in rapids. But what if the six-fingered man was from the far north, and they battled on frost, or freshly watered ice? And what if Inigo, helpless and slipping, lost his balance, lost the battle, lost everything?

  After Iceland, he spent half a year on the equator, studying with Atumba, the master of heat, because what if the six-fingered man came from a steaming country, and what if they battled in the heat of the hottest day, temperature at 150, and what if the grip of his sword went wet for a moment in his hand?

  Now, having just turned twenty, he was in Italy, to see Piccoli, the tiny ancient, the acknowledged king of the mind. (Piccoli was from the most famous line of great Italian teachers—another branch was centered in Venice and taught singing to every famous Italian tenor whose name ends in a vowel.) Inigo knew he would not be able to think when his death battle came. His mind had to be a spring day, and his movements had to come on their own, his spins and twists and thrusts all had to leap unbidden.

  Piccoli lived in a small stone house, in the employ of Count Cardinale, the strange and secret man who controlled most of the country. Piccoli had heard of Inigo because although Yeste was the greatest and most famous maker of swords, there were rumors that when he was confronted with a task that was too much even for him, he would go to the town of Arabella, high in the hills above Toledo, to the hovel of one Domingo Montoya, a widower who lived with a young son.