The Princess Bride

'It's going to be wonderful' his mother translated.

Fezzik only burst into tears.

They had his first professional match in the village of San-diki, on a steaming-hot Sunday. Fezzik's parents had a terrible time getting him into the ring. They were absolutely confident of victory, because they had worked very hard. They had taught Fezzik for three solid years before they mutually agreed that he was ready. Fezzik's father handled tactics and ring strategy, while his mother was more in charge of diet and training, and they had never been happier.

Fezzik had never been more miserable. He was scared and frightened and terrified, all rolled into one. No matter how they reassured him, he refused to enter the arena. Because he knew something: even though outside he looked twenty, and his mustache was already coming along nicely, inside he was still this nine-year-old who liked rhyming things.

'No,' he said. 'I won't, I won't, and you can't make me.'

'After all we've slaved for these three years,' his father said. (His jaw was almost as good as new now.)

'He'll hurt me!' Fezzik said.

'Life is pain,' his mother said. 'Anybody that says different is selling something.'

'Please. I'm not ready. I forget the holds. I'm not graceful and I fall down a lot. It's true.'

It was. Their only real fear was, were they rushing him? 'When the going gets tough, the tough get going,' Fezzik's mother said.

'Get going, Fezzik,' his father said.

Fezzik stood his ground.

'Listen, we're not going to threaten you,' Fezzik's parents said, more or less together. 'We all care for each other too much to pull any of that stuff. If you don't want to fight, nobody's going to force you. We'll just leave you alone forever.' (Fezzik's picture of hell was being alone forever. He had told them that when he was five.)

They marched into the arena then to face the champion of Sandiki.

Who had been champion for eleven years, since he was twenty-four. He was very graceful and wide and stood six feet in height, only half a foot less than Fezzik.

Fezzik didn't stand a chance.

He was too clumsy; he kept falling down or getting his holds on backward so they weren't holds at all. The champion of Sandiki toyed with him. Fezzik kept getting thrown down or falling down or tumbling down or stumbling down. He always got up and tried again, but the champion of Sandiki was much too fast for him, and too clever, and much, much too experienced. The crowd laughed and ate baklava and enjoyed the whole spectacle.

Until Fezzik got his arms around the champion of Sandiki.

The crowd grew very quiet then.

Fezzik lifted him up.

No noise.

Fezzik squeezed.

And squeezed.

'That's enough now,' Fezzik's father said.

Fezzik laid the other man down. 'Thank you,' he said. 'You are a wonderful fighter and I was lucky.'

The ex-champion of Sandiki kind of grunted.

'Raise your hands, you're the winner,' his mother reminded.

Fezzik stood there in the middle of the ring with his hands raised.

'Booooo,' said the crowd.

'Animal.'

'Ape!'

'Go-rilla!'

'BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!'

They did not linger long in Sandiki. As a matter of fact, it wasn't very safe from then on to linger long anywhere. They fought the champion of Ispir. 'BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!' The champion of Simal. 'BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!' They fought in Bolu. They fought in Zile.

'BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!'

'I don't care what anybody says,' Fezzik's mother told him one winter afternoon. 'You're my son and you're wonderful.' It was gray and dark and they were hotfooting it out of Constantinople just as fast as they could because Fezzik had just demolished their champion before most of the crowd was even seated.

'I'm not wonderful,' Fezzik said. 'They're right to insult me. I'm too big. Whenever I fight, it looks like I'm picking on somebody.'

'Maybe,' Fezzik's father began a little hesitantly; 'maybe, Fezzik, if you'd just possibly kind of sort of lose a few fights, they might not yell at us so much.'

The wife whirled on the husband. 'The boy is eleven and already you want him to throw fights?'

'Nothing like that, no, don't get all excited, but maybe if he'd even look like he was suffering a little, they'd let up on us.'

'I'm suffering,' Fezzik said. (He was, he was.)

'Let it show a little more.'

'I'll try, Daddy.'

'That's a good boy.'

'I can't help being strong; it's not my fault. I don't even exercise.'

'I think it's time to head for Greece,' Fezzik's father said then. 'We've beaten everyone in Turkey who'll fight us and athletics began in Greece. No one appreciates talent like the Greeks.'

'I just hate it when they go 'BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!'' Fezzik said. (He did. Now his private picture of hell was being left alone with everybody going 'BOOOOOOOOOOO' at him forever.)

'They'll love you in Greece,' Fezzik's mother said.

They fought in Greece.

'AARRRGGGGH!!!' (AARRRGGGGH!!! was Greek for BOOOOOO-OOOOO!!!)

Bulgaria.

Yugoslavia.

Czechoslovakia. Romania.

'BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!'

They tried the Orient. The jujitsu champion of Korea. The karate champion of Siam. The kung fu champion of all India.

'SSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!' (See note on AARRRGGGGH!!!)

In Mongolia his parents died. 'We've done everything we can for you, Fezzik, good luck,' they said, and they were gone. It was a terrible thing, a plague that swept everything before it. Fezzik would have died too, only naturally he never got sick. Alone, he continued on, across the Gobi Desert, hitching rides sometimes with passing caravans. And it was there that he learned how to make them stop BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!ing.

Fight groups.

It all began in a caravan on the Gobi when the caravan head said, 'I'll bet my camel drivers can take you.' There were only three of them, so Fezzik said. 'Fine,' he'd try, and he did, and he won, naturally.

And everybody seemed happy.

Fezzik was thrilled. He never fought just one person again if it was possible. For a while he traveled from place to place battling gangs for local charities, but his business head was never much and, besides, doing things alone was even less appealing to him now that he was into his late teens than it had been before.

He joined a traveling circus. All the other performers grumbled at him because, they said, he was eating more than his share of the food. So he stayed pretty much to himself except when it came to his work.

But then, one night, when Fezzik had just turned twenty, he got the shock of his life: the BOOOOOOOOOOO!!!ing was back again. He could not believe it. He had just squeezed half a dozen men into submission, cracked the heads of half a dozen more. What did they want from him?

The truth was simply this: he had gotten too strong. He would never measure himself, but everybody whispered he must be over seven feet tall, and he would never step on a scale, but people claimed he weighed four hundred. And not only that, he was quick now. All the years of experience had made him almost inhuman. He knew