The Tale
Gollum is in a pitiable
state after Frodo’s stern words, and for a while they can get nothing from him
but squeaks and mumbles and begging for them to be nice to ‘poor little
Smeagol!’ Eventually he calms down enough to begin revealing, in fits and
starts, the alternative road he is proposing.
If they travel down the road
that turns west of the Ephel Duath they will come to a crossroads in a circle
of trees. The road on the right goes down to the ruined city of Osgiliath. The
road in the middle goes down to the Great Water (the Sea), full of fish and ‘nice
birds’; Gollum never went there, alas! Further down that road (he’s heard) are
lands where the Yellow Face is very hot and there are fierce men with dark
faces. But it is the road to the left that he means to lead them on.
That road immediately begins
climbing up into the dark mountains. When the road turns, they will see a
fortress, very old and horrible now. Smeagol heard tales when he was young (‘we
used to tell lots of tales in the evening, sitting by the banks of the Great
River, in the Willow Lands, when the River was younger too,’) of the Men of the
West and their tall buildings and of the white-walled Tower of the Moon.
‘That would be Minas Ithil
that Isildur the son of Elendil built,’ said Frodo. ‘It was Isildur who cut off
the finger of the Enemy.’
‘Yes, He has only four on
the Black Hand, but they are enough.’ Gollum shudders. Anyway, Sauron took that
city long ago and it is terrible now, full of Orcs and ‘worse things’, and the
Silent Watchers guard the road. Sam grumbles that the way seems just as bad as
the Black Gate with another long march to it to boot. Gollum explains that
while the Eye watches everywhere, and especially the Gate where he expects his
enemies to attack his land, ‘He can’t see everything all at once, not yet.’
This way does not have his full attention.
You seem to know a lot about
it, says Sam. Have you been talking about it with Him, or just ‘hobnobbing with
Orcs?’
“Not a nice hobbit, not
sensible.’ He has talked to Orcs before he met master, yes, but what he says
many people are saying now. It’s here in the North that the great danger to
Sauron is (and to them, too, while they stay) and the Enemy is always watching.
But to the west He is not afraid, and He has the Silent Watchers. Are we to
just stroll up to the City, then, and ask if we’re on the right way to Mordor,
then? asks Sam. Or are the Silent Watchers too silent to answer?
‘Don’t make jokes about it,’
hissed Gollum. ‘It isn’t funny, O no! Not amusing at all.’ It makes no sense
trying to get into Mordor, but if Frodo says he must go or will go, he has to
try some way. This is where nice Smeagol helps. He’s not proposing they go to Minas
Morgul. He found another way, long ago. Near the ruined city there is a path
leading into the mountains, then a long narrow stair, then a long winding
stair, and then - his voice drops – a dark tunnel. That is how he escaped
Mordor, long ago, so long he cannot be sure the way is still there.
Sam is sure if it is there,
the way must be guarded, somehow. Frodo presses Gollum on the matter: isn’t it
guarded? And did he escape, or was he let loose on an errand for the Dark Lord?
That’s what Aragorn thought when he caught Gollum near the Dead Marshes.
‘He lied on me, yes he did!’
Gollum has no fond memories of his captor. He did escape on his own. Of course
he had been told to seek the Precious, but he went looking for it for himself. Frodo
notices that he is using ‘I’ while he tells this story; this seems to mean he
is telling the truth … or the truth as he knows it. The escape might have been
arranged by the Dark Tower itself and allowed. And he does seem to be keeping
something back. He presses him again. Is the way guarded?
But mention of Aragorn has
made Gollum sullen. No really safe places in these lands; master must try it or
go home. If he knows the name of the high pass, he refuses to say it, or
anything more.
‘Its name was Cirith Ungol,
a name of dreadful rumor.’ Maybe Aragorn could have told them what the name
meant, and Gandalf would have warned them. But Frodo is alone in this decision.
But even at that moment, when Gandalf is striving with Saruman in the ruins of
Isengard, the wizard’s thought is seeking for Frodo and Sam over the long
leagues in hope and pity.
Maybe Frodo feels it, though
he thinks Gandalf long fallen in Moria. He sits silently a while, trying to
remember everything the old wizard ever told him, but none of his advice seems
to fit the situation. He wonders if Gandalf himself ever had any real plan to
get into Mordor; he doesn’t think he’d ever been there himself. Here he is, a
little hobbit from the Shire, trying to go where the great ones could not or
dare not go. It is a dark path and an evil fate, but one he chose back at Bag
End at a time that seems ‘so remote now that it was like a chapter in a story
of the world’s youth’.
‘This was an evil choice.
Which way should he choose? And if both led to terror and death, what good lay
in choice?’
Bits and Bobs
I love the little glimpse we
have of Gollum back in the days of his relative innocence, and how he knows
from personal experience that Sauron has only four fingers on one hand,
apparently unable to regenerate from this wound though he can rebuild another
body. We also see from Gollum’s point of view his travels and how he has even
interacted with Orcs and survived. His Cain-like wanderings have given him strange
knowledge far beyond that of Frodo, even with all his counsel from the Wise.
Lots of travel lore here,
pushing us to the edge of the map of Middle-Earth. The image of Gollum possibly
frolicking at the seashore and eating fish to his heart’s content is rather
delightful. The significance of the name Cirith Ungol is hinted at here; I
shall not translate it just yet.
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