‘Waiting for him?’ Fenoglio looked at Mo, confused.
‘That’s terrible!’ whispered Meggie. ‘I’m glad I didn’t read any more.’
‘What do you mean? Are you talking about my book?’ Fenoglio’s voice sounded hurt.
‘Yes,’ said Meggie. ‘I am.’ She looked at Mo, a question in her eyes. ‘And Capricorn? Who kills him?’
‘No one.’
‘No one!’
Meggie stared at Fenoglio so accusingly that he rubbed his nose awkwardly. It was an impressive nose. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he cried. ‘Yes, I let him get away with it. He’s one of my best villains. How could I kill him off? It’s the same in real life: notorious murderers get off scot-free and live happily all their lives, while good people die – sometimes the very best people. That’s the way of the world. Why should it be different in books?’
‘What about Basta? Does he stay alive too?’ Meggie remembered what Farid had said back in the ruined hovel: ‘Why not kill them? That’s what they were going to do to us!’
‘Basta stays alive too,’ replied Fenoglio. ‘I remember toying for some time with the idea of writing a sequel to Inkheart, and I didn’t want to do without those two. I was proud of them! And the Shadow was quite a success too, yes, he really was, but I’m always most attached to my human characters. You know, if you were to ask me which of those two I was prouder of, Basta or Capricorn, I couldn’t tell you! Even though some critics said they were just too nasty!’
Mo stared out of the window again. Then he looked at Fenoglio. ‘Would you like to meet them?’ he asked.
‘Meet who?’ Fenoglio looked at him in surprise.
‘Capricorn and Basta.’
‘Good God, no!’ Fenoglio laughed so loud that Paula, quite frightened, put her hand over his mouth.
‘Well, we did,’ said Mo wearily. ‘Meggie and I – and Dustfinger.’
25
The Wrong Ending
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
per
G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE
Mark Twain,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Fenoglio said nothing for a long time after Mo had finished his story. Paula had gone off long ago in search of Pippo and Rico. Meggie heard them running over the wooden floorboards above her, back and forth, jumping, sliding, giggling and squealing. But in Fenoglio’s kitchen it was so quiet you could hear the tick of the clock on the wall by the window.
‘Does he have those scars on his face? I expect you know what I mean? The fairies treated the cuts – that’s why there are only slight scars left, little more than three pale lines on the skin, is that right?’ Fenoglio looked enquiringly at Mo, who nodded.
Fenoglio looked out of the window again, brushing a few crumbs off his trousers. ‘Basta scarred him,’ he said. ‘They both fancied the same girl.’
Mo nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’
A window was open in the house opposite, and you could hear a woman scolding a child inside. ‘I suppose I ought to feel very, very proud,’ murmured Fenoglio. ‘Every writer wants to create lifelike characters – and mine are so lifelike they’ve walked straight off the page!’
‘That’s because my father read them out of the book,’ said Meggie. ‘He can do it with other books too.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Fenoglio nodded. ‘A good thing you reminded me. Otherwise I might start taking myself for a minor god, mightn’t I? But I’m sorry about your mother – although depending on how you look at it, that wasn’t really my fault.’
‘It’s worse for my father,’ said Meggie. ‘I don’t remember her.’
Mo looked at her, startled.
‘Of course not. You were younger than my grandchildren,’ said Fenoglio thoughtfully. ‘I’d really like to see him,’ he added. ‘Dustfinger, I mean. Naturally I’m sorry now that I thought up such an unhappy ending for the poor fellow, but it somehow seemed right for him. As Shakespeare puts it so well, “Everybody plays his part, and mine is a sad one.”’ He looked out into the street. Something fell and broke on the floor above them, but Fenoglio didn’t seem particularly interested.
‘Are those your children?’ asked Meggie, pointing up at the ceiling.
‘Heaven help us, no. My grandchildren. One of my daughters lives in this village too. They’re always visiting me, and I tell them stories. I tell half the village stories, but I don’t feel like writing them down any more.’ He turned to Mo with an enquiring look. ‘Where is he now?’
‘Dustfinger? I can’t tell you. He doesn’t want to see you.’
‘He got quite a shock when my father told him about you,’ added Meggie. But Dustfinger must be told what happens to him, she thought, he must. Then he’ll understand why he really can’t go back. And all the same, she thought next, he’ll still be homesick. Homesick for ever.
‘I must see him! Only once. Don’t you understand?’ Fenoglio looked pleadingly at Mo. ‘I could just follow you, inconspicuously. How would he know who I am? I want to find out if he really looks the way I imagined him, that’s all.’
However, Mo shook his head. ‘I think you’d better leave him alone.’
‘Nonsense. Surely I can see him whenever I like. After all, I invented him!’
‘And you killed him off,’ Meggie pointed out.
‘Well.’ Fenoglio raised his hands helplessly. ‘I wanted to make the story more exciting. Don’t you like exciting stories?’
‘Only if they have happy endings.’
‘Happy endings!’ Fenoglio snorted scornfully, and then listened to what was going on upstairs. Something or someone had landed heavily on the wooden floorboards. Loud howls followed the thud. Fenoglio strode to the door. ‘Wait here! I’ll be back in a minute!’ he called, disappearing into the corridor.
‘Mo!’ whispered Meggie. ‘You’ve got to tell Dustfinger! You’ve got to tell him he can’t go back.’
But Mo shook his head. ‘He won’t want to listen, I promise you. I’ve tried more than a dozen times. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring him together with Fenoglio after all. He might well be more likely to believe his creator than me.’ With a sigh, he brushed a few cake crumbs off Fenoglio’s kitchen table. ‘There was a picture in Inkheart,’ he murmured, raising the palm of his hand over the table-top as if to conjure up the picture itself. ‘It showed a group of women standing under an arched gateway, in splendid clothes as if they were going to a party. One of them had hair as fair as your mother’s. You can’t see the woman’s face in the picture, she has her back turned, but I always imagined it was her. Crazy, isn’t it?’
Meggie placed her hand on his. ‘Mo, promise you won’t go back to the village!’ she said. ‘Please! Promise me you won’t try to get the book back.’
The second hand on Fenoglio’s kitchen clock was dividing time into painfully small segments.
At last Mo answered. ‘I promise,’ he said.
‘Look at me and say it!’
He did. ‘I promise!’ he repeated. ‘There’s just one more thing I want to discuss with Fenoglio, and then we’ll go home and forget about the book. Happy now?’
Meggie nodded. Although she wondered what else there could be to discuss.
Fenoglio returned with a tearful Pippo on his back. The other two children followed their grandfather, looking crestfallen. ‘Holes in the cake and now a dent in his forehead too. I think I ought to send the lot of you home!’ Fenoglio told them crossly as he put Pippo down on a chair. Then he rummaged around in the big cupboard until he found a plaster, which he stuck none too gently on his grandson’s cut forehead.
Mo pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you to Dustfinger after all.’
Fenoglio turned to him in surprise.
‘Perha
ps you can make it clear to him once and for all that he can’t go back,’ Mo continued. ‘Goodness knows what he might do next! I’m afraid it could be dangerous for him – and I do have this idea, rather a weird idea, but I’d like to talk to you about it.’
‘Weirder than what I’ve heard already? I’d say that’s hardly possible!’ Fenoglio’s grandchildren had disappeared into the cupboard again. Giggling, they closed the doors. ‘Very well, I’ll listen to your idea,’ said Fenoglio. ‘But I want to see Dustfinger first!’
Mo looked at Meggie. It wasn’t often that he broke a promise, and he clearly felt far from comfortable about it. Meggie could understand that only too well. ‘He’s waiting in the square,’ said Mo hesitantly. ‘But let me talk to him first.’
‘In the square here?’ Fenoglio’s eyes widened. ‘That’s wonderful!’ With one stride he was standing in front of the little mirror hanging next to the kitchen door, running his fingers through his black hair almost as if he were afraid Dustfinger might be disappointed by his creator’s appearance. ‘I’ll pretend I don’t see him until you call me,’ he said. ‘Yes, that’s the thing to do.’
There was a clattering in the cupboard, and Pippo stumbled out in a jacket that came down to his ankles and a hat so large that it had slipped right over his eyes.
‘Of course!’ Fenoglio took the hat off Pippo’s head and put it on his own. ‘That’s it! I’ll take the children with me. A grandfather with three grandchildren – nothing about that sight to make anyone uneasy, is there?’
Mo just nodded and pushed Meggie out into the narrow passage.
As they walked down the street leading back to the square and their car, Fenoglio followed a few metres behind them, with his grandchildren running and jumping around him like three puppies.
26
Shivers Down the Spine and a Foreboding
And that’s when she put her book down. And looked at me. And said it: ‘Life isn’t fair, Bill. We tell our children that it is, but it’s a terrible thing to do. It’s not only a lie, it’s a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it’s never going to be.’
William Goldman,
The Princess Bride
Dustfinger sat on the chilly stone steps, waiting. He felt sick with fear; but he wasn’t quite sure of what. Perhaps the war memorial behind him reminded him too much of death. He had always been afraid of death, which he imagined as cold, like a night without fire. Now, however, he dreaded something else even more. Its name was sorrow, and it had been stalking him like a second shadow ever since Silvertongue lured him into this world. Sorrow that made his limbs heavy and turned the sky grey.
Beside him, the boy was running up and down the steps. Up and down, tirelessly, with light feet and a cheerful face, as if Silvertongue had read him straight into Paradise. What could be making him so happy? Dustfinger looked round at the narrow houses, pale yellow, pink, peach, the dark green shutters at the windows and the rust-red tiles on the roofs, an oleander flowering in front of a wall as if its branches were on fire, cats stalking past the warm walls. Farid stole up to one of them, stroked its grey fur and put it on his lap, although it dug its claws into his thighs.
‘You know what people do to keep the numbers of cats down around here?’ Dustfinger stretched his legs and blinked up at the sun. ‘When winter comes they take their own cats indoors for safety, then they put out dishes of poisoned food for the strays.’
Farid still fondled the grey cat’s pointed ears. But his face was rigid and grim, not a trace left of the happiness that had just made it look so soft and open. Dustfinger glanced quickly aside. Why had he said that? Had the happiness on the boy’s face upset him so much?
Farid let the cat go and climbed the steps to the memorial.
He was still sitting there on the wall, legs drawn up, when the other two came back. Silvertongue had no book with him, and he looked strained – his guilty conscience was clearly visible on his face.
Why? What could have made Silvertongue look so guilty? Dustfinger glanced suspiciously around without knowing quite what he was looking for. Silvertongue’s face always showed his feelings; he was an open book that any stranger could read. His daughter was different. It wasn’t so easy to make out what was going on in her mind. But now, as she came towards him, Dustfinger thought he saw something like concern in her eyes, perhaps even pity … What had that writer fellow said to make the girl look at him like that?
He got up and brushed the dust off his trousers.
‘No copies left, am I right?’ he asked, when the two of them had reached him.
‘You’re right. They’ve all been stolen,’ Silvertongue replied. ‘Years ago.’
His daughter never took her eyes off Dustfinger.
‘Why are you staring at me like that, princess?’ he snapped. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’
Bull’s-eye. An accidental one, too. He hadn’t wanted to score a bull’s-eye at all, certainly not a direct hit on an uncomfortable truth. The girl bit her lip, still looking at him with that same mixture of pity and concern.
Dustfinger rubbed his hand over his face, feeling his scars on it like a picture postcard saying ‘Greetings from Basta’. He could never forget Capricorn’s rabid dog for a single day even if he wanted to. ‘To help you please the girls even better in future!’ Basta had hissed in his ear before wiping the blood off his knife.
‘Oh, curse it all!’ Dustfinger kicked the nearest wall so hard that he felt the pain in his foot for days to come. ‘You’ve told that writer about me!’ he accused Mo. ‘And now even your daughter knows more about me than I do! Very well, out with it! I want to know now too. Tell me. You always wanted to tell me, after all. Basta hangs me, is that it? Strings me up and tightens the noose until I’m dead as a doornail, right? But why should that bother me? Basta’s in this world now, isn’t he? The story’s changed – it must have changed. Basta can’t hurt me if you just send me back there where I belong!’
Dustfinger took a step towards Silvertongue as if to grab him, shake him, take out on him all that had been done to himself, but Meggie came between them. ‘Stop it! It’s not Basta!’ she cried, pushing him away. ‘It’s one of Capricorn’s men, and he’s waiting for you in the book. They want to kill Gwin and you try to help him, so they kill you instead! Nothing about that has changed! It will simply happen and there’s nothing you can do about it. Do you understand? You must stay here, you can’t go back, ever!’
Dustfinger stared at the girl as if he could shut her up that way, but she held his gaze. She even tried to take his hand.
‘You should be glad to be here!’ she faltered as he retreated from her. ‘You can escape from them here. You can go away, far away, and …’ Her voice quivered. Perhaps she had seen the tears in Dustfinger’s eyes. Angrily, he wiped them away with his sleeve, and looked round like an animal in a trap, searching for some way out. But there was no way out. No going forward and, even worse, no going back.
A trio of women standing at the bus stop glanced curiously in his direction. Dustfinger often attracted such glances; anyone could see he didn’t belong here. A stranger for ever.
Three children and an old man were playing football with a tin can on the other side of the square. Farid looked at them. The Arab boy had Dustfinger’s rucksack over his narrow shoulders, and grey cat hairs clung to his trousers. He was deep in thought, wriggling his bare toes into the gaps between the paving stones. He was always taking off the trainers Dustfinger had bought him and going about barefoot, even on hot tarmac, with his shoes tied to the rucksack like loot he was taking home.
Silvertongue looked at the playing children too. Had he given some sign to the old man with them? The old fellow left the children and came over. Dustfinger took a step back. A shiver ran down his spine.
‘My grandchildren have been admiring the tame marten that boy has on a chain,’ said the old man, as he approached.
Dustfinger took another step backwards. Why was the dark-h
aired man looking at him like that? In quite a different way from the women at the bus stop. ‘The children say the marten can do tricks and the boy’s a fire-eater. Perhaps we could come to the show and watch at close quarters?’
The cold shiver spread right through Dustfinger, although the sun was shining down on him. The way the old man looked at him – as if he were a dog who had run away long ago and was now back, tail between his legs, perhaps with lice in his coat, but definitely his, the old man’s dog.
‘Nonsense, we don’t do tricks!’ he managed to say. ‘There’s nothing to see here!’ He retreated again, but the old man followed him – as if they were linked by an invisible thread.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the old man, raising a hand as if to touch Dustfinger’s scarred face.
Dustfinger’s back came up against a parked car. Now the old man was standing right in front of him, and still staring, staring—
‘Go away!’ Dustfinger pushed him roughly back. ‘Farid, bring me my things!’ The boy hurried to his side. Dustfinger snatched the rucksack from his hand, picked up the marten and stowed him in the rucksack, taking no notice of the animal’s sharp, snapping teeth. The old man stared at Gwin’s horns. Fingers flying, Dustfinger slung the rucksack over his shoulder and tried to push past him.
‘Please. I only want to talk to you.’ The old man barred his way, reaching for his arm.
‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’ Dustfinger tried to free himself from the bony fingers. They were surprisingly strong, but Dustfinger had the knife, Basta’s flick-knife. He took it out of his pocket, snapped it open and held it under the old man’s chin. His hand was trembling, he had never enjoyed threatening anyone with a knife, but the old man let go. And Dustfinger ran.
He ignored whatever Silvertongue was calling after him. He just ran