第 35 页

Why had she never before noticed how quiet her house could be? It was silent as the grave, and

the pleasure Elinor had expected to feel as soon as she was back within her own four walls was

slow in coming.

"Hello, here I am again!" she cried into the silence as she felt along the wall for the light switch.

"Now you shall all be dusted and tidied again, my dears!"

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The ceiling light came on, very bright, and as Elinor stumbled back in alarm she fell over her

own handbag, which she had put down on the floor. "Oh heavens!" she whispered, getting to her

feet again. "Oh, dear heavens! Oh no!"

The custom-made bookshelves were empty. The books that had stood on them so safely, spine

beside spine, now lay in untidy heaps on the floor, crumpled, dirty, and trampled underfoot, as if

heavy boots had been performing a wild dance on them. Elinor began to tremble all over. She

stumbled through her desecrated treasures as if she were wading through a muddy pond,

pushed them aside, picked one up and let it drop, staggered on down the long corridor that led

to her library.

The corridor was no better. Great disorderly piles of books were heaped so high that Elinor

could hardly make her way through the ruins. At last, she reached the library door. It had not

been locked. Elinor stood there for an eternity, weak at the knees, before she finally dared to

open it.

Her library was empty.

Not a book in sight, not a single book, not on the shelves or beneath the broken glass of the

display cases. There wasn't a book on the floor either. They were all gone. Instead, a red rooster

dangled from the ceiling, stone dead.

Elinor's hand flew to her mouth. The rooster's head was hanging down, its red comb flopped

over its staring eyes. Its plumage was still glossy, as if all the life in it had fled there, into the fine

russet breast feathers, the darkly patterned wings, and the long deep-green tail feathers that

shimmered like silk.

One of the windows was open. A black arrow had been drawn in soot on the white paint of the

windowsill and pointed the way to the garden outside. Elinor staggered toward the window,

numb with fear. The night was not dark enough to hide what lay on the lawn outside: a

shapeless mound of ashes, pale gray in the moonlight, gray as moth wings, gray as burnt paper.

There they were. Her most valuable books. Or all that was left of them.

Elinor knelt down on the floorboards, on the wood she had so carefully chosen. The wind wafted

in through the open window and over her, the familiar wind, and it smelled almost like the air in

Capricorn's church. Elinor wanted to scream, she wanted to curse, rage, cry out in fury, but not a

sound came out of her mouth. All she could do was weep.

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Chapter 29 – Only An Idea

"Don't have a mother," he said. Not only had he no mother, but he had not the slightest

desire to have one. He thought them very over-rated persons.

– J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

The apartment that Fenoglio rented to tourists was only two streets away from his own house. It

had two rooms plus a tiny bathroom and kitchen. Since it was on the ground floor it was rather

dark, and the beds creaked when you lay down in them. All the same, Meggie slept well or,

anyway, better than on Capricorn's damp straw or in the hovel with the ruined roof.

Mo slept only fitfully. Meggie was woken twice on that first night by tomcats fighting out in the

street, and both times she saw him lying there with his eyes open, arms folded behind his head,

looking at the dark window.

He got up very early in the morning and went to buy food for breakfast in the little shop at the

end of the street. The rolls were fresh and warm, and Meggie really did almost feel as if they

were on vacation when Mo and she drove to the nearest town of any size to buy the basic tools

of his trade: brushes, knives, fabric, stout cardboard — and truly gigantic ice creams, which they

ate together in a cafe by the sea. Meggie still had the taste of the ice cream in her mouth as they

knocked on the door of Fenoglio's house. The old man and Mo drank another cup of coffee in his

green kitchen before he took Mo and Meggie up to the attic where he kept his books.

"I don't believe it!" said Mo, outraged, standing in front of Fenoglio's dusty bookshelves. "They

should all be seized on the spot! When did you last come up here? I could scrape the dust off

their pages with a trowel."

"I had to put them up here," said Fenoglio defensively, signs of a guilty conscience lurking among

his wrinkles. "I was getting so short of space downstairs with all those shelves, and anyway my

grandchildren were always pulling them around."

"They could hardly have done as much damage as the damp and dirt up here," said Mo.

Fenoglio went downstairs again looking crestfallen. "You poor child. Is your father always so

strict?" he asked Meggie as they climbed down the steep staircase.

"Only about books," she said.

Fenoglio disappeared into his study before she could ask him any questions, and his

grandchildren were at school or play group, so she got the books that Elinor had given her and

sat down with them on the flight of steps leading into Fenoglio's tiny garden. Wild roses grew so

thickly there that you could hardly take a step without feeling their shoots twine around your

legs, and from the top step you could see the sea, far away yet looking very close.

Meggie opened the book of poems. She had to narrow her eyes because the sun was shining in

her face so brightly, and before beginning to read she looked over her shoulder to make quite

sure Mo hadn't followed her down. She didn't want him to catch her at what she was planning to

do. She was ashamed of it, but the temptation was just too great.

When she was perfectly sure no one was coming she took a deep breath, cleared her throat —

and began. She shaped every word with her lips the way she had seen Mo do it, almost tenderly,

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as if every letter were a musical note and any words spoken without love were a discord in the

melody. But she soon realized that if she paid too much attention to every separate word the

sentence didn't sound right anymore, and the pictures behind it were lost if she concentrated on

the sound alone and not the sense. It was difficult. So difficult. And the sun was making her

drowsy, until at last she closed the book and held her face up to its warm rays. It was silly of her

to try anyway. Very silly . . .

Later that afternoon Pippo, Paula, and Rico came back, and Meggie walked around the village

with them. They bought things in the shop where Mo had gone in the morning, sat on a wall on

the outskirts of the village, watched ants carrying pine needles and flower seeds over the rough

stones, and counted the ships sailing by on the distant sea.

A second day passed like this. Now and then Meggie wondered where Dustfinger could be and

whether Farid was still with him, how Elinor was, and if she was beginning to wonder where

they were.

There was no answer to any of these questions, and Meggie didn't find out what Fenoglio was

doing behind his study door either. "Chewing his pencil," Paula told her when she had managed

to hide under her grandfather's desk. "Just chewing the end of his pencil and walking up and

down."

"Mo, when are we going to Elinor's house?" Meggie asked on their second night, when she

sensed that, yet again, he couldn't sleep. She perched on the edge of his bed. The bed creaked

just like hers.

"Soon," he said. "Go to sleep again now, OK?"

"Do you miss her — my mother I mean?" Meggie herself didn't know why she asked that

question out of the blue. All of a sudden it was there, on the tip of her tongue, and had to be

spoken aloud.

It was a long time before Mo answered.

"Sometimes," he said at last. "In the morning, at midday, in the evening, at night. Almost all the

time."

Meggie felt jealousy digging its little claws into her heart. She knew that feeling; she felt it every

time Mo had a new girlfriend. But how could she be jealous of her own mother? "Tell me about

her," she said quietly. "I don't mean the made-up stories you used to tell."

She used to search her books for a suitable mother, but there were hardly any mothers in her

favorite stories. Tom Sawyer? No mother. Huck Finn? Ditto. Peter Pan and the Lost Boys? Not a

mother in sight. Jim Button was motherless, too — and all you found in fairy tales were wicked

stepmothers; heartless, jealous stepmothers ... the list could go on forever. That had often

comforted Meggie in the past. It didn't seem particularly unusual not to have a mother, or at

least not in the books she liked best.

"What do you want me to tell you?" Mo looked at the window. The tomcats were fighting outside

again. Their yowls sounded like babies crying. "You look more like her than me I'm glad to say.

She laughs like you, and she chews a strand of hair while she's reading exactly the way you do.

She's nearsighted, but too vain to wear glasses —"

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"I can understand that." Meggie sat down beside him. His arm hardly hurt him now. The bite

from Basta's dog had almost healed, but there would always be a scar, pale as the scar Basta's

knife had left nine years ago.

"What do you mean? I like glasses," said Mo.

"I don't. Go on."

"She loves stones—flat, smooth stones that fit comfortably into the hand. She always has one or

two of them in her pocket, and she weights down books with them, especially paperbacks. She

doesn't like the covers to stick up in the air, but you were always taking the stones away and

rolling them over the wooden floor."

"And then she was cross."

"Oh, I don't know. She tickled your fat little neck until you let go of the stones." Mo turned

around to look at her. "Do you really not miss her, Meggie?"

"I don't know. Well, only if I'm feeling angry with you."

"About a dozen times a day, then?"

"Don't be so silly!" Meggie dug her elbow into his ribs. They both listened for any sounds in the

night. The window was open just a crack, and it was quiet outside. The tomcats had fallen silent,

probably licking their wounds. For a moment Meggie thought she could hear the sea breaking in

the distance, but perhaps it was only the traffic on the nearby highway.

"Where do you think Dustfinger has gone?" The darkness enveloped them like a soft cloth. I'll

miss this warmth, she thought, I really will.

"I don't know," said Mo. His voice sounded absent. "A long way off, I hope, but I'm not sure."

Nor was Meggie. "Do you think that boy's still with him?" Farid. She liked his name.

"I expect so. He was running after Dustfinger like a dog."

"He likes Dustfinger. Do you think Dustfinger likes him?"

Mo shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know who or what Dustfinger likes."

Meggie rested her head against his chest, the way she always used to at home when he was

telling her a story. "He still wants the book, doesn't he?" she whispered. "Basta will make

mincemeat of him if he catches him. He must have gotten a new knife by now."

Someone was coming along the narrow alley. A door opened and was closed again; a dog barked.

"If it wasn't for you," said Mo, "I'd go back, too."

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Chapter 30 – Talkative Pippo

"We were told there was a village nearby that might enjoy our skills."

"You were misinformed," Buttercup told him. "There is no one, not for many miles."

"Then there will be no one to hear you scream," the Sicilian said, and he jumped with

frightening agility toward her face.

– William Goldman, The Princess Bride

The next morning, at around ten o'clock, Elinor called Fenoglio's house. Meggie was sitting

upstairs with Mo, watching him remove a book from its mildewed binding as carefully as if he

were releasing an injured animal from a trap. "Mortimer!" Fenoglio called up the stairs. "Come

down at once, will you? There's some hysterical female on the phone, shouting in my ear. I can't

make head nor tail of it. Says she s a friend of yours."

Mo put the book to one side, minus its cover, and went downstairs. Fenoglio handed him the

receiver with a gloomy expression on his face. Elinor's voice was pouring rage and despair into

the peaceful study. Mo himself had some difficulty in making sense of what she was saying.

"But how did he know . . . oh, of course . . . ," Meggie heard him saying. "Burned? All of them?" He

passed a hand over his face and glanced in Meggie's direction, but she had a feeling that he was

looking straight through her. "All right," he said. "Yes, of course, though I'm afraid they won't

believe a word of it. And the police down here aren't responsible for what's happened to your

books . . . yes, of course. Naturally ... I'll pick you up. Yes."