The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride Page 81

He sat alone and confident and strong. His life was straight and fine. He had money enough for brandy, and if you had that, you had the world.

The stoop was wretched and bleak. Inigo slumped there, quite contented, clutching the bottle in his once-trembling hands. Existence was really very simple when you did what you were told. And nothing could be simpler or better than what he had in store.

All he had to do was wait and drink until Vizzini came…

Fezzik had no idea how long he was unconscious. He only knew, as he staggered to his feet on the mountain path, that his throat was very sore where the man in black had strangled him.

What to do?

The plans had all gone wrong. Fezzik closed his eyes, trying to think—there was a proper place to go when plans went wrong, but he couldn’t quite remember it. Inigo had even made a rhyme up for him so he wouldn’t forget, and now, even with that, he was so stupid he had forgotten. Was that it? Was it “Stupid, stupid, go and wait for Vizzini with Cupid”? That rhymed, but where was the Cupid? “Dummy, dummy, go out now and fill your tummy.” That rhymed too, but what kind of instructions were those?

What to do, what to do?

“Dunce, dunce, use your brains and do it right for once”? No help. Nothing was any help. He never had done anything right, not in his whole life, until Vizzini came, and without another thought, Fezzik ran off into the night after the Sicilian.

Vizzini was napping when he got there. He had been drinking wine and dozed off. Fezzik dropped to his knees and put his hands in prayer position. “Vizzini I’m sorry,” he began.

Vizzini napped on.

Fezzik shook him gently.

Vizzini did not wake.

Not so gently this time.

Nothing.

“Oh I see, you’re dead,” Fezzik said. He stood up. “He’s dead, Vizzini is,” he said softly. And then, with not a bit of help from his brain, a great scream of panic burst from his throat into the night: “Inigo!” and he whirled back down the mountain path, because if Inigo was alive, it would be all right; it wouldn’t be the same, no, it could never be that without Vizzini to order them and insult them as only he could, but at least there would be time for poetry, and when Fezzik reached the Cliffs of Insanity he said, “Inigo, Inigo, here I am” to the rocks and “I’m here, Inigo; it’s your Fezzik” to the trees and “Inigo, INIGO, ANSWER ME PLEASE” all over until there was no other conclusion to draw but that just as there was now no Vizzini, so there was also no Inigo, and that was hard.

It was, in point of fact, too hard for Fezzik, so he began to run, crying out, “Be with you in a minute, Inigo,” and “Right behind you, Inigo” and “Hey, Inigo, wait up” (wait up, straight up which was the way he ran, and wouldn’t there be fun with rhymes once he and Inigo were together again), but after an hour or so of shouting his throat gave out because he had, after all, been strangled almost to death in the very recent past. On he ran, on and on and on until finally he reached a tiny village and found, just outside town, some nice rocks that formed kind of a cave, almost big enough for him to stretch out in. He sat with his back against a rock and his hands around his knees and his throat hurting until the village boys found him. They held their breath and crept as close as they dared. Fezzik hoped they would go away, so he froze, pretending to be off with Inigo and Inigo would say “barrel” and Fezzik right quick would come back “carol” and maybe they would sing a little something until Inigo said “serenade” and you couldn’t stump Fezzik with one that easy because of “centigrade” and then Inigo would make a word about the weather and Fezzik would rhyme it and that was how it went until the village boys stopped being afraid of him. Fezzik could tell that because they were creeping very close to him now and all of a sudden yelling their lungs out and making crazy faces. He didn’t really blame them; he looked like the kind of person you did that to, mocked. His clothes were torn and his throat was gone and his eyes were wild and he probably would have yelled too if he’d been their age.