Free Night Music by John Connolly

on a physical form in this world, replete with the memories and experiences forced upon them, would they not have given some thought to their ultimate fate? To do otherwise would be tantamount to sadism!”
    â€œBut that isn’t how literature works,” said Mr. Gedeon. “It isn’t even how the world works. The books are written. It’s not for you or me to start altering them at this stage. These characters have power precisely because of what their creators have put them through. By changing the endings, you’ve put at risk their place in the literary pantheon, and by extension their presence in the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were to go and inspect the lodgings and find a dozen or more unoccupied rooms, with no trace that their occupants ever existed.”
    Mr. Berger hadn’t thought of that. It made him feel worse than ever.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so very, very sorry. Can anything be done?”
    Mr. Gedeon left his desk and opened a large cupboard in the corner of the room. From it he removed his box of restorer’s equipment: his adhesives and threads, his tapes and weights and rolls of buckram cloth, his needles and brushes and awls. He placed the box on his desk, added a number of small glass bottles of liquid, then rolled up his sleeves, turned on the lamps, and summoned Mr. Berger to his side.
    â€œMuriatic acid, citric acid, oxalic acid, and tartaric acid,” he said, tapping each bottle in turn.
    He carefully mixed a solution of the last three acids in a bowl, and instructed Mr. Berger to apply it to his inked changes to Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
    â€œThe solution will remove ink stains, but not printer’s ink,” said Mr. Gedeon. “Be careful, and take your time. Apply it, leave it for a few minutes, then wipe it off and let it dry. Keep repeating until the ink is gone. Now begin, for we have many hours of work ahead of us.”
    They worked through the night, and into the next morning. Exhaustion forced them to sleep for a few hours, but they both returned to the task in the early afternoon. By late in the evening, the worst of the damage had been undone. Mr. Berger even remembered the titles of the books that he had returned to the shelves while drunk, although one was forgotten. Mr. Berger had set to work on making Hamlet a little shorter, but had got no further than Scenes IV and V, from which he had cut a couple of Hamlet’s soliloquies. The consequence was that Scene IV began with Hamlet noting that the hour of twelve had struck, and the appearance of his father’s ghost. However, by halfway through Scene V, and after a couple of fairly swift exchanges, it was already morning. When Mr. Berger’s excisions were discovered many decades later by one of his successors, it was decided to allow them to stand, as she felt that Hamlet was quite long enough as it was.
    Together they went to the lodgings and checked on the characters. All were present and correct, although Macbeth appeared in better spirits than before, and remained thus ever after.
    Only one book remained unrestored: Anna Karenina .
    â€œMust we?” said Mr. Berger. “If you say yes, then I will accept your decision, but it seems to me that she is different from the rest. None of the others are compelled to do what she does. None of them is so despairing as to seek oblivion over and over. What I did does not fundamentally alter the climax of the novel, but adds only a little ambiguity, and it may be that a little is all she requires.”
    Mr. Gedeon considered the book. Yes, he was the librarian, and the custodian of the contents of the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository, but he was also the guardian of its characters. He had a duty to them and to the books. Did one supersede the other? He thought of what Mr. Berger had said: if Tolstoy had known that, by his literary gifts, he would doom his heroine to be