The Unknown Huntsman

by Jean-Michel Fortier

  “You see, removing a patient’s wisdom teeth is a minor operation. In fact, it’s very straightforward.”

  If it’s so straightforward, why is he telling us, it’s making us anxious, this whole situation with Amelia, especially since we thought the curse had been broken at last, but the old doctor hasn’t finished:

  “However, as I was operating on Amelia, I noted that the child—the adolescent, I should say—appeared to have a swollen throat. And being a conscientious doctor, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, you see.”

  We do not see at all, should we say as much, at the risk of looking like idiots in the eyes of a man of science, but the baker doesn’t share our fear:

  “We see nothing whatsoever, Dr. Harmer. Nothing in the slightest.”

  “Well it’s quite simple. I wanted to examine her throat more closely but I forgot about the tool I was holding—a pair of pliers—and I uhh…”

  And he uhh he uhh he uhhh what? That’s what you call the revenge of the senile doctor, all this suspense surrounding the Gross girl, is he going to tell us what happened or not?

  “As you can imagine, I was startled when I realized the poor child had a pair of extraction pliers stuck nearly as far back as her tonsils, and I must say, I still can’t believe she didn’t feel a thing.”

  We can only imagine the scene, a shiver of disgust runs down our spine—pliers stuck in the girl’s gullet and the doctor’s putrid breath in her face to boot, no wonder Amelia’s condition took a turn for the worse, but the old man has more to add:

  “And I was so startled I accidentally scraped the inside of her mouth, her throat, with my pliers. As you can imagine, it sent me into a panic, and I began to shake and shake, and she began to bleed and bleed and cry. Oh, this profession is too much for an old man like me!”

  We shudder at the thought. It’s like something out of a horror movie, the doctor torturing his helpless patient as she lies, defenceless, on the old sadist’s chair and when, to make matters worse, the victim is a rosebud of a girl like Amelia Gross, the tragedy is threefold, but what has become of the poor thing, Harmer is about to tell us:

  “Amelia is fighting an infection caused by the cuts inflicted by my pliers. I have every hope that under my care, and that of Mr. Meaney, she will be back on her feet within a month. I cannot hide the fact that she is suffering terribly. But I am certain that the support of her parents—and your prayers—are of great comfort to her.”

  Ah! Our prayers. We will pray for her, starting tomorrow evening, we promise, poor Amelia, poor Mayor Gross, and poor Morosity, as if the girl hadn’t suffered enough in her lifetime with the whole pen-pinching story, now she’s battling a serious infection, this from a girl who has always claimed to anyone who’ll listen that she won’t live a day past fourteen, those of a more pessimistic nature may now be inclined to believe her. The parish hall suddenly falls silent, even the baker crosses himself and prays, as a matter of form, and the doctor, who’s looking more confident now that he realizes we aren’t going to hold his incompetence against him, takes advantage of the lull to announce:

  “On that note, go on back home. And send your positive thoughts to the Gross family.”

  We will, they can count on us, in fact we’ll ask Mrs. Latvia to take them a gigantic bouquet, that’ll take her mind off things, the poor old crone is so lonely and bored.

  8

  We’re in for a pleasant surprise when we arrive at the parish hall today. The Professor is already there, pacing up and down, clearing his throat and patting his pant pocket. We take our seats in silence; when our master is preoccupied, it’s best to keep quiet. He turns to look at us, his eyes puffy:

  “Dear colleagues, welcome.”

  That’s a good sign. He carries on:

  “This has been a week of insomnia for me. The first in years.”

  We wince in sympathy. We know only too well: when the Professor doesn’t sleep well, a catastrophe is surely imminent. The man is so much more learned than us in the ways of the world. He continues, his voice expressionless:

  “Only last week I blamed my two miserable little swine…”

  We glance over at the young newlyweds, who are clearly moved at being the focus of attention all over again.

  “…and yet this week, I made a mistake. Perhaps the biggest mistake of my life.”

  Our stomach churns, our head spins. How could the Professor be wrong? It’s enough to make us question the very foundations of our existence. We hazard a comment:

  “Professor, you’re too hard on yourself.”

  He pulls his revolver out of his pocket and points it at us, his hand trembling for the first time:

  “Keep quiet. Keep quiet. Keep quiet. Unless you want to fall by example like that other one. The hairdresser. Keep quiet.”

  So we keep quiet. To die by example at our mentor’s hand would give us great joy, but to do so would mean going against the Professor’s wishes, a repulsive notion. He lowers his gun and speaks again:

  “The daughter of one of our members is suffering terribly as we speak. I’m sure you know who I am talking about.”

  Alas, we do! That’s all everyone’s been talking about this week, the poor girl with the infected mouth, rumour has it that her gums have rotted so fast all her teeth have dropped out.

  “You probably think—wrongly—the person responsible for this tragedy is our colleague the doctor.”

  Indeed, that’s exactly what we think, they say he completely lacerated her mouth with his rusty pliers. The Professor shouts:

  “Well, think again! Of course our friend the GP injured the girl, but…”

  Our throat is suddenly dry.

  “… but he did so at my request. That’s right, at my specific request. On my orders.”

  Our master bursts into violent sobs. We look at each other in amazement. A large teardrop hangs off the end of the Professor’s nose, and his gold-rimmed glasses are all askew. We feel like comforting him, singing him a lullaby, but it wouldn’t be right. We wait until he composes himself. He continues speaking, his voice hoarse:

  “I thought a little incident would divert attention from the whole unknown huntsman affair. I knew the girl was going to have her wisdom teeth out. I told the doctor to botch the operation—just a little—to distract those imbeciles.”

  Our colleague the doctor stands:

  “Only I botched it completely. You understand, what with the stress, my age…”

  His eyes swim with tears. We’re on the verge of bawling in unison, but our master hasn’t finished:

  “And now she is suffering. In agony. And it’s my fault.”

  Fortunately the stricken girl’s father is absent tonight. What a tragedy for the family.

  “And now we must pray. Pray that everything works out, that the girl survives. Oh!”

  Once again, tears spring from his eyes. This time, we can’t hold back. We join him in his anguish, we give in to an outpouring of emotion. The hall fills with haunting wails. If the girl had been there, what a comfort it would have been for her, even if she were to die, at least she would know how we were moved by her misfortune. We look at each other, tears in our eyes, and think what a wonderful family we are. The Professor takes the gun out of his pocket again:

  “But this week, no mistakes. No slip-ups. We keep calm. Understood, you idiots?”

  Ahh, that’s our beloved mentor speaking, such a genius. Not afraid to plunge headfirst into his emotions, though never for too long, then—in a flash!—he’s back. He pulls himself together and leads us to reason. Such a great man. Now we’re sobbing in admiration. We file out of the basement, handkerchiefs in hand, praying for… what was it again? Yes, praying that the Professor never leaves our side.

  9

  A monstrous week, that’s the only way to describe it—monstrous—and don’t think for a minu
te we’re exaggerating! You only have to ask Morosity Gross, who’s been by Amelia’s bedside day and night for the past eight days without sleeping a wink. According to Mrs. Latvia, she’s so exhausted she looks worse than her daughter, and God knows the child is in terrible shape, what with the infection of her entire oral cavity, gums molars canines tongue included. Angelina White says her breath is so fetid that even Sybille was unable to stifle a cry of disgust when she passed beneath the bedroom window yesterday, and if there’s anyone here who has a stomach for repugnant odours, it’s Sybille. Aside from the case of the girl who’s rotting from the inside of her mouth, Mrs. Latvia asked the council tonight to be relieved of the Campbell children:

  “It’s simply not right to ask an elderly florist like me to run around after three youngsters all day long, especially when there’s one who’s always dreaming about death.”

  It’s true, the eldest is officially suicidal, Dr. Harmer confirmed it after a thorough psychological examination; apparently he must never be left alone with knives, scissors, a gun, or a bottle of pills, and when you consider that Mrs. Latvia’s shop is full of secateurs and her night table laden with tablets to fight off boredom, the child must indeed be causing her no end of worry. Except, if Mrs. Latvia gets rid of the kids, who’s going to take them? After all, Lisa Campbell specifically named the florist as a worthy adoptive mother to her litter, can the wishes of the deceased really be ignored so easily? The baker gets to his feet—in the mayor’s absence, he’s clearly taking his ease—and proclaims:

  “Mrs. Latvia is right. Look at her. Look at her! She must have aged ten years in two weeks.”

  We all take a good look at her. It’s true her crow’s feet are a little more pronounced than before, but that’s normal at her age. We’ve always thought of her not just as the florist, but as the founder of the village. It’s as if she’s been around forever, knows every stone and board in every house, has seen and heard it all, but that’s the stuff of legends, and if you ask her, she’ll surely tell you she’s no older than any of the others, barely older than Albania, and certainly not as old as that witch Sybille. But if you ask us, she must be pushing a hundred and two.

  “I’m sixty-six years old and I can’t foresee the day I’ll be allowed to rest. It’s not as if she left her young ones to a well-off family like the Grosses. She left me peanuts to look after those children. Mere peanuts, I’m telling you!”

  Only sixty-six, poor old Mrs. Latvia, we never would have believed it. She pulls out her embroidered hankie, here come the tears:

  “It’s African violets I sell, you know, not diamonds! And now if I have to scrounge for money to make the stews and jelly doughnuts they’re so fond of, well, my Dutch tulips will end up straight in the garbage. Farewell, my English roses!”

  The old woman manages to extract a sigh of pity from us, and even a droplet from the corner of our eye. Hah, she has a real knack for melodrama or is it expressionism, whatever, we’re not too up on the world of cinema, what we mean is that she has a knack for bringing a tear to the eye, even when she’s at the end of her tether. Blanche Bedford stands up—she’s getting chattier by the minute, that one, as bold as a baker, we won’t put up with it for long, but for now we let it pass—and puts on her best young Audrey Hepburn voice:

  “If Mrs. Latvia no longer wishes to shoulder the heavy burden of these children… I am willing to take over. That is an official offer.”

  The florist recovers her composure and crumples her perfumed handkerchief:

  “Blanche Bedford celebrated her first communion barely six years ago, I remember because I was the one who provided the flowers to decorate the church!”

  Flustered, she points at the young woman:

  “Far too young, my girl. You are far too young and inexperienced for that. It’s an ordeal! One of the modern scourges sent by the Creator to test old Latvia, nothing less. I warn you, my dear: the eldest spends his days sleeping or spitting at his brothers whenever they come near. And the brothers aren’t much better: The teacher says they barely know how to count on their fingers. At their age!”

  The young bride stamps her foot, a surprising gesture for one who prides herself on her maturity, and yet… Such a childish reflex! She replies:

  “Mrs. Latvia, you must make up your mind. Look at you—all teary-eyed and on edge, at an age when you should be making your funeral arrangements. Isn’t it time you enjoyed life a bit? While Albert and I have our whole lives ahead of us. And in any case, do you see anyone else stepping up to volunteer?”

  We scan the room, not a single hand is raised, not like during our votes, not even Angelina White, the wealthy—and then some!—old spinster, or Leaven the baker, who’s always saying he’d make an excellent father if only a woman would give him the chance. Then there’s old Giorgio Cantarini who raises his finger, but no one takes him seriously, not since the day the late Lisa Campbell swore he used to peek under her skirt while she swept up hair clippings, we don’t consider him an appropriate candidate for raising three children. And anyway, with his meagre war widower’s pension, all he can afford to eat is beans in tomato sauce, when we know full well the little ones are used to chicken pie and sticky buns!

  The baker, who we notice has been shifting restlessly on his chair for the past few minutes, decides to take charge of the meeting:

  “That’s enough! Have we forgotten our manners, our procedures? This type of situation must be decided by a show of hands. All those who think young Blanche Bedford should take the Campbell children, raise your hands nice and high!”

  Ah, spoken with the authority of our loafmaker, and we raise our hand straight up, as high as it will go so we can move on to the next thing other than feeling sorry for Mrs. Latvia, and looking around the room, we notice that everyone, except for that old romantic Cantarini, and obedient Angelina White, is doing the same, which brings a smile to the face of the baker, who booms:

  “E basta!”

  Cantarini squirms with delight, he looks like he’s about to launch into a few verses of Dante in a burst of nostalgia, but our dear Latvia has other plans, and she leaps up like a jack-in-a-box:

  “I call on the priest to decide!”

  The priest, what a ridiculous idea, we chuckle to ourselves, even Father Wavery is wearing a rather disbelieving grin, and then, as usual, Blanche adopts the schoolmarmish tone that earned her mother a reputation back in the day when she used to teach painting to the old folks:

  “This is not simply up to you, Mrs. Latvia. Where the safety of the children is a concern—and I believe it may well be—we cannot take any risks.”

  The florist straightens up in her chair and lifts her nose towards the heavens, appropriately enough, given the premises:

  “Safety, safety! Those children are better off with me and my chrysanthemums than with Lisa Campbell and her shenanigans!”

  Now, we have to admit we’re not quite following: what exactly is she talking about? While the late Lisa Campbell may have allowed her children to play in the street a little too often, she nevertheless struck us as a worthy mother, although, worthy is no doubt too strong a word in her case, but at the very least, she never lost any of her young ones in the woods, and knowing their nature, that’s an achievement that surely deserves a trophy. The baker immediately demands an explanation:

  “What are these accusations against the deceased, Mrs. Latvia? That’s not like you.”

  Look who’s talking, the man who’s been knocking Sybille at every chance he gets for the past three weeks, mind you it’s not as though Sybille is actually dead, although who really knows, maybe she’s just some sort of creature of witchcraft risen from her ashes. The old florist frowns:

  “Oh, I know what I know!”

  She’s playing with our nerves again, that sly woman, and there she goes with a second tragic waving of the hankie, dabbing at her eyes, and now all it takes is Cantari
ni rubbing her back—speaking of which, they’d make a fine pair, those two, it would calm them down and would suit us just fine too—to get her started again:

  “Ahh, now I have your attention! No one listens to the old lady until she starts dishing out the gossip. Well if that’s how it’s going to be… Let me tell you what I overhead one day while I was waiting in Lisa Campbell’s hair salon.”

  All ears perk up, especially Dr. Harmer’s, who’s hard of hearing, and the florist continues:

  “I was sitting comfortably in the waiting room of Lisa Campbell’s salon and I could hear Lisa finishing up Angelina White’s hair. It was December 18 of last year; I remember because it was snowing hard, and I really hoped she would finish my hair in time so I wouldn’t get lost in the storm on my way home.

  “Then the phone rang. I was a bit angry, because I was afraid the call would set me back even later. From where I was sitting, in the corner of the waiting room, I could hear everything that went on at the counter, so when Lisa Campbell left Angelina to answer the phone, I was able to follow the entire conversation with no trouble, and, more importantly, without being seen, and let me tell you, what I heard took my mind off the storm completely.

  “Now, get this: she was talking to a man—she called him by his name ‘James’ several times—and she appeared to know him well. And when I say ‘well’ I mean they weren’t chatting about the weather or about Sybille, if you get my drift.

  “I knew, just as well as you, that Bertrand Campbell had skipped out the year before, leaving poor Lisa with his young ones. But I also knew, thanks to Sybille, that Bertrand Campbell’s brother is named—wait for it !—James.

  “So, when Lisa Campbell hung up, and it must have been a good fifteen minutes later—because Angelina White’s half-dried locks certainly weren’t going to stop her from talking to her James—I figured I was going to have to keep waiting, so I might as well make the most of the situation.