The old doctor with gray hair and taut lips had grown accustomed to the queer ways of the folk in the deep forest village. He did not now find it strange that the people hung wreaths in their windows, in the Christmas fashion, or that they mumbled fantastical prayers to ward away the churlish wind. He did, however, find it unnecessary and perhaps a bit foolish and superstitious.
The old doctor would not adopt the practice of placing lit candles on the window sill to guide gentler weather toward the village, or any of the other customs of the estranged village people. He was not afraid of the vicious wind or winter storms. He guffawed at the livid sky.
He had once written to his mother about the strange village people and their sacred ceremonies. He wrote that they were not men at all and that they succumbed too willingly to nature. The old doctor had burned the letter, though, when he discovered from his hunting comrades that the postman read all his mail.
The men said that the postman took a small metal file and sawed the adhesive from the envelopes. He read the letters inside, no matter their contents, and then carefully closed the envelopes before mailing them slyly to their recipients.
‘Will, he even reads the romantic letters,’ the comrades said incredulously to him while hunting for rabbits. The postman was a regular topic among the townsfolk because scandal was scarce and gossip was unceasing in the little village.
Will had moved to the tiny settlement, of ten or so cabins, when he was young, with his father and mother. His father was a burly man who kept even burlier hounds. His face was always pleasant and inviting and never stoic like Will’s face. He quickly adjusted to the ways of the town and shunned his practice of medicine for the fur trade. He sold his draughts and chemicals to buy a gun and a gunny sack to carry his furs.
Will’s mother was a portly old woman with rosy cheeks and pink, rubbery arms. The soft fragrances of slowly broiling meat and sweet dough could be smelled in the cabin when she was home. She tenderly picked flowers and put them into tiny vases all over the cabin. Their scent mingled with that of the meat and was quite nice, the old doctor recalled.
The flowers and the pastoral landscape paintings she fastened to the walls drew wandering eyes from the dingy and uninviting walls of the cabin, and the mirrors she placed randomly around the room created an impeccable light.
Will had inherited a scruffy, unshaven face from his father. He fingered his hair instinctively, like his mother, and had a habit of gingerly touching his rubbery, pink hook-nose. It was a bit too far left for handsomeness though it was undeniably characteristic.
‘His face is so full of character,’ most said. ‘Full of character!’
His face was distinctly English
and, though he had lived only a short time in
Will was old now and his parents were dead. His bones creaked with age and his jaws cracked when he strenuously swallowed water. His careful steps revealed his arthritic joints and when he slept he lay supine as rigor mortis. He would not admit that his hair was fading from a dark, supercilious brown to a venerable gray or that the balls of his feet required habitual massages after walking long distances.
The cabin Will acquired from his father was filled with dark wooden furniture and haughty, nonchalant cushions. The rickety floorboards creaked perpetually and, instead of flowers and meat, the pungent odours of mould and must pervaded the cabin. Towering candles stood like trustworthy sentinels or soldiers on all the tables in the cabin. Dust and ash danced frenziedly on invisible platforms of air that spilled down the chimney or through minute cracks in the wood.
A few faded and dreary photographs and paintings remained in the cabin, though they were myopically hidden in dark corners or behind curtains. A large but unobtrusive pile of books surrounded the old doctor’s usual chair and the pile of faux-pelts and blankets usually enveloping it now covered both the chair and Will’s clothed body.
Suddenly the old doctor remembered his chore of collecting wood. He would wait until the wind and snow abated before trudging labouriously, unless he could spot a path through the oppressive nuisance, to his woodpile.
The old doctor had loathed this common labour and had refused to clean the stove or fetch the wood when he was a child. He hated ripping his trousers or spoiling his socks with mud. His mother would get stern and slap him, if he refused her instructions, and he would then walk sulkily to complete his chores with red cheeks and tears covering his warm face. When he returned his mother would hand him a rusty tin can of cookies, but he was old now and had no wife or mother to bake sweets.
Will rose and peered through the moist window. He pulled the sleeve of his shirt from his forearm and cupped his hand with the fabric. He harshly scraped the moisture from the window and he squinted into the lonely, cold purgatory facing him. It was nothing like The Bible said and it was nothing like Dante said.
Blinded by the monotony of the white storm, Will returned to his chair and peeled the shirt from his body. He flayed the wet garment as a snake sliding from its cantankerous, dying skin; he slithered and wriggled his body back and forth to escape the shirt’s confinement. The shirt slowly slipped from his body and he threw it at the fireplace then sank slowly and capriciously into his chair.
The brick foundation of the fireplace was coated thickly with layers of night-like ash. Various paraphernalia (elegant Swiss clocks, urns, tiny monotone photographs, and bone carvings of wild animals) littered the tarnished mantle and disguised its decaying wood surface. A verbose medical encyclopedia, bound in fading pale red and turned to a page concerning gestation and birth, discreetly masked a giant water stain at the centre of the mantle.
Will’s stethoscope lay supine. It stretched itself lazily upon the table to his left and leaned on a heavy, decorative decanter of crimson sherry. Two tiny crystal glasses accompanied the decanter; Will held the third glass tightly in his perpetually trembling hand.
Will remembered he had purchased the decanter from an Indian from the West who had probably acquired it from an Englishman or a Frenchman. It was a pretty lacquered brown and was imbued with a nice vine pattern. The vines crept all along the top of the decanter and down into the opening at the top. The glasses were transparent and crystal and he had purchased them separately. They complimented his table very well.
The old doctor was suddenly startled by a barbaric knock at his door. His smug grin was wiped from his face and he sat his glass of sherry next to the decanter and hobbled to the door. He was ashamed to be wearing nothing over his shoulders but Indian pelts and woolen blankets so he wrapped himself tightly.
He struggled with the rusting handle of the door. He worked it roughly and maneuvered its intricate internal mechanisms. When the convulsions of the wood had loosened the fickle ice and rust, Will maniacally threw open the agitated door.
A glacial wind howled through the doorway. It breathed incarnation into the otherwise lifeless objects of the cabin. Blankets moved about aggressively and the light curtains in the windows swayed powerfully. A few photographs toppled to the dirty floor and all the candles fell from the tables.
A black woman, bundled in an array of colourless clothing, stood shivering breathlessly in the door's frame. Her dark face bitterly contrasted the storm. Will stared at the woman and was confounded by her presence. He was oblivious to the chattering of the woman's teeth and the contorting of her frigid body.
She was a pretty girl, he noted. Her hair was an ebony hue and her hands looked soft, though they were severely frost-bitten. Will gawked bewilderedly, for a moment, while the woman shook violently. She turned her head incredulously and forced her way past Will. She ran into the cabin muttering unintelligibly so the old doctor sat her down in a dark rocking chair.
Will ran arthritically to the kitchen and opened a long closet door. He pulled a tiny black metal box from inside the closet and then deftly roused a key from his pocket. He inserted it slowly into the convolute keyhole. The brass key twisted liquidly through the labyrinthine passages of the keyhole and filled all the nooks and crannies like aqueous yellow mercury.
Will turned the key clockwise and a soft click ascended from the box. He gently lifted the rusty, antique lid and, ignoring the invaluable golden jewelry and delicate ivory artifacts contained within the box, selected two paper bills and an assortment of large, brown coins. He held them openly in his clammy, flagrant hand.
‘Here’s the money for your master,’ Will said.
‘I ain’t here for no money——’
‘Why are you here?’ The old doctor interrupted.
‘I
ain’t here for the
‘Tonight!’ Will exclaimed. He moved to the disheveled trunk near his fireplace and threw open the lid. An assortment of syringes and draughts were nestled inside the trunk and an abundance of chemicals was stored safely in strong glass containers. Metal boxes of salt and solid iron tools were surrounded by a white mesh cloth attached to the trunk’s lid.
Will grabbed his stethoscope from the table and threw it into the trunk. He looked at the floor and saw thick sherry seeping through the floorboards. Glass floated like tiny islands amidst the sea of alcohol and was stained a translucent purple by the fleeting liquid.
‘Please
horry, young sir. I fear the mistress is sick!’
‘Sick?’
‘Her face is all red like! An' she screams as if the debbul's in her very womb, and not a chil' at all!’ She cried.
‘And her husband? Where is that man on such an important night? Can he not help her through this?’
‘The
‘Go then! Run ahead and wave to me when I come near.’ Will instructed. ‘Mind you keep both eyes on your mistress, though!’ He added as a severe afterthought.
He followed the maid’s path through the snow and almost pouted as the warm, inviting light leaking through the windows of his cabin faded away.
Will trudged quickly past his haughty woodpile and out of the yard. He ran swiftly through the untamed forest and pushed his vigour to its end. He chanced only transient glimpses at the canopy above because the wind moved drifts of snow like a slowly swelling sea that rose and fell with the ebbing and flowing gusts of wind.
Will stumbled frequently over his own freezing legs. Despite his rapid panting and profuse sweating Will righted himself each time and continued sloshing through the snow.
The wind fought the old doctor’s advance and tasted him bitterly with its victimising sting. It taunted and tortured his body and ephemeral gusts chilled his hands and neck.
‘I forgot my mittens,’ Will said to himself. He shivered as a wet pile of snow fell from a tree above and hit his neck. ‘I forgot my scarf!’ Will screamed angrily.
He lifted his coat to shield his numbing face. His cold nose dripped fluid which crystallized feeling the wind’s polar grasp and the liquid from his watery eyes coagulated, and then congealed, on his dry lips and cheeks.
Despite the onslaught the old doctor passed quickly over the barely-trodden dirt and pebble path which connected the warm cabins. Glowing little houses that were illuminated by the fires and candles within caught his gaze and he contemptuously scorned the gleeful men and women fortunate to be safe inside the blessed shelters. In his wrathful mind, he saw women dancing and curtsying and he saw suitors court the rosy-cheeked, smiling women. The women responded dully and then clasped their suitors’ arms, intertwining their limbs like those of old and pompous oak trees.
A sudden bout of jealousy invaded Will and he cursed his job. He envied the men inside with the rosy-cheeked women, and swore that he’d give anything (a dozen prayers!) to be there with them.
Will stumbled past a humble gray cottage surrounded by trees and bushes that had once produced beautiful pink blossoms in spring and then gorgeous red apples in fall. He always wondered what the blossoms were like in summer but summer was a busy time.
Will
heard a scream from behind and turned furiously.
‘Light a fire!’ Will commanded sharply as he sat his trunk on a table beside the red satin bed which held the pregnant mistress. Her purple eyelids hid her eyes beneath them and her red face was warm and dry. The old doctor moved a trembling finger slowly to his mouth, silencing the black woman's intense panic and anxiety.
‘Is she awrigh'? Is she awrigh'?’ The maid cried, rising from the fireplace to the mantle. She collected a match and struck its red tip along the erratic stone surface of the fireplace until a tiny flame was kindled at its end. She lunged forward and threw the match into the fire.
‘Quiet, Rosa!’ Will said. He tried to ignore the maid and massaged the mistress’ stomach gently. He evaluated the swollen lump with the prowess of a well-versed doctor and motioned for her to push.
‘Push hard, push hard! Don’t forget to breathe!’ Will instructed.
The mistress pushed and convulsed though she was already exhausted with the prolonged birth of her child. She contracted her sore muscles rhythmically gasped as sharp pains shot through her weak body more rapidly than moist breath from her dry mouth. The woman clenched her fists.
The
screams of the pregnant mistress grew into a powerful music that filled the
entire cabin. It dove into the corners of the room and seemed to hang in the
air, floating.
Will gazed at the suffering maid and her deplorable nausea. She sat sick with grief through the remainder of the labour. She tapped her foot irritably, greedy for the venerable cries of her mistress’ child. She sighed as the mistress screamed and an astonished look was perpetually plastered upon her face.
‘Oh
the Lord ha’ blessed us tonight!’ The maid cried hoarsely. She kissed the baby’s
little cheeks and matted the few tendrils of hair on its little head. The baby
jocularly poked
Thoughts of Will’s own hypothetical marriage entered his mind and dreams of a wife and of a child filled his mind. His thoughts were interrupted by the mistress’ exhausted stirring.
‘
‘ ‘Mistress, I ain't ben to no store! I couldn't go, mistress, with the babe an' you all sick! I em so sorry, mistress! We ben eatin’, you ‘en I, the month-old rabbit, mistress, from yar husband, and we et it all! I em so sorry, mistress!’
The colour faded from the mistress but she held on to her waning health for awhile. Gradually, though, she fell into a feverish stupor. She screamed and cried and cursed and ripped at her moist, sweaty hair. She scratched her naked body with her fingernails and blood careened from her neck and shoulders. She flailed her hands toward Will and twisted upon the red satin bed which was now stained with the remnants of a successful birth.
Will attempted in vain to pacify the rabid woman: he sang joyous songs of spring and happiness, and groped her sweating hands. He, as a husband would, embraced her and stroked her face, whispering into her burning ears. ‘Oh hold on,’ he said inaudibly.
‘Should I go out ‘en get some food?’
‘Maybe—’ The old doctor said. He halted mid-sentence and paused for a moment.
‘No, Rosa. It’s death out there. Listen to how the storm howls!’ They both strained their ears but the ringing scream of the baby drowned their efforts.
As the endless hours of the stupor passed, condition worsened. She lay almost lifeless on the bed with her baby asleep in her arms. Will bowed his head in prayer before leaning her head back and moving a block of ginger and sal volatile to her face. She coughed when she smelled the potent aroma of the ginger and ammonium, her birth remains, and the warm stench of putrefying and curdling blood. The blood and fluids surrounded her as a tumultuous ocean surrounding a quaking island.
The toxic odour of urine released periodically during birth filled her undulating nostrils. She inhibited vomit and sank into a pillow. Her face was very pale now.
‘She'll be okay, righ'? Mistress'll be fine?’ The maid paused. ‘Tell me, sir, that the mistress'll be fine!’
‘I don’t know,
He stared out into the darkening landscape and noted the myriad trees contorted by the wind. He knelt to the floor and delved into the small pile of birth remnants. He located the mistress’ warm, fragrant placenta and roused a tiny, durable penknife from his pocket. He hastily cut a stringy sliver of the warm, jelly-like membrane.
‘Sir, tell me——’
‘Open her mouth,
‘Sir——’
‘Now! Open her mouth!’ Will commanded angrily before handing