Once the April mud had dried, I started to venture more and more boldly into the neighbourhood on the pretext of making my rounds. At this time of year I was happy to drop in at Achthozja, the hamlet next to the quarry, where the Dentist lived. And like every year I came upon an astonishing sight – there on the brilliant green grass, under a sheet of blue sky, stood the dilapidated white dental chair, with someone half-lying on it, mouth wide open to the Sun, while the Dentist leaned over him, drill in hand. Meanwhile, his foot was moving monotonously, steadily pressing on the drill pedal. And a few metres away another two or three fellows were watching this scene in rapt silence as they sipped their beers.
The Dentist’s main occupation was pulling out aching teeth, and sometimes, more rarely, treating them. He also made dentures. Before I knew of his existence, I had very often wondered what sort of a race could have settled here, in this area. Many of the local people had quite distinctive teeth, as if they were all a family, with the same genes or the same configuration in their Horoscope. Especially the older ones: their teeth were long and narrow, with a blue tinge. Strange teeth. I came up with an alternative Hypothesis too, for I had heard that under the Plateau there were deep seams of uranium, which, as everyone knows, has an effect on various Anomalies.
By now I knew that these were the Dentist’s false teeth, his trademark, his brand. Like every artist, he was unique.
In my view he could have been a tourist attraction for Kłodzko Valley, if only what he did were legal. Unfortunately, some years ago he was stripped of his licence to practise his profession because of alcohol abuse. It’s odd that they don’t take away a dentist’s professional licence because of poor sight. This Ailment could be far more dangerous for the patient. And the Dentist wore powerful spectacles, with one of the lenses taped into place.
That day he was drilling a man’s tooth. It was hard to recognise the patient’s facial features, twisted in pain and mildly numbed by alcohol, with which the Dentist anaesthetised his patients. The dreadful noise of the drill bored into my brain, stirring the ghastliest childhood memories.
‘How’s life?’ I said in greeting.
‘Bearable,’ replied the Dentist with a broad smile, which reminded me of the old adage ‘Physician, heal thyself’. ‘You haven’t been here for ages. I think the last time we met was when you were looking for your…’
‘Yes, yes,’ I interrupted him. ‘It was impossible to walk this far in the winter. By the time I’d dug myself out of the snow it would be dark.’
He went back to his drilling and I stood with the other onlookers, pensively watching the drill working in the man’s mouth.
‘Have you seen the white foxes?’ one of the men asked me. He had a beautiful face. If his life had turned out differently I’m sure he’d have been a film star. But now his good looks were disappearing beneath a network of furrows and wrinkles.
‘They say Innerd let them out before he ran off,’ said a second man.
‘Maybe he had pangs of conscience,’ I added. ‘Maybe the Foxes ate him.’
The Dentist glanced at me with curiosity. He nodded and sank the drill into the patient’s tooth. The poor man jolted in the chair.
‘Isn’t it possible to fill a tooth without all that drilling?’ I asked.
But no one seemed particularly concerned about the patient.
‘First Big Foot, then the Commandant, now Innerd…’ sighed the Beautiful Man. ‘A man’s afraid to leave the house. After dark I tell my old woman to deal with everything outside.’
‘You’ve found an intelligent solution,’ I said, and then slowly added: ‘Animals are taking revenge on them for hunting.’
‘You must be joking…Big Foot didn’t hunt,’ said the Beautiful Man doubtfully.
‘But he was a beater,’ said someone else. ‘Mrs Duszejko’s right. And he was the biggest poacher around here, wasn’t he?’
The Dentist smeared a bit of white paste onto a little plate and put it into the drilled tooth with a spatula. ‘Yes, it’s possible,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It really is possible – there has to be some justice, doesn’t there? Yes, yes. Animals.’
The patient moaned pitifully.
‘Do you believe in divine providence?’ the Dentist suddenly asked me, coming to a standstill over the patient. There was a note of provocation in his voice.
The men sniggered, as if they had heard something improper. I had to think about it.
‘Because I do,’ he said, without waiting for an answer. He gave the patient a friendly clap on the shoulder, and the man leaped from the chair, happy. ‘Next,’ he said. One of the group of onlookers stepped forward and reluctantly sat in the chair.
‘What’s up?’ asked the Dentist.
In reply the man opened his mouth, and the Dentist peeked into it. He instantly recoiled, saying: ‘What the fuck!’ which must have been the shortest possible assessment of the state of the patient’s dentition. For a while he prodded with his fingers to check how secure the man’s teeth were, and then reached behind him for a bottle of vodka. ‘Here, drink up. We’ll pull it out.’
The man mumbled something indistinct, utterly disheartened by this unwelcome verdict. He accepted the near full tumbler of vodka proffered by the Dentist and downed it in one. I was sure he wouldn’t feel any pain after that much anaesthetic.
While we were waiting for the alcohol to take effect, the men excitedly began to talk about the quarry, which apparently is going to be reopened. Year by year it will swallow the Plateau, until it has devoured the whole thing. We’ll have to move away from here. If they do actually reopen it, the Dentist’s hamlet will be the first to be relocated.
‘No, I don’t believe in divine providence,’ I said. ‘Form a protest committee,’ I advised them. ‘Organise a demonstration.’
‘Après nous le déluge,’ said the Dentist, sticking his fingers into the mouth of his patient, barely conscious by now. Then, with ease, without effort, he extracted a blackened tooth. All we heard was a slight crack. It made me feel faint.
‘They should take revenge for all of it,’ said the Dentist. ‘Animals should fuck it all to buggery.’
‘Quite so. Sodding well screw it into oblivion,’ I followed his lead, and the men glanced at me with surprise and respect.
I went home by a roundabout route; by now it was well into the afternoon. And that was when, at the edge of the forest, I saw the white Foxes, two of them. They were moving slowly, one behind the other. Their whiteness against the green meadow was like something from another world. They looked like the diplomatic service of the Animal Kingdom, come here to reconnoitre.
At the start of May the dandelions flowered. In a good year they were already in bloom on the holiday weekend, when the owners arrived at their houses for the first time after the winter. In a less good year they didn’t carpet the meadows in yellow spots until Victory Day, on the eighth. Every year, Dizzy and I admired this miracle of miracles.
Unfortunately, for Dizzy it was a harbinger of tough times; two weeks later his various allergies would hit him – tears streamed from his eyes, he choked and suffocated. In town it was just about bearable, but on Fridays when he came to see me I was obliged to shut all the doors and windows tight to stop the invisible allergens from getting inside his nose. In June, when the grasses were flowering, we had to move our translation sessions to his place in town.