Facing the Hunchback of Notre Dame (7 page)

A
t the end of the last chapter, I added some tension to the story. If things had continued along in the same vein, then you might have set down the book and hopped onto a computer somewhere. And we all know that some shortsighted knuckle-heads designed those devices to turn people’s brains to porridge (hot breakfast cereal, like oatmeal) — especially children’s. The powers that be—and nobody knows who they really are—want to make sure the next generation turns into a flock of mindless sheep. Corporations and conglomerates (a grouping of corporations) are able to get more of your money that way
.

You may be wondering what harm a few raindrops can cause. Well, a few raindrops do little but remind one of the corny rhyming song, “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day. “But when raindrops continue to fall and collect upon themselves, it becomes an entirely different matter. Ask Noah. He could tell you more about it than I could while sitting here behind my old typewriter in my little closet in the English department.

Ophelia spent the afternoon reading, and every couple of hours the boys brought good food for Quasimodo to sample while he whittled that block of wood. It was generally a quiet rainy afternoon in the attic. My kind of day.

Ophelia kept looking up from the pages of her novel to gaze at Quasimodo, feeling more sorrow for a person than she’d ever felt in her fourteen long years. This is called empathy, or the ability to
put yourself in another person’s shoes. If you can do this, then you are a much better human being than those who cannot. And that is all I have to say about that!

You see, despite the fact that Quasimodo found himself in the stocks because Deacon Frollo (his stepfather) forced Quasi to help him kidnap Esmeralda the Gypsy girl (obviously an unsuccessful venture), Esmeralda had just given Quasi a drink of water.

And now he was in love.

Poor thing, thought Ophelia, knowing that beautiful Gypsy girls never fall in love with monstrous versions of humanity like Quasimodo. Instead, girls like Esmeralda fall for dashing captains like Phoebus who don’t give them the time of day or even the weather forecast, for that matter. Such young ladies often turned themselves into a sort of version of Quasimodo, only higher up on the “food chain” (those portions of society that deem themselves better than most people, typically a bit prettier, and generally possessing more money). Why a poor Gypsy girl thought a noble soldier like Phoebus would fall in love with her says something about her ego in an age in which all people were relegated (assigned, by birth in this instance) to a certain class of people. The admiration of the crowds must have sunk into her brain a bit too far.

Nevertheless, sometimes love stories between two people from different strata (levels) of society work out. But not usually. Ask any sociologist.
(And please, don’t get me started about the sociology department at the university. Those people need to straighten up their act!)

Ophelia sidled (walked casually) up to Linus in the kitchen as he was making another round of PB&Js. “Do you think we can change things for Quasi back in the Book World?”

“Huh?” He pulled out six pieces of bread from the bag.

“The imaginary realm.” She handed him the peanut butter jar and a knife. “Make me one too, please.”

He slid out two more slices and said nothing.

“Well, it’s like this, Linus. Maybe we can tell Quasi the truth about Esmeralda. She’s pretty and all, sure. But she’ll never want anything to do with him. He should know that.”

Linus shrugged. “Maybe.”

“It’s worth a try, right?”

“Sure.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “Oh thank you, Linus,” she said. “You’re always so good to talk to.”

“That’s enough of that,” Linus said, wiping his scarlet cheek again.

Ophelia walked to the window overlooking the street. “It’s really coming down now. Do you know the forecast?”

“Rain. For the next three days.”

“Yuck.”

Uncle Augustus stepped into the kitchen. “How about one for me, Linus?”

Linus sighed and took two more slices of bread from the bag.

“Ah, looking at the rain I see. I spent many hours doing that when I was your age, Ophelia. Of course, we lived in Seattle at the time.”

“I guess it was hard not to.”

“Did you know that Kingscross is on a flood plain?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Oh yes! We’re due for a hundred-year flood, too. They say it can be terrible, and with that dam upriver …”

“Maybe we should move stuff out of the basement.” Linus could hardly believe he’d said the words. They’d just popped out of his practical brain when he wasn’t thinking.

“Good idea! You kids do that. I’m sure you have nothing better to do today.”

It was a job sneaking Quasimodo down to the basement, but nobody complained about the inconvenience. With his strong arm muscles and willingness to work hard, he was a great help. And he seemed glad for something to do. Walter was a big help as well, working up a sweat while Ophelia sat on an old chair the color of sidewalk gum and continued reading
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
.

“You could help out a bit,” Linus said to Ophelia after a poof of dust exploded in his face after he set down a half-open box of old-fashioned looking clothes.

“It’s quite all right,” Quasi said. “I’m more than happy to help.
And a fine lady such as Ophelia should not be subjected to heavy labor.” Then he stammered, “What I mean to say, such a young lady should not be so burdened, that is,” he said, growing redder by the minute, “no young miss should have to lift when there are strong young men around.”

“Thank you Quasi,” Ophelia said, turning rather pink herself. “I would help, but if you remember one of us needs to finish your book, and I don’t believe anyone else has a start on it yet.”

“How convenient,” Linus smirked.

“See here!” Walter cried out, seemingly oblivious to the exchange, as he held up a box. “It’s a box of books!”

They all groaned.

But nobody groaned an hour later when Walter discovered a box full of memorabilia. He picked up object after object.

“Look, Ophelia.”

She arose from her chair and leaned over the box. “Oh my!” One by one she picked up what seemed to be Juliet’s cap, Macbeth’s broadsword, and the dagger Brutus might have used to slay Julius Caesar. “It’s like treasures from the mind of William Shakespeare!” The three of them continued to rifle through the contents.

Then the boys pulled out more intriguing boxes labeled
The Canterbury Tales
,
The Three Musketeers
,
The Iliad
,
The Odyssey
, and more. Ten other boxes.

Ophelia met Linus’s eyes.

Cato Grubbs, the mad scientist of the enchanted circle, was alive and well. And obviously he was a very busy man. Or was he? Could it be Cato, or perhaps someone else? Who could know?

A further conversation with Aunt Portia and Uncle Augustus was most definitely in order! Maybe they possessed more information about the former owner of the house than they were letting on.

“Did you see that?” asked Walter.

“See what?” Ophelia said.

“I thought I saw a shadow over there, in the corner by the furnace.”

Linus shook his head. “Sorry.”

Quasi set down a box on the bottom step. “I did, Walter. It looked like a man.”

“A rather fat man?” asked Walter.

“Yes.”

“I wonder who it could be?” Walter reached for another box to carry upstairs.

“Let’s hope it’s nobody,” said Ophelia. “Let’s hope there’s a reasonable explanation for whatever you saw.”

Later that afternoon, they were back upstairs listening to the rain. Walter couldn’t stand being cooped up any longer. “Let’s take a quick walk to the river,” he said. “Surely we can get Quasi there and back without any trouble.”

“I’ve got to read,” said Ophelia, lying comfortably on Linus’s bed.

“It’s still raining,” said Linus, doing some sort of calculation on the wall by the door.

“Then it’s on me. Right,” said Walter. “You mind a little rain?” he asked Quasi.

“No, I don’t.”

“I’ll run interference for you,” Ophelia offered. She hurried down the steps to the bookshop’s office and engaged Aunt Portia in a conversation about literary fantasy. Uncle Auggie was out for the afternoon, headed to an estate sale in search of more books.

Walter hurried out the front door of the shop, side by side with Quasimodo.

“Are you sure this is all right?” asked Quasi, his gait rambling and crablike due to his severely bowed legs.

“Absolutely.”

They ambled through the stone pillared gateway at the entrance to the park and made for the river.

Of course, a boy like Quasi, especially when he’s clad in a pirate costume, can be only so inconspicuous. As Quasi and Walter strolled past a group of teenagers playing touch football, the young men stopped what they were doing and stared.

Then one cupped a hand beside his mouth and hollered, “Trick or treat!”

“Great costume!” yelled another.

The group now approached Walter and Quasimodo, and their apparent leader stepped forward. Walter knew how to size up a group, and he knew you always went for the toughest guy, if it came
down to it. He quickly did the math. This guy was bigger than he was, but also fatter. Walter could take him if he had to. He’d just have to work a little harder.

Walter extended a hand. “I’m Walter.”

“And, oh dear, dahling, I’m Briiii — an,” he said in an awful imitation of a British accent. “Who’s the freak and where did he get that mask? It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Quasi looked down and shuffled his feet.

The last thing Walter wanted was a fight. He motioned Brian to come a little closer. “It’s not a mask. And do you see the size of his hands?” he whispered. “He’s as mean as he looks, too.”

Brian quickly stepped back, pointed at Quasi, and said, “What a loser.”

“Yeah,” the others muttered.

“Let’s get back to the game.”

Walter breathed a sigh of relief. He could fight, but he usually let his mouth do everything it could to prevent it. Another success!

They continued on down the path a ways, and then Quasi asked, “What’s a ‘freak’? What’s a ‘loser’? Although, I think I can figure that one out. But what did I lose? Does he know something I don’t?”

“No, Quasi. He doesn’t know a thing. That lad is a brainless Neanderthal.”

“What’s a ‘Neanderthal’?”

They sat down on a park bench overlooking the river as the rain continued falling in a light mist.

Good, thought Walter, a change of topic. He jumped on it.

A
unt Portia had decided to go with a pea green theme for teatime, which brought a grimace to Ophelia’s lips. The theme should have been orange, since Portia generally tripped her culinary way along the light spectrum. But she was preoccupied by the rain falling nonstop for the past six hours. Forty-two hours and counting until they ushered Quasimodo back into the circle and back home to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.

Ophelia worried about finishing the novel by then. She read quickly, to be sure. Nevertheless, she thought she might give reading at the dinner table a go. Better to be safe than sorry when someone’s life is in your hands. Oh, the pressure!

Uncle Augustus cleared his throat and settled his cutlery in the proper position. “Ophelia, darling. This isn’t a library, you know.”

“But it’s just so good, Uncle Auggie!”

“Be that as it may, dinnertime is a social time, not a necessary evil.”

“Teatime,” corrected Aunt Portia.

Linus, loving food the way he did, had to agree. He nodded once in his uncle’s general direction, and they exchanged that man-to-man expression that Ophelia and Portia despised.

The females shook their heads. Ophelia laid the book aside and began eating her pea soup. Coming up next was pea salad, of course, followed by some kind of pea spread on crackers. Thankfully, no
pea-flavored crackers could be found on the shelves of any grocery store.

Aunt Portia had outdone herself.

“It certainly doesn’t look good down by the river,” said Uncle Augustus as he spooned up his soup against the far side of the bowl.

Aunt Portia picked up a cracker and bit off the end of it. “The rain isn’t supposed to let up for days. It’s ten years too soon, you know.”

“Too soon for what?” Linus asked.

“The hundred-year flood. The dam up by Joan Dawson’s farm has needed repairing for years. They were supposed to start working on it in July, when the water gets low,” said Aunt Portia. (Joan, a soybean farmer, was surprisingly well read and came into the bookshop at least once a week.)

“Uh-oh,” said Linus, “you don’t think …”

“Unfortunately, I do. If this rain doesn’t slow down …”

“Let’s just hope and pray the dam holds,” said Uncle Augustus. “We’ve had this much rain before, and it’s always been fine.”

Ever the pessimist (a person who sees situations in their most negative light), Portia narrowed her eyes. “Let’s hope so. And thank you, children, for getting all of that flotsam and jetsam (various bits of junk and useless items) out of the basement. I’ve been meaning to go through it for years.”

“Speaking of junk in the basement,” Ophelia jumped on the topic, “can you tell us more about Cato Grubbs? We found some of his lab equipment down there. Is he dead?”

Portia leaned forward. (She’s always loved a little harmless gossip. Oh the things she’s told me that I’ll never tell you!) “Nobody knows if he died or not, dear. He simply disappeared one day. And when he didn’t come back for six months, his attorney put the house on the market. He said if we took the contents of the house as well, we could have it for a discount.”

“Guess Mr. Grubbs’s possessions didn’t have much value.”

“No. And rightfully so.” Uncle Augustus leaned forward and said in a low voice, “I didn’t get a good feeling around most of it.”

Ophelia would have tapped her temple with her forefinger if she hadn’t cared about giving away the secret of the enchanted circle. “Did all of it go down to the basement then?”