The Skinner's Revenge. Chris Karsten

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СКАЧАТЬ nerves. Good news, isn’t it?”

      “What’s wrong with my nose and chin?”

      “Nothing is wrong, Mr Lomas, it’s just, er … work in progress, you might say. Little more adjustments to be done.”

      “He called it a weekend facelift. He didn’t say anything about unfinished work!”

      “He couldn’t have known there would be complications.”

      “I have to go to the bathroom.”

      “I’ll bring a bedpan.”

      “I don’t want a bedpan.”

      She helped him out of bed.

      “Take the drip out of my arm.”

      “I can’t.” She held out his dressing gown. “Doctor has to give his permission. Come, slowly now. Do you feel light-headed? Lean on my shoulder until your legs feel stronger. Can you stand on your own?”

      He began to cough, wiped mucus from his lips with the back of his hand.

      “Are you getting a cold, Mr Lomas? It could be the after-effects of the infection.”

      She draped the dressing gown around his shoulders, over the hospital gown. He was short, inclined to chubbiness, especially around the hips and buttocks, with round, fat thighs.

      “Cough syrup. Can you get me some for my cough?”

      “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask the doctor.”

      “Chamberlain’s. It’s harmless. Just a few sips of Chamberlain’s for the cough and my raw throat.”

      “I’ll get you some.”

      He shuffled to the door, the drip stand in one hand. The skin of his face felt taut, but it was free of bandages.

      In the bathroom he found a mirror. Stared.

      He didn’t recognise the face.

      Before, he had been chinless. Now the mirror reflected a chin, a large one, the skin pockmarked, like craters on the surface of the moon. The once flat nose was now sharp, but crooked, the tip pointing up, the nostrils flared.

      The face in the bathroom mirror was a caricature. He recognised only the eyes. The sluggish blink of the lazy eye.

      He started to tremble as the rage seethed and roiled deep inside him. Then, suddenly, not able to be suppressed, his fury erupted in a mournful wail and his body twisted and convulsed as if seized by some undefined spirit, his bulging eyes distended, white froth gathering at the corners of his mouth. He hit his forehead against the bathroom wall and slowly slid down to the floor. He sat there, maybe for a minute, inert, with hunched shoulders. Then he lifted his face and gulped for air. His chest heaved and his quivering hands caressed his cheeks and nose and chin, and he forced his anger back into that dark crevice of his mind where it lurked and waited to be summoned again.

      You’re not attractive, his mother had told him, so don’t make it worse by telling lies. He’d been ten or twelve at the time. Later, at thirty, she’d said: every man deserves the face he’s got. He hadn’t understood what she meant.

      Work in progress. Straightening the nose, turning the tip down, tidying up the nostrils. And chiselling the chin. The craters in the skin were the result of the infection, he knew. It was water under the bridge. There was nothing to be done. He knew all about hides and skins, and he didn’t think a graft was possible. The risk was too great, here, in this place, with the possibility of infection.

      He stood up, looked in the mirror again. With a paper towel, he wiped the sweat from his disfigured face and the froth from his plump lips and, carrying his drip, shuffled back to the men’s ward, past the beds occupied by complaining patients, crawling back under the blankets of his bed at the window. He took a sip from the brown cough-syrup bottle. He liked the liquorice taste, the soothing effect of the thick syrup as it slid down his throat.

      He took another sip, lying propped against the pillows, and once again in full control of his mind and senses he studied the label and noted the ingredients: liquorice, ipecac extract, sodium benzoate as the preservative. He returned the bottle to the nightstand. Ipecac. His mother had given his father and brother ipecac syrup on the night they had suddenly and simultaneously fallen ill. Ipecac syrup was a home remedy used to induce vomiting when someone had ingested poison. Not that it had done his father and brother any good.

      Banishing the two of them once more from his thoughts, he waited for Dr Lippens and wished he had his MP3 so that he could listen to Paganini.

      His thoughts turned to Jules of Bujumbura, whom he’d met in Johannesburg. Jules, who had supplied him with African masks for his gallery of ethnic artefacts in the mall. All his beautiful, authentic masks, which had spoken to him from the walls, sharing with him their stories and legends and myths. All gone now, presumably packed in boxes, gathering dust in the dark, stuffy room where the police locked away their evidence.

      It couldn’t be helped. He couldn’t have brought them along. His flight had been too sudden, entirely unexpected. But he would get others, with Jules, on their travels through Africa. To the Bwa and Nuna in Burkina Faso, the Zackana in Mali, the Grebo of the Côte d’Ivoire, with their rare battle masks.

      Yes, he would like to go in search of a Grebo. The small round eyes signifying vigilance and aggression, the teeth sharply pointed and exposed, the straight nose depicting obduracy – like his own new nose, despite its being crooked. A Grebo as a symbol of a new phase in his life and his destiny, liberated now from the straitjacket that had tied him to his mother for fifty years. A Grebo in the place of his beloved Punu, which he had left on a faceless skull.

      “Mr Lomas, I’m glad to see you’ve come back to us.”

      He opened his eyes, saw the perfect proportions of the surgeon’s face, the harmony and balance lent to the face by the nose and chin. He smelt the subtle aroma of cologne on the unblemished skin. He heard “ooh” and “aah” and “mmm” as the fingers probed and palpated the skin of his cheeks, chin and ears; felt the cold metal of the stethoscope on his chest.

      “How many cosmetic procedures have you done, Dr Lippens?”

      “The nose isn’t right. The splint moved when we were treating the infection. The cartilage didn’t set properly.”

      “How many?”

      “Hundreds. Reconstructive surgery is actually my field. Victims of fire, accidents, shooting incidents, birth deformities.”

      “You said two nights.”

      “We’ll have to work on the chin as well, perhaps a smaller implant, not so prominent. But it’s still better than no chin, isn’t it, Mr Lomas? At least you have a chin now.” He gave a rueful smile.

      The patient didn’t like lies. On that account he had been seriously reprimanded during his childhood by his mother, who had called down fire and brimstone on his head. But there were times, he believed, when a white lie was unavoidable. Even his mother would understand and pardon him.

      “When can I come for the final work on СКАЧАТЬ