by Wilbur Smith
‘Beautiful, really lovely – we have cleaned up the infection nicely. Now we can begin.’
The head was cleansed of its running rivers of pus, and now it was glistening and wet, bald and bright red, the colour of a cocktail cherry as granulation tissue formed. There were two gnarled and twisted flaps for ears, the double row of teeth startlingly white and perfect where the lips had been eaten away, a long white blade of exposed bone outlined the point of the jaw, the nose was a stump with the nostrils like the double muzzles of a shotgun, and only the eyes were still beautiful – dark indigo and flawlessly white between lids of shocking crimson and neatly laid back stitches.
‘We’ll begin at the back of the neck. Will you prep for this afternoon’s theatre, please, Sister?’
It was a variation on the theme of the knife. They planed sheets of live skin from his thighs and meshed them to allow a wider spread, then they laid them over the exposed flesh, covering a little at each session, and evaluating each attempt while David lay in his cot and rode the long swells of pain.
‘That one is no good. I’m afraid we will have to scrap it and try again.’
While his thighs grew a new crop of skin, they planed fresh sheets from his calves, so that each donor-site became a new source of pain.
‘Lovely! An edge-to-edge take with that graft.’
Slowly the cap of skin extended up across the nape of his neck and over his scalp. The meshing of the skin grafts gave them a patterned effect, regular as the scales of a fish, and the new grafts were hard-looking and raised.
‘We can move the pedicel up now.’
‘This afternoon’s theatre, Doctor?’
‘Yes, please, Sister.’
David came to know that they operated every Thursday in the burns unit. He came to dread the Thursday morning rounds when the consultant and his staff crowded around his cot and touched and prodded and discussed the restructuring of his flesh with an impersonal candour that chilled him.
They freed the fat sausage of flesh from his belly and it dangled from his arm like some grotesque white leech, seeming to have a life of its own, drawing blood and sustenance from its grip upon his forearm.
They lifted his arm and strapped it across his chest, and the raw end of the pedicel they split and stitched to his jaw and to the stump of his nose.
‘It’s taken very nicely. We will begin shaping it this afternoon. We’ll have him at the head of the theatre list. Will you see to that please, Sister?’
With the living flesh that they had stolen from his belly they fashioned a crude lump of a nose, taut, narrow lips and a new covering for his jawbone.
‘The oedema has settled. This afternoon I will go for the bone-graft on the jaw.’
They opened his chest and split his fourth rib laterally, robbing it of a long sliver of bone, and they grafted this to the damaged jaw-bone, then they spread the flesh of the pedicel over it and stitched it all into place.
On Thursdays it was the knife and the stink of anaesthetic, and for the days in between it was the ache and pain of abused and healing flesh.
They fined down the new nose, piercing it with nostrils, they finished the reconstruction of his eyelids. They laid the last grafts behind his ears, they cut a double zig-zag incision around the base of his jaw where the contracting scar tissue was trying to draw his chin down on to his chest. The new lips took firm hold on the existing muscles and David gained control of them so he could form his words again and speak clearly.
The last area of raw flesh was closed beneath the patchwork of skin grafts, flesh grafts and stitches. David was no longer a high-infection risk and he was moved from a sterile environment. Once again he saw human faces, not merely eyes peering over white surgical masks. The faces were friendly, cheerful faces. Men and women proud of their achievement in saving him from death and refleshing his ravaged head.
‘You’ll be allowed visitors now, and I expect you’ll welcome that,’ said the consultant. He was a distinguished-looking young surgeon who had left a highly paid post at a Swiss clinic to head this burns and plastic surgery unit.
‘I don’t think I will be having any visitors,’ David had lost contact with the reality of the outside world during the nine months in the burns unit.
‘Oh, yes, you will,’ the surgeon told him. ‘We’ve had regular enquiries on your progress from a number of people. Isn’t that correct, Sister?’
‘That’s right, Doctor.’
‘You can let them know that he is allowed visitors now.’
The consultant and his group began to move on.
‘Doctor,’ David called him back. ‘I want a look at a mirror,’ and they were all silent, immediately embarrassed. This request of his had been denied many times over the last months.
‘Damn it,’ David became angry. ‘You can’t protect me from it for ever.’
The consultant gestured for the others to leave and they filed out of the ward, while he came back to David’s bed.
‘All right, David,’ he agreed gently. ‘We’ll find you a mirror – though we don’t have much use for them around here.’ For the first time in the many months he had known him, David glimpsed the depths of his compassion, and he wondered at it. That a man who lived constantly amongst great pain and terrible disfigurement could still be moved by it.
‘You must understand that how you are now is not how you will always be. All I have been able to do, so far, is heal your exposed flesh and make you functional again. You are once more a viable human being. You have not experienced the loss of any of your faculties – but I will not pretend that you are beautiful. However, there remains much that I can still do to change that. Your ears, for example, can be reconstructed with the material I have reserved for that purpose—’ He indicated the stump of the pedicel that still hung from David’s forearm. ‘– There is much fine work still to be done about the nose and mouth and eyes.’ He paced slowly the length of the ward and looked out into the sunlight for a moment before turning back again and coming forward to face David.
‘But let me be truthful with you. There are limitations to what I can do. The muscles of expression, those delicate little muscles around the eyes and mouth, have been destroyed. I cannot replace those. The hair follicles of your lashes and brows and scalp have been burned away. You will be able to wear a wig, but—’
David turned to his bedside locker and took from the drawer his wallet. He opened it and drew out a photograph. It was the one which Hannah had taken so long ago of Debra and David sitting at the rock-pool in the oasis of Ein Gedi and smiling at each other. He handed it to the surgeon.
‘Is that what you looked like, David? I never knew.’ The regret showed like a quick shadow in his eyes.
‘Can you make me look like that again?’
The surgeon studied the photograph a moment longer, the young god’s face with the dark mop of hair and the clean pure lines of the profile.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I could not even come close.’
‘That’s all I wanted to know.’ David took the photograph back from him. ‘You say I’m functional now. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
‘You don’t want further cosmetic surgery? We can still do a lot—’
‘Doctor, I’ve lived under the knife for nine months. I’ve had the taste of antibiotics and anaesthetic in my mouth, and the stink of it in my nostrils for all that time. Now all I want is a little escape from pain – a little peace and the taste of clean air.’
‘Very well,’ the surgeon agreed readily. ‘It is not important that we do it now. You could come back at any time in the future.’ He walked to the door of the ward. ‘Come on. Let’s go find a mirror.’
There was one in the nurses’ room beyond the double doors at the end of the passage. The room itself was empty and the mirror was set into the wall above the wash basin.
The surgeon stood in the doorway and leaned against the jamb. He lit a cigarette and watched as David crossed towards the mirror and then hal
ted abruptly as he saw his own image.
He wore the blue hospital dressing-gown over his pyjamas. He was tall and finely proportioned. His shoulders were wide, his hips narrow, and he had the same lithe and beautiful man’s body.
However, the head that topped it was something from a nightmare. Involuntarily he gasped out aloud and the gash of a mouth parted in sympathy. It was a tight lipless mouth, like that of a cobra, white-rimmed and harsh.
Drawn by the awful fascination of the horror, David drew closer to the mirror. The thick mane of his dark hair had concealed the peculiar elongation of his skull. He had never realized that it jutted out behind like that, for now the hair was gone and the bald curve was covered with meshed skin, thickened and raised.
The skin and flesh of his face was a patchwork, joined by seams of scar tissue drawn tightly over his cheekbones, giving him a vaguely Asiatic appearance, but the eyes were round and startled, with clumsy lids and puffed dead-looking flesh beneath.
His nose was a shapeless blob, out of balance with his other coarsened features, and his ears were gnarled excrescences, seemingly fastened haphazardly to the sides of his head. The whole of it was bland and bald and boiled-looking.
The gash of a mouth twisted briefly in a horrid rictus, and then regained its frozen shape.
‘I can’t smile,’ said David.
‘No,’ agreed the surgeon. ‘You will have no control of your expressions.’
That was the truly horrifying aspect of it. It was not the twisted and tortured flesh, with the scarring and stitch marks still so evident – it was the expressionlessness of this mask. The frozen features seemed long dead, incapable of human warmth or feeling.
‘Yeah! But you should have seen the other guy!’ David said softly, and the surgeon chuckled without mirth.
‘We’ll have those last few stitches behind your ears out tomorrow – I shall remove what remains of the pedicel from your arm – and then you can be discharged. Come back to us when you are ready.’
David ran his hand gingerly over the bald patterned skull.
‘I’m going to save a fortune in haircuts and razor blades,’ he said, and the surgeon turned quickly away and walked down the passage, leaving David to get to know his new head.
The clothes that they had found for him were cheap and ill-fitting – slacks and open-neck shirt, a light jacket and sandals – and he asked for some head covering, anything to conceal the weird new shape of his scalp. One of the nurses found him a cloth cap, and then told him that a visitor was waiting for him in the hospital superintendent’s department.
He was a major from the military provost marshal’s office, a lean grey-haired man with cold grey eyes and a tight hard mouth. He introduced himself without offering to shake hands and then opened the file on the desk in front of him.
‘I have been instructed by my office to ask for the formal resignation of your commission in the Israeli Air Force,’ he started, and David stared at him. In the long pain-filled, fever-hot nights, the thought of flying once more had seemed like a prospect of paradise.
‘I don’t understand,’ he mumbled, and reached for- a cigarette, breaking the first match and then puffing quickly as the second flared. ‘You want my resignation – and if I refuse?’
‘Then we shall have no alternative other than to convene a court martial and to try you for dereliction of duty, and refusing in the face of the enemy to obey the lawful orders of your superior officer.’
‘I see,’ David nodded heavily, and drew on the cigarette. The smoke stung his eyes.
‘It doesn’t seem I have any choice.’
‘I have prepared the necessary documents. Please sign here, and here, and I shall sign as witness.’
David bowed over the papers and signed. The pen scratched loudly in the silent room.
‘Thank you.’ The major gathered his papers, and placed them in his briefcase. He nodded at David and started for the door.
‘So now I am an outcast,’ said David softly, and the man stopped. They stared at each other for a moment, and then the major’s expression altered slightly, and the cold grey eyes became ferocious.
‘You are responsible for the destruction of two warplanes that are irreplaceable and whose loss has caused us incalculable harm. You are responsible for the death of a brother officer, and for bringing your country to the very brink of open war which would have cost many thousands more of our young people’s lives – and possibly our very existence. You have embarrassed our international friends – and given strength to our enemies.’ He paused and drew a deep breath. ‘The recommendation of my office was that you be brought to trial and. that the prosecution be instructed to ask for the death penalty. It was only the personal intervention of the Prime Minister and of Major-General Mordecai that saved you from that. In my view, instead of bemoaning your fate, you should consider yourself highly fortunate.’
He turned away and his footsteps cracked on the stone floor as he strode from the room.
In the bleak impersonal lobby of the hospital, David was suddenly struck by a reluctance to walk on out into the spring sunshine through the glass swing doors. He had heard that long-term prisoners felt this way when the time came for their release.
Before he reached the doors he turned aside and went down to the hospital synagogue. In a corner of the quiet square hall he sat for a long time. The stained-glass windows, set high in the nave, filled the air with shafts of coloured lights when the sun came through, and a little of the peace and beauty of that place stayed with him and gave him courage when at last he walked out into the square and boarded a bus for Jerusalem.
He found a seat at the rear, and beside a window. The bus pulled away and ground slowly up the hill towards the city.
He became aware that he was being watched, and he lifted his head to find that a woman with two young children had taken the seat in front of him. She was a poorly dressed, harassed-looking woman, prematurely aged and she held the grubby young infant on her lap and fed it from the plastic bottle. However, the second child was an angelic little girl of four or five years. She had huge dark eyes and a head of thick curls. She stood on the seat facing backwards, with one thumb thrust deeply into her mouth. She was watching David steadily over the back of the seat, studying his face with that total absorption and candour of the child. David felt a sudden warmth of emotion for the child, a longing for the comfort of human contact, of which he had been deprived all these months.
He leaned forward in his seat, trying to smile, reaching out a gentle hand to touch the child’s arm.
She removed her thumb from her mouth and shrank away from him, turning to her mother and clinging to her arm, hiding her face in the woman’s blouse.
At the next stop David stepped down from the bus and left the road to climb the stony hillside.
The day was warm and drowsy, with the bee murmur and the smell of the blossoms from the peach orchards. He climbed the terraces and rested at the crest, for he found he was breathless and shaky. Months in hospital had left him unaccustomed to walking far, but it was not that alone. The episode with the child had distressed him terribly.
He looked longingly towards the sky. It was clear and brilliant blue, with high silver cloud in the north. He wished he could ascend beyond those clouds. He knew he would find peace up there.
A taxi dropped him off at the top of Malik Street. The front door was unlocked, swinging open before he could fit his key in the lock.
Puzzled and alarmed he stepped into the living-room. It was as he had left it so many months before, but somebody had cleaned and swept, and there were fresh flowers in a vase upon the olive-wood table . – a huge bouquet of gaily coloured dahlias, yellow and scarlet.
David smelled food, hot and spicy and tantalizing after the bland hospital fare.
‘Hello,’ he called. ‘Who is there?’
‘Welcome home!’ There was a familiar bellow from behind the closed bathroom door. ‘I didn’t expect you so soon – and y
ou’ve caught me with my skirts up and pants down.’
There was a scuffling sound and then the toilet flushed thunderously and the door was flung open. Ella Kadesh appeared majestically through it. She wore one of her huge kaftans, it was a blaze of primary colours. Her hat was apple-green in colour, the brim pinned up at the side like an Australian bush hat by an enormous jade brooch and a bunch of ostrich feathers.
Her heavy arms were flung wide in a gesture of welcome, and the face was split in a huge grin of anticipation. She came towards him, and the grin persisted long after the horror had dawned in her bright little eyes. Her steps slowed.
‘David?’ Her voice was uncertain. ‘It is you, David?’
‘Hello, Ella.’
‘Oh God. Oh, sweet holy name of God. What have they done to you, my beautiful young Mars—’
‘Listen, you old bag,’ he said sharply, ‘if you start blubbering I’m going to throw you down the steps.’
She made a huge effort to control it, fighting back the tears that flooded into her eyes, but her jowls wobbled and her voice was thick and nasal as she enfolded him in her huge arms and hugged him to her bosom.
‘I’ve got a case of cold beers in the refrigerator – and I made a pot of curry for us. You’ll love my curry, it’s the thing I do best—’
David ate with enormous appetite, washing down the fiery food with cold beer, and he listened to Ella talk. She spouted words like a fountain, using their flow to cover her pity and embarrassment.
‘They would not let me visit you, but I telephoned every week and kept in touch that way. The sister and I got very friendly, she let me know you were coming today. So I drove up to make sure you had a welcome—’
She tried to avoid looking directly at his face, but when she did the shadows appeared in her eyes, even though she made a convincing effort at gaiety. When he finished eating at last, she asked, ‘What will you do now, David?’
‘I would have liked to go back and fly. It’s the thing I like to do best – but they have forced me to resign my commission. I disobeyed orders, Joe and I followed them across the border, and they don’t want me any more.’
