The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (59 page)

“I know how that feels!”

“Precisely! You are in a unique position, Bruno, because you have seen this cage from both within and without. And just as you have liberated yourself from the confines of this cage, we must liberate narrative art from its cage. We must return the theatre back to the wild, where it is free, if it so chooses, to rip its spectators to bloody shreds!”

“The theatre of wild animals!”

“Bruno!”—Leon grasped me by the arm, grasped it as forcefully as if he had just suffered a heart attack—“What a brilliant phrase! The theatre of wild animals!”

We toasted to this coinage, violently knocking our martinis together in celebration. An idea had just been born. The theatre of wild animals: we fell in love with the idea at once. In the meantime, I was able to convince Leon to begrudgingly permit me to borrow—he considered it a loan, a term I hoped he would forget about—seven hundred dollars from our company cash box to pay for my nose.

M
y nose. Exactly as I once did, Gwen, upon the lid of a now-quasimythical Plexiglas box on the floor of a small white room in the Behavioral Biology Laboratory of the University of Chicago—the box that led me into civilization—years later, with the same ape knuckles I knocked three times:
knock, knock, knock
. Only this time it was not a transparent plastic box containing a peach that I knocked three times upon, but rather a door—a door I had seen once before—in back of an inconspicuous Brazilian beauty salon. Beside me stood my magnitudinous friend, Leon Smoler, who, finally bending to my desire to have a new nose, had driven me in his ex-wife’s Wagoneer from the apartment we shared on City Island to this place, and would drive me home following my operation. On the drive to Queens we noticed that Leon’s ex-wife’s car was running low on gas. This problem would have been easy enough to ameliorate, but Leon, acting in rational economic self-interest by seeking to minimize production expenses, wanted to milk every last possible mile out of the current contents of the fuel tank, and he planned to make the eighth of a tank that was already at our disposal when we picked it up from Leon’s ex-wife’s house in Yonkers last all the way from City Island to
Queens, then back to City Island, to our apartment behind Artie’s Shrimp Shanty, where he would tenderly outstretch me supine on my bed to convalesce, then back to Yonkers to return the car. I expected to be anesthetized and in no shape to see myself home after the surgery. So long as I got my nose—and I am infinitely grateful to Leon for this favor—I chose not to advise him as to the wisdom or folly of his plan, nor to the ethical questions it raised.

The car was parked outside on the street in front of the Impanema Beauty Salon. Beside Leon stood Cecília, Dr. DaSilva’s wife and the owner of the legitimate end of the business that this establishment conducted. (But what business is
legitimate
, really? The entire system of economic exchange has always smacked of unnaturalness to me, of absolute spiritual illegitimacy.) In the inner pocket of my jacket was an envelope, containing nine one-hundred-dollar bills, two of them borrowed from Audrey and the other seven borrowed from the production budget of
The Tempest
. The door opened. There stood Dr. DaSilva, looking even more like a man in a silent movie than he had before: that slicked-back pewtery fish-skin hair, the ends of his elegant little mustaches pointing down and away from his nasal septum like two arrows, the supreme gentility of his manners, and the gentleness of his demeanor.

I distinctly imagined that I heard the trilling of a toy piano providing musical accompaniment, and after he extended his delicate hand to me and I shook it in greeting, a black title card appeared onscreen, with the words printed on it and framed in an ornate border:
Hello, Mr. Littlemore!
Perhaps there were other words exchanged between us, but they are cleverly implied by our facial expressions and gestures. The doctor asked who this Gargantua was who loomed so tall and wide beside me, and I answered that this was my friend Leon, who drove me here as a personal favor, knowing that after my operation I would not be in any condition to see myself home. Leon tried to follow me into the operating
room, but Dr. DaSilva shook his head and held up his hand, and the piano notes deepened to indicate that Leon was not to be admitted into the operating room, he must wait outside, sorry, it’s my policy, and after some futile arguing Leon stamped his foot and turned away. Dr. DaSilva shut the door, and in my silent movie Leon shuffled over to the waiting area and deposited himself in one of the folding chairs. He then tapped his foot as his eyes flicked back and forth in boredom. He picked up a magazine from the coffee table and begun to flip through it, but it was written in another language, and he could not read it, so he had to content himself with looking at the pictures. Then another black title card flashed on the screen:
Meanwhile…
Cut to Dr. DaSilva’s office-cum-operating room. Dr. DaSilva politely conveyed me to his desk, his hand on my back. Bruno sat, Dr. DaSilva sat, and across the desk we engaged in one last conversation about the nose that he was going to make on my face. My organs trembled with an emotional recipe consisting of three cups excitement and a teaspoon of fear. My eyes drifted to a work counter on one side of the room, where I caught sight of an open black suitcase. It was a surgical kit, made perhaps sometime in the early twentieth century. The surgical instruments were made with a craftsman’s love and precise attention to detail that we rarely glimpse anymore in objects of modern make. The scientific delicacy of those gleaming instruments!—every pair of forceps, scissors, pliers, tweezers, every knife, needle, saw, scalpel, lancet, caliper, trocar, cauter, retractor, spatula and speculum snug in its place, strapped with green ribbons into its proper depression in the green velvet lining of the case. There was, though, a distinct overture of menace in the way these sharp things glistened. Dr. DaSilva told me what I must do after I leave following the operation. He told me I could not remove the bandages until such-and-such a date. He told me not to get them wet. He told me that I might wake up with a face that was wounded, swollen,
badly bruised, looking as if I had been bloodied up in a fistfight. Following surgery, I must stay in bed with my head elevated for the first twenty-four hours. My face would feel puffy, my nose would ache, a dull headache might be present. Swelling and bruising would peak after two to three days, but this could be lessened with the application of cold compresses. Bleeding was common for the first few days of recovery. Do not bend over with the head below the heart, he said, as this might increase swelling and/or bleeding. The nasal packing could be removed after a few days, and the splint could be removed one to two weeks later. I might go a little insane from the unremitting itching beneath his bandages, and it would feel like a swarm of fire ants crawling all over my flesh, but I must under absolutely no circumstances satisfy the desire, which would be a burning one, to scratch the itches. It would be best, the doctor told me, if during the healing period I did not touch my face at all, or at least as little as possible. Do not blow your nose for at least two weeks following the operation, he said. He told me that I must have serene patience to endure the coming vexation, the mad itching, the pain and discomfort that would pinch and enflame and torture my face. Patience, patience. The patient must be patient. Get lots of rest. Painkillers, if you can get them. What do you mean
if
I can get them, I wailed in alarm, and the doctor reminded me that he was practicing without a medical license, and so he could not prescribe anything. I should brace myself for a long period of excruciating pain, he told me. Vanity is painful. Beauty is difficult. And I should be discreet. Keep a low profile. Invisible, if possible. In fact it would be best, said the doctor, to simply not leave your home for a while—say the first week or two following the surgery. After all this had been said, the doctor asked me again, one last time, if I was still prepared to go through with the operation. This was my last chance to back out. The patient answered the doctor in the brave, defiant affirmative. Then the doctor asked for his fee:
everything up front. The doctor was acutely embarrassed even to be discussing money—he was a man of almost aristocratic manners, and disliked the dirty but necessary intrusion of the economic into this conversation. The patient reached a long purple hand into the inner pocket of his jacket and slipped out an envelope, which he slid across the desk. The doctor opened the unsealed flap of the envelope, peeked inside, and counted the money visually without handling it, then rolled open the desk drawer, dropped the envelope in the drawer, and rolled it shut. The doctor nodded gravely. He rose from the desk, pushed in his chair, rolled up his sleeves, draped a white apron over his head and tied the strings in the back. He told me to take off my shirt and lie down on the operating table. I did as he commanded. The thin paper mat on the operating table crinkled under my body and stuck to the sweaty flesh of my back. I rested my sweet head on a little paper pillow, and heard the paper fabric rustle and crunch under my ears. The doctor covered me with a clean white sheet. He billowed it over my body as if changing a bed, and pulled it up to my neck and tucked it under my chin. The doctor clicked on the fluorescent lamps C-clamped to the edges of the operating table. The tubes glowed on—
nzt-nzt-ngnzzzzzzzz
—stinging my eyes with bright light. Why does it seem at times as if my whole life has been lived out beneath the cold glare of fluorescent lights? The lights of academia, of science, of art, of medicine, of the madhouse. That is my fate, to live beneath fluorescent lights. In my peripheral vision I saw Dr. DaSilva—his body moving quickly and exactly, though with the occasional pops, scratches, blots, and jitters in the old celluloid—as he took a roll of duct tape from the operating table. The primitive restraining device of an illegal physician. I heard the sound of a long strip of tape being unpeeled from the roll. I smelled the incredibly distinctive odor of freshly unpeeled duct tape. With a long band of smelly gray tape the doctor secured my head to the back of the table, then
wrapped several more layers of tape around my forehead, until I couldn’t budge it. He did likewise with my arms, until the image of Frankenstein’s monster strapped to the table to presently await his incarnating bolt of harnessed lightning probably became comically analogous. I hesitantly asked the doctor whether these restraints were entirely necessary. The doctor assured me they were a necessary precaution, nothing to worry about. He dabbed alcohol on my forearm, squirted a spurt of clear liquid from the end of a hypodermic needle, knocked it twice with his fingers, slid it deep into a vein and pushed its contents into my bloodstream. Things began to get fuzzy here for me. My sense of time dilated. I felt my body quickly becoming cool and numb. It was a pleasant sensation. Hot and cold at the same time. My breathing slowed faster than my stream of consciousness. I might have muttered incoherently.
Lydia
—I hope I did not mumble over and over until the anaesthetic took me under—
Lydia, Lydia, Lydia…
Perhaps the doctor wondered what significance this name had for his patient. What other secrets did morphine unlock from my fading brain? I’ll never know. I woozily observed the doctor wash his hands at the sink as if from a thousand miles away. Somehow I was asleep and awake simultaneously. I could feel the doctor’s delicate hands, I could feel the slight applications of pressure, the deft touches, the surgical flourishes, the cuts. I could just barely feel the doctor mutilating my face with his instruments, and a distant part of me felt the blood running down my cheeks, I tasted it as it dripped a little into my mouth, the warm bitter metallic tang of blood, and I heard, or I dreamt or imagined I heard, a drop or two of my blood go
plit
plit
on the sticky linoleum floor of the operating room. I floated above my own body and watched the surgeon as he removed parts of my face. I watched the doctor break something in my nose and jerk it loose from its envelope of bloody slime. I saw the naked meat beneath my skin, exposed under the hot buzzing lights.

I dreamt that I was making love with Lydia. We were in Chicago. It was years ago. We were in our bed in the apartment in Chicago. It was snowing outside. Her warm body, her skin next to mine. The bed became earth, and then I was crawling through damp, dark soil. Pebbles, roots, grubs. My hands reached the surface. I pulled apart the clods of dirt, and saw a faint spot of light above. I dragged myself above the surface and emerged in a forest. I was in the jungle. I was in a wet, dark, densely vegetated place, ancient and teeming with life, with steam, dirt, fire, blood, semen, water, disease, ghosts. Everything was alive, everything breathing and flowing and moving and writhing with animal spirits. I was surrounded by chimpanzees. Naked, hairy animals, unenlightened, ungifted with speech. Grunting, howling, farting, scratching themselves, eating bugs and worms, picking nits out of each other’s fur. Their rubbery masklike faces, dark glassy eyes. They looked at me, confused. I was not one of them. I looked up into the sky. I could see only patches of blue here and there; most of it was shrouded by branches. But in one of the places where I could see the sky unobstructed by the leafy umbrages of the giant jungle trees, I saw something: a tiny speck, something floating in the sky, way up high above the trees. It descended, getting bigger, clearer, until it floated down through the break in the trees to the forest floor: it was a pink balloon effigy of a human being. I reached out to touch it. It popped.

S
omeone was shining a flashlight in my eyes.

I blinked twice, and blinked again. My eyelids were weighty with drugged sleep.

“Hey
buddy
!” said the flashlight, in a nasally New York accent. “You gotta be kiddin me here!”