The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [275]
She could hardly articulate her response and seemed little less doubtful of the whole issue than was her father. Amaril stayed and talked to them, convincing them.
‘The next day when he went back, he was received with a message that Semira was not to be seen and that what he proposed was impossible. But Amaril was not to be put off, and once more he forced his way in and bullied the father.
‘This, then, is the fantasy in which he has been living. For Semira, as loving and eager as ever, cannot leave her house for the open world until he fulfils his promise. Amaril offered to marry her at once, but the suspicious old man wants to make sure of the nose. But what nose? First Balthazar was called in and together they examined Semira, and assured themselves that the illness was due neither to leprosy nor syphilis but to a rare form of lupus
— a peculiar skin T.B. of rare kind of which many cases have been recorded from the Damietta region. It had been left untreated over the years and had finally collapsed the nose. I must say, it is horrible — just a slit like the gills of a fish. For I too have been sharing the deliberations of the doctors and have been going regularly to read to Semira in the darkened rooms where she has spent most of her life. She has wonderful dark eyes like an odalisque and a shapely mouth and well-modelled chin: and then the gills of a fish! It is too unfair. And it has taken her ages to actually believe that surgery can restore the defect. Here again Amaril has been brilliant, in getting her interested in her restora-tion, conquering her self-disgust, allowing her to choose the nose from that portfolio, discuss the whole project with him. He has let her choose her nose as one might let one’s mistress choose a valuable bracelet from Pierantoni. It was just the right approach, for she is beginning to conquer her shame, and feel almost proud of being free to choose this valuable gift — the most treasured
feature of a woman’s face which aligns every glance and alters every meaning: and without which good eyes and teeth and hair become useless treasures.
‘But now they have run into other difficulties, for the restoration of the nose itself requires techniques of surgery which are still very new; and Amaril, though a surgeon, does not wish there to be any mistake about the results. You see, he is after all building a woman of his own fancy, a face to a husband’s own specifications; only Pygmalion had such a chance before! He is working on the project as if his life depended on it — which in a way I suppose it does.
‘The operation itself will have to be done in stages, and will take ages to complete. I have heard them discussing it over and over again in such detail that I feel I could almost perform it myself. First you cut off a strip of the costal cartilage, here, where the rib joins the breastbone, and make a graft from it. Then you cut out a triangular flap of skin from the forehead and pull down-wards to cover the nose — the Indian technique, Balthazar calls it; but they are still debating the removal of a section of flesh and skin from inside the thigh…. You can imagine how fascinating this is for a painter and sculptor to think about. But meanwhile Amaril is going to England to perfect the operative technique under the best masters. Hence his demand for a visa. How many months he will be away we don’t know yet, but he is setting out with all the air of a knight in search of the Holy Grail. For he intends to complete the operation himself. Meanwhile, Semira will wait for him here, and I have promised to visit her frequently and keep her interested and amused if I can. It is not difficult, for the real world outside the four walls of her house sounds to her strange and cruel and romantic. Apart from a brief glimpse of it at carnival-time, she knows little of our lives. For her, Alexandria is as brilliantly coloured as a fairy-story. It will be some time before she sees it as it really is — with its harsh, circumscribed contours and its wicked, pleasure-loving and unromantic in-habitants. But you have moved!