How to Wear a Scar Lightly
Personal injuries of the physical sort can be matter of distinction, a source of innocent pride even, particularly if they leave scars not so trivial as to pass notice and not extensive enough to stir revulsion. They become, these scars, laconic tokens of a man’s contact with an intractable world, like the nicks in an alley-cat’s ears – part of the intriguing signature of a person’s charisma. To carry these marks with decorous restraint takes the same lyricism of character as the wearing of an obscure decoration for bravery or the ribbon of the Polar Medal. Occasionally, with luck, we may meet a person so wounded, so marked who has discovered and established precisely the correct balance of insouciance and modest self-gratulation. Like any subtle ritual performed with an ease that looks instinctive, it is not easy to come by; good manners and a flair for improvisation are never quite enough. When recovering from a motor smash, I was travelling in a train between Köln and Freiburg-im-Breisgau; I suddenly realized that the other people in the compartment had collusively agreed that I had been marked about the face by duelling with the sabre in Heidelberg; they gazed upon me with an awe that my ignorance of the German language could do nothing to dispel. On another occasion an Italian restaurateur that I had never seen before embraced me and congratulated me on climbing Mount Everest (Sir Edmund Hillary happened to be in Toronto that day). I didn’t know what to do with either of these circumstances. (When, as a matter of curiosity, I tried to consult learned authorities to find out how in fact the correct deportment was cultivated, there seemed to be neither field work reported nor case studies. The following report may perhaps provide a starting point for further study in a neglected area of refined human conduct.)
The subject is a writer in indeterminate middle age. His right hand is so heavily bandaged that he will not be able to meet his next deadline. He sits at an old counting-house table that has the air of having been built by a shipwright; the table is situate in an unpretentious farmhouse in his island retreat some two miles to seaward of the roaring town that his trade depends upon. He seems to be sunk in gloomy meditation, but the perceptive and well-trained observer sees at once that he is reflecting upon the prospects for his latest scar. We question him.
Q. And how did you injure your hand?
A. I was trying to induce a cat – a seal-tipped Siamese named Sappho – to come down from the roof.
Q. At what time?
A. Five minutes to eight in the morning; a cool morning with sun and a light breeze.
Q. What was the cat doing on the roof?
A. Sitting there in enclosed self-admiration. She was pretending that she had been driven there for sanctuary, but the real reason was that she knows the colour of the roof sets off her fur and figure well.
Q. Was there any cause for alarm?
A. In the cat?
Q. Yes.
A. No. But an antique Bassett-hound, name of Charley, with a melancholy face and splayed feet, who is well known to the cats of the island for his sweetness of temper, had just slumped round the end of the house to see whether all the rabbits were at their stations, and what garbage-pail might offer a fair prospect for breakfast.
Q. The cat was not alarmed?
A. She was purring. It is true that she shed, visibly, two large tears, one from each eye; but that could only have been joy or self-pity. She was purring.
Q. How did you propose to solve this problem?
A. I tried first to beguile the cat within reach by making cat-like and endearing sounds. She advanced to within one-half millimeter of my grasp and stopped, eyes almost completely closed. I then found a chair and stood it insecurely on some fossiliferous paving stones in the kitchen doorway and stood on it to extend my reach.
Q. What did the cat do?
A. She withdrew at once out of reach.
Q. And Charley?
A. He had gone round to the other side of the house to examine the garbage-pail.
Q. Did the cat show distress?
A. None.
Q. But you persisted?
A. Yes. It is a fine cat though laconic and self-willed.
Q. And how came you by these lesions?
A. When it became clear to me that the cat preferred to stay on the roof in the warm sun and the fine air of early morning, I addressed her in a monologue half abuse and half flattery, and was so afflated with eloquence that I lost my balance. The chair began to fall sideways; I seized with my right hand the eaves-trough to arrest my fall. The eaves-trough being insecure, I fell anyway and on gathering myself together on the ground noted two lesions to my right hand.
Q. You examined them?
A. Cursorily.
Q. And there was blood?
A. Yes.
Q. What did you do then?
A. I arrested the haemorrhage and prepared breakfast for the cat.
Q. It is unusual, is it not, for an eaves-trough to inflict a deep and ragged incision?
A. This was no ordinary eaves-trough. It had been improvised from a narrow sheet of corrugated iron, and had been cut (I fancy) with tinsmith’s shears, and the cutting will have been hard because the edge was continuously and raggedly serrated. You have seen the glass and spikes with which Oxford undergraduates are discouraged from climbing the walls of their colleges? – that sort of thing on a smaller scale. A quick lateral movement with a little weight applied –
Q. Yes, yes. I quite understand. You are left-handed?
A. Right-handed.
Q. And a writer, a musician?
A. You flatter me.
Q. So you decided, in spite of the early hour and the isolated situation, to seek medical advice?
A. It seemed prudent if I were to avoid permanent malfunction.
Q. It was a very famous surgeon you summoned to your help?
A. He is not yet famous; but he has been my medical advisor for some years and eventually the world may be grateful –
Q. There is a telephone then on this island? Or did you signal with flags?
A. There is an instrument attached to a submarine cable. It usually bubbles; this time it worked.
Q. He had to come from some distance? Perhaps leaving a deathbed?
A. Yes; from a distance. No conscientious physician could in fairness do less. He could not of course come to the island.
Q. He was not alarmed when he received your message?
A. He took it, I understand, very well. Doctors must make a practice of spreading confidence; they can sometimes be very cool customers.
Q. And you arranged a rendezvous for some place well provided with medical comforts?
A. Yes: I travelling by open boat with a sharpish souwester under the quarter, he by limousine coming from his comfortable summer residence outside the town. We were to meet at the General Hospital, emergency entrance. When I set out from the island I could see the smoke already rising from the sterilizers and was confident that adequate preparations were in train.
Q. Two and a half hours after the injuries had been inflicted … you could still walk? You must have had some whisky ….
A. No. I was suffering from shock, not elation; and therefore administered hot sweet tea.
Q. With a little brandy in it?
A. Yes. When I know I am going to faint I like to have a little brandy beforehand while I can still enjoy it.
Q. Was the doctor waiting when you arrived?
A. No. I was, for a moment, a little disappointed in him.
Q. What did you do while you were waiting?
A. I read The Saturday Evening Post – an old copy from which people had cut out the funny jokes – and looked interesting.
Q. As soon as the doctor arrived, he scrubbed up at once?
A. Yes, after an initial examination and a few reassuring remarks.
Q. Did you take it sitting down?
A. No. He said: “Put him down on the table there. I’ve seen him keel over before. He goes down real fast.”
Q. There were nurses in attendance?
A. Yes. One.
Q. Did she giggle?
A. Yes. Surreptitiously.
Q. Did it take long and was it extremely painful?
A. I lost all sense of time. I think I bore myself with dignity.
Q. Did you keep count of the stitches?
A. Yes.
Q. How many?
A. One.
Q. And what did the doctor say?
A. “No football or squash till next Tuesday.”