Another piece from a far past and like everything else closely based on real events. I still have the complete upper set of teeth that were glued in so firmly 15 years ago. Money well spent I feel.
Transylvania, 1893.
There was once a Master and a Servant, and they lived in a faraway land. Or quite close by if you lived in Transylvania. The Master was a diabolical fiend, striving all his life to create a living creature from the body parts left over from local feasts. His demented cries of rage and frustration rang out from the castle wherein he lived. Verily did folks kak their Daks at these fell sounds. Feersum Enjins were constructed to better manufacture this facsimile of human life. Eventually, and following the script closely, the Master was successful. A creature was duly created with primitive electricity belting thro its hand-carved veins and arteries, and it sprung to life bang on cue in the middle of a thunderstorm of special effects and much rushing about by Best Boys and Gaffers. The Creature, having been shown the script that Master and Servant were working to, roared and raged a bit, slew a peasant here and there and then buggered off to make a lucrative living in the B-movie industry.
Everybody seemed happy with this arrangement. The Master had a nice little earner going renting out the Feersum Enjins to cigar chewing movie moguls. The local people were happy as well, as they got good paid work running here and there in rustic attire and screaming their heads off every time there was a full moon. The only one who was not happy was the Servant. Film parts were few and far between, and a life spent in the abattoirs and blood-vats of his Master had done little to prepare him for the jobs market in the wider world. The Servant was a man of limited stature…a bit on the tall side for a dwarf, a lot on the short side for a regular bloke. Stood on a box when he went for a pee in the gents at the local hostelry. Widely overlooked by anything of a female persuasion. Small hump. Pronounced limp. Lithp.
The Master was not an unkind man, and he saw how sad his servant had become, sitting on a stool by the kitchen fire tapping a spare femur against the kettle singing merrily thereon. Sighing. Aching for the old days of nocturnal butchery and the occasional foray into post-mortem gardening in the graveyards of towns nearby. The Master called him into his study…
“Igor…?”
“Yeth Marthter?”
“Is it not true that thou art a carbuncle and a blot on the face of humanity?”
“Thertainly ith, Marthter.”
“Well Igor, I feel that I must take pity on you, and have devised a plan, a cunning plan. Would you like to know what it is?”
“Yeth pleeth Marthter…Oooo yeth pleeth!”
“Very well. I am now rich beyond the dreams of avarice; with so much money I wipe my bum on the stuff. Wenches pop in ter polish me plonker on a daily basis. Got everything I am ever likely ter need. Can’t see you languishing there by the firegrate. I know there’s not much of a market for Igor’s these days and you have been the most faithful of servants, so I am going to make you a once-in-lifetime offer, Igor…a chance to retrain, to give up this life forever and find yourself a place in the world, perhaps in a far off land of your choice, there to ply a trade and be a credit to yer dear old Mum and Dad. So whaddaya say Igor…whaddaya wanna do with life?”
“Oooooo Marthter…you are tho kind. I am but a humble Igor, unworthy of anything but the kicks and pricks of a menial drudge. But if you were willing Marthter, there ith one thing I really and truly would like to be…a dream beyond hope for such as me…”
“Come on Igor…spit it out man…what is it you want to do?”
“I want to be a dentitht Marthter. I want to be able to take peopleth teeth out. With plierth and other thingth. And I want a Nursie to help me and she mutht have big tit-th.”
“Very well Igor. Your wish is granted. A dentitht – sorry dentist – thou shalt be. And where in the world would you like to be a dentist Igor?”
“Karachi, Marthter…pleeth…Karachi…in Pakithtarn.”[1]
Karachi, Pakithtarn, June 2004
Doctor Rodney Mulvery FRCI (Fellow of the Royal College of Igors) plies his terrible trade in a dungeon at the 7th Day Adventist Hospital in Saddar, one of the least beguiling parts of a city that is completely devoid of attraction for all except those with a fetish for rubbish. This is the place where your Correspondent has laid his head these last nine months when he is in the city. As might be inferred from the name of the hospital, it was founded by American 7th Day Adventists about a hundred years ago and has been at the top end of health care in the city ever since. It is a private company, and altho it has a missionary origin is now a part of the burgeoning private healthcare sector in Pakistan, and has to pay its way like any other business, so when your Correspondent intimated that he might be interested in contracting some dental work of Great Wall proportions eyes lit up right and left. Dentistry, wherever you are in the world, aint cheap.
Despite all indications to the contrary your Correspondent was, at one time, a child. He was born in the dark and cold days after WW2, at the end of the dreadful winter of 1947, the first child of Dorothy and Patrick Cork. She a nurse, he a wounded veteran of the Eighth Army. And quite possibly something else as well, probably the Royal Signals. Childhood was unremarkable for the young Cork, until in the same year he had both glandular fever and appendicitis, with long spells in hospital for both. Whilst there he appears to have been fed a diet of undiluted antibiotics, then in the early stages of their development. Wonder drugs they may have been, but what was little known or understood at the time was the disastrous effect they could have on dentition, both thro childhood and in later life. So young Cork grew up being dragged weeping in and out of various dentists in west London, south London, Stockport, Bedford, Rochdale and finally Northampton, and left school at sixteen with a much patched and visibly battered, set of his own teeth. Things did not improve down the years, and despite a lifetime spent taking risks of one sort or another, and generally being a bit of a gung-ho chappie, your Correspondent had a lifelong fear of dentists, and covered his miserable teeth with a splendid moustache as soon as nature and hormones allowed. The splendid moustache has grown over the years into something of an institution, occasionally measured against other similar outcrops, and usually coming out tops – only being significantly beaten in recent years by a policeman in Gilgit who could actually loop the ends of his specimen over the tops of his ears.
Every year there would be resolutions made that ‘The teeth will get fixed’ and they never did. The inside of the Cork mouth remained a place of shame and disrepair. The decline in the availability of dentistry under the National Health Service in UK was a contributing factor, and the vast sums of money required by dentists to perform the most basic of procedures further dissuaded him from action.
But the cogs and gears move on, and life winds its way through, and it reached a point where, on a whim, your Correspondent asked one day about the quality of dentistry at the 7-Day. Top notch he was assured. Our dentists are trained in America, Italy the Philippines and in the garage just around the corner from where we are now, where they do the heavy-duty extractions. The ones that need the ropes. And a harness. Block. Tackle. Plierth.
Those of you who had a traditional education may well have read the story of Huckleberry Finn, in which there is a classic of the literature of dentistry that involves a piece of string tied to a tooth and the violent sudden slamming of a door – the handle of which is attached the other end of the piece of string. Given that your Correspondent had recently interviewed a doctor at a rural health centre in the Punjab who performed major surgery without general anaesthetic, a sterile environment, any qualified nurses within miles and a range of instruments better suited to the adjustment of the primary drive shaft of a large tank, thoughts of friend Finn loomed large.
‘Be not afraid’ – said the hospital administrator, for we have a dentist of the finest pedigree, coming from a long line of torturers who emigrated here many moons back. Doctor Rodney ‘Igor’ Mulvery is this very paragon, a dentitht of unparalleled skill and a dab hand with the plierths, even if I do say so myself. So, very much afraid despite the reassurances, your Correspondent went to the lair of the Wild Mulvery, there to peruse the price list for services about to be rendered.
The dentistry department of the 7-Day is in a little annexe at the back on the ground floor, and is dominated by a large promotional display of Colgate products in one corner and a set of chairs and a table with all the usual magazines that you find in dentists the world over – S + M monthly, the February issue of ‘The catheter’ and ‘Rubber Glove Quarterly’. Behind a desk next to a computer terminal sat the receptionist, who handed over the list of charges – which were extremely reasonable compared to everything else of a similar nature seen elsewhere in the world. The receptionist was quite definitely not of the golden-skinned lissom Australian variety, but very definitely was of the prop-forward variety, with a certain Igor-ish bent. Whilst standing at the counter and mulling over the pricelist your Correspondent became aware of the fact that somebody was talking to his penis.
“Good morning. How are you today? I hear you would like some work done here at the 7-Day, and I am delighted to thay that we can offer an excellent thervice at exemplary rate-th, ath I am sure you can thee.”
It’s not every day you get your Willie addressed as directly as this, especially in a voice accented with a curious mix of Pakistani English and something vaguely middle-European. Looking down, there was Doctor Mulvery who had sneaked in under the radar and was now beaming up at your Correspondent with the kind of smile that would have sat well on the lips of Josef Mengele.
Doctor Mulvery was indeed extremely small, but as genial a torturer as you could ever wish to meet. He rattled on at length about how qualified everybody was in the Dentistry Department, their record for cleanliness – the certificate being held up for my inspection by a large cockroach – and their all round ability to cut the dental mustard. Muthtard. Two rooms led off the reception, both equipped with state of the art gizmos, lights, drills reclining chairth and yeth, plierth, sitting prominently on the instrument tray beside the room belonging to the Wild Mulvery. ‘Errrrr…they look like plierths…’ says twitching Correspondent, pointing to the implement in question. WM assured that they were in fact forceps and only very rarely used, on especially intractable cases, where greater leverage was required.
Invited to sit down and open wide it was a step into the dark. Forget all notions of privacy and an air of professional reserve, once the WM got a look inside the Cork oral cavity it was Eyes Light Up Full Igor With Bells And Whistles and why don’t you folks all come in here and have a good look at this load of old rubbish! So they did. The Receptionist arrived, a couple of assistants, a cleaner dropped by to empty the bins and got a look as well, and finally, having rung the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital (another Igor, and brother to the one currently half-way down the Cork throat) to come and get an eyeful, there was quite an audience. The WM offered a multi-lingual commentary on his initial appraisal, with heads nodding and bobbing in front of the Cork eyes, which were dilated to the size of golf-balls and standing out on stalks a-la Wily Coyote on spotting Acme anvil descending at terminal velocity in the direction of his head.
‘Yeth…interethting…very interethting…ve haff never seen anything qvite like zith before…hmmmm…are you very rich Mr. Cork…?
‘Errrr…no, not really…why…?
‘Vell….zere ith zee bridgeworkth, and the root canal therapy, and then the upper and lower dentureth, and the extractionth…maybe fifty thousand rupees?
A quick calculation suggested that £500 was about right, and considering a UK dentist of Mr. Corks acquaintance had once had a look, screwed up his face in horror and said ‘Three grand…if you’re lucky’ – it sounded like a bargain.
And so it came to pass that the very next morning Mr. Cork held hands with himself and made the jump. An hour later he wondered quite what all the fuss had been about and why the devil had he not done this years ago when there was still a National Health dental service.
Dr. Mulvery was the very soul of reassurance, the audience of the first examination was banished to the wings, massive doses of local anaesthetic were administered producing pain-free extraction and over a period of seven days nine teeth came out, a front incisor was extensively excavated in root-canal therapy and all looked set fair for the installation of the new pearlies in the near future. But there was just the one hurdle to get over, the very last tooth to come out, the left rear lower molar, and did it want to come? Nope. So it was, right at the end, a job for the plierths. He tugged and pulled and yanked and assistants held the Cork head straight but no matter what he did the little bugger would not budge. He managed to get the top of the tooth off, tried dissecting the gum away, panted and heaved and then said ‘Ah…now I thee…tooth ith fixed to bone. Thith happenth thometimeth.’
As this epic thtruggle was taking place the WM was interrupted in his ministrations by a phone call, which in true Pakithstani fashion he took whilst on the job, cradling the receiver twixt ear and shoulder as he tugged mightily at the stubborn molar. His father had disappeared. Puff of smoke…Pater vanishes. Put him on the train for Lahore last night, train arrived Lahore this morning, and no Pater. Older brother there to meet Pater…family distress raises by the minute…search of Lahore station…still no Pater. Pater is apparently in his mid-seventies and a tad confused at the best of times, so maybe not the best person to make a nighttime journey of 1000kms unaccompanied. All this was relayed at foghorn level directly into the face of your Correspondent, who, it has to be said, was not mightily impressed to be sidelined mid-molar by a missing Pater. Phone was handed to a slender assistant, (thmall tit-th, thadly) and work resumed, to be interrupted again by a call on the mobile this time, taken with another assistant holding the phone while excavations and manipulations continued. Matters had progressed, and the missing Pater was now the subject of a police enquiry, tho the Lahore police would have difficulty finding their own arses without both hands and a map. Matters were still unresolved when the session ended, and the last seen of the WM was him lithping into both mobile and landline simultaneously in the hope of locating missing Pater. It later transpired that the barmy old bugger had got off the train a station early and caught a taxi to his home village, and was blissfully asleep while the family had fantasies about kidnap and ransom. There was no extra charge for light entertainment when the bill was finally presented.
So the situation as this is typed is that the rooted rear molar is going to stay where it is and will be healed over to sit under a denture – a strange thing made of skeletal surgical steel – and the dead roots will eventually atrophy and be easily removed – at least that’s what the WM said. Excitement over, and feeling somewhat battered and bruised it was off to find a working ATM so that the bill could get paid; as dentistry, as with other health services is strictly COD in Karachi.
ATM’s are a relatively recent innovation as far as Pakithtarn is contherned. They are still widely misunderstood, and even more widely out of action or offline when you want to use them. The children of the family in the village were astonished to see Uncle Chris put a bit of plastic in a hole in the wall, press a couple of buttons, and get cash in his sweaty hand. People still form small crowds and watch as the ATMs that have suddenly appeared in Karachi over the last year perform their financial magic. It can be a profoundly unsettling experience to have half a dozen penniless beggars looking – literally – over your shoulder as you punch in the PIN, but there are as yet no Urban Myths about robbers running off with cashcards and the like. Eventually, after a search of the foetid streets of Karachi with a thunderstorm pending and loudspeaker vans going around warning people not to lean on electricity poles if it rained,[2] there it was, a functioning ATM in a posh part of the city that loved my card and even said ‘Thank you’ when I took my cash. Considering that this was at the Muslim Commercial Bank, not a bank ever renowned for its ability to innovate, something of a leap into the twentieth century! Cash in hand it was back to the 7-Day and a bill of 6,400 rupees, about £64.00 or $110.00.
The final tetht of the WM and his squad will begin on the 1st July, when the Great Denture Construction begins. It is hoped that the new teeth will be fitted and roadtested by the 8th July, the day of the wedding of Sharoon and Sara, and that they will shine out from the wedding photos as they have never shone before – in fact since I was about seven, to be precise.
Some of life’s journeys we make harder for ourselves than they ever needed to be. Getting my teeth fixed was an act of considerable courage for me, and the battles of will and fear that went on inside me in the days and hours prior to Dr. Mulvery working his wizardry will be forever hidden from public view. But altho I now look like the victim of an RTA my head is just that little bit higher than it was a week ago, and I say to people ‘I’m down here getting my teeth fixed…they’re good at the 7-Day y’know…little chap called Igor something-or-other does the bithneth…very reasonable rateth…hardly hurt at all.’ And in three weeks time I will be able to give Rose the smile she has never ever had from me, and it will all have been worth it.
Thank you, Igor.
No problem, Marthter.
Chrith Cork
7-Day Hothpital
Karachi
16th
June 2004, 20.05 PST
[1] Apologies are due to many, including…Mary Shelley, Terry Pratchett, Tony Robinson and the authors of the Blackadder series and probably a few others besides. Sorry.
[2] A surprising number of people find their demise in a casual lean against electrical poles in Pakistan. Especially when it rains for the first time after a long dry spell. 32 people died in this way in Karachi last year, said the Dawn newspaper today.
Thunksforthinkers 