I recently had a molar pulled, an excruciatingly painful episode that was certainly delayed payback for numerous clandestine childhood visits to the corner milk bar with my little brother, where we would purchase two shilling’s worth of mixed lollies (about the amount of peppermint leaves, musk sticks, chocolate and liquorice bullets, and other delights that my father in his day would have purchased for a farthing). Those, and the lethal glass candy that my mother occasionally made - once the cause of much delight - have now become a source of profound discomfort.
The aftermath of this dental visit was even worse than the tooth-pulling itself, for I developed what is known as 'dry socket' a dull-enough sounding term that in no way gives expression to what must surely be one of the most painful experiences outside of childbirth or having ones fingernails torn out. Basically, what it means is that an exposed part of the jaw has not healed over, and remains exposed to the air, producing an intense throbbing pain of such volume that it becomes one’s entire existence. By the eighth day, all medication having failed, I had begun to accept that this was to be my life from this point on… one of constant, racking pain, an inability to function beyond mere existence, and a growing dread of meals and sleep, or rather, of the difficulties involved in attempting to carry out those once pleasurable activities.
And then, one morning I was sitting by a window, my eyes closed, my mind totally absorbed by my suffering, when the sun suddenly came out from behind a cloud, and shone through the window directly onto my face. I felt the warmth of the sunlight on my cheeks, and through my eyelids the retinas of my eyes registered a brilliant ebullition of orange to red to yellow to red. The intensity of this was such that the pain seemed to subside, and I could remember again the sense of pure physical pleasure. It was a brief respite.
Without drawing any comparison between the temporary physical discomfort of a mere toothache and the horrific experiences of soldiers in war, when I was writing the last chapter of my forthcoming novel, A Gentle Empire, set in the little French town of le Cateau on the very last day of war, I wanted to give expression to the transience of the emotion that the soldiers were undergoing when the clocks struck eleven, signalling the termination of four years of horrific anguish and suffering. I wanted to point to the fact that the relief that they must certainly have felt as they heard the guns fall silent, would have momentarily been a wonderous thing, but also an ephemeral response, for although they were ending a horrific phase in their lives, what lay ahead would now seem almost as daunting as battle had been, in some ways perhaps even more so. For those who had survived, had been lucky enough to escape serious injury, and were now about to leave behind the terror, the panic, the uncertainties, and the discomforts of four long years of war, ahead lay more fears and more doubts – fear of how would they be received back home, doubts about whether it had been worthwhile, necessary, justified, about whether they would be able to make those who had not been through it understand, and fear that their nightmares might continue, that they might have to live with the guilt at having survived while their friends had fallen, fear about what the future would be like, whether they would be able to find work, and how on earth, after all that they had experienced, they would be able to go back to what had once, in a different lifetime, seemed so normal.
Comments