The Skinner's Revenge. Chris Karsten
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photos of your own face – you have good proportions. I want a sharper nose, like yours. And a more prominent chin, like yours.”
“You flatter me, Mr Lomas.”
“And my ears stick out.”
“The photos are still necessary, even if you only want your features refined. Once I’ve uploaded them on my computer, I’ll have a better idea of the modifications we need, and I can take exact measurements and plan the whole procedure before the first incision.”
The patient sat frozen in front of the flashing camera.
“It’s not just about cutting and hoping for the best, Mr Lomas. I’m not a cowboy.”
You should see my work, thought the patient. You should see the delicate work I do with a scalpel.
“Yes,” said Dr Lippens, studying the photos on his computer screen. “Your face needs a lot of work, that is clear. And if it’s what you want, I’ll use my own proportions as a template. Perhaps superimpose my face on your photo and see how we can help you. How does that sound?”
The patient remained silent. It was his dream, no, his obsession, to superimpose a face onto his own.
But not this doctor’s face.
No, the tender, softly tanned skin of a young woman. And not on a photograph. He wanted to pull on her face over his, feel her skin caressing his own.
Dr Lippens returned to his chair and moved slightly closer, again reaching out to the patient’s face with his fingers. The patient stiffened, but allowed the surgeon to go ahead. After all, this was how he examined his donors’ skins on his own operating table.
“The nose is the most important element,” the surgeon said. “The nose is smack in the middle of the face, the aesthetic focal point. It lends strength to the face, and character. The science of physiognomy is centuries old, you know. Even the ancient Greeks judged a man by looking at his features.”
“When can you begin?”
“A tenth of a second. That’s how long it takes to judge someone’s personality at first glance: he cares, he can be trusted, he’s aggressive, he’s an introvert, he’s thorough, he’s dishonest … Did you know that, Mr Lomas?”
“I want the photos when you’ve finished.”
“As a memento? Sure, I’ll put them on a memory stick for you. But I always keep photos of my patients. For the record. Have you heard of the halo of attraction?”
The patient shook his head, his thoughts focused on the photos that would remain on the surgeon’s computer.
“The halo of attraction … People who are considered attractive get more Valentine’s cards, are considered more socially acceptable, sexually alluring, intelligent, happy, healthy. They are popular and are treated more sympathetically – even by the courts.”
“What about a face that can’t be trusted?” the patient inquired. He did not trust the doctor’s face.
“The corners of the mouth turn down, the eyebrows form a V.”
“What about a baby face?”
“Someone with a baby face – and I’m not saying you have one – is seen as naïve, a bit of a mommy’s boy.”
The patient had read about physiognomy, even about ethology and phrenology, and a lot about lazy eyes. And especially about men who are scorned and derided and nicknamed Babyface. The surgeon didn’t know – or had forgotten, the patient suspected – about spots on the wings and bodies of certain butterflies, moths and fish that emulate eyes to confuse and evade predators. The principle was also applicable to a man with a baby face: the first impression, arrived at within a tenth of a second, was that the person was innocent and submissive. But just as the moth’s false eye was not a real eye, the owner of the baby face was not a baby. The patient knew that from personal experience.
“The chin is almost as important as the nose,” said the surgeon, measuring the patient’s features with sliding callipers. “The chin lends balance and harmony to the face. We’ll definitely have to do something about your chin. Or, in your case, your lack of a chin.”
“And the ears.” The patient looked at the long, black hairs on the back of the doctor’s fingers, inhaled the smell of his skin.
“Yes,” said Dr Lippens, his eager breath on the patient’s cheek. “The ears must be proportionate to the size and shape of the face and head. We’ll work on the ears, push them back against the skull, prune back the cartilage and skin to get the desired effect.”
“Like yours.”
“Exactly,” said Dr Lippens. “If I may say so – and I’m always honest with my patients – if anyone thought you had a baby face before, they’re going to eat their words by the time I’ve finished with you.”
From the storeroom of the patient’s memory – and he never forgot faces – he recalled Konrad Lorenz, ethologist and Nobel Prize winner, who maintained that someone with a baby face inspired in others a desire to nurture and protect. And Leslie Zebrowitz, psychologist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, who claimed that men with baby faces stimulated the amygdala, the emotional centre of the brain, in other people. She’d also found in her research that men with baby faces were generally better qualified, more assertive, and over time were awarded more military medals than men who were more mature in appearance. But of course there’s always a twist. She also found that men with baby faces overcompensated for their shortcomings, that they were usually more argumentative and aggressive, and, like Al Capone, more inclined to criminal behaviour.
“Lippens?” asked the patient. “Is that … ?”
“Belgian. Originally from Ghent. After Burundi’s independence, the country was not the Utopia everyone had been hoping for. Health services collapsed, along with many other things. The government turned to the old colonial master to recruit skilled workers: engineers, teachers, nurses and doctors.”
Yes, I know you’re Belgian, thought the patient. That’s why I’m here. You’ve been specially selected for the procedure on my face.
“Are you still a Belgian citizen?”
“Of course. I have permanent residency here, but why should I give up my citizenship and passport in favour of Burundi?”
The patient nodded and agreed to an endoscopic mini rhytidectomy, with rhinoplasty, mentoplasty and otoplasty. He declined the blepharoplasty, opting for amber-tinted spectacles instead.
* * *
For two nights he lay attached to a drip in the Prince Louis Rwagasore Clinic in the Rue Pierre Ngendandumwe, his entire head swathed in gauze bandages, only his eyes and mouth visible. He could see the surgeon enter to inspect his handiwork, and the nurses when they came to disinfect the wounds and wrap his head in fresh bandages.
And he could feel. It felt as if his entire face had been plunged into a basin of fiery coals, as if someone had peeled off his skin with a blunt knife. Tubes were pushed into his mouth, needles pierced his buttocks, pills and water passed across his parched lips, and pain and fever racked his body.
In his feverish mind he was vaguely aware of intense whispered conversations between doctor and nurses.
When he regained full consciousness, a nurse was at his bedside. Alone, hazy as a ghost.
“How are you feeling, Mr Lomas?”
She, too, spoke English with an accent, but by now the patient was used to it. Her Creole dialect reminded him of the speech of Jules Daagari, his Burundian friend and purveyor of masks.
“Can you hear me, Mr Lomas?”
He could hear – only dimly through the bandages