My Right Ear
by John McGroarty
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: A couple of Spanish ones.
Description: An exiled Scot in Spain has an appointment at the doctor's. Will the Sun explode? Will it be the end of all life?
_____________________________________________________________________
I should never have done it. I know, don’t say it. It was really stupid. Really mind-blowingly stupid. Never put anything bigger than your elbow in your ear. Sound advice. Falling on deaf ears. Or perhaps, very soon, a literal deaf ear. A deaf right ear. I can still see myself with the cotton bud in my hand turning madly to my wife to make some exaggerated comment about some banal and unimportant issue and, thwack, into the innermost sanctuary of my ear it shot, my elbow like a lever against the bathroom cabinet. The screams. The tears. The writhing in stupidity. And then, three visits to the doctor’s later, the pure tone audiometry test.
I hate the doctor’s. It always sets off my neurosis. And from neurosis to insomnia. And from insomnia to the end of everything. The explosion of the Sun. The end of all life.
The appointment was for ten o’clock. Reasonably early enough. There wouldn’t be too many people around. It wouldn’t take long, I hoped. I would be in and out in a jiffy. Maybe I could even find some way to cheat. Just go on living with the deaf ear. I mean, who cares? Lots of people have survived a deaf right ear. Beethoven even wrote the ninth symphony with two deaf ears. Perhaps the right side of my head will develop some musical genius as a side effect. Then things would be a lot easier. I could give up work and devote myself to my genius. And all the people I wouldn’t have to listen to. I might even stick a cotton bud in the left one, too.
“Hey, Paul!” said a voice, suddenly slap bang in front of me.
It was Wullie. A fellow exiled Scot. I hadn’t seen him coming. Hadn’t had the chance to cross the street or nip into a shop.
“Beautiful day, beautiful day,” he pronounced, with a poetic longing in his voice, sweeping his hand towards the blue sky.
I hadn’t noticed. I was in another place. Weren’t all the days “beautiful”?
“Aye,” I said. I grimaced. “I’m going to the doctor’s”.
“Jeez oh,” said Wullie. He leant into my space. “Is it your testicles?” he said, looking around to make sure nobody was listening.
“No, God, no!” I said emphatically. I looked around, too.
“The doctor’s, the doctor’s,” Wullie was shaking his head and starting to muse.
I don’t have time for this. The world is ending. I may be deaf before the sun falls.
“Aye, okay,” he finally said, “it’s that thing then, you know, when you have to go with your shit in a wee container, for the colon cancer, eh?”
Wullie was older than me.
“When you get the letter to have a test, you try not to think about it, but then, well, aye, you end up going and sweating for weeks afterwards waiting for the results, expecting the worst.” He licked his lips.
“I’m only forty-two, Wullie,” I said deadpan, “it’s not about shit.”
“Aye, well, you’ve got some time yet,” he said with a smug jokeresque grin.
“Listen, Wullie, I’m gonnae be late.” I looked at my watch.
“What are you reading?” he asked, signalling my under arm with his jawbone.
I turned the book over in my hands.
“Soldados de Salamina,” I said. “You know, kill the time, you usually have to wait.”
“In Spanish? Catalan?”
He turned his head trying to follow my hands.
“Aye, in Spanish,” I said, a little apologetically.
“I read it in English,” he said crisply, without losing the grin. “I didn’t like it much, another book about the Spanish Civil War.”
“Ehrm, I think it’s, eh, brilliant, it’s got a wee touch of Capote, and, and Fitzgerald,” I said.
“Oh, aye, is that right? Have you read Hemingway? For Whom the Bells Toll?” he said, his voice ding-donging off the surrounding buildings.
“No,” I confessed, “I haven’t.”
I smiled weakly.
“Homage to Catalonia? Have you read that one?” he said, pointing at something up in the sky.
I followed his finger.
“Aye, I’ve read that one,” I said.
“I don’t know why he called it Homage to Catalonia because he doesn’t say a blooming good thing about Catalonia in the whole book.”
He laughed long and heartily. Laughed in the face of testicle tests and shit in wee plastic containers.
I was at a loss.
“Look, Wullie,” I raised my wrist to show him my watch, “the bells are tolling for me.”
“Aye, on you go, Paul, on you go,” he said, starting to move off. He patted me on the back.
I watched him go down the street for a few seconds. He turned and waved and then disappeared round a corner.
I stuck the book back under my arm. Squeezed my testicles just to make sure. Now, back to the ear. I was happy I had met Wullie. Really. A cheerful voice from home. Some reassurance before stepping into the belly of the whale of the Spanish health system.
I went up the backstairs and emerged on the third floor. It was completely empty. No teams of screaming children or packs of black clad gypsy women or old people staring maliciously at any foreign face daring to have an appointment before them. I relaxed. Maybe I’d have to come back another day. Deafness postponed. The Sun would not die. I would live.
I walked down the aisle and found the door. The little light above it was red. I sat down. I’ll just wait ten minutes, I thought. I started to read my book. There were some footsteps and an almost middle-aged Spanish woman sat down opposite in a white summer dress. We squeezed our faces up at each other. I couldn’t leave now. She was a witness. We waited. And waited. Time seemed to standstill. The place was starting to fill up with old people. I couldn’t concentrate on my book. I stared at the pages blankly. I could see it all now. They would look into my ears. Hmmm. I would be sent to a specialist. They would finally discover the tumour. I’m too young, I implored. So much still to do. Get a grip, Paul. I stood up and looked for the exit. Too late, the door swung open. The ear guy was accompanying his first victim out of his lair.
He scanned the benches from over his glasses.
“Paul, Mc .. Mc …,” he began.
“That’s me,” I said, raising my hand unconsciously like register at school. No escape now. He then gave the entry orders for the other patients. I started to move towards the door. He raised his hand and smiled through his sailor’s beard.
“I have to make an important phone call first,” he said, and disappeared back into his room. The little light came back on. Red. I sat down. The woman across from me looked to the heavens. The old people huffed and puffed and began to grumble. Some of them hadn’t heard what he said. An old woman in slippers with an ear horn was swinging her head around trying to work out what was going on.
“An important phone call, my arse,” scoffed one old boy. He stamped his stick on the floor in annoyance.
“He’s gone for a cortado,” said an old woman knowingly.
Another nodded, “Probably a brandy filled one.”
Everybody laughed. We waited twenty minutes for the important phone call to finish. Thirty minutes. Thirty-five. There was a constant flow of sighs and tuts and ay señores. I contemplated springing to my feet and sprinting out before anybody could stop me. And just when you felt you couldn’t take it any longer, when you felt you were going to kill somebody with your bare hands, the door opened. Everybody looked at me accusingly. I raised my hands apologetically and backed into the room. I was told to sit down. I sat. I tried to focus on the ear guy. He was big with a long bushy beard and small brown eyes overshadowed by overly hirsute eyebrows. His beard and fingers were yellow with cigarette smoke. He was a nineteen-seventies ear guy. No, not nineteen-seventies. Timeless was what he was. The ancient of days. Captain Cat. I couldn’t help liking him despite the hour and a half wait. I wondered who the important phone call was to. He ushered me into a little box.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said.
I nodded gravely.
He placed some heavy duty industrial headphones on my head.
“Okay,” he said slowly, “cuando usted oiga el sonido, levante la mano derecha. ¿Vale?”
I thought he sounded vaguely like Mariano Rajoy.
“La mano derecha,” he said again.
“De acuerdo,” I said.
His brown eyes scrutinised me.
“¿Cuál es la mano derecha?” he said matter-of-factly.
I tried not to laugh.
I raised my left hand slightly. He straightened his spine and opened his mouth to speak but I cut off his indignation.
“Es broma,” I said, and raised my right hand.
He looked at me long and hard. For a moment I thought he was going to throw me out or, I gulped, give me a bad report on purpose.
“Perdona,” I said, and bowed my head.
After a waiting-room length silence, he said, “usted es gracioso”.
I waved my hands, a little uncertain of how he had taken it.
“Usted es escocés, ¿verdad?” he said.
I thought about denying it for a split second.
“Yeah, I am,” I finally admitted.
He pointed his beard at me and flashed a set of white teeth.
Pride restored, he said, “We’re fellow countrymen.”
It was a surreal moment. I wasn’t sure how to proceed.
“I’m from Galicia, we’re Celts, brothers,” he said, eyebrows flapping and head nodding. It was true. There was no denying it. We were Celts. Brothers.
“Save my ears and then we’ll speak,” I said.
He beamed and, shutting the door tight, sprang round to the front of the booth. He gave me the thumbs-up through the perspex. Take off.
The test lasted ten minutes and even in my hyper-sensitive state I realized after three that I wasn’t deaf, or even slightly hard of hearing at that. The ear guy’s attention wandered once or twice with the left ear. Who could blame him? So did mine.
He opened the door.
“You have a small problem in the left ear,” he said, “nothing too serious.”
The cotton bud had pierced the right one. I got out of the booth and sat down. Waited for the report.
The ear guy lifted some files to reveal a huge book hidden under the bureaucracy of a million hearing tests. He thrust it into my hands.
I looked at the title, “Dalriada: Symbolism and Mystery in the Early Celtic Kingdoms”.
I nodded. Tried to look interested. I opened it at the contents page and read the blurb.
He waited patiently, his small brown eyes watching me closely.
“It’s interesting, really, eh, you know, symbolism and that, ah, have you read Jung? Man and his Symbols?” I said.
He frowned.
“No, it’s, well it’s not the Celts or,” I was dying up there.
I studied him a little more closely and that was when I saw it. He seemed to be surrounded by a mist. A timeless Celtic mist enveloping his huge hairy body.
“Brilliant,” he screamed suddenly, pointing at my book, which was lying on his desk.
“Sí, brilliant!” I agreed.
“My father was there,” he said proudly, “in our war.”
“So was mine,” I said.
He looked at me strangely.
“In the other war, in Europe,” I clarified.
We smiled at each other.
“He was on the Lancastria,” I said.
“The Lancastria?” he raised his hairy eyebrows.
“It was the worst sea disaster of the war, in June 1940, 5000 men were lost,” I said.
His curiosity was piqued. He sat down at his desk.
“Can we get information on the Internet? Do you know how it works?” he said and pulled a chair up for me. I started to think about that story by Kelman about being in with the doctor. The doctor starts to talk about Chekhov and orders some tea. What about those poor buggers out there, thinks the main character. What about the poor buggers in here, I thought. He was continuing to talk about his father and about the war and about how he had never heard of the Lancastria.
“Churchill didn’t allow the news to be printed at the time, would have been bad for morale, and then I suppose it was just forgotten.”
He looked at me. Nodded his head in deep understanding and fellowship.
“It’s the same for my father,” he said a little angrily, “they don’t like to speak about his war either.”
I was showing him how to open a google page and do a search.
“Why’s that?” I said distractedly.
There it was, the photo of the ship upended in the sea, the men adrift in the water, some balanced on the hull waiting for the end, you could almost hear the singing, there’ll always be an England, roll out the barrel.
“He was in la División Azul,” he said.
I stopped. He was peering at the photo on the screen
“Pobre cabrones,” he said.
He fixed his glasses on his nose.
What about the poor bastards out there, the poor bastards in here, the poor bastards everywhere? What about the men of the Lancastria? About all the beautiful days? About the soldiers of Salaminas?
He printed a couple of copies of the internet article.
“Toma,” he said, handing me a copy, “lo leeré con más tranquilidad después.”
He handed me the report and stuck a file with his book about the Celts hidden beneath under his arm and opened the door for me.
“He never came back,” he said in an almost whisper.
I went to say pobre cabrón, pobre CABRÓN, but stopped myself in time. His small brown eyes looked frightened. They studied me looking for my reaction. I gave him a rueful smile and stepped out of the room.
There was silence on the benches. The Spanish woman stood up but again he stopped everybody in their tracks.
He pointed to the file under his arm, “I have to take this important file to reception urgently,” he said.
There was practically an open revolt but the ear guy was not fazed.
“Anybody who needs a certificate for their work can get one downstairs and I’ll stamp and initial it,” he said guilefully.
There was a resigned silence. ¡Ay señor! He turned and headed down the passageway. We all watched him and half way down he whipped out his book and started reading about Dalriada and the Celts and their symbols lost in time. We blinked and he had disappeared. The pobre cabrón. Swerved into one of the endless green doors that lined the corridor. Disappeared on his important mission. Disappeared into the hairy mists of time, from whence he seemed to have come.
Swearwords: A couple of Spanish ones.
Description: An exiled Scot in Spain has an appointment at the doctor's. Will the Sun explode? Will it be the end of all life?
_____________________________________________________________________
I should never have done it. I know, don’t say it. It was really stupid. Really mind-blowingly stupid. Never put anything bigger than your elbow in your ear. Sound advice. Falling on deaf ears. Or perhaps, very soon, a literal deaf ear. A deaf right ear. I can still see myself with the cotton bud in my hand turning madly to my wife to make some exaggerated comment about some banal and unimportant issue and, thwack, into the innermost sanctuary of my ear it shot, my elbow like a lever against the bathroom cabinet. The screams. The tears. The writhing in stupidity. And then, three visits to the doctor’s later, the pure tone audiometry test.
I hate the doctor’s. It always sets off my neurosis. And from neurosis to insomnia. And from insomnia to the end of everything. The explosion of the Sun. The end of all life.
The appointment was for ten o’clock. Reasonably early enough. There wouldn’t be too many people around. It wouldn’t take long, I hoped. I would be in and out in a jiffy. Maybe I could even find some way to cheat. Just go on living with the deaf ear. I mean, who cares? Lots of people have survived a deaf right ear. Beethoven even wrote the ninth symphony with two deaf ears. Perhaps the right side of my head will develop some musical genius as a side effect. Then things would be a lot easier. I could give up work and devote myself to my genius. And all the people I wouldn’t have to listen to. I might even stick a cotton bud in the left one, too.
“Hey, Paul!” said a voice, suddenly slap bang in front of me.
It was Wullie. A fellow exiled Scot. I hadn’t seen him coming. Hadn’t had the chance to cross the street or nip into a shop.
“Beautiful day, beautiful day,” he pronounced, with a poetic longing in his voice, sweeping his hand towards the blue sky.
I hadn’t noticed. I was in another place. Weren’t all the days “beautiful”?
“Aye,” I said. I grimaced. “I’m going to the doctor’s”.
“Jeez oh,” said Wullie. He leant into my space. “Is it your testicles?” he said, looking around to make sure nobody was listening.
“No, God, no!” I said emphatically. I looked around, too.
“The doctor’s, the doctor’s,” Wullie was shaking his head and starting to muse.
I don’t have time for this. The world is ending. I may be deaf before the sun falls.
“Aye, okay,” he finally said, “it’s that thing then, you know, when you have to go with your shit in a wee container, for the colon cancer, eh?”
Wullie was older than me.
“When you get the letter to have a test, you try not to think about it, but then, well, aye, you end up going and sweating for weeks afterwards waiting for the results, expecting the worst.” He licked his lips.
“I’m only forty-two, Wullie,” I said deadpan, “it’s not about shit.”
“Aye, well, you’ve got some time yet,” he said with a smug jokeresque grin.
“Listen, Wullie, I’m gonnae be late.” I looked at my watch.
“What are you reading?” he asked, signalling my under arm with his jawbone.
I turned the book over in my hands.
“Soldados de Salamina,” I said. “You know, kill the time, you usually have to wait.”
“In Spanish? Catalan?”
He turned his head trying to follow my hands.
“Aye, in Spanish,” I said, a little apologetically.
“I read it in English,” he said crisply, without losing the grin. “I didn’t like it much, another book about the Spanish Civil War.”
“Ehrm, I think it’s, eh, brilliant, it’s got a wee touch of Capote, and, and Fitzgerald,” I said.
“Oh, aye, is that right? Have you read Hemingway? For Whom the Bells Toll?” he said, his voice ding-donging off the surrounding buildings.
“No,” I confessed, “I haven’t.”
I smiled weakly.
“Homage to Catalonia? Have you read that one?” he said, pointing at something up in the sky.
I followed his finger.
“Aye, I’ve read that one,” I said.
“I don’t know why he called it Homage to Catalonia because he doesn’t say a blooming good thing about Catalonia in the whole book.”
He laughed long and heartily. Laughed in the face of testicle tests and shit in wee plastic containers.
I was at a loss.
“Look, Wullie,” I raised my wrist to show him my watch, “the bells are tolling for me.”
“Aye, on you go, Paul, on you go,” he said, starting to move off. He patted me on the back.
I watched him go down the street for a few seconds. He turned and waved and then disappeared round a corner.
I stuck the book back under my arm. Squeezed my testicles just to make sure. Now, back to the ear. I was happy I had met Wullie. Really. A cheerful voice from home. Some reassurance before stepping into the belly of the whale of the Spanish health system.
I went up the backstairs and emerged on the third floor. It was completely empty. No teams of screaming children or packs of black clad gypsy women or old people staring maliciously at any foreign face daring to have an appointment before them. I relaxed. Maybe I’d have to come back another day. Deafness postponed. The Sun would not die. I would live.
I walked down the aisle and found the door. The little light above it was red. I sat down. I’ll just wait ten minutes, I thought. I started to read my book. There were some footsteps and an almost middle-aged Spanish woman sat down opposite in a white summer dress. We squeezed our faces up at each other. I couldn’t leave now. She was a witness. We waited. And waited. Time seemed to standstill. The place was starting to fill up with old people. I couldn’t concentrate on my book. I stared at the pages blankly. I could see it all now. They would look into my ears. Hmmm. I would be sent to a specialist. They would finally discover the tumour. I’m too young, I implored. So much still to do. Get a grip, Paul. I stood up and looked for the exit. Too late, the door swung open. The ear guy was accompanying his first victim out of his lair.
He scanned the benches from over his glasses.
“Paul, Mc .. Mc …,” he began.
“That’s me,” I said, raising my hand unconsciously like register at school. No escape now. He then gave the entry orders for the other patients. I started to move towards the door. He raised his hand and smiled through his sailor’s beard.
“I have to make an important phone call first,” he said, and disappeared back into his room. The little light came back on. Red. I sat down. The woman across from me looked to the heavens. The old people huffed and puffed and began to grumble. Some of them hadn’t heard what he said. An old woman in slippers with an ear horn was swinging her head around trying to work out what was going on.
“An important phone call, my arse,” scoffed one old boy. He stamped his stick on the floor in annoyance.
“He’s gone for a cortado,” said an old woman knowingly.
Another nodded, “Probably a brandy filled one.”
Everybody laughed. We waited twenty minutes for the important phone call to finish. Thirty minutes. Thirty-five. There was a constant flow of sighs and tuts and ay señores. I contemplated springing to my feet and sprinting out before anybody could stop me. And just when you felt you couldn’t take it any longer, when you felt you were going to kill somebody with your bare hands, the door opened. Everybody looked at me accusingly. I raised my hands apologetically and backed into the room. I was told to sit down. I sat. I tried to focus on the ear guy. He was big with a long bushy beard and small brown eyes overshadowed by overly hirsute eyebrows. His beard and fingers were yellow with cigarette smoke. He was a nineteen-seventies ear guy. No, not nineteen-seventies. Timeless was what he was. The ancient of days. Captain Cat. I couldn’t help liking him despite the hour and a half wait. I wondered who the important phone call was to. He ushered me into a little box.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said.
I nodded gravely.
He placed some heavy duty industrial headphones on my head.
“Okay,” he said slowly, “cuando usted oiga el sonido, levante la mano derecha. ¿Vale?”
I thought he sounded vaguely like Mariano Rajoy.
“La mano derecha,” he said again.
“De acuerdo,” I said.
His brown eyes scrutinised me.
“¿Cuál es la mano derecha?” he said matter-of-factly.
I tried not to laugh.
I raised my left hand slightly. He straightened his spine and opened his mouth to speak but I cut off his indignation.
“Es broma,” I said, and raised my right hand.
He looked at me long and hard. For a moment I thought he was going to throw me out or, I gulped, give me a bad report on purpose.
“Perdona,” I said, and bowed my head.
After a waiting-room length silence, he said, “usted es gracioso”.
I waved my hands, a little uncertain of how he had taken it.
“Usted es escocés, ¿verdad?” he said.
I thought about denying it for a split second.
“Yeah, I am,” I finally admitted.
He pointed his beard at me and flashed a set of white teeth.
Pride restored, he said, “We’re fellow countrymen.”
It was a surreal moment. I wasn’t sure how to proceed.
“I’m from Galicia, we’re Celts, brothers,” he said, eyebrows flapping and head nodding. It was true. There was no denying it. We were Celts. Brothers.
“Save my ears and then we’ll speak,” I said.
He beamed and, shutting the door tight, sprang round to the front of the booth. He gave me the thumbs-up through the perspex. Take off.
The test lasted ten minutes and even in my hyper-sensitive state I realized after three that I wasn’t deaf, or even slightly hard of hearing at that. The ear guy’s attention wandered once or twice with the left ear. Who could blame him? So did mine.
He opened the door.
“You have a small problem in the left ear,” he said, “nothing too serious.”
The cotton bud had pierced the right one. I got out of the booth and sat down. Waited for the report.
The ear guy lifted some files to reveal a huge book hidden under the bureaucracy of a million hearing tests. He thrust it into my hands.
I looked at the title, “Dalriada: Symbolism and Mystery in the Early Celtic Kingdoms”.
I nodded. Tried to look interested. I opened it at the contents page and read the blurb.
He waited patiently, his small brown eyes watching me closely.
“It’s interesting, really, eh, you know, symbolism and that, ah, have you read Jung? Man and his Symbols?” I said.
He frowned.
“No, it’s, well it’s not the Celts or,” I was dying up there.
I studied him a little more closely and that was when I saw it. He seemed to be surrounded by a mist. A timeless Celtic mist enveloping his huge hairy body.
“Brilliant,” he screamed suddenly, pointing at my book, which was lying on his desk.
“Sí, brilliant!” I agreed.
“My father was there,” he said proudly, “in our war.”
“So was mine,” I said.
He looked at me strangely.
“In the other war, in Europe,” I clarified.
We smiled at each other.
“He was on the Lancastria,” I said.
“The Lancastria?” he raised his hairy eyebrows.
“It was the worst sea disaster of the war, in June 1940, 5000 men were lost,” I said.
His curiosity was piqued. He sat down at his desk.
“Can we get information on the Internet? Do you know how it works?” he said and pulled a chair up for me. I started to think about that story by Kelman about being in with the doctor. The doctor starts to talk about Chekhov and orders some tea. What about those poor buggers out there, thinks the main character. What about the poor buggers in here, I thought. He was continuing to talk about his father and about the war and about how he had never heard of the Lancastria.
“Churchill didn’t allow the news to be printed at the time, would have been bad for morale, and then I suppose it was just forgotten.”
He looked at me. Nodded his head in deep understanding and fellowship.
“It’s the same for my father,” he said a little angrily, “they don’t like to speak about his war either.”
I was showing him how to open a google page and do a search.
“Why’s that?” I said distractedly.
There it was, the photo of the ship upended in the sea, the men adrift in the water, some balanced on the hull waiting for the end, you could almost hear the singing, there’ll always be an England, roll out the barrel.
“He was in la División Azul,” he said.
I stopped. He was peering at the photo on the screen
“Pobre cabrones,” he said.
He fixed his glasses on his nose.
What about the poor bastards out there, the poor bastards in here, the poor bastards everywhere? What about the men of the Lancastria? About all the beautiful days? About the soldiers of Salaminas?
He printed a couple of copies of the internet article.
“Toma,” he said, handing me a copy, “lo leeré con más tranquilidad después.”
He handed me the report and stuck a file with his book about the Celts hidden beneath under his arm and opened the door for me.
“He never came back,” he said in an almost whisper.
I went to say pobre cabrón, pobre CABRÓN, but stopped myself in time. His small brown eyes looked frightened. They studied me looking for my reaction. I gave him a rueful smile and stepped out of the room.
There was silence on the benches. The Spanish woman stood up but again he stopped everybody in their tracks.
He pointed to the file under his arm, “I have to take this important file to reception urgently,” he said.
There was practically an open revolt but the ear guy was not fazed.
“Anybody who needs a certificate for their work can get one downstairs and I’ll stamp and initial it,” he said guilefully.
There was a resigned silence. ¡Ay señor! He turned and headed down the passageway. We all watched him and half way down he whipped out his book and started reading about Dalriada and the Celts and their symbols lost in time. We blinked and he had disappeared. The pobre cabrón. Swerved into one of the endless green doors that lined the corridor. Disappeared on his important mission. Disappeared into the hairy mists of time, from whence he seemed to have come.