V.

What else: Irish, she wanted, turned up. Like they all wanted. To none of them did it occur that the retrousse nose, too, is an aesthetic misfit: a Jew nose in reverse, is all. Few had ever asked for a so-called "perfect" nose, where the roof is straight, the tip untilted and unhooked, the columella (separating the nostrils) meeting the upper lip at 90 degrees. All of which went to support his private thesis that correction - along all dimensions: social, political, emotional - entails retreat to a diametric opposite rather than any reasonable search for a golden mean.

A few artistic finger-flourishes and wrist-twistings.

"Would that be it?" Eyes aglow, she nodded. "It has to harmonize with the rest of your face, you see." It didn't, of course. All that could harmonize with a face, if you were going to be humanistic about it, was obviously what the face was born with.

"But," he'd been able to rationalize years before, "there is harmony and harmony." So, Esther's nose. Identical with an ideal of nasal beauty established by movies, advertisements, magazine illustrations. Cultural harmony, Schoenmaker called it.

"Try next week then." He gave her the time. Esther was thrilled. It was like waiting to be born, and talking over with God, calm and businesslike, exactly how you wanted to enter the world.

Next week she arrived, punctual: guts tight, skin sensitive. "Come." Schoenmaker took her gently by the hand. She felt passive, even (a little?) sexually aroused. She was seated in a dentist's chair, tilted back and prepared by Irving, who hovered about her like a handmaiden.

Esther's face was cleaned in the nasal region with green soap, iodine and alcohol. The hair inside her nostrils was clipped and the vestibules cleaned gently with antiseptics. She was then given Nembutal.

It was expected this would calm her down, but barbituric acid derivatives affect individuals differently. Perhaps her initial sexual arousal contributed; but by the time Esther was taken to the operating room she was near delirium. "Should have used Hyoscin," Trench said. "It gives them amnesia, man."

"Quiet, schlep," said the doctor, scrubbing. Irving set about arranging his armamentarium, while Trench strapped Esther to the operating table. Esther's eyes were wild; she sobbed quietly, obviously beginning to get second thoughts. "Too late now," Trench consoled her, grinning. "Lay quiet, hey."

All three wore surgical masks. The eyes looked suddenly malevolent to Esther. She tossed her head. "Trench, hold her head," came Schoenmaker's muffled voice, "and Irving can be the anaesthetist. You need practice, babe. Go get the Novocain bottle."

Sterile towels were placed under Esther's head and a drop of castor oil in each eye. Her face was again swabbed, this time with Metaphen and alcohol. Gauze packing was then jammed far up her nostrils to keep antiseptics and blood from flowing down her pharynx and throat.

Irving returned with the Novocain, a syringe, and a needle. First she put the anaesthetic into the tip of Esther's nose. one injection on each side. Next she made a number of injections radially around each nostril, to deaden the wings, or alae, her thumb going down on the plunger each time as the needle withdrew. "Switch to the big one," Schoenmaker said quietly. Irving fished a two-inch needle out of the autoclave. This time the needle was pushed, just under the skin, all the way up each side of the nose, from the nostril to where the nose joined forehead.

No one had told Esther that anything about the operation would hurt. But these injections hurt: nothing before in her experience had ever hurt quite so much. All she had free to move for the pain were her hips. Trench held her head and leered appreciatively as she squirmed, constrained, on the table.

Inside the nose again with another burden of anaesthetic, Irving's hypodermic was inserted between the upper and lower cartilage and pushed all the way up to the glabella - the bump between the eyebrows.

A series of internal injections to the septum - the wall of bone and cartilage which separates the two halves of the nose - and anaesthesia was complete. The sexual metaphor in all this wasn't lost on Trench, who kept chanting, "Stick it in . . . pull it out . . . stick it in . . ooh that was good . . . pull it out . . " and tittering softly above Esther's eyes. Irving would sigh each time, exasperated. "That boy," you expected her to say.

After a while Schoenmaker started pinching and twisting Esther's nose. "How does it feel? Hurt?" A whispered no: Schoenmaker twisted harder: "Hurt?" No. "Okay. Cover her eyes."

"Maybe she wants to look," Trench said.

"You want to look, Esther? See what we're going to do you?"

"I don't know." Her voice was weak, teetering between here and hysteria.

"Watch, then," said Schoenmaker. "Get an education. First we'll cut out the hump. Let's see a scalpel."