Nose

 

The Nose, by Niko ‘Naso’ Google. Part I. This was not what the barber Jones was used to. Indeed it was what the morning newspapers call a once-in-a-lifetime event. Inside the freshly baked loaf of bread his wife made for breakfast was a nose. This wouldn’t happen with Baker’s Delight. Furthermore, he recognised the nose. It was the nose of Smith, distinctly, the wannabe CEO part-time head kicker. Jones’s wife did “not want that nose in the house one more minute.” He understood. Taking the nose with him to work he threw it off Princes Bridge, only to be spotted by a policeman. The officer refused Jones’s bribe, saying he was getting enough bribes already. Soon after this exchange heavy rain enveloped the scene leaving the whole city, as they say in fiction, “shrouded in mystery.” Part II. It was unpleasant for Smith to look in the mirror that morning to find his nose was missing. The only thing for it was to find the first fitted facemask to hand and go report this disappearance to the police chief. Where had it got to? He mingled in with the crowd of fitted masks, but imagine his alarm while passing nearby the Cathedral, to see his nose being chauffeur-driven in the latest model BMW business-like along Collins Street, replete in woollen suit and silken tie, stylish attire of the accomplished CEO. Accosting it, Smith demanded the nose get back on his face. The nose declined, the nose refused, the nose eluded. Oddly, the police chief was not in, so Smith sent lost notices to the newspapers. The Guardian took a sniff, but the others refused outright as too scandalous, a threat to CEO culture, mask mandates, personal identity. Not in the public interest. Indulging his habit of flirting with young women Smith realised, they might be masked but he was noseless. Arriving home humiliated he met a policeman who had just returned his nose. The nose however played funny buggers and wouldn’t comply with his face. His doctor thought it a hopeless case. A poison pen correspondence ensued with Mrs Eleven when Smith decided she made his nose fall off after he refused her daughter’s hand in marriage. Eventually he saw the light, judging this to be a false assumption. Sea rain started falling all over town loudly and incessantly for what seemed like days. Part III. In the time-honoured tradition of happy endings, Smith woke up one morning to find his nose was back on his face. The rain had cleared, it was a cool but sunny day with seven hot air balloons floating over the Yarra. Wearing of masks was optional while anti-vaxxers protested that their freedoms had been stolen, cancelled, or otherwise denied. It was the world’s most liveable city. Happy to be alive, Smith visited Jones for a haircut and shave. The barber was surprised to see Smith with his nose, but quietly got on with the job. Later in the morning Smith was his old self again, practising shopping therapy at major department stores and flirting with the young women.

  

 Photograph: selfie at Ivanhoe Station in April 2022. Today I read Osip Mandelstam’s novella ‘The Egyptian Stamp’ (1928) set in Petrograd, i.e. St Petersburg, in the summer of 1917. The story is told in a unique poetic way, but draws on certain haunting works of Russian literature, one of them being that absurdist enigma ‘The Nose’ by Nicolai Gogol (1836). Anyway, these two stories inspired this one, so make of it what you will.