Dr Muk

Dr Muk asked me whether I’d heard any more news about the Algerian hostage crisis. Had the number of hostages killed been announced yet, for example? ‘I simply don’t understand these Islamist terrorists,’ he added, sadly. ‘They seem absolutely crazy to me. They are brainwashed, I suppose.’ I hadn’t listened to the radio so far today, I said, so I wasn’t up to date. But if you asked me, I said, they quite possibly have a point. Maybe our secular, materialist society is as contemptible as they claim it is. ‘Mm. Mm,’ agreed Dr Muk with surprising readiness.

I was lying on my back and he was slicing open my upper chest with a scalpel. The local area was anaesthetised, so I couldn’t feel a thing. The last time I was under his knife, six months ago, he’d failed to remove the corruption entirely. He’d missed a bit. So here I was again and he was unzipping the scars and ranging wider and deeper with his sharp instruments.

Dr Muk was leaning over me from the right-hand side; his assistant was leaning over me from the left. Half of his assistant’s face was covered by a mask, and she wore glasses, but behind the glasses her blue eyes were wonderfully expressive. She communicated friendliness, reassurance and good humour easily with them. I felt like a child in a cradle being doted on by loving parents.

Dr Muk’s real name is Mukopadhyay, but to his operating team here in Devon he’s Dr Muk. He is a slightly built and very gentle, otherworldly man. I feel at a slight disadvantage in his company, given that our entire acquaintance has consisted of my lying underneath him with my chest bared, and him knifing me, but his delicacy and modesty is such that it is always I who have the impression of being the one deferred to.