The Dentist

The Dentist                              by Anton Notna

I had a dreadful fear of one day losing my teeth and having to wear dentures – like my old parents - and I was sure that indifferent dental care during my young days predisposed me to this fate.  Somehow, however, apart from a gap or two, they are still continuous, a little crooked but functional and, due to my later efforts, pampered. 

After moving into a new residential area I had, after the first little stab of pain, consulted a young dentist with a string of letters after his name, Dr Ben Venter.  His receptionist is an attractive, distinguished looking person, his mother, as I gathered shortly after my arrival.  She evinces a bright optimism with a gracious air as she arranges the magazines on the coffee table, occasionally casting an appreciative glance at the garden as if every moment was to be enjoyed.  The likeness with Dr Ben is unmistakeable, especially evident in the affectionate contact with each other at the reception desk, from where, after his greeting on that first occasion, I followed him to the surgery, making further observations along the way. 

Dr Ben is a tall, lean, athletic man, his almost lithe movements suggesting a trace of femininity that is belied by broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist.  He immediately put me at ease, readily exchanging personal details outside of the purpose of my visit, during which I gathered his hobby was ballroom dancing. This explained his nimble grace and poise that were accentuated by the stylish cut of his shirt and trendy striped trousers.  In his impeccable English, more attractive because of a trace of his home language, Afrikaans, he lucidly explained during and after the examination the dental problem and the action to be taken, dispelling any trepidation on my part and instilling a confidence that has remained as I have increasingly become aware of his solicitous care of my remaining, treasured teeth. 

I have always marveled that anyone could choose a career of working in another’s mouth.  While his further qualifications indicated an interest that went beyond what to me is prosaic, indeed, repulsive, dentistry, and which doubtless commend his aspirations in that field, I failed to see why a personable, precise young man like Dr Venter should ever have followed such a path, except that the aesthetic and the cosmetic aspects are appropriate to his persona.  And he is a persuasive tribute to his profession. This was clear by the inordinate time taken in his unerring technique, performed with what seemed to me the keenest preoccupation on his part with the work in hand under – and it is this that always captivates me – the remarkable faculty, the most intense scrutiny, of deep, interested and supremely eloquent eyes. 

Beyond any other characteristic it is his eyes that never fail to arrest me, particularly from my supine vantage point.  I have the clearest view for he has not yet found it necessary to employ those truncated binoculars that to most patients make the situation even more intimidating and which, of course, would have entirely prevented my developing fixation.  I think that it is my own absorption with those eyes that at times penetrates his concentration, causing him to refocus his eyes on my own when I, in momentary apprehension, as experienced when suddenly exposed under a penetrating light and have all revealed and known, shamefacedly lose my inquisitiveness.  I do not shift my gaze, though, and am reassured by his own as the blue of those perfect, rounded orbs, exquisitely pigmented to allow light only through the pupil of his eyes but themselves the beautiful image that reaches my brain in the same way, just for a moment lose their mystery in an affectionate smile otherwise hidden by his surgical mask, as if to ask what I find so fascinating. 

I had never thought for a moment that the juxtaposition of the heads of doctor and patient could mitigate the terrors associated with the dentist’s chair, but to me  in these moments the forbidding clinical milieu of that situation, the cold theatre illumination and gurgling rinse water, the articulated arms as of some menacing robot wielding the invasive drill with its dreaded sound and feel, are strangely secondary in the almost mesmerizing eye – shall I dare say, soul - contact  that this proximity affords.

How remarkable the eye is!  How precise; how delicate; how efficiently functional; how beautiful!  And how inadequate is the technical anatomy that describes it.  Its wonderful mechanism that so perfectly processes the photo-chemical-electrical chain of operations before the result is dispatched to the consciousness, so barely understood by me and, as to the expert, always a source of wonderment, surely tells, I muse as I peer into those unfathomable depths, only a part of the story. The wonder of this window to the soul cannot be told in terms of the cornea, the lens, the exquisite vitreous sphere, the retina, the optic nerve – these say nothing of the mesmeric allure of the mystifying depths that so far exceed the physicality of the eye.  They cannot describe the indefinable translucid, mysterious and illimitable pool that I presume to enter and explore, passive and vulnerable as I am beneath its omniscience. 

And so, over a period of two years, I had occasion to seek Dr Ben’s professional attention to my teeth, and was never disappointed and always guiltily delighted to indulge in that whimsical exploration of his eyes, the fantasy being just as effective in assuaging any discomfort as the clinical procedures that he employed.  I have not been successful in my quest but am never frustrated; the welcoming promise of discovery adequately satisfies me.

But my reverie was to be disturbed, for during my last visit there appeared on what had become to me the familiar imaginary landscape beyond his eyes an alien spectre, such as a wispy mist that momentarily obscures the horizon over the sea in the early morning except that it was intrusive, agitated, as if to forbid the attempted foray into the unfathomable depths beyond.  Startled, I blinked and then shifted my gaze to his brow and temples but saw nothing there that may have explained the change.  I refocused to the scene I had always sought to explore around and within the azure window and, yes; the erstwhile translucent allure was diminished by a threatening opacity.  I was frustrated, exasperated as perhaps an avid reader would be who discovers a defect in his central vision, a dark spot obscuring the text; here, a transient diaphanous curtain that by its very presence signified the scene beyond but foiled observation.  Had Dr Ben sub-consciously come to resent my intrusion and was closing the door?  No; for his pleasantness as he removed his mask, smiling, after a job well done though with a semblance of fatigue, was certainly unreserved.  I was baffled.

I chatted to his mother as he prepared the invoice in his surgery.  We had built up a rapport, a close friendliness which on that day was greater in the exchange of confidences.  Her eyes were misty as she explained, to my heartfelt dismay, that the latest medical report had indicated a return of her cancer. The chemo that she had endured with optimism and the remission that had given such bright hope for the future, to which I could testify as I had observed her manner over the years without knowing the circumstances, were ultimately to little avail as again the ominous count had indicated an insistent stirring of the dreaded disease within her body.  Dr Ben came in and handed me the invoice but not before he had gently laid his hand on his mother’s shoulder and stooped to kiss her hair, gently moving a wayward wisp across her forehead and looking for a long moment into her lovely, saddened face.  Ah, here was the explanation; a perhaps rare affinity so great that the threat to one is unconsciously lodged and reflected in the greatest means of communication, the eyes, of the other and once registered will sympathetically resonate with the consciousness, not, I now believed, simply as effect from cause but as a monitor of that which only time will extenuate and perhaps never subdue.