The Axe and the Knife

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 774, 21 May 1954, Page 22

The Axe and the Knife

by

SUNDOWNER

APRIL 30

there?" "No, we don’t have him." "That tall one. What is it?" "Him? He’s a kike." "Kike?" "Yes. It’s really ki-katee, but we leave out the tee." "The milk and sugar, too, I suppose." "That’s right. The milk -and sugar, too. Cripes, I'll remember that, Tea, 4k that a white pine you have

milk and sugar." "You don’t have pukatea here?"

"No, I never heard of that one." "A very big tree with pale bark. and a strutted base. The wood won’t burn, so you see the great trunks lying about for years." "Yes, I know him. Buckatee. I used to see him up north. He doesn’t grow here. Too cold, I think." "Cold doesn’t seem to trouble your manuka. Look at that big stuff by the creek." "That’s man-OOKA, He grows everywhere. Great burning when he’s dry." "What about kowhai? You must have it here, but I haven’t seen any." "Co-eye? Oh, go-eye! No, he’s gone. Used to make great fencing posts, but

there’s ‘nothing worth cutting now. Funny the way you call him. "Kowhai?" "Yes. Co. Co for company. Like you see on a bill." "You prefer go? Go for get a move on?" "That’s right. Get a move on. Like the sentimental bloke. Shake your bloody boots. Cripes, I'll remember that. Ever see the séntimental bloke?" "I met the man who made him." "What?" "The man who made him. Dennis. The man who thought him up and wrote books about him." "Books? No, it’s not the same. The bloke I saw was in a picture in Gore. Hell, he made me laugh." "You laugh easily; don’t. you?" "Me? You said it. I can laugh my head off at nothing." "Well, to get serious again. Have you any matai here?" "No, I don’t know him." "Or rimu?" "No." "No red or black pine at all?" "Yes, we’ve black pine. Red, too, but cE ae nowadays. Never had much red."

"You still have plenty of black?" "No, not plenty, but some. Can't beat his roots for firewood. Hard, though. Hard as hell to saw, and heavy." "Tough wood for tough men." "That’s right. Tough wood for tough men..Cripes, I’ll remember that. D’you know what we call jokers like you down here? Dags. That’s it. A real dag. Ever go to a pub?" "Now and again. This is the day, I think. Come on." * * Es

MAY 1

| IMAGINE that most men, before they submit to an ‘anaesthetic, turn over their chances of coming through. If they are very sick or in great pain the thought of oblivion is no doubt pleasant; but I am thinking of those who have all their faculties, all their doubts, all their fears, and no over-

riding physical discomfort. In those cases, I am sure, there is much secret

anxiety and many dark questionings. Are they sure that their heart is sound? Would the doctor know if they had a thymus? Do doctors ever know enough about anyone to be able to foresee all the reactions? What is the anaesthetic mortality? One in a thousand? One in ten thousand? One in a hundred thousand? Who knows, in any case, that he is not that one? So I suspect, it usually goes on, if we have enough knowledge, enough intelligence, and an active enough imagin-

ation to build up the picture. It certainly went on that with me. I not say that I had to whip up my courage, since there is no courage where there is no fear. Courage is facing what we do fear, and accepting the risks. I had no difficulty in accepting them. But I had difficulty in forgetting them. In remaining quite calm and quite normal from the day the operation was ordered till the morning when it took place. But as it turned out, I was never unconscious. A spinal anaesthetic shuts off pain but not sight or hearing or memory. I was never, I suppose, fully aware of the succession of events, but I was never completely blind to them, When I was wheeled away an hour and a half later I knew in my head what had happened to me, even if my body told me nothing.

MAY 3

* * * E jests gt scars who never felt a wound. But no one in hospit Is his wounds when he gets them. at he feels is nausea; sickness, humiliation, and disgust. It is necessary, he knows,

that life should be reduced to its simplest terms; that neither habit

not training nor shyness nor squeamishness should go to bed with him; that he should become what he was in the beginning, naked and unashamed. But _even nakedness has degrees. It can be passive and simple, a state to which we soon adjust ourselves; but it can also

be active and challenging, and an offence to human dignity. This also it is necessary to accept during the period of surrender. But I felt that surrendering to it was an abdication; a _ renouncing of everything that keeps us clean and restrained; a reversion to sub-normality. Until I escaped from that condition time was the longest interval I could insert between _ two vomit bowls. I was found to have that perverse body in ten or twenty that rejects modern drugs. ad he

MAY 5

STILL think, looking back, that the indignities of some branches of surgery are too gross to be accepted calmly. They would, in fact, be quiteintolerable but for the impersonal attitude of the surgeons, and especially of the sisters and nurses, who mix efficiency with kindness

and kindness with firmness un-

til you have no resistance left. But it seemed to me that most of my fellow patients accepted what came to them without much effort. I would like to believe that a single patient passed through the ward without revealing his

reason for entering it. "Yours is gallstones, isn’t it?" A cheerful giant shouted across the corridor the day after I arrived; and it was not maintaining the tradition to answer curtly No. He was, as it happened, a man without meanness or malice, and there was no one in the ward I missed more when he went home. He tried me out, and usually found me out, in so many subjects that I would have lost. patience if he had once ceased to be interesting. But although he was often wrong his blunders were as stimulating as his safest declarations, which ranged from Bertrand MRussell and Whitehead to cats, horology, and Continental cooking. I realised the moment he spoke that New Zealand had played no part. in making him; but I would not have guessed, if he had not told me, that he was a French-Canadian reared in Los Angeles and topped off in Victoria, B.C. His bed, oddly enough, was taken by another New Zealander whose making was completed before New Zealand ever saw him. But whereas the first occupant had been only four years in New Zealand, the second had been 40 years or more here learning nothing and forgetting nothing. He, too, was.a stimulating talker om a narrower range of subjects, but while the first man bombarded you gently with flower balls the second gave vou shrapnel. You could | please yourself whether you stood in the | line of. firé or moved out of it. If you | stood you would get hit, and find your | self waiting for a chance to hit back., If you ran you neither annoyed ‘the speaker nor stopped him. It was, in fact, a sign that you°had some intelligence or had been properly educated. But after three days he too went off, taking his strong convictions with him,

and my vis-a-vis was then a New Zealander from his heels up. If you met him in the dark or in a far country, in a | bathing costume or wearing the uniform of the Grenadier Guards, you would feel | at home with him the moment he’ opened his mouth, and then begin ask- | ing yourself whether you would stand | or run. It gives no impression of him | at all to call him simply an extrovert | who had never opened a. book. The | world was his book, you, your interests, | friends, and associates, doctors, hospitals, | chiropractors, gallstones, gardening, | whitebait, medical rackets, native birds, | pasteurised milk, vocational guidance, | correspondence ‘schools, the big depres- | sion, social credit, visiting hours, floor | polishets, ingrowing nails, light switches, | impacted teeth, doctored bread. On any or all of these subjects, and as many more, he would involve you, not merely at a moment’s notice, but with no notice at all, if you were weak enough or rash enough to glance in his direction. But I missed him, too, when he left us, since his tongue, tireless though it was, was lubricated by kindness. I don’t know | why God sends some chatterers into the ) world, but I am sure He created this man to mock at his own misfortunes and | help others to bear theirs. (To be continued)