The Man Who Lost His Nose

When James T. Smythe-Bowman opened his eyes in the optimally air conditioned room at the poshest hotel in the city, when this magnificently successful business tycoon from the oil and banking world condescended to lift his eyelids to the world, he immediately knew that something was wrong. It was only after he stepped out from between the silky sheets of his gargantuan bed and crossed the immense room to the marbled washroom that he realized what was amiss: the demigod who sleepily stared back at him from the wide, gold-rimmed mirror, dark haired, square of jaw, lips full and self assured, coppery skin and immaculately trimmed eyebrows—everything was in its place, as it should be and as seen on the pages of the glitzy magazines that have tracked his extraordinary ascendancy—except one thing: where his nose ought to be, there was but emptiness, a vague blur, as if someone had airbrushed it out of existence. Attributing this to the occasional glitch of his eyes upon waking, which was becoming more frequent after he had transited from his thirties into his forties, the baron pressed a knuckle against his left eyeball and gently rolled it, by doing so chasing the film that had covered his eyeball during his sleep. Having done so, he looked up again, expecting the perfect protuberance to make a reappearance. Notwithstanding this effort, his nose remained amiss. Slight panic pouring its cold water inside his body, the man, still incredulous, still certain of a temporary ocular defectiveness, brought the tip of his fingers to the area of concern and pressed gently. As he did so, his heart did an odd, slightly off-kilter bounce inside his chest as tactility gave way to confirmation, and then horror. Without a doubt, his nose was gone. Stranger still was the fact that while the apparatus itself was absent, he had no difficulty breathing in through nostrils that somehow no longer seemed to exist. 

After minutes of staring back at this absurd deformation, the victim of this assault on his person crossed the room and returned to his bed, intent on placing a call to…who, in fact, did one contact when one’s nose had been stolen? For he knew, beyond doubt, that this was an act of burglary. Was he not, after all, one of the country’s wealthiest individuals? Turning on the lamp on the bedside table, he reached for his cell phone, still undecided on whom to call, and discovered the small handwritten note—a standard square yellow Post-It, which someone had affixed onto the screen of his expensive (and gold-plated, no less) handheld device.   

I have your nose, the note said. The handwriting was poor, the characters slightly child-like, messy, unaligned. You can recover it, but must do something in return. And on the other side: You will buy me dinner and you and I will have a little conversation. Grant me this, and you will get your nose back. But first you must endeavor to find me.

The temerity! How could anyone…Didn’t this thief know who he was dealing with, how busy, important he, James T. Smythe-Bowman, who mingled with heads of state and billionaires and the most powerful opinion makers, was? Dinner and a conversation with a miscreant? He’d have none of this. Someone had his nose, acquired by means which in his anger he could not begin to comprehend, and that someone would pay. He would call the authorities, and the powers that be would do whatever was necessary to ensure that what was his was duly returned. Lividly resolute, he first placed a call to his secretary and ordered her to cancel all his morning meetings, then returned to the washroom, a quick sideways glance in the mirror again confirming the unfathomable, showered, got dressed—pristinely, multi-thousand-dollar suit, for nose or not, a man of his stature could not conceivably be seen in anything suggesting common taste or vulnerability—and left the room. He had no appetite for breakfast this morning, which he customarily took at the hotel’s grand restaurant, where the best first meals of the day in the entire country were reputedly served. 

Walking down the quiet hall toward the elevators, he encountered a hotel employee who was laboriously pushing a breakfast trolley. Placing himself squarely in the way of the young Indian-looking man’s path, he propped up his chin and asked if the man saw anything wrong with his face.

“Wrong, sir?”

“Yes, wrong. Isn’t there anything…missing?”

“N-no, sir,” the perplexed man said. If I may say so, the gentleman looks as elegant as ever.”

“No missing nose, you ignoramus?”

“No, sir, everything is in order, sir.”

“Ugh! Get out of my way, you useless punk,” Smythe-Bowman screamed, the outburst propelling the young man on a mad cacophonous effort to prevent meals and coffee from spilling onto the thickly rugged floor.

“Yes, sir, my apologies, sir,” the man’s voice echoed behind him as Smythe-Bowman reached the elevator and angrily pressed the button down. Behind him through the tall window, the city below was awakening, insultingly oblivious to the calamity that was visiting one of its prime movers. Didn’t the man see his missing nose? Or not-see his missing nose, that is? The mirrors inside the elevator made it perfectly clear that his nose was indeed still performing its strange vanishing act.

At the reception desk, Smythe-Bowman requested a limousine and asked to be taken to the police station. He unfailingly used limousines and always stayed at this hotel whenever he was in town from his base in London, a routine which spared him the annoyance of having to deal with change. Everything constant, in its place, predictable, bereft of the annoyances of unnecessary human interactions that did not maximize success and profit, in line with his rule of never becoming attached to anyone and hence the long series of undistinguishable, disposable and unmemorable lady friends. Smythe-Bowman looked closely at the comely receptionist’s expression—a first real look in all those years—for a hint, any hint, of recognition that something was out of the ordinary, but she gave him none.

“My nose…”

“Sir?”

“Never mind,” he said, and sauntered over to the awaiting car and chauffeur. 

“To the police station.”

His predicament did not improve with the authorities, who equally failed to recognize that an important feature of his person had gone missing. He handed over to the chief officer, a gray-haired man who initially showed amusement, then gradually something closer to annoyance, the hand-written note that he had discovered next to his bed, but this only succeeded in further fueling the man’s growing impatience—and beyond that, the first suggestion of mockery in the glances the chief officer exchanged with the other members of the force who had now gathered. Impatience, annoyance, even, he could perhaps countenance. But mockery, ridicule, that was unacceptable!

Smythe-Bowman would have none of this. If local law enforcement could not take this calumny with the seriousness his situation warranted, he would take this to the next logical step. Returning to his car, he demanded the chauffeur take him to his country’s high commission. Surely the diplomats would address with the utmost dedication the case of a theft against one of their own, an emissary of sorts to this Asian upstart which, it was now perfectly clear, needed to be told—shown, that is—what was what and who was who. Someone was walking around with his nose. His nose!

Thanks to his status, Smythe-Bowman quickly was able to secure a meeting with the high commissioner, a white haired scion of a long line of magnificent diplomats with whom he had spent many an evening at the county’s prohibitively expensive restaurants. Smythe-Bowman was shown into the high commissioner’s office and immediately launched himself into an explanation of his case.

“Brian”—they were on a first-name basis—“someone’s stolen my nose.”

“Come again, old chap?”

“My nose,” he said irritably. “It’s gone. Can’t you see?”

This went on for a while, and at one point the high commissioner even got off his chair and approached Smythe-Bowman to scrutinize his face, so closely that he could discern the smell of the diplomat’s first whisky of the day and could probably have named which expensive brand it was had he not been distracted by his rather more serious situation. The man rubbed and pinched, and satisfied that he had accomplished his investigation, went back to his seat.

“Everything’s in order, James. The whole package is there,” he said. “So tell me, what is this really about?” The high commissioner poured him a glass of whisky, but the spirits did not accomplish much besides reminding him that he had spent the entire morning on an empty stomach. 

“You tell me it is there, that you have felt it when you touched it,” Smythe-Bowman said. “But it isn’t. When you palpated it, I didn’t feel a thing.”

“Perhaps,” the high commissioner said, leaning forward. “Perhaps you should consider consulting a specialist?”

“A psychiatrist, you mean?” Smythe-Bowman exclaimed. “You think I am nuts?”

“No, I simply—”

“The note! If this is, as you seem to be suggesting, all in my head, some insanity or malady, how do you explain this note, which I found on my desk?” Surely this was incontrovertible evidence that the cause of all this lay not inside his head but rather was the workings of some external agent.

At this, the high commissioner went completely silent, his face blank. But his eyes, which briefly made contact with Smythe-Bowman’s before shifting to some unseen point of interest on a wall, said enough.

“You think I composed this note, don’t you?”

“Listen, James. I can recommend someone. When Alice had her troubles last year, we turned to him and the results were nothing short of miraculous. Of course she still requires medication, but the visions are gone—well, mostly gone, I’d say, with the occasional relapse. But those are minor affairs, and I’m convinced that a proper look-see into what’s troubling you could…”

Before the high commissioner could finish his sentence, Smythe-Bowman had gotten up and left.

“James, old chap!”

As he was being driven to his downtown office, Smythe-Bowman wondered whether his old chum may have had a point and that perhaps he should make an appointment with a clinic. To check on the physical, that is, as a way to defer the more troubling alternative—that he was indeed going crazy. But then, how could be be crazy when he knew for a fact that someone else, not him, had written that note? This was the clue, proof beyond doubt of a direct link between the missing part of him and the author of this ignoble misdeed. There was, of course, the possibility that somehow, perhaps while sleepwalking, it was him who had written the note. But he was not ready to consider this as an explanation, and deep inside he knew that madness could not account for what he was experiencing. By the time he arrived at the downtown building where his office was located, occupying the topmost floor of a skyscraper whence the entire Marina Bay could be observed in all its magnificence, it was already past noon. Going up the elevator, Smythe-Bowman decided he’d pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary. He had too much work to do anyway, too many videoconference calls and meetings with Important People like him. Too much money to make. He even avoided glancing at surfaces which could reflect his image. In this fashion, Smythe-Bowman went through his entire day pretending normalcy, and he was almost able to confine his troubles to a remote part of his mind, but on several occasions he caught himself observing peoples’ reactions to his presence, still looking for this drop of a hint that someone had noticed something different about him. He even dropped the word “nose” on more than one occasion during the afternoon board meeting, telling one partner to not stick his nose into affairs that weren’t his business, and another that a competitor had stolen a land deal right under their noses (he just couldn’t bring himself to use that other one, cut off your nose to spite your face, as this would be, well, too close to home). None of this provided any suggestion that anyone had noticed that his nose was missing.

When he returned to his hotel that night, Smythe-Bowman discovered that another note had been left on the nightstand. Miss your nose yet? 

This went on for a few days. Every morning when he woke up, and every evening when he returned to his room, he would find a similar handwritten note, each more of a riddle than the preceding one. You see me and yet you don’t, one said. I am your nose, said another. He despaired, fumed, vented as he struggled to return to some semblance of routine. He installed cameras to spy on his room and yet the devices captured no intruder. Falling asleep next to an empty nightstand, when he woke a note had magically deposited itself upon its surface. Some he tore up, others he collected and frantically pored over and arranged and rearranged in various orders in an attempt to find meaning, to extract a hidden pattern.

One evening about a week later, on the brink of a complete mental breakdown, Smythe-Bowman decided to try something different. Before going to sleep, he scribbled a note of his own; his first attempt, as it were, to communicate with whatever ghost was haunting him. For by this point, he had concluded that this was what was happening to him, a haunting, and if this did not cease he would have no choice but to relocate to another (alas, less expensive) hotel. 

How do I find you? he wrote.

The next day, he had his reply.

At last! A step in the right direction! You reach out to another who is invisible to you. Call this number. Written on the reverse side of the note was a telephone number, a local one. 

Smythe-Bowman immediately dialed the number, his heart beating inside his chest. On the third ring, someone picked up.

“Good morning, sir.”

The voice was vaguely familiar, with a certain southern foreignness, something the’d heard countless times in the city. The servant class. If someone had asked him to guess, he’d have said Malaysian. 

“Who are you?” he asked, struggling to contain his anger. “And where the hell is my nose?”

“Who I am is to be revealed at an appropriate time, provided that you make the effort to find me. As to your nose, it is where is belongs and shall be returned to you, as promised, after we have had dinner and conversed. All I ask is one meal.”

“How dare you!” he exploded. “I will not be blackmailed—”

At this outburst, the line went dead. He called again, but nobody picked up. However, he now had a lead: a phone number, which surely would help him unmask the perpetrator. He would not give in to extortion. No free meal for such a person, he vowed. His hopes of wiggling out of that dinner, however, were dashed when both Internet searches and a call to the operator revealed that the phone number in question was not activated. Inquiring whether the number had perhaps been just deactivated, the operator informed him that the number in question had not been in service for more than a decade.

Moments later, a disconsolate Smythe-Bowman collapsed into his chair for breakfast in the dining room. When the waiter came over to take his order, Smythe-Bowman did not look up, his eyes glued, as always, to the stock market figures on his cellphone and, next to it, on some lead article in the Wall Street Journal. The inevitable morning routine, except that this morning the graphics and words meant nothing at all to him.

“Good morning, sir.”

Good morning, sir. That voice! When he looked up, his eyes perceived a short man in a completely white uniform, brown skinned, with curly black hair, dark eyes slightly too close to each other above a nose below which a small mustache did its best to give form to an otherwise unexceptional face. This was the face of thousands like him that he had seen—or not seen, rather—over the many years he had spent in the city. 

Smythe-Bowman abruptly got off his chair, banging his knee against the table in the process. Pointing an accusing finger at the waiter, he screamed: “It is you!”

“Now I beg you to calm down, sir. It is indeed I, and I am very pleased to announce that in the many years that you have attended this fine institution, it is the first time that you have dignified my presence with as much as a glance.”

Enraged, Smythe-Bowman made toward the man, his claws aching to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until his own nose fell off. The commotion attracted the attention of diners at tables nearby, who irritably looked over in their direction.

“Oh no,” the man said, taking a step back. “Any violence and I promise you that you will never be reunited with that nose of yours.” Thus challenged, and wary of his reputation with the people in the dining hall, Smythe-Bowman lowered himself back into his chair.

“Is it money you want?” he asked.

“I have already told you what I want. Dinner and a conversation.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Smythe-Bowman responded.

“Be that as it may, sir, I will have that dinner. In fact, it shall be this very evening, at Le Rouget.”

“I will not…”

In a flash, the man was gone. Smythe-Bowman jumped off his chair and chased after him, but he had vanished into thin air. When he returned to his table, another waiter—a different one, now that he bothered to look at him—came over to offer a coffee refill, which he absentmindedly agreed to.

Le Rouget. Something had to be said about the man’s taste, he had to admit. Later that morning, Smythe-Bowman made a reservation for two, using an influential contact to secure a table after being informed that the restaurant was fully booked for the entire month.

He arrived at 6pm and waited for nearly an hour, sipping on an expensive glass of red wine whose taste left him entirely indifferent. The man eventually showed up, dressed in clothes that made him stand out in a room filled with diners wearing their glitziest evening attires. A waiter came over and disdainfully asked whether the man was indeed, as he claimed, Mister Smythe-Bowman’s dinner companion. Smythe-Bowman hesitated, aware that such an admission would undermine his image among the high flyers in the room, many of whom he knew by reputation, and quite a few personally. 

“He is indeed, let him come,” he said, deflated.

The man walked over, with a pride in his gait that clashed with his physical appearance. The man did not seem affected in the least by the mismatch caused by his presence in this rarified circle.

“First time here?” Smythe-Bowman asked mockingly.

“Ah yes, sir. I could not ever have dreamed of being in such a place—not even as a waiter, in fact.”

“Then why did you strut in here as if you owned the goddamned place?”

“Because, sir, tonight is a special night for me.”

“What is so special about tonight?” Smythe-Bowman asked irritably.

“Tonight I feel dignified.”

“Dignified?” Smythe-Bowman scoffed.

“Yes. Tonight you have no choice but to see me. Tonight I am no longer invisible to you.”

“As I told you before, I have absolutely nothing to say to you,” Smythe-Bowman replied. “Order whatever you want and let’s get this over with. This will be the most expensive meal of your entire life, I can guarantee you that.”

“It will indeed,” the man said, grabbing a menu.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Smythe-Bowman said with venom in his voice.

“What a sad man you must be.”

“Sad? What makes you say that? I have the means to have such a meal every single night if I want. I own houses in five countries.”

“That may be so,” the man said, mockingly, “but let me remind you that you lack a nose.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Smythe-Bowman ejaculated, doing his utmost to contain his voice so as not to repeat the morning’s  embarrassment.

“You did this to yourself, sir. I am but a reminder.”

“A reminder of what?”

“Of what invisibility feels like. You see, sir, I am a symbol—or rather, your nose, currently missing, is a symbol. A ghost, a mere idea, there but not. By making your nose disappear, I wanted you to experience what it is like to be like me.” 

“Damn you.”

“I already am, sir.”

“Order up, I have nothing to say to you. We’ve had our conversation, now eat up and that’ll take care of that deal of yours.”

“You need not say a word more, sir,” the man said. “But I am only beginning. And tonight, you shall listen. That is part of the deal. You will listen, and we will be done when I decide that we are done.”

They ordered, Smythe-Bowman indifferently, the man, Hafiz, as he eventually introduced himself, with palpable excitement. Hafiz declined wine, content with an overpriced glass of mango juice. Dishes were served, Hafiz ravenously consuming the delicate French cuisine while Smythe-Bowman merely picked at his food, boredom and contempt showing on his face.

Over more than an hour, Hafiz told Smythe-Bowman of his life as an immigrant, of the crowded conditions at the second-floor hovel he, his wife and four children shared with three other families. He told of his father, who sacrificed everything and died in penury so that his son and daughter in law could build a better life for themselves abroad, and of his mother who died broken hearted after her son and his family moved abroad and never came back, not because they did not want to, but rather because they were never given the leave to do so, and could not afford to be away from their work—he at the hotel, she cleaning rooms elsewhere—for more than a day, and such days were usually used up whenever one of them was too physically ill to work. He told of his eldest son who dreamed of owning his own house one day, and of a daughter who due to an early illness probably could not ever count to anything above ten. And on and on Hafiz talked while Smythe-Bowman did not even pretend to listen.

As the two companions ended their dessert, a chocolate mousse with gold leaves and other elements which Hafiz could not even identify, and after Hafiz had completed the telling of his family’s sundry trials and endless string of calamities, Smythe-Bowman signaled the waiter over and asked for the check. In a voice devoid of any passion, and clearly unmoved by everything he had or had not listened to, he said: “We are done here. Time to go.”

Hafiz sat silently while the waiter brought the bill and Smythe-Bowman handed him his credit card.

“Were is my goddamned nose?” he asked, a threatening tone in his voice.

“One more thing, sir,” Hafiz said.

“What now?” Smythe-Bowman hissed.

“Just look at me. You need not say anything. Just look at me.”

With glacial blue-grey eyes, Smythe-Bowman looked up and stared squarely at Hafiz for several long seconds. It was a gaze that normally made much more powerful men and women blink and look away. But Hafiz returned that gaze.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Whatever. I don’t give a damn about you or your stories. Where’s my nose?”

“I will respect my part of the deal,” the man said. “Tomorrow morning, your nose will be given back to you.”

“It had better,” Smythe-Bowman seethed as they exited the restaurant. “Now get lost.”

Hafiz stared at him for a few moments, his hands in the large pockets of his pajama-like pants. Sadness flashed briefly across his face, and then he was gone, his small figure swallowed by the night’s descending darkness. Smythe-Bowman climbed into the waiting limousine that took him back to his hotel. Later that night, after checking himself in the bathroom mirror, Smythe-Bowman went to sleep, wondering whether he might have been deceived.

When he woke up the following morning, his very first act was to move his fingers to the middle of his face. He touched and palpated, squeezed and rubbed. His nose was back! Relieved, he walked over to the washroom, feeling like a new man, and took a long hard look at his reflection, at the center of his face. There was no doubt, his nose was back. He cracked a devilish smile, a smile of his victory over that silly little man.

Except that where lips should have been, there only was a void. 

On the nightstand, a new note had materialized, one that suggested the fate of his mouth was but the first in a long series of disappearances to come.