What's that on your nose?

Part 1: The bubble

Arturo was the first.

Seating ourselves at a shaded table outside his café-bar, we waited quietly, knowing what would come next.

Arturo came out to take our order. 'The usual?' He paused, staring at my nose with the hesitant half-smile of a man torn between politeness, curiosity and suspicion that he's about to get his leg pulled. 'What's that?' Pointing at my nose.

'It's a spot,' I told Arturo. Beyond that I could tell him nothing.

It had begun as such a tiny thing, appearing out of nowhere, out of nothing, like the cosmic Big Bang. A tiny pimple on the upper bridge of my nose, placed with geometric exactitude midway between the eyes. Nothing much happened for a week or two while the newborn pimple sat there deciding what to do, then one day it began to expand enthusiastically.

In the story of the Big Bang this phase is known as 'inflation', a fudge that nobody understands but purports to explain why we now have a Universe to live in. After the inflation of my pimple what I had was a pink circle spreading across my nose and beginning to swell like one of those slow, malevolent bubbles in a volcanic mud pool.

Arturo peered more closely at my bubble. 'There's a kind of scab on top.' Yes.

'And it looks like there's blood inside.' Yes indeed.

He retreated, trying not to look repulsed. 'You ought to see a doctor with that.'

I had already made an appointment for the next morning. Meanwhile I covered the bubble with a sticking plaster which reduced the repulsion but not the comments, since it clearly hid something big and nasty.

My doctor at the local health centre, well practised in avoiding alarm for his patients, flinched only briefly when I showed him the excrescence but sent me straight to the dermatologist at the local hospital with a big label Urgent around my neck and instructions to beat down the door if nobody answered. (I'm exaggerating a little.)


Part 2: The treatment


There are some doctors who inspire instant relief - at last I'm in good hands! - and others who inspire dread that they're hiding something from you. My dermatologist belongs to the first group, an extremely competent lady in whom I have the utmost faith. She examined the growth on my nose with her high-tech illuminated magnifying glass, through which it must have looked magnificently horrid.

She straightened up and nodded. 'It's not malignant.'

'It's not malignant?'

'It's not malignant.' She must be well accustomed to having to say that twice. 'But it does need dealing with.'

Yes, good, great. An ointment, a pill, an antibiotic? 'We'll do it now,' she decides. 'Agreed?' Right, fine.

The best thing to do, she explains, is to burn it out.

Burn it out? I picture a little blowlamp hovering between my eyes. But I have complete faith in this lady. If she wants to burn it out, let her burn.

'Over to the couch there, and lie down.'

'Right.' Complete confidence. J is watching from the guest chair and looking as perplexed and nervous as I'm trying not to look.

'You don't have a pacemaker, do you?' asks the dermatologist. Why would that matter? But I don't. Could probably do with one just at this moment. She switches on one of those mysterious electronic machines they have in hospitals then administers a quick jab of anaesthetic at the top of my nose.

A minute or two later she's waving in front of me a little rod trailing a curly cable back to the machine. The rod turns out to be an electronic red-hot poker. She taps the bridge of my nose with it, tentatively at first, perhaps to see how I react, then with more determination. Tap, hold, withdraw... tap again, hold...

This doesn't hurt, it really doesn't, but the billowing smoke and barbecue smell are alarming. And the cotton swabs, handed to her in quantities by her assistant to mop up whatever’s flowing from my nose bubble. How deep does this thing go?


Part 3: The aftermath


It's best to leave the cauterized wound open to the air, it seems, to heal more quickly. Within moments this revamped adornment to my nose catches the eye of Bernardo, a fellow villager. He is seated in the waiting area, accompanying his mum (nobody ever visits a doctor alone). 'Hey, that was a good shot! Right between the eyes. You must have really annoyed her.'

Such remarks will be repeated throughout the next week. Shop assistants, bartenders, friends, taxi drivers (especially taxi drivers). My barbecued nose spot has become a blood-black hollow, perfectly circular, clearly the entry wound of a high-velocity bullet. I've seldom produced such hilarity with so little effort.


Part 4: Epilogue


Eventually the black scab fell off and now there's just a little scar. But the question remains - what provoked this evil eruption?

Well, it was certainly the sun, and it's suspicious that the spot nestled precisely below the bridge of my old plastic sunglasses. Could the curved lower surface of the bridge have acted as a concave mirror, treacherously focusing the ultraviolet into a hotspot?

Who knows. I'm not going to experiment. Maybe it was just the usual cause of most such problems these days, la edad, age. And the remaining scar, a little white patch, could come in useful one day, as Arturo pointed out. 'When it's time to put you down they'll have something to aim at.'

But meanwhile: 'Another little glass of wine?' Oh okay, Arturo, go on then.