3 Sri Lanka (Back in the Hills)
May 31, 2022

55 Shaving

The first time I came to work at the House I remember being in a state of great apprehension, having never done anything of the sort before, and not knowing what to expect. There is a certain resistance and fear in the mind when faced with any new situation, and we much prefer the comfort and security of the old, of what we know, to the challenge of the new. We normally live subject to the past and it is really the power of God working in us that enables us to do what is right, rather than what is easy. My biggest fear that morning as I made the long journey to the House was that I would be asked to do something I had no competence in and would be exposed for the worthless fellow I knew myself to be. But I prayed in surrender to the Lord and placed my trust in his powers rather than my own, and at 8.00am sharp I appeared on men’s ward. As it happened the first thing sister asked me to do was something completely beyond my competence, for she asked if I could shave the patients, most of whom were old men with rumpled faces. I was about to protest that I didn’t even shave myself, but when I looked at sister I realised that she was non too used to shaving either, and it was her or me, and so I set about the task assigned with infinite care.

For the next couple of hours I was totally absorbed in what I was doing, I had no memory or experience to guide me, only a patient attention to what I was doing. Of course it all took a preposterously long time, but then time is not of the essence in a house like this, but love and care are. However, being unpractised can have its drawbacks and I remember that somehow I managed to nick one of the patients behind the ear, though what I was doing with the razor behind his ear I don’t know. This accident was a source of considerable nervous excitement on my part as the man involved kept putting his hand up trying to find out what had happened, but to my relief he never discovered the small trickle of blood flowing from such an unexpected quarter. With another of the old men it is the fold upon fold of skin on his neck that I remember and the difficulty I had in pulling it taut. I just sat there wondering how I was ever going to shave such an impossible face. But somehow I – and they – got through, and in fact as I’ve noticed before it is nearly always possible to cope with the reality of just about any situation when it’s there before you. It’s the thinking about it either before or after that tends to paralysis.

I shaved many a face that day, some of which were large and bony, and another so curiously small that one wondered how all the features could be accommodated; some had nervous disabilities that made them twitch, and becoming empathetic with their nervous systems was the only way to shave rather than cut. There was but one razor blade to suffice for the multitude of faces that presented themselves that morning, and you may think that a sign of poverty, but I remember thinking at the time that having to entrust one’s face to a total stranger, with whom it was not possible to converse owing to a lack of a common language, and moreover to someone who clearly didn’t shave himself – now that is a true measure of the poverty these people had fallen into.

56 Bathing