MY HEMORRHOID

It was his hemorrhoid that got him into the mess—he says it was his destiny. Destiny is a mysterious business, and most experts can agree upon only one essential feature common to all definitions of destiny: destiny is the often unpleasant stuff that happens to people. And the stuff that happened to Roman Gilchrist was the direct result of his hemorrhoid. Or, to put it a bit differently, a man sometimes stands at a crisscrossing of the paths of his destiny, where the path of saving the world intersects with the path of his hemorrhoid. Roman Gilchrist was one such man. This is his story.

On the morning of June 17, RG woke up, brushed his teeth, had his cup of tea, took a shower, wore his clothes (a solid black suit, white shirt, black tie with small white stars), and wriggled into his shoes, just as he invariably did, every day of his life, with the exception of Saturday and Sunday (when he didn’t wear the suit). Nothing was different about his life that morning. And yet, he was standing at the end of a long series of events that was gathering momentum to explode into an excruciatingly painful climax at the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office of Britain was where he worked. He was assistant to the Foreign Secretary, Sir James Modius.

When he entered the Foreign Office, he had little inkling of the horror that was about to intrude into his life. In fact, he was feeling fairly buoyant, energetic, even joyful. After a long gap, he had started working out again the previous day—working out, for RG, meant going for a brisk walk. He had come home from his walk invigorated, perspiring lightly so that his clothes just stuck to his flesh, and the hot shower that rapidly followed had lifted his spirits several orders of magnitude. This feeling had carried over into a restful sleep and then into the following morning. He was, as the expression goes, feeling good about himself, good about being alive.

He took his customary position in his chair, in the smallish antechamber that led to the spacious chambers of his boss, Modius. Modius, answerable only to the Prime Minister of Britain, Cuthbert Willins, ran his ship like the captain of a Roman slave ship. People scurried about like frightened cockroaches whenever Modius came into a room or stalked the halls. He made periodic rounds inspecting the workers, making sure that Work, not idle chatter, was being performed. Working directly beneath Modius was not the easiest task in the world, as he was given to unusual mood swings and made the most surprising requests at times. But the job had its perks. RG had the privilege of using Modius’s bathroom, by far the cleanest lavatory in the building. It had three stalls, two urinals, a shower area, and a map of Britain for easy reference. This map, as a matter of record, glowed in the dark. Modius was quite fond of walking into the toilet at the end of the day, turning the lights off, and inspecting the map. He sometimes asked RG to accompany him. The two would gaze at the map, Modius would make a comment or two, such as ‘Devilish chaps, the French, what?’, or tap his index finger on the map and say something like, ‘Britain it is, is it not?’ To all these comments, RG had developed a standard reply. It was ‘Indeed.’ ‘Indeed’ was an all-purpose reply that always appeared to satisfy Modius, and that was just the way RG liked it.

The morning of June 17, 2004, or should we say the historic morning of June 17, 2004, whittled away as mornings usually do, till the clock showed the time 11:18. At this time, RG felt a rumbling sensation in his lower abdomen, a sensation that is familiar to most of us, a sensation that ordinarily announces the impending arrival of a bowel movement. RG finished typing a letter from Modius to the Turkish Ambassador, looked at his watch—it read 11:20—and decided to attend to the matter at hand. He bent purposeful steps in the direction of the exclusive lavatory. He swung open the door. The first stall was occupied. No matter, this was exactly the advantage of sharing the toilet with Modius and Modius alone. You never had to wait, unless VIPs were visiting, of course. RG recalled one somewhat amusing occasion when members of a Rumanian goodwill mission found themselves queuing for the three stalls. Being quite frank, the leader of the mission attributed this to the rather large intake, the night before, of a meal consisting of shredded, spicy beef, jalapeno peppers, and last, but certainly not least, beans. With a swift movement—RG realized that this was no ordinary tumble down his intestinal tract; there was an urgency about it—he pushed open the door, took the necessary steps and planted himself securely on the toilet seat.