Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

  Hema pushed her chair back and stood up. “Please. I don't want you to ever mention that man's name in this house.”

  There were tears in her eyes. And fear. He went to her. He could bear her anger, he could suffer it, but he couldn't bear to see her in distress. He grabbed her hands, pulled her toward him; she fought but finally gave in, as he murmured, “It is all right. I didn't mean to upset you. It's all right.” I'd sell my best friend down the river to be able to hold you like this.

  “What if he comes and claims them? You heard the astrologer.” She was trembling. “Have you thought about that?”

  “He won't,” Ghosh said, but she heard the uncertainty in his voice. She marched to her bedroom. “Well, if he tries, it will be over my dead body, do you hear me? Over my dead body!”

  ONE VERY COLD NIGHT when the twins were nine months old, and while the mamithus slept in their quarters, and when Matron had returned to hers, everything changed. There was no longer a reason for Ghosh to sleep on the couch, but neither of them had brought up the idea of his leaving.

  Ghosh came in just before midnight, and he found Hema sitting at the dining table. He came up close to her so she could inspect his eyes and see if there was liquor on his breath—it was what he always did to tease her when he returned at this hour. She pushed him away.

  He went in to look at the twins. When he came out he said, “I smell incense.” Hed scolded her before for letting the twins breathe in any smoke.

  “It's a hallucination. Maybe the gods are trying to reach you.” She pretended to be absorbed in the task of putting his dinner on the table.

  “Macaroni that Rosina prepared,” she said, uncovering a bowl. “And Almaz left chicken curry for you. They are competing to feed you. God knows why.”

  Ghosh tucked his napkin into his shirt. “You call me godless? If you read your Vedas or your Gita, you'll remember a man went to the sage, Ramakrishna, saying, ‘O Master, I don't know how to love God.’ “ Hema frowned. “And the sage asked him if there was anything he loved. He said, ‘I love my little son.’ And Ramakrishna said, ‘There is your love and service to God. In your love and service to that child.’ “

  “So where were you at this hour, Mr. Godly Man?”

  “Doing a Cesarean section. I was in and out in fifteen minutes,” Ghosh said. Hema did three Cesarean sections in the weeks after the birth of the twins: once to teach Ghosh, once to assist him as he did it, and the third time to stand by and watch. No woman would die at Missing or be sent elsewhere for want of a C-section. “The baby had the cord wrapped around its neck. Baby is fine. The mother is already asking for her boiled egg.”

  Watching Ghosh eat had become Hema's nightly pastime. His appetites engaged him; he lived in the center of a flurry of ideas and projects that made piles around her sofa.

  Her mind had been drifting, so she had to ask him to repeat what he said.

  “I said I would be in the middle of my internship at Cook County Hospital now, had I gone. I was ready to leave Ethiopia, you know.”

  “Why? Because Stone left?”

  “No, woman. Before that. Before the babies were born or Sister died. You see, I was convinced that you would come back from India a married woman.”

  To Hema this was so absurd, so unexpected, a reminder of an innocent time from so long ago, that she burst out laughing. Ghosh's consternation made it even funnier, and the safety pin that held the top of her blouse together flew into the air and landed in his plate. That was too much for her, and she clutched her breast and rose from her chair, doubled over.

  Since her return from India and the tragedy of Sister's death, there had been few occasions for side-splitting humor. When she caught her breath she said, “That's what I like about you, Ghosh. I'd forgotten. You can make me laugh like no one else on earth.” She sat back in her chair.

  Ghosh had stopped eating. He pushed the plate away. He was clearly upset and she didn't know why. He wiped his lips with the napkin, his movements precise and deliberate. There was a quaver in his voice.

  “What joke?” he said again. “My wanting to marry you all these years was a joke?”

  She found it difficult to meet his gaze. She'd never told him what had gone through her mind when she thought her plane was crashing, and how her last earthly thought was about him. The smile on her face felt false and she couldn't sustain it. She looked away, but her eye caught the menacing mask nailed up over the bedroom door.

  Ghosh dropped his head into his hands. His mood had turned from ebullient to despairing; she had pushed him past a breaking point. And all because she had laughed? Once again she felt uncertain around him, as she had that day at Sister Mary Joseph Praise's grave.

  “It's time I moved back to my quarters,” he said.

  “No!” Hema said, so forcefully that they were both startled.

  She pulled her chair closer to his. She peeled his hands from his head and held them. She studied the strange profile of her colleague, her unhandsome but beautiful friend of so many years who had allowed his fate to become so inextricably tangled with hers. He seemed intent on leaving. He wasn't looking to her for guidance.

  She kissed his hand. He resisted. She moved even closer. She pulled his head to her bosom, which, without the safety pin, was more exposed than it had ever been in front of a man. She held him the way he had held her when he came running the night Shiva stopped breathing.

  After a while she turned his face to hers. And before she could think about what she was doing, or why, and how this had happened, she kissed him, finding pleasure in the way his lips felt on hers. She saw now and was ashamed to see how selfishly she had dealt with him, made use of him all these years. Shed not done it consciously. Nevertheless, shed treated him as if he existed for her pleasure.

  It was her turn to sigh, and she led the stunned Ghosh to the second bedroom, which was used to iron clothes and as storage, a bedroom she should have given him long ago instead of leaving him on the sofa. They undressed in the dark, cleared the bed of the mountain of diapers, towels, saris, and other garments. They resumed their embrace under the covers. “Hema, what if you get pregnant?” he asked. “Ah, you don't understand,” she said. “I'm thirty. I may have left it too late already.”

  To his shame, now that those magnificent orbs he had fantasized about were unfettered and in his hands, now that she was his from the fleshy chin pad to the dimples above her buttocks, the transformation of his member from floppy flesh to stiff bamboo did not happen. When Hema realized what was amiss, she said nothing. Her silence only increased his distress. Ghosh didn't know that Hema blamed herself, that she thought she had been overeager and that she had misread the signs and misunderstood the man. A hyena's coughing in the distance seemed to mock them both.

  She stayed perfectly still, as if lying on a land mine. At some point she fell asleep. She awoke to a sensation of rising from underwater to be resurrected and reclaimed. And it was because Ghosh's mouth was around her left breast, trying to swallow it. He directed her movements, pushing her this way and that, and it made her think that even when he had been at his most passive, he had really been in charge.

  The sight of his great block of a head and his lips resting where no man had been before brought forth a rush of blood to her cheeks, her chest, and deep in her pelvis. One of his hands held her other breast, shock waves surging through her, while his other hand caressed her inner thighs. She found her hands responding in kind, pulling his head to her, reaching for his broad back, wanting him to swallow her whole. And now she felt something unmistakable and promising against her thighs. In that moment, witnessing his animal eagerness, she understood that shed forever lost him as a plaything, as a companion. He was no longer the Ghosh she toyed with, the Ghosh who existed only as a reaction to her own existence. She felt ashamed for not having seen him this way before, ashamed for presuming to know the nature of this pleasure and thereby denying herself and denying him all these years. She pulled him in, welcomed him—colle
ague, fellow physician, stranger, friend, and lover. She gasped in regret for all the evenings they'd sat across from each other, baiting each other and throwing barbs (though, now that she thought about it, she did most of the baiting and throwing) when they could have been engaged in this astonishing congress.

  IN THE EARLY MORNING she awoke, fed and changed the children, and when they went back to sleep, she returned to Ghosh. They began again, and it was as if it were the first time, the sensations unique and unimaginable, the headboard slapping against the wall advertising their passion to Almaz and Rosina who were just arriving in the kitchen, but she didn't care. They slept, and only when they heard the cowbell and the calf cry did they rise.

  Ghosh stopped Hema as she was about to leave the room.

  “Is marrying me still a laughing matter?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Hema, will you marry me?”

  He was unprepared for her response, and later he wondered how she could have been so ready with an answer, one that would never have occurred to him.

  “Yes, but only for a year.”

  “What?”

  “Face it. This situation with the children threw us together. I don't want you to feel obliged. I will marry you for a year. And then we are done.”

  “But that is absurd,” Ghosh sputtered.

  “We have the option to renew for another year. Or not.”

  “I know what I want, Hema. I want this forever. I have always wanted it forever and ever. I know that at the end of the year I will want to renew.”

  “Well you may know, my sweet man. But what if I don't? Now you have surgery scheduled this morning, no? Well, you can tell Matron that I'll start doing hysterectomies and other elective surgery again. And it's time you learned some gynecologic surgery, something other than just C-sections.”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder as she departed, and the coyness in her smile and the mischief in her eyes and her arched eyebrows, and the steep tilt of her neck, were those of a dancer sending a signal without words. Her message silenced him. Instead of a year or a lifetime, suddenly he could only think of nightfall, and though it was only twelve hours away, it felt like an eternity.

  PART THREE

  I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art …

  Hippocratic Oath

  Theirs is the stoneless fruit of love Whose love is returned.

  Tiruvalluvar, The Kural

  CHAPTER 17

  “Tizita”

  IREMEMBER THE EARLY MORNINGS, sweeping into the kitchen in Ghosh's arms. He is counting under his breath, “One-two … onetwothree.” We twirl, dip, lunge. For the longest time I will think that dancing is his occupation.

  We execute a turn before the stove and arrive at the rear door, where Ghosh works the lock and shoots back the bolt with a flourish.

  Almaz and Rosina step in, quickly shutting the door against the cold, and against Koochooloo, who is wagging her tail, awaiting breakfast. Both mamithus are wrapped like mummies, only their eyes showing in a crescent gap. They peel off layers, and the odors of cut grass, and then turned earth, then berbere and coal fires rise from them like steam.

  I laugh uncontrollably in anticipation, tuck my chin into my body, because I know Rosina's fingers, which are like icicles, will soon stroke my cheek. The first time she did this, I was startled into laughter instead of tears, a mistake, because it has encouraged this ritual that I dread and anticipate every day.

  AFTER BREAKFAST, Hema and Ghosh kiss Shiva and me good-bye. Tears. Despair. Clinging. But they leave anyway, off to the hospital.

  Rosina places us in the double pram. Soon, with uplifted hands, I beg to be carried. I want higher ground. I want the adult view. She gives in. Shiva is content wherever he is placed, as long as no one tries to remove his anklet.

  Rosina's forehead is a ball of chocolate. Her braided hair marches back in neat rows, then flies out in a fringe that reaches her shoulders. She is a bouncing, rocking, and humming being. Her twirls and turns are faster than Ghosh's. From my dizzy perch, her pleated dress makes gorgeous florets, and her pink plastic shoes flash in and out of sight.

  Rosina talks nonstop. We are silent, speechless, but full of thoughts, impressions, all of them unspoken. Rosina's Amharic makes Almaz and Gebrew laugh because her guttural, throat-clearing syllables don't really exist in Amharic. It never dissuades her. Sometimes she breaks into Italian, particularly when she is being forceful, struggling to make a point. Italinya comes easily to her, and strangely its meaning is clear, even though no one else speaks it, such is the nature of that language. When she speaks to herself, or sings, it is in her Eritrean tongue—Tigrinya— and then her voice is unlocked, the words pouring out.

  Almaz, who once served Ghosh in his quarters, is now the cook in his and Hema's joint household. She stands rooted like a baobab to her spot in front of the stove, a giantess compared with Rosina, and not given to sound other than deep sonorous sighs, or an occasional “Ewunuth!”— “You don't say!”—to keep Rosina or Gebrew's chatter going, not that either of them needs encouragement. Almaz is fairer than Rosina, and her hair is contained by a gauzy orange shash that forms a Phrygian helmet. While Rosina's teeth shine like headlights, Almaz rarely shows hers.

  BY MIDMORNING, when we return from our first Bungalow–to– Casualty–to–Women's Ward–to–Front Gate excursion, with Koochoo -loo as our bodyguard, the kitchen is alive. Steam rises in plumes as Almaz clangs lids on and off the pots. The silver weight on the pressure cooker jiggles and whistles. Almaz's sure hands chop onions, tomatoes, and fresh coriander, making hillocks that dwarf the tiny mounds of ginger and garlic. She keeps a palette of spices nearby: curry leaves, turmeric, dry coriander, cloves, cinnamon, mustard seed, chili powder, all in tiny stainless-steel bowls within a large mother platter. A mad alche mist, she throws a pinch of this, a fistful of that, then wets her fingers and flings that moisture into the mortar. She pounds with the pestle, the wet, crunchy thunk, thunk soon changes to the sound of stone on stone.

  Mustard seeds explode in the hot oil. She holds a lid over the pan to fend of the missiles. Rat-a-tat! like hail on a tin roof. She adds the cumin seeds, which sizzle, darken, and crackle. A dry, fragrant smoke chases out the mustard scent. Only then are the onions added, handfuls of them, and now the sound is that of life being spawned in a primordial fire.

  ROSINA ABRUPTLY HANDS ME TO Almaz and hurries out the back door, her legs crossing like scissor blades. We don't know this, but Rosina is carrying the seed of revolution. She is pregnant with a baby girl: Genet. The three of us—Shiva, Genet, and me—are together from the start, she in utero while Shiva and I negotiate the world outside. The handoff to Almaz is unexpected.

  I whimper on Almaz's shoulder, perilously close to the bubbling cauldrons.

  Almaz puts down the stirring ladle and shifts me to her hip. Reaching into her blouse, grunting with effort, she fishes out her breast.

  “Here it is,” she says, putting it in my hands for safekeeping.

  I am the recipient of many gifts, but this is the first one I remember. Each time it is given to me it is a surprise. When it is taken away, the slate is wiped clean. But here it is, warm and alive, eased out of its cloth bed, bestowed on me like a medal I don't deserve. Almaz, who hardly speaks, resumes stirring, humming a tune. It is as if the breast no more belongs to her than does her ladle.

  Shiva in the pram puts down his wooden truck, which his saliva has digested to a soggy pulp. It is, unlike his anklet, separable from him if need be. In the presence of that magnificent one-eyed teat, Shiva lets the truck fall to the floor. Though I have possession of the breast, stroking it, palpating it, I am also his amanuensis.

  A rapt Shiva spurs me on and sends silent instructions: Throw it to me. And when I cannot, he says, Open it and see what is inside. That, too, is impossible. I mold it, indent it, and watch it reboun
d.

  Put it to your mouth, Shiva says because this is the first means by which he knows the world. I dismiss this idea as absurd.

  The breast is everything Almaz is not: laughing, vibrant, an outgoing member of our household.

  When I try to lift it, to examine it, that teat dwarfs my hands and spills out between my fingers. I wish to confirm how all its surfaces sweep up to the summit, the dark pap through which it breathes and sees the world. The breast comes down to my knees. Or perhaps it comes down to Almaz's knees. I can't be sure. It quivers like jelly. Steam condenses on its surface, dulling its sheen. It carries the scent of crushed ginger and cumin powder from Almaz's fingers. Years later, when I first kiss a woman's breast, I become ravenous.

  A flash of light and a blast of crisp air announce Rosina's return. I am back in her arms, removed from the breast which vanishes as mysteriously as it has appeared, swallowed by Almaz's blouse.

  IN THE LATE MORNING, the chill long gone and the mist burned away, we play on the lawn till our cheeks are red. Rosina feeds us. Hunger and drowsiness blend together perfectly like the rice and curry, yogurt and bananas, in our belly. It is an age of perfection, of simple appetites.

  After lunch, Shiva and I fall asleep, arms around each other, breath on each other's face, heads touching. In that fugue state between wake-fulness and dreaming, the song I hear is not Rosina's. It is “Tizita,” which Almaz sang when I held her breast.

  I WILL HEAR THAT SONG through all my years in Ethiopia. When I leave Addis Ababa as a young man, I will carry it with me on a cassette that has “Tizita” along with “Aqualung.” Departure or imminent death will force you to define your true tastes. During my years of exile, as the battered cassette wears out, I'll meet Ethiopians abroad. My word of greeting in our shared language is a spark, a link to a community a network: the phone number of Woizero (Mrs.) Menen who, for a modest fee, cooks injera and wot and serves you in her house if you call her the day before; the taxi driver Ato (Mr.) Girma, whose cousin works for Ethio pian Airlines and brings in kibe—Ethiopian butter—because with out butter from cows that live at altitude and graze on high pastures, your wot will taste of Kroger or FoodMart or Land O'Lakes. For Meskel celebrations, if you want a sheep slaughtered in Brooklyn, call Yohannes, and in Boston try the Queen of Sheba's. In my years away from my birth land, living in America, I will see how Ethiopians are invisible to others, yet so visible to me. Through them I will easily find other recordings of “Tizita.”