Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

  They are eager to share, to thrust that song in my hands, as if only “Tizita” explains the strange inertia that overcomes them; it explains how they were brilliant at home, the Jackson 5, the Temptations, and “Tizita” on their lips, a perfect Afro on their heads, bell-bottoms swishing above Double-O-Seven boots, and then the first foothold in America—behind the counter of a 7-Eleven, or breathing carbon mon oxide fumes in a Kinney underground parking lot, or behind the counter of an airport newsstand or Marriott gift shop—has turned out to be a cement foot plant, a haven that they are fearful of leaving lest they suffer a fate worse than invisibility namely extinction.

  Getachew Kassa's slow version of “Tizita,” a bright but haunting, sober lament on a backdrop of minor-chord arpeggios, is the best known. He has another version, with a fast Latin rhythm. Mahmoud Ahmed, Aster Aweke, Teddy Afro … every Ethiopian artist records a “Tizita.” They record it in Addis Ababa, but also in exile in Khartoum (yes, Khartoum! which proves that even hell has a recording studio) and of course in Rome, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Dallas, Boston, and New York. “Tizita” is the heart's anthem, the lament of the diaspora, reverberating up and down Eighteenth Street in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, D.C., where it pours out from Fasika's, Addis Ababa, Meskerem, Red Sea, and other Ethiopian eateries, drowning out the salsa or the ragas emanating from El Rincon and Queen of India.

  There is a fast “Tizita,” a slow “Tizita,” an instrumental “Tizita” (which the Ashantis made so popular), a short and a long “Tizita” … there are as many versions as there are recording artists.

  That first line … I hear it now.

  Tizitash zeweter wode ene eye metah.

  I can't help thinking about you.

  CHAPTER 18

  Sins of the Father

  IN OUR HOUSEHOLD, you had to dive into the din and push to the front if you wanted to be heard. The foghorn voice was Ghosh's, echoing and tailing off into laughter. Hema was the songbird, but when provoked her voice was as sharp as Saladin's scimitar, which, according to my Richard the Lion Hearted and the Crusades, could divide a silk scarf allowed to float down onto the blade's edge. Almaz, our cook, may have been silent on the outside, but her lips moved constantly, whether in prayer or song, no one knew. Rosina took silence as a personal offense, and spoke into empty rooms and chattered into cupboards. Genet, almost six years of age, was showing signs of taking after her mother, telling herself stories about herself in a singsong voice, creating her own mythology.

  Had ShivaMarion been delivered vaginally (impossible, given how our heads were connected), Shiva, presenting skull first, would have been the firstborn, the older twin. But when the Cesarean section reversed the natural birth order, I became the first to breathe—senior by a few seconds. I also became spokesperson for ShivaMarion.

  Trailing after Hema and Ghosh in the Piazza, or threading between gharries and lorries into Motilal's Garments in the crowded Merkato of Addis Ababa, I never heard Hema say, “That blue shirt will look so good on Shiva,” or “Those sandals are perfect for Marion.” The arrival of Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Hema meant chairs were dragged out and dusted, and a boy sent running to return with warm Fanta or Coca-Cola and biscuits, despite all protests. Tape measures sized us, our cheeks were pinched by rough hands, and a small crowd gathered to gawk, as if Shiva Marion was a lion in the cages at Sidist Kilo. The upshot of all this would be that Hema and Ghosh purchased two of whatever piece of clothing it was they felt we needed. Ditto for cricket bats, fountain pens, and bicycles. When people saw us and said, “Look! How sweet,” did they really imagine that we had picked the matching outfits ourselves? I'll admit, the one time I tried to dress differently from Shiva, I felt uneasy as we stood before the mirror. It was as if my fly were undone—it just didn't feel right.

  We—”The Twins”—were famous not just for dressing alike but for sprinting around at breakneck speed, but always in step, a four-legged being that knew only one way to get from A to B. When ShivaMarion was forced to walk, it was with arms locked around each other's shoulders, not really a walk but a trot, champions of the three-legged race before we knew there was such a thing. Seated, we shared a chair, seeing no sense in occupying two. We even used the loo together, directing a double jet into the porcelain void. Looking back, you could say we had some responsibility for people dealing with us as a collective.

  Ask The Twins to come inside for dinner.

  Boys, isn't it time for your bath?

  ShivaMarion, do you want spaghetti or injera and wot tonight?

  “You” or “Your” never meant one of us. When we replied to a question, no one cared which of us had spoken; an answer from one was an answer for The Twins.

  Perhaps the adults believed that Shiva, my busy, industrious brother, was naturally parsimonious with his words. If the sound of the anklet which he insisted on wearing counted as speech, then Shiva was a terrible chatterbox, only silent when he muffled the tiny bells under his sock for school. Perhaps the adults believed I never gave Shiva much of a chance to speak (which was true), but no one wanted to tell me to shut up. In any case, in the hullabaloo of our bungalow, where the bridge crowd congregated twice a week, where a 78 rpm spun on the Grundig, and where Ghosh's lumbering tread rattled the dishes as he struggled to learn the rumba and the cha-cha-cha, two years went by before the adults fully registered that Shiva had stopped speaking.

  WHEN WE WERE INFANTS, Shiva was considered the more delicate: it was his skull that Stone attempted to crush before Hema saved us. But then Shiva hit all his developmental milestones on time, lifting his head when I did and crawling when it was time to crawl. He said “Amma” and “Ghosh” on cue, and we both decided to walk when we were a month shy of one year of age. Hema and Ghosh were reassured. According to Hema, we forgot how to walk within a few days of taking our first steps, because we had discovered how to run. Shiva spoke as much as he needed to well into his fourth year, but about that time he began to quietly hoard his words.

  I hasten to say, Shiva laughed or cried at the appropriate times; he often acted as if he were about to say something just when I piped in; he punctuated my words with exclamations from his anklet and he sang la-la-la lustily with me in the bath. But when it came to actual words— he had no need for them. He read fluently, but refused to do so aloud. He could add and subtract big numbers at a glance, scribbling out the answer while I was still carrying the one over and counting fingers. He was constantly jotting notes to himself, or to others, leaving these around like droppings. He drew beautifully, but in the oddest places, like on cardboard cartons or the back of paper bags. What he loved to draw best at that stage was Veronica. We had an issue of Archie comics in the house—I bought it from Papadakis's bookstore; the three frames on page sixteen had to do with Veronica and Betty. Shiva could reproduce that page, complete with balloons, lettering, and crosshatch shading. It was as if he had a photograph stored in his head and could spill it onto paper whenever he wanted. He left nothing out, not even the page number, or the stain of the fly that had met its death on the margin of the original. I noticed that he always accentuated the curved line under Veronica's breast, particularly when compared with Betty's. I checked the source, and sure enough, the line was there, but Shiva's was thicker, darker. Sometimes he improvised and departed from the original image, rendering the breasts as pointed missiles about to launch, or else as pendulous balloons that hovered over the kneecaps.

  Genet and I covered for Shiva's silence. I did it unconsciously; if I was talkative to excess, it was because I saw this as the necessary output for ShivaMarion. Of course, Ihad no problem communicating with Shiva. In the early morning, the shake of his anklet—ching-ding—said, Marion, are you awake? Dish-ching was Time to get up. Rubbing his skull on mine said, Rise and shine, sleepyhead. All one of us had to do was think of an action and the odds were the other would rise to carry it out.

  It was Mrs. Garretty at school who made the discovery about Shiva's having given up speech. Th
e Loomis Town & Country School catered to the merchants, diplomats, military advisers, doctors, teachers, representatives of the Economic Commission for Africa, WHO, UNESCO, Red Cross, UNICEF, and especially the newly forming OAU—the Organization of African Unity. The Emperor had offered the gift of Africa Hall, a stunning building, to the fledging OAU, a cunning move that would bring the organization's headquarters to Addis Ababa and already was boosting business for everyone from the bar girls to the Fiat, Peugeot, and Mercedes importers. The OAU kids could have gone to the Lycée Gebremariam, an imposing building that loomed over the steepest part of Churchill Road. But the envoys from the Francophone countries—Mali, Guinea, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mauritius, and Madagascar— had an eye to the future, and so the cars with the Corps Diplomatiques plates carried les enfants past the lycée to Loomis Town & Country. For completeness, I must mention St. Joseph's, where, according to Matron, the Jesuits, those foot soldiers of Christ, believed in God and the Rod. But St. Joseph's was boys only, which ruled it out for us because of Genet.

  Why not the rough-and-tumble of the government schools? If we'd gone there we might have been the only non-native children, and we would have been in a minority of kids with more than one pair of shoes and a home with running water and indoor plumbing. Hema and Ghosh felt their only choice was to send us to Loomis Town & Country, which was run by British expats.

  Our teachers at LT&C had their A levels and the odd teaching certificate. It is astonishing how a black crepe robe worn over a coat or a blouse gives a Cockney punter or a Covent Garden flower girl the gravitas of an Oxford don. Accent be damned in Africa, as long as it's foreign and you have the right skin color.

  Ritual. That was the balm to soothe the parents’ disquiet about what they were getting for their money at LT&C. Gymkhana, Track and Field Day, the School Carnival, the Christmas Pageant, the School Play, Guy Fawkes Night, Founder's Day, and Graduation—we carried so many mimeographed notices home that they made Hema's head spin. We were assigned to Monday House, or Tuesday House, or Wednesday House, each with its colors, teams, and house masters. On Track and Field Day we competed for the glory of our house and for the Loomis Cup. Every morning in Assembly Hall, Mr. Loomis led us in Assembly Prayer, then a reading from the Revised Standard Version, and then we belted out the hymn from the blue hymnal while one teacher or another banged out the chords on the assembly piano.

  I am convinced that one can buy in Harrods of London a kit that allows an enterprising Englishman to create a British school anywhere in the third world. It comes with black robes, preprinted report cards for Michaelmas, Lent, and Easter terms, as well as hymnals, Prefect Badges, and a syllabus. Assembly required.

  Unfortunately, the LT&C students’ pass rates for the General Certificate of Education O levels were terrible when compared with the free government schools. There the Indian teachers were all degree holders whom the Emperor hired from the Christian state of Kerala, the place Sister Mary Joseph Praise hailed from. Ask an Ethiopian abroad if perchance they learned mathematics or physics from a teacher named Kurien, Koshy Thomas, George, Varugese, Ninan, Mathews, Jacob, Judas, Chandy Eapen, Pathros, or Paulos, and the odds are their eyes will light up. These teachers were brought up in the Orthodox ritual which St. Thomas carried to south India. But in their professional roles, the only ritual they cared about was engraving the multiplication and periodic tables as well as Newton's laws into the brains of their Ethio pian pupils, who were uniformly smart and who had a great aptitude for arithmetic.

  My class teacher, Mrs. Garretty called Hema and Ghosh at the end of a day when I stayed home from school with a fever. She knew us as the adorable Stone twins, those darling, dark-haired, light-eyed boys who dressed alike, who happily sang, ran, drew, jumped, clapped, and chattered to excess in her class. The day I stayed home, Shiva ran, drew, jumped, and clapped but never uttered a word and, when called on, would not or could not.

  Hema went from disbelieving to blaming Mrs. Garretty. Then she blamed herself. She canceled the dancing lessons at Juventus Club, just when Ghosh had mastered the fox-trot and could circumnavigate a room. The turntable got its first rest in years. The bridge regulars shifted to Ghosh's old bungalow, which he had been using as an office and clinic for private patients.

  Hema checked out Kipling, Ruskin, C. S. Lewis, Edgar Allan Poe, R. K Narayan, and many others from the British Council and the United States Information Service libraries. In the evenings, the two of them took turns reading to us in the belief that great literature would stimulate and eventually produce speech in Shiva. In those pretelevision days, it was entertaining, except for C. S. Lewis, whose magical cupboards I didn't buy, and Ruskin, who neither Ghosh nor Hema could understand or read for long. But they persisted, hoping that at the very least Shiva might yell for them to stop, the way I did. They kept on even after we'd fallen sleep, because Hema believed one could prime the subconscious. If they had worried over Shiva's survival after birth, now they worried over lingering effects of the antiquated obstetric instruments that had been applied to his head. There was nothing they would not try to bring about speech. Shiva remained silent.

  ONE DAY, soon after we turned eight, we got home from school to find Hema had a blackboard installed in the dining room. She stood there, chalk at the ready, copies of Bickham's Penmanship Made Easy (Young Clerks Assistant) at each of our places, and a maniacal gleam in her eyes. On top of each book was a shiny new Pelikan pen, the Pelicano, every schoolkid's dream, along with cartridges—such a novelty.

  A time would come when I would be glad to be known as a surgeon with good handwriting. My notes in the chart perhaps gave some intimation of similar skills with a knife (though I will say it is not a rule, and the converse isn't true: chicken-scratch scribbles aren't a sign of poor technique in the theater). One day I would grudgingly thank Hema for making us copy in the round and ornate styles:

  Shiva was already fingering his Pelicano. Genet said nothing. Her position in these matters was delicate.

  I stood firm. I didn't trust Hema's motivation: guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action. Besides, I had planned a special parade of my Dinky Toys in a weaving path I had carved out on a low embankment next to the house. Her timing was terrible.

  “Why can't we go out and play? I don't want to do this,” I said.

  Hema's mouth tightened. She seemed to be considering not what I said, but my person, my obstinacy. Subconsciously, at least, she blamed me for Shiva. She saw me and even Genet as having camouflaged his silence in a blanket of chatter.

  “Speak for yourself, Marion,” she said.

  “I did. Why can't we—I—go play?”

  Shiva already had his cartridge loaded.

  “Why? I'll tell you why. Because your school is nothing but play I have to see to your real studies. Now, sit down, Marion!”

  Genet quietly took her seat.

  “No,” I said. “This isn't fair. Besides, it won't help Shiva.”

  “Marion, before I twist your ear—”

  “He won t speak till he is ready!”I shouted.

  With that, I dashed out. I flew around one the corner of the house, gathering speed on the turn. At the second corner, I ran straight into Zemui's broad chest. My first thought was Hema had sent the military to get me.

  “Cousin, where is the war?” Zemui said, smiling, peeling me free. His olive uniform was as crisp as ever, the belt, holster, and boots all brown and gleaming. As a reflex, he stomped his right foot and snapped a salute with enough vigor for his fingers to sail off.

  Sergeant Zemui was the driver to a man who was now full colonel in the Imperial Bodyguard—Colonel Mebratu. Ghosh had saved his life in surgery years before. Colonel Mebratu was once under suspicion, but now he was in the Emperor's favor. He was both senior commander of the Imperial Bodyguard and liaison to the military attachés from Brit ain, India, Belgium, and America, all of whom had a presence in Ethio pia. The Colonel's job involved frequent diplomatic recepti
ons and parties, not to mention the regular bridge nights at our place. Poor Zemui could only begin his long walk home to his wife and children when his boss's head was on the pillow and the staff car parked in the shed. The Colonel had assigned Zemui a motorcycle to make it easier for him to get back and forth. Since Zemui, who lived near Missing, didn't want to ruin his tires on the crude stone and shingle track that led to his shack, he got Ghosh's permission to park the bike under our carport. There his precious machine was sheltered from the elements and from vandals.

  “Just the person I was hoping to see,” Zemui said. “What's the matter, my little master?”

  “Nothing,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. My troubles seemed minor when talking to a soldier who'd just done his tour with the UN peacekeeping forces in the civil war in the Congo. “How come you're picking up your motorcycle so late?” I asked.

  “The boss was at a party till four in the morning. When I got him home, the sun was coming up. He told me I could come back in the evening. Listen, come, sit down. I want you to read me this letter again.” He parked himself on the edge of the front porch, took the blue-and-red aerogram from his front pocket, and handed it to me. He took off his pith helmet to extract a half-smoked cigarette tucked carefully under one of the straps on the outside. The pith topee, in the manner of white explorers of old, was unique to the Imperial Bodyguard, recognizable at a distance.