Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

Finally, Hema whispered, “Shiva … what did you say?”

  “Will you forget about us tomorrow if someone kills us today?”

  Hema reached for Shiva, wanting to hug him, tears of joy in her eyes. But Shiva drew back from her, drew back from all of them, as if they were murderers. He bent down, rolled down his sock, and snapped off the anklet, placing it on the table. That anklet had never come off except to be repaired, enlarged, and three or four times replaced by a new one. It was as if he'd cut off a finger and laid it on the table.

  “Shiva,” Matron said at last, “if we let Koochooloo have her litters, we'd have about sixty dogs around Missing by now.”

  “What happened to the other puppies?” Shiva asked, before I could.

  Matron mumbled something about Gebrew having disposed of them humanely and that the car exhaust was ill-advised and not sanctioned, and Gebrew should have done it well before we came back from school. I was in step with him now.

  Shiva touched my shoulder, and whispered in my ear.

  “What did he say?” Hema asked.

  “He said, when you all are so cruel, why should he speak? He says he doesn't think Sister Mary Joseph Praise or Thomas Stone would have done something like this. Maybe if they were here this would never have happened.”

  Hema sighed, as if shed been waiting for one of us to bring their names up in just this way. “Darling,” she said, in a voice like gravel, “you have no idea what they might do.”

  Shiva walked out. Ghosh and Matron had the stunned expression of people who had seen a ghost. Now they were the ones who were mute. How, I wondered, could these adults who cared so much whether my brother spoke or not, who cared for the poor, the sick, the motherless, who were as bothered as we were by the cruelty to the old woman outside the palace, be so indifferent to the cruelty we had witnessed?

  I asked Matron later if she thought that the death of her pups left scars on Koochooloo's insides. Matron said she didn't know, but she did know that Missing couldn't afford to breed dogs, and three was the limit. And no, she didn't think there was a separate dog heaven, and frankly she did not know God's opinion on what was the right number of dogs for Missing, but He had given her some discretion on this matter and that was not something she wanted to debate with me.

  AFTER THE KILLINGS, I saw in Koochooloo's eyes her disappointment in us as a race. She sought out places where she could curl up and not run into humans. We left food out for her, and if she ate, it was not when we were around.

  For weeks, there was only one person for whom she would attempt to wag her tail, and that was Shiva.

  When Shiva learned to dance Bharatnatyam (and became Hema's sishya and she was already talking about his arangetram—his debut), I first began to see him as separate from me. Now that he would talk and could express himself, ShivaMarion didn't always move or speak as one. In earlier years, our differences had complemented each other. But in the days after the death of the pups, I felt our identities slowly separating. My brother, my identical twin, was tuned to the distress of animals. As for the affairs of humans, for now at least, he was to leave that to me.

  CHAPTER 20

  Blind Man's Buff

  MR. LOOMIS, headmaster of Loomis Town & Country, saw to it that our long holidays coincided with the long rains. That way, he could be in England in July and August, relaxing, spending our school fees, while we were stuck in Addis Ababa. Old hands in Addis referred to the monsoon months as “winter,” which hopelessly confused new arrivals for whom July could only be summer.

  It rained so much that it even rained in my dreams. I awoke happy that there was no school, but that incessant murmur on the tin roof immediately dampened the euphoria. This was the winter of my eleventh year, and when I went to bed at night, I prayed that the skies should open up on Mr. Loomis wherever he was, be it Brighton or Bournemouth. I hoped that a personal thundercloud trailed him every minute of that day.

  SHIVA WAS UNAFFECTED BY COLD, fog, mist, or wetness, while I became morose and pessimistic. Outside our window, there was now a brown lake dotted with atolls of red mud. I lost faith that a lawn and flower bed could ever reappear out of that.

  On Wednesdays Hema took us to the British Council and USIS libraries, where we returned books, checked out a new pile, loaded them in the car, then she dropped us off at the Empire Theater or Cinema Adowa for the matinee. We were free to read whatever we wanted, but Hema required of us a half-page journal entry to record new words we learned and the number of pages we had read. We were also to copy out a memorable idea or sentence to share at dinner.

  I resented this winter curriculum, but it did bring Captain Horatio Hornblower sailing into my life. Matron, whose ability to read my soul I did not yet fully appreciate, asked me to borrow A Ship of the Line for her. I opened it out of curiosity and found I had sailed into a world more damp and wretched than my own, and strangely, I was happy to be there. Thanks to C. S. Forester, I was on a creaking ship on the other side of the world and in the head of Horatio Hornblower, a man who was like Ghosh and Hema—heroic in his professional role. But he was also like me—”unhappy and lonely.” Of course, I wasn't really unhappy or lonely, but in the monsoon season it seemed necessary to think of myself that way. The unfairness of the Admiralty in London, the irony of Horn-blower's seasickness, the tragedy of his returning from a long voyage to find his children mortally ill with smallpox … I had my equivalents, trivial as they were, for all these perils.

  After hours of reading, I itched to be outdoors; I know Genet did, too. Shiva sketched and scribbled. Hema's calligraphy exercises catalyzed an unstoppable ink flow in Shiva's pen, but his medium was still paper bags, napkins, and end pages of books. He loved to sketch Zemui's BMW and had done so in every season. Veronica, if he drew her, now straddled a motorcycle.

  On a Friday, after Ghosh and Hema left for work, the rain came down harder and there was now thunder and hail. The noise on the roof was deafening. I peeked out of the kitchen door and was met by the scent of sopping hide, and the sight of three donkeys sheltering under the roof overhang along with their overseer. If the wood the donkeys delivered was anywhere as wet as they were, it did not bode well for our stove. The animals stood still, resigned to their fate, half asleep, their skin twitching involuntarily.

  When I went back to the living room, Genet yelled above the racket, “Let's play blind man's buff!”

  “Sissy game,” I said. “Stupid girls’ game.” But she was already hunting for a blindfold.

  I never understood why blind man's buff was so popular at school, particularly in Genet's class. I'd seen the mob dancing just out of reach of “it,” pushing or “buffing” the blind man till he (or she) captured a tormentor. The blind man had to name the captive or set the person free.

  We modified the game for indoors: no buffing of the blind man. Instead, you hid by standing silent (though with the din on the roof you could be whistling and it wouldn't matter). You could hide anywhere but the kitchen, and not under or behind a barrier. Time was the object of the game: how fast could the blind man find the other two.

  THAT MORNING, Genet went first. It took her fifteen minutes to find Shiva, and ten more to get me.

  You would think after twenty-five minutes of standing there I would be bored. I wasn't. I was intrigued.

  It took discipline to stand stock-still. I felt like the Invisible Man, one of my favorite comic book characters. The Invisible Man stood as the world moved around him, as his archenemy tried to find him.

  Blindfolded, wearing white tights, her arms reaching in front of her, putting one foot out, then the other, Genet looked helpless, as if she were walking the plank on a pirate ship. She had the upright carriage and the balance of one who could do cartwheels with an arm tucked to her side, and who could walk on her hands with more grace than Ghosh on two feet. Barrettes made of yellow and silver beads were snug around her hair, which was parted in the middle and pulled up into two stalks. Genet wasn't vain about her dress. But when it came
to headbands, combs, pins, and banana clamps, she was most particular. Of course, this trait might have been more Hema's or Rosina's or Almaz's doing: they were forever brushing her hair or braiding it into ponytails or rows. Hema sometimes put kohl inside Genet's lower lid. That black line highlighted her eyes, made them catch fire and flash like mirrors.

  Girls matured faster than boys, so they said, and I believed it, because Genet acted older than ten. She distrusted the world and was more argumentative and always ready for combat; if I was too willing to defer to adults and assume they knew what they were doing, she was just the opposite, quite willing to think of them as fallible. But now, blindfolded, she had a vulnerability I'd never been aware of before; all her defenses seemed to reside in the high heat of her gaze.

  Twice, Genet almost walked into me–as–Invisible Man, veering off at the last second. The third time, she was millimeters away, and the Invisible Man snorted to suppress a laugh. Her hands, sweeping like windmills, found me and nearly took my eyes out.

  Then things turned strange.

  When I wore the blindfold, I found Genet in thirty seconds, and Shiva in half that time. How? I followed my nose. I had no inkling such a thing was possible. I was “seeing” through olfaction. I heeded an instinct that only made itself known when my sight was gone.

  Shiva, when it was his turn, found us just as quickly. Suddenly, we forgot about the rain.

  When I blindfolded Genet again, it took her even longer than the first time. Her nose was no help. For half an hour, I watched her shuffle this way and that.

  Frustrated, she whipped off the blindfold and accused us of moving and of being in collusion. On both counts we were innocent.

  When Ghosh came home for lunch, Genet and I rushed to tell him about our game. “Wait! Stop!” he said. “I can't hear you when you speak over each other. Genet, you first. ‘Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end: then stop.’ Who said that?”

  “You did,” Genet said.

  “The King in Alice in Wonderland,” Shiva said, “page ninety-three. Chapter twelve. And you missed four words and two commas.”

  “I certainly did not!” Ghosh said, acting offended, but unable to conceal his surprise.

  “You missed ‘The King said, comma, very gravely, comma.’ “

  “Right you are …,” Ghosh said. “Now, tell me what happened, Genet.”

  She did and then begged him to referee. Ghosh stationed Genet here and there, and each time, blindfolded and sightless, I went straight to her. We blindfolded Ghosh at his request, but he was no better than Genet. We would have further “explored the phenomenon,” as Ghosh put it, but he had to return to the hospital.

  GENET'S FOREHEAD STAYED FURROWED all afternoon, her eyebrows meeting in a V. I felt the venom of her gaze on my face.

  “What are you looking at?” she said.

  “Is it against the law to look?”

  “Yes.”

  I stuck my tongue out. She flew out of her chair and came at me. I expected that. We tumbled to the floor. I soon pinned her flat on her back, her arms above her head, straddling her, but it was far from an easy task.

  “Get off me.”

  “Why? So you can have another shot?”

  “Get off, I said.”

  “I will. But if you start again, I will do this.” I dug my knee under her armpit and into her ribs. Her anger dissolved into screams and hysterical laughter. She begged me to stop. Knowing her and how quickly the fire could flare when you thought you had put it out, I gave her another dose to make sure. When I stepped off, I did not turn my back on her.

  Genet could sprint faster than Shiva but could not quite beat me over a short distance. Her gait was so effortless, her feet barely touching the ground, that she could run all day. I wouldn't race her over anything longer than fifty yards. Climbing trees, playing soccer, wrestling, or sword fighting—in all these she was just about our equal.

  But blind man's buff had found a difference.

  DURING DINNER with Hema and Ghosh, Genet was quiet. The yellow and silver barrettes had given way to a vicious claw clamp and a knitting needle going across. When Hema asked, she reported on her Secret Seven book. She sat next to me and Shiva, fending off Almaz and Rosina, who bustled around, trying to add to our plates. The two of them always ate later in the kitchen.

  After dinner, Genet said her good nights and retreated to Rosina's quarters behind our bungalow. I found Ghosh hunting through Alice in Wonderland. I looked over his shoulder as he found page ninety-three. Shiva was right, down to the two commas.

  The rain stopped when we got into bed, precisely when it was too late to take advantage of the lull. The silence was both a relief and nerve-racking, because at any moment it would start back up.

  Hema read to us in our bedroom, a nightly ritual that she had never interrupted once she began it in response to Shiva's silence. R. K. Nara -yan's Man-eater of Malgudi was our text the last few days. Ghosh sat on the other side of our bed, head bowed, listening. The book had started slowly and it had yet to pick up any pace. But perhaps that was the point. As we adjusted to the slow, the “boring” world of village India, it revealed itself to be interesting and even funny. Malgudi was populated by characters that resembled people we knew, imprisoned by habit, by profession, and by a most foolish and unreasonable belief that enslaved them; only they couldn't see it.

  The sound of the phone ringing was foreign to Malgudi and it broke the thread of the story. Ghosh picked up the receiver. “Right away,” he said, gazing at Hema. When he hung up he said, “Princess Turunesh is in labor. Six centimeters. Pains five minutes apart. Matron is with her in the private room.”

  “What does that mean, ‘six centimeters’?” I asked.

  Ghosh was about to answer, but Hema, already at the dresser, brushing her hair, said quickly, “Nothing, sweetie. The princess will have a baby soon. I have to go.”

  “I'll come with you,” Ghosh said. He could assist if Hema opted for a Cesarean section.

  I NEVER LIKED IT when they left at night. My dread wasn't intruders, but an anxiety about Hema and Ghosh, a fear that despite their best intentions, they might not come back. I never felt that way in the daytime. But at night, when they went dancing at Juventus or played bridge at Mrs. Reddy and Evangeline's house, I'd wait up for them, imagining the worst.

  After they left, I padded into the living room in bare feet and pajamas. I worked the short-wave band on the Grundig.

  Above the static, I heard the motorcycle. Halfway up our driveway, Sergeant Zemui would always cut the engine so as not to disturb us. Then in silence, save for the squeak of springs and the rattle of mudguards, he'd coast into the carport. The coda was the metallic whump of cycle rolling back onto its center stand.

  I loved that ungainly BMW and the way its udderlike engine bulged out on either side of the frame. Shiva loved it, too. All machines have genders, and that BMW was a royal “she.” For as long as I can recall I'd been hearing her low throb, a lub-dub sound in the early morning and at bedtime, as Zemui left for and returned from work. Whenever I heard the tramp of his heavy boots receding, I felt sorry for him. I pictured his lonely hike home, particularly during this season of mud and rain. Despite the long raincoat and a plastic hood for his pith helmet, it was impossible not to get soaked.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, I heard the kitchen door open. Genet came in wearing my hand-me-down pajamas.

  Her anger from earlier wasn't there. In its place was something I rarely saw: sadness. Her hair was held back by a blue headband. She was listless, withdrawn, as if years, not minutes, had passed since I last saw her.

  “Where's Shiva?” she asked, sitting across from me.

  “In our room. Why?”

  “Just asked. No reason.”

  “Hema and Ghosh had to go to the hospital,” I said.

  “I know. I heard them tell my mother.”

  “Are you all right?”

  She shrugged. Her eyes looked through the g
lowing dial of the Grundig, to some planet beyond. There was a little fleck in the right iris, a puff of smoke around it, where a spark had penetrated. We were much younger, exploding cap-gun strips on the pavement, striking them with a heavy rock, when that happened. You could only see the blemish close up, and at certain angles. From a distance, the hint of asymmetry made her gaze seem dreamy.

  A crackly Chinese station faded in and out, a woman's voice with sounds no throat should be able to produce. I thought it was funny, but Genet didn't smile.

  “Marion? Will you play blind man's buff with me?” She asked in a sweet, gentle way. “Just one more time?”

  I groaned.

  “Please?”

  The urgency in her voice surprised me. As if her future depended on this.

  “Did you come back just for that reason? Shiva's already in bed.”

  She was silent, considering this, and then she said, “How about just you and me. Please, Marion?”

  I was never good at saying no to Genet. I didn't think she would have any better luck finding me this time around than before. It would only make her more depressed. But if that was what she wanted …

  OUTSIDE, the rain had scrubbed the sky free of stars; the black night leaked through the shutters into the house and under my blindfold.

  “I've changed my mind,” I said into the void.

  She ignored me, tying a second knot to secure the blindfold. For good measure, she put an empty rice-flour sack over my head, rolling up the edges to leave my mouth uncovered.

  “Did you hear me?” I said. “I don't want to do this, I never agreed to this.”

  “You cheated? You admit it?” The voice did not even sound like hers.

  “I won't admit what is not true,” I said.

  A gust of wind rattled the windows. It was the bungalow's way of clearing its throat, warning us to cinch up for more rain.

  She disappeared again, and when she returned I felt my hands being strapped against my sides with a piece of leather—Ghosh's belt. “That's so you won't remove the blindfold.”