Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

  A folio-size book in the British Council Library had pictures of Chang and Eng of Siam, the most famous Siamese twins. A few pages later was a portrait of the Indian Laloo, who toured the world as a circus freak. Laloo had a “parasitic twin emerging from his chest.” Laloo stood in a loincloth, and from his bare chest sprouted two buttocks and a pair of legs. To me it looked as if the parasitic twin wasn't “emerging” from Laloo, but climbing back into him.

  When I could unglue my eyes from the pictures, every word in that text was a revelation to me. I learned that when two embryos just happened to grow in the mother at the same time, the result was fraternal twins—they didn't look alike and they could be boy and girl. But if a single embryo in a mother happened to split very early on in its growth into two separate halves, the result was identical twins like me and Shiva. Conjoined twins, then, were identical twins where the early split of the fertilized egg into two halves was incomplete, so the two halves remained stuck to each other. The result could be like Chang and Eng, two individuals connected at the belly or some other spot. It could also result in unequal parts, like Laloo and his parasitic twin.

  “Did you know that Shiva and I were craniophagus? Connected at the head?” I said to Sister Mary Joseph Praise. “They cut that connection at birth—they had to. It was bleeding.”

  I was silent for a long while, and I hoped she understood that I was being respectful. It was selfish for me to talk about our births when they coincided with her death. We had another long and awkward silence.

  “Can you please get Ghosh out of jail?”

  There, I said it.

  I waited for a reply. In the ensuing quiet, I felt guilt and shame wash over me. I hadn't told her that Id ripped out the page on Laloo and left the library with it; Id said nothing about killing the army man and how I feared a terrible retribution some day.

  There was something else Id held back, something I understood only after seeing the pictures of Chang and Eng, and of Laloo: the fleshy tube between Shiva and me had been cut and it was long gone … but it wasn't gone—it still connected us. That picture of Laloo captured how I felt, as if pieces of me were still stuck to Shiva and parts of him were inside me. I was connected to Shiva for better or worse. The tube was still there.

  What would it have been like if ShivaMarion walked around with heads fused, or—imagine this—sharing one trunk with two necks? Would I have wanted to make my way—our way—through the world in that fashion? Or would I have wanted doctors to try and separate us at all costs?

  But no one had given us that choice. Theyd separated us, sliced through the stalk that made us one. Who's to say that Shiva's being so different, his circumscribed, self-contained inner world that asked nothing of others, didn't come from that separation, or that my restlessness, my sense of being incomplete, didn't originate at that moment? And in the end, we were still one, bound to each other whether we liked it or not.

  I left the autoclave room abruptly, without even a good-bye. How could I expect Sister to help me when I was holding back so much?

  I didn't deserve her intercession.

  So I was astonished when, an hour later, it came.

  It took the form of a cryptic note on a Russian hospital prescription pad. It came to Gebrew from Teshome, his counterpart at the Russian hospital gates. Teshome said it was from a Russian doctor who had made Teshome swear to keep his identity a secret. On one side the doctor had scribbled: “Ghosh is fine. Absolutely no danger.” On the back Ghosh had scrawled: “Boys, SCREW YOUR COURAGE TO THE STICKING PLACE! Thank Almaz and no need to wait. Matron please call in all favors. Hope lovely bride renews yearly contract. XXX G.”

  I went back to the autoclave room. I stood behind the chair like a penitent and I thanked Sister Mary Joseph Praise. I told her all. I held back nothing. I asked for her forgiveness—and for her to continue to help us free Ghosh.

  I SAW ALMAZ ANEW, saw her quiet strength and determination in the nightly vigil she had held outside Kerchele Prison. Whatever she lacked in education she made up for in character and in loyalty.

  But Id lost all respect for the Emperor. Even Almaz, always a staunch royalist, had a crisis of faith.

  No one really believed that Ghosh was a party to the coup. The problem was—and it was the same for hundreds of others whod been rounded up—His Majesty Haile Selassie made all the decisions. His Majesty wouldn't delegate and His Majesty felt no haste.

  Every afternoon we went to Kerchele to deliver the one meal we were allowed to bring, and to pick up the container bearing the previous day's meal. The relatives outside the prison were our family now. It was also the most fertile place to gather new information and plausible rumors. We heard that the Emperor took a morning walk in the palace garden, during which the Minister of Security, the Minister of State, and the Minister of the Pen came out to him one by one. They walked three paces behind him and reported on rumors and real events of the previous twenty-four hours. Each man worried whether the one who went before him had set a trap by mentioning something which he then failed to mention. Lulu, a royal diviner, peed on certain people's shoes, and the rumor mills were undecided if that was an indication that you were to be trusted or you were under suspicion—this was the sort of thing one learned by visiting Kerchele.

  The next day, just twenty-four hours after my visit to Sister Mary Joseph Praise, we were allowed to see Ghosh.

  The prison yard with its lawn and giant shade trees looked like a picnic spot. Under that green canopy, the prisoners stood like leafless saplings.

  I spotted Ghosh at once. Shiva and I flung ourselves into his arms. It didn't register till we were in his embrace that his head had been shaved or that his face had become gaunt. What did register was that my chest stopped aching for the first time in over a month. The scent on his clothes, on his person, was a coarse, communal odor that made me sad, because it spoke of his degradation. We stood aside to allow Hema and Matron to get near him, but I kept a hand on him, frightened that he might vanish. Some men are improved by losing weight, but Ghosh, without his plump cheeks and jowls, looked diminished.

  Almaz stood back, her face all but hidden by the tail of her shama, waiting. Ghosh freed himself from Hema and Matron, and he walked over to her. She bowed deeply, then bent as if to touch his feet, but Ghosh grabbed her arms before she could, and he pulled her up and kissed her hands. He embraced her. He said hed been so happy to see her standing and waving when they would take him back and forth in the covered jeeps, even though he knew she didn't see him. Almaz, whose teeth Id never noticed before, grinned from ear to ear, while tears ran down her face.

  “The only suffering for me was worrying about all of you. You see, I didn't know if they'd arrested Hema as well. Or maybe even Matron. When I saw Almaz standing in the prison yard, holding that picture of the family in her hands in that frame, I understood she was saying you were all right. Almaz, you put my heart at ease.”

  None of us knew till then that Almaz's vigil had included the family picture, and that whenever a car came or left the prison, she'd stand up and hold that picture up and smile.

  The minutes were ticking by and we pressed Ghosh to tell us all. I don't think he wanted to alarm us, but he couldn't lie. “The first night was the worst. I was put in that cage,” he said, pointing to a grubby, low-slung shack that looked like a storeroom. “It's a tiny space. You can't stand up. That's where they put common criminals, murderers, along with vagrant boys, pickpockets. The air is terrible, and at night, they lock the door and then there's no air at all. This one fellow, a brute, rules the place, and he decides who sleeps where. The only place where you can get a little air is by the door, and in return for my wristwatch, he let me sleep there. If I spent another night there I thought I'd have died. No sheets, no blankets, sleeping on the cold ground. When the sun rose, I was scratching from lice.

  “A major came directly from the palace with instructions to take me to the military hospital and give me everything I needed to care fo
r General Mebratu. The Emperor didn't have much faith in the doctors who were caring for him. When this major saw where I'd spent the night, and saw that my face was swollen, and that I was limping, he was furious. He took me to the military hospital where I could shower, get deloused, and get a fresh set of clothes.

  “At the military hospital, they showed me the General's X-rays, then took me to him. Who do I see there but Slava—Dr. Yaroslav from the Russian hospital. Slava was shaking badly and not looking good. As for Mebratu, he was in deep sleep, or else he was unconscious. Slava said the Ethiopian doctors wouldn't go near the General. They were terrified that if he died they'd suffer, and if they saved him they'd be suspected of being sympathizers. ‘Slava,’ I said, ‘tell me he is sedated, and wasn't this way before you saw him.’ Slava said the General had been wide awake, speaking, no weakness in hands and legs when he came in. ‘I was against sedation,’ Slava said. All this time, there was another Russian doctor with Slava, a youngish woman—Dr. Yekaterina. She said, ‘Sedation is very good. He has head injury. We have to operate.’ I said, ‘Head injuries are only important because the head contains the brain. That bullet is not near the brain.’ ‘What you call this,’ she says pointing to his eye. ‘Comrade,’ I said to her, ‘I call it his orbit.’ She didn't think much of me, and I didn't like the way she was disrespectful of Slava. Slava may be an alcoholic, but he was a pioneer in orthopedics before they banished him to Ethiopia. Slava mouths to me from behind her, ‘KGB!’ I called in the major. ‘What are your instructions as far as my authority?’ He said, ‘Whatever you need. You are in charge. Those are my direct orders from His Majesty.’ ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Take this doctor back to Balcha Hospital. Don't let her come back. I need medicinal brandy, some smelling salts, and let's put two beds in this room for me and Slava.’ I dosed General Mebratu with every antibiotic there was, and gave Slava the brandy and he stopped shaking. Then Slava and I debrided the General's eye, right at the bedside, cut away what was hanging without trying to do too much more. The General never stirred. I had no plans to take the bullet out.

  “For the next two nights, I had Slava for company, and I slept in a regular bed. It was three days before that Communist sedation wore off. ‘Slava, was that dose of sedative for a horse, by any chance?’ I asked. ‘No, but it was given by a nag named Yekaterina!’ Slava said.

  “When General Mebratu woke up, other than a slight headache and a nasal voice, he was in good shape. They wouldn't let me stay there anymore, and they sent Slava off. That's when I scribbled the note. When I came back here they put me in one of the proper cells with some decent chaps. They brought me back and forth once or twice a day, to dress the wound, but I wasn't allowed more than a few words with the General.”

  I'd already spotted two giant rats emerging in broad daylight from a gutter between two buildings. Ghosh was hiding things from us, but then we were hiding something from him.

  From that day on, we were allowed twice-weekly visits. Now the only question was when he would be released.

  First one, then another of Ghosh's VIP patients came by the house to pick up some comfort from home that Ghosh sought—a particular pen, more books, a paper in a certain stack. Theyd bring with them a Lati-nate script in Ghosh's handwriting, a prescription for a compound mixture, and I'd lead them to Adam, the compounder.

  In Ghosh's absence I understood what kind of doctor he was. These royals, or ministers or diplomats, weren't seriously ill, not to my eyes anyway. They didn't have the power to get him out of jail, but they had the power to get into prison to see Ghosh. He, by pulling down the lower eyelid and looking at the color of the conjunctivae, by asking them to protrude the tongue, and all the while with his finger on the pulse, managed to diagnose and reassure them. The modern designation “family practitioner” doesn't quite cover all the things he was.

  THREE WEEKS AFTER we first saw Ghosh, General Mebratu was put on trial, a show for international observers. An underground newspaper carried reports of the trial, as did a few foreign papers. General Mebratu, proud and far from penitent, wouldn't renounce what he'd done. His bearing made a great impression on people who were allowed to attend. From the witness box he preached his message: land reform, political reform, and the end of entitlements that reduced peasants to slaves. Those who had fought to put down Mebratu s coup now wondered why they had opposed him. We heard that a core of junior officers plotted to spring the General from prison, but Mebratu vetoed this. The death of his troops weighed on him. The court sentenced him to hang. His last words in the courtroom were “I go to tell others the seed we planted has taken root.”

  ON THE EVENING of the forty-ninth day of Ghosh's captivity, a taxi drove up our driveway and swung around the back. I heard Almaz yell, and I tried to imagine what new calamity we were facing.

  Getting out of the taxi, surveying our quarters as if he'd never seen them before, was our Ghosh. Gebrew, who'd ridden on the running board of the taxi from the gate, jumped off, clapping with glee, hopping in place. Genet and Rosina came out from their quarters. We danced around Ghosh. The air was filled with shrieks and with lululululu—the sound of Almaz's joy. Koochooloo was there, barking, wagging her tail, and howling, the two nameless dogs standing at a distance following her cue.

  It was midnight when we went to bed, Shiva and me crowded in with Ghosh and Hema. It was far from comfortable, and yet I never slept better. I woke once and heard the sound of Ghosh's heavy snoring: it was the most reassuring sound on earth.

  WE AWOKE EARLY the next morning, our mood still celebratory. Unbeknownst to us, at that moment General Mebratu, veteran of Korea and the Congo, graduate of Sandhurst and Fort Leavenworth, was taken to his execution.

  They hung him in a clearing in the Merkato, perhaps because it was in the Merkato that the student procession and the idea of the coup had found its most vocal support. The executioner, we later learned, was the Emperor's aide-de-camp, a man General Mebratu had known for years. “If you ever loved a soldier, put that knot carefully,” General Mebratu was reported to have said. When the noose was in position, and just as the truck was about to pull away, the General took a running jump off the back of the truck, sailing off into martyrdom.

  We heard about it by late morning. That night in the stone villas, the barracks, and in chikka houses, junior officers who graduated from the Holeta Military Academy, or the Harar Military Academy, or the Air Force Academy in Debre Zeit, went to bed plotting to finish what General Mebratu had started.

  With every passing day, General Mebratu s stature grew until he was unofficially canonized. His likeness appeared in anonymous leaflets, drawn in the cartoon style of the ancient Ethiopic icon painters, with an abundance of yellow, green, and red; they depicted a black Christ flanked by a black John the Baptist, and our own General Mebratu. All three had yellow halos around their heads and the River Jordan running over their feet. The text read, For this is He that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying: The voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.

  CHAPTER 29

  Abu Kassem's Slippers

  TWO DAYS AFTER the General's execution, the hospital staff, led by Adam and W. W. Gonad, had a welcome-back party for Ghosh. They bought a cow, hired a tent and a cook.

  Adam slit the beast's throat. An overeager orderly with a yearning for gored-gored—raw beef—cut a thin and still quivering steak from the flank while the animal stood on glass legs. They strung the cow from a tree, made their cuts, and carried the meat to an outdoor table to be processed.

  When I saw an army jeep come up our driveway, my blood turned cold. The cooks stood still as we watched a uniformed officer go into our bungalow. I sleepwalked toward the house. I was at the front door when the officer stepped out, Ghosh and Hema with him. Shiva was by my side.

  “Boys,” Ghosh said. “The motorcycle. Do you know who came to take it?” Ghosh was calm, unaware of any reason to be alarmed.

  My first response was relie
f—they hadn't come for Ghosh! Then, when it sunk in why the man was here, came panic. The five of us had worked out the story: A soldier came with the key. He drove the motorcycle away. We had no words with him. We'd repeated the story to Hema the day the soldier went missing. As preoccupied as she was with Ghosh's arrest, she'd shrugged it off.

  I was about to speak when I got a good look at the officer's face.

  It was the intruder, the army man, the one who came to take the motorcycle.

  It was his face. The same forehead and teeth, but a body that was not as lean and gangly. The spotless, pressed uniform, the beret tucked under his shoulder lapel, gave him the manner of a professional soldier, something which the intruder had lacked. I felt my face turning colors.

  Rosina and Genet came walking rapidly around the corner of the house. Word had gotten out. There was a crowd around us.

  “A soldier came with a key and he drove it away,” Shiva said.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  The officer smiled. He leaned forward to me and said politely, in English, “Is there anything else you remember? Something you aren't telling me?”

  Ghosh interrupted, saying, “Ah, here's Rosina.” In Amharic, Ghosh said, “Rosina, this officer wants to know about Zemui's motorcycle.”

  Rosina made a deep bow. I was reminded of her politeness to the thief, and how her choice of words then had been inflammatory. I hoped she'd be prudent.

  “Yes, sir. I was with the boys when he came—” She stopped and brought the edge of her shama to her mouth, her eyes popping. “Excuse me, sir. The man … he looked very much like you. When I saw your face … forgive me,” and she made a little bow again. “He wasn't … he wasn't as polite as you. Dressed … not like you.”

  “We have the same mother,” the officer said, with a wry smile. “It's true, he looks like me. What was he wearing?”