Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

  Popsy's dementia no longer needed to be concealed. He roamed safely throughout Our Lady, wearing scrubs, and with a mask dangling from his neck. He was turned away every time he wandered into the operating room, or tried to leave the premises, but he didn't seem to mind. He would sometimes stop people and declare, “I contaminated myself.”

  LATE ON A FRIDAY EVENING, a few months after Thomas Stone's first visit to my room, I heard a knock at my door. There he stood, tentative, embarrassed, and unsure what his reception would be.

  My father's long confessional had changed things for me; it had been much easier to stay angry with him, to trash his apartment and violate his space, before I heard his story. Now his presence felt awkward and I didn't invite him in.

  “I can't stay but I wondered … want to ask if … would you care to join me for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in Manhattan tomorrow, Saturday? … Here's the address—about seven?”

  This was the last thing I expected from him. If he'd invited me to go to the Met, or to dine at the Waldorf-Astoria, I would have declined without any hesitation. But when he said “Ethiopian restaurant,” it conjured up the sour taste of injera and a fiery wot and my mouth began watering and my tongue stopped working. I nodded, even though I really didn't want to be around him. But we had unfinished business.

  On Saturday I emerged from the subway and I saw Thomas Stone at a distance standing outside the Meskerem in Greenwich Village. Though hed been in America more than twenty years, he looked out of place. He had no interest in the menu displayed outside, and he did not notice the students pouring out from a New York University building, instrument cases in their hands, their hair, clothing, and multiple ear piercings setting them apart from other pedestrians. When he saw me he was visibly relieved.

  Meskerem was small, with dark red curtains and walls that recalled the inside of a chikka hut. The aroma of coffee beans roasted over charcoal and the peppery smell of berbere made it feel a world away from Manhattan. We sat on rough-hewn, three-legged wooden stools, low to the ground, with a woven basket table between us. A long mirror behind Thomas Stone allowed me to see both the back of his head and people entering or leaving the restaurant. The posters thumbtacked to the walls showed the castles of Gondar, a portrait of a smiling Tigre woman with strong perfect teeth, a close-up of the wrinkled face of an Ethiopian priest, and an aerial view of Churchill Road, each with the same caption: THIRTEEN MONTHS OF SUNSHINE. Every Ethiopian restaurant I subsequently visited in America relied heavily on the same Ethiopian Airlines calendar for decor.

  The waitress, a short, bright-eyed Amhara, brought us menus. Her name was Anna. She almost dropped her pencil when I said in Amharic that I'd brought my own knife and I was so hungry that if she pointed me to where the cow was tethered, I'd get started. When she brought our food out on a circular tray, Thomas Stone looked surprised, as if he'd forgotten that we would eat with our fingers off a common plate. To his dismay, Anna (who hailed from the neighborhood of Kebena in Addis, not that far away from Missing) gave me gursha—she tore off a piece of injera, dipped it in curry, and fed me with her fingers. Thomas Stone hastily rose and asked for the restroom, lest she turn to him.

  “Blessed St. Gabriel,” Anna said, watching him leave. “I scared your friend with our habesha customs.”

  “He should know. He lived in Addis for seven years.”

  “No! Really?”

  “Please don't take offense.”

  “It's nothing,” she said, smiling. “I know that type of ferengl. Spend years there, but they look through us. But don't worry. You make up for it, and you're better looking.”

  I could have taken up for him. I could have said he was my father. I smiled. I'm sure I blushed. I said nothing.

  When Thomas Stone returned, he made a halfhearted effort to eat. Inevitably, one of the songs that cycled through the ceiling speakers was “Tizita.” I studied his face to see if it meant anything to him. It didn't.

  The mark of a native is that your fingers are never stained by the curry; you use the injera as your tongs, as a barrier, while you pick up a piece of chicken or beef sopped in the sauce. Thomas Stone's nails were red.

  Tilahoun singing “Tizita,” the cocoonlike atmosphere, and the frank incense brought memories bubbling to the surface. I thought of mornings at Missing and how the mist had body and weight as if it were a third element after earth and sky, but then it vanished when the sun was high; I remembered Rosina's songs, Gebrew's chants, and Almaz's magical teat; I recalled the sight of a younger Hema and Ghosh leaving for work, as we waved through the kitchen window; I could see those halcyon days, shiny like a new coin, glinting in sunlight.

  “Do you plan to finish your next four years of residency at Our Lady?” Thomas Stone said, abruptly, breaking into my reverie. “If you were interested in moving to Boston …” So much for his perceptiveness. Just when I was ready to talk about the past, he wanted to know about my future.

  “I don't want to leave Our Lady. The hospital is my Missing equivalent. I never wanted to leave Missing or Addis, but I had to. Now I don't want to leave Our Lady.”

  Any other man would have asked me why I had to leave Missing. That was my fault—had he posed the question, I might not have answered. And perhaps he knew that.

  As she cleared our plates, Anna said to Thomas Stone in English, “How did you like the food?”

  “It was good,” he said, barely glancing at her. He reddened as she and I studied him. “Thank you,” he added, as if he hoped that would help get rid of her. She took two packaged towelettes out from her apron pocket and put them on the table.

  I said to Anna, “Honestly, it was good, but you could make the wot hotter.”

  “Of course we can,” she said in Amharic, a little taken aback by the implied criticism. “But then people like him won't be able to touch the food. Also we use local butter, so even if we make it hotter, it won't taste the same as home. Only someone like you would know the difference.”

  “You mean there is no place to get real habesha food? The real thing? With all these Ethiopians in New York?”

  She shook her head. “Not here. If you ever visit Boston, go see the Queen of Sheba. She's in Roxbury She is famous. The house is like our embassy. Upstairs, in one room, they sell groceries, and downstairs they serve home food. Cooked with true Ethiopian butter. The Ethiopian Airlines crew bring it just for her. All the Ethiopian taxi drivers eat there. You won't see anybody but Ethiopians there.”

  THOMAS STONE HAD WATCHED this exchange, his face blank. When Anna left, he reached into his pocket. I thought he was reaching for his billfold. Instead, he pulled out the bookmark I had left in his room, the one on which Sister Mary Joseph Praise had written her note to him.

  I dried my hands carefully and took it from him. I realized that I had missed it; it felt as if it shouldn't be here on a basket table but in a bank vault. It had been my talisman on a harrowing journey, an escape from Ethiopia which he knew nothing about. I read her last lines—”Also, I am enclosing a letter to you from me. Please read at once. SMJP”—and then I looked up.

  Thomas Stone fidgeted in his seat. He swallowed hard, leaning on the basket table.

  “Marion. This bookmark … was in the textbook, I presume?”

  “Yes, it was. I have the textbook.”

  He grew stiff, his hands trapped under his thighs as if an electric current were running through him. “Would you … Can I ask if … Do you have … Was there a letter?”

  He looked helpless, sitting so low to the ground, like a parent visiting kindergarten, his knees under his chin.

  “I thought you had the letter,” I said.

  “No!” he said, so emphatically that Anna looked over at us.

  “I'm sorry,” I said, though I wasn't sure what I was sorry for. “I assumed that you took the letter when you left. That you left the book with the bookmark in it.”

  His face, so expectant a moment ago, collapsed.

  “I took almost noth
ing,” he said. “I walked out of Missing with the clothes I had on and one or two things from the office. I never went back.”

  “I know,” I said.

  He cringed when I said those words. No wonder he was reluctant to probe my past. No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son. But did he really think of me this way? As a son? “But you took the finger with you?” I went on.

  “Yes … that's all I took. It was in her room. I went back there.” He looked up.

  I said, “I'm sorry. I wish I had the letter.”

  “And the bookmark?” he said. “How did you get it?”

  I sighed. Anna served us coffee. The small cup with no handle felt inadequate for my task of trying to cover a lifetime for this man. “I had to leave Ethiopia in haste. The authorities were looking for me … It's a long story. They thought I was involved in the hijacking of an Ethiopian Airlines plane. They thought I was a sympathizer for the Eritrean cause. Ridiculous, right? You remember your maid, Rosina? One of the hijackers was Rosina's daughter, Genet. Rosina is dead, by the way. Hanged herself.”

  It was more than he could digest.

  “Rosina and Genet …,” I began. “Suffice it to say, I had an hour to get out of town. As I was leaving, climbing over Missing's wall, I said my good-byes to Hema, Matron, Gebrew, Almaz, and to Shiva, my brother …” I stopped. I had hit a roadblock. “Shiva, your other son … ?”

  Stone swallowed. This was proving impossible. And yet he needed to know, particularly if it was painful.

  “My son …,” he said, trying out the word.

  “Your son. You want to see what he looks like?” He nodded, expecting me to pull out a wallet. “Look at that mirror behind you.”

  He hesitated as if this might be a joke, a trick. But he turned, and our eyes met in the mirror, startling me, because it was suddenly more intimate than I'd expected. “Shiva and I are mirror images.”

  “What is he like?” he asked without turning around.

  I sighed. I shook my head. I dropped my gaze. He turned back to me.

  “Shiva is … very different. A genius, I would say. But not in the usual way. Impatient with school. He'd never answer an exam question in a way that might make him pass, not because he didn't know … He has never understood the need to subscribe to convention. But he knows more medicine, certainly more gynecology than I do. He works with Hema doing fistula work. He's a brilliant surgeon. Trained, but by Hema. No medical school.” None of this would have been difficult for Stone to discover on his own had he been interested. He was interested now.

  “I was very close to Shiva when we were little boys.”

  Stone's eyes were unblinking. I couldn't tell him the details of what had happened since. I had told no one. Only Genet and Shiva knew the truth.

  “He and Genet did something to hurt me that I cannot forgive …”

  “Something related to the hijacking?”

  “No, no. It happened long before. Anyway, I was and still am very angry with him. But he is my brother—my twin—and so when I had one hour to leave the city, when the time came to say good-bye to Shiva— well, it was very painful for both of us.” Suddenly I found myself fighting for composure. It was terribly important for me not to cry in front of Thomas Stone. I pinched the inside of my thigh. “As I was saying good-bye to Shiva, he handed me two books. One was his Gray's Anat omy. That was his most valued possession. He dragged it around like a blanket.

  “And the second was your book, with that bookmark inside. I didn't know how he got it, or how long he had it. I didn't even know you had written a book. The book was hardly opened. I don't think Shiva ever read it, certainly not like he devoured his Gray's. He probably saw and read the bookmark. But you have to know Shiva. He wouldn't be curious about the bookmark or the letter she referred to. Shiva lives in the now. I don't know just how he got the book or why he wanted to give it to me.”

  Stone remained silent, his gaze on the empty basket between us, as if it stood in for all that was unknown about his past, our past. His look of pain was so intense, it pierced me. “I can ask him,” I offered. I wanted to know just as much as Thomas Stone did. “I will ask him,” I said.

  Thomas Stone was a world away. When he lifted his gaze, I understood the depths of his sorrow; I saw it in a darkening of his iris, even though that delicate structure should not change color. I could see that the almost mystical aura of this legendary surgeon—the single-mindedness, the dedication, the skill—was mere surface. The surgical persona was something he had crafted to protect himself. But what he had created was a prison. Anytime he strayed from the professional to the personal, he knew what to expect: pain.

  When he spoke, his voice sounded tired, old. “And here I thought you had it, and you thought I …”

  “What do you think is in the letter?”

  “How I wish I knew,” he said abruptly. “I'd give my right arm …”

  It had been a few months since I met Thomas Stone. The anger I felt obliged to have had subsided. The story he told me of his childhood, his mother's death—it should have been enough to forgive him, but I didn't think I was ready for that. I hadn't forgiven Shiva, so why forgive Thomas Stone? Even if I had forgiven him, a perverse streak in me refused to let him know that. But I had unfinished business with him.

  “There's something I have to tell you,” I said. I never thought I would be ashamed in front of this man. “Something I was charged to tell you by Ghosh.” Ghosh's wish had seemed irrational to me at the time. But now, looking into that hard, craggy face, I understood why Ghosh had wanted me to reach out to Stone. Ghosh knew Thomas, but Ghosh had overestimated my maturity.

  “Ghosh had a dying wish which I promised to fulfill. But I didn't. I ignored it. I hope you—and he—will forgive me. Ghosh told me that he felt his life would be incomplete without my doing this … His wish was for me to come and find you. To let you know that he considered you a brother.”

  This was hard, both because I could recall Ghosh's labored breathing, could recall Ghosh's every word, and because I was now seeing the effect these words had on Thomas Stone. Other than his mother, and Dr. Ross in the sanatorium, who had ever expressed love for him? Sister Mary Joseph Praise perhaps, but did she ever get to tell him, and if she did, did he hear?

  “Ghosh was disappointed that you never contacted him. But he wanted you to know that whatever your reason was for being silent all those years, it was all right with him.” Ghosh had felt it was shame that kept Thomas from looking back. He was right, because it was shame that colored his face now.

  “I'm so sorry,” Stone said. I don't know whether he was speaking to me, or Ghosh, or the universe. It wasn't enough, but it was about time.

  If there were other people in the restaurant, I was no longer aware of them. If there was music playing, I couldn't hear it.

  I studied my father as I might study some specimen set before me: I saw the smile that struggled for purchase on his face and failed, and then I saw the haunted and hunted look that came in its wake. God help us if such a man had tried to raise us, if he had taken us away from Ethiopia. With all the sorrow and loss I'd experienced, I'd never have traded my past at Missing for a life in Boston with him. I should have thanked Thomas Stone for leaving Ethiopia. The love he felt for Sister Mary Joseph Praise had come too late. She was the mystery, the great regret that he would take to his grave—and he would regret nothing more than not knowing what she said in that letter.

  “I'll write to Shiva,” I said. “I'll ask about the letter.” I suppose I understood Thomas Stone's shutting people out. After Genet's betrayal, I never wanted to have such strong feelings for a woman again. Not unless I had a written guarantee. I'd encountered a medical student from Mecca, a saint compared with my first love; she was kind, generous, beautiful, and seemed to transcend herself, as if her existence was secondary to her interest in the world and the things in it, including me. My belated and muted response must have pushed her away
, lost me any chance of a future with her. Did I feel sad? Yes. And stupid? Yes, but I also felt relieved. By losing her, I was protected from her and she from me. I had that in common with this man sitting before me. I thought of a watch that had stopped ticking, and how it showed the correct time twice a day. He paid. I rose with him. At the door of the restaurant, our hands in our pockets, I waited.

  “ ‘Call no man happy until he dies,’ “ he said. Before I could tell if that was a smile or an expression of sadness on his face, he nodded and walked away.

  CHAPTER 48

  Five Fingers

  JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT on the first Sunday of every month, I would ring Hema at her bungalow. It was seven o'clock, Monday morning, Addis time. The rates were best at this hour, but since Almaz, Gebrew, and sometimes Matron came on before Hema, it could still be a long and expensive call. Ever since Hema delivered Mengistu's—sorry, Comrade Mengistu's—child, we no longer worried about the secret police eavesdropping on us; besides, they were preoccupied with real enemies. Mengistu Haile Mariam, Strength of Mary, Secretary General of the Council of Peasants and Workers, Chairman of the Military Council of Socialist Ethiopia, President-for-Life of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Peoples of Ethiopia, General in Command of the Bureau for Armed Struggle Against Imperial Aggression in Tigre and Eritrea, had adopted an Albanian style of Marxism. The upper and middle classes and even the working poor had their houses confiscated and land taken away. But favors to Mengistu and particularly favors to his wife weren't forgotten; Missing's medicines and supplies were not held up in the Customs godown, and there were no palms to grease.

  As I dialed Hema's number that Sunday, I pictured my Missing family watching the clock, coffee cups in their hands, waiting for the phone to ring from a continent none of them had seen. Almaz picked up the receiver, with Gebrew leaning in, both of them suddenly shy and self-conscious. Their side of the conversation consisted of repeated Ende-menneh? Dehna-ne-woy?—How-are-you? Are-you-well, then?—until these godparents of mine were satisfied that their lij, their child, was all right. They told me they kept me in their prayers, fasted for me. “Pray that I'll see you soon and may God take care of you and your health,” I said. Matron was just the opposite, chatty and spontaneous, as if we had run into each other in the corridor outside her office.