Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

  For the next few minutes I solemnly shook the hand of every person in the house.

  LATER I SAT WITH TSIGE on a sofa in a living room upstairs. She had kicked off her heels and tucked her feet up under her. Still holding my hand, she touched my cheek often to exclaim how happy she was to see me.

  I had plans to return to New York that afternoon, but Tsige insisted on sending Mesfin away. “You can take a later flight,” she said.

  “Are you sure I can find a taxi here?” I said, pretending to be serious.

  After a beat, she threw her head back and laughed. “See, you have changed! You used to be so shy.”

  Through the window I saw six or seven baby goats in a large wire enclosure. Behind that was a chicken coop. A dreamy-looking boy with a long narrow head sat stroking one of the goats. “He's my cousin,” Tsige said. “You can see the forceps marks on his forehead. He has some problems. But he loves to take care of the animals. You should come here when we celebrate Meskel on Meskerem Day. We slaughter the goats and cook outdoors. You will see not just taxis, but police cars. They come from the Roxbury and South End stations to eat.”

  Tsige said she left Addis a few months after me. A patron of the bar, a corporal in the army, had wanted to marry her. “He was nobody. But in the revolution, even the privates became powerful.” When she declined his advances, she was falsely accused of imperialist activities and imprisoned. “I bought my way out after two weeks. In the time I was in Kerchele, they confiscated my house. He came to see me, pretending he had nothing to do with my arrest. If I married him, he said, everything would come back to us. The country was being run by dogs like him. I had money hidden away. I never looked back. I left.

  “In Khartoum, I waited a month for asylum from the American Embassy. I worked as a servant for the Hankins, a British family. They were nice. I learned English by taking care of their children. That was the only good thing that came out of Khartoum. I don't mind the cold in Boston because every cold day reminds me how good it is to be out of Khartoum.

  “I worked hard here, Marion. Quick-Mart—often I did two shifts. Then five nights I worked at a parking garage. I saved and saved. I became the first Ethiopian woman to drive a taxi in Boston. I learned the city. I found work for Ethiopians. Stock boy, parking attendant, taxi driver, or counter girl at the hotel gift shop. I lent money on interest to Ethiopians. Tayitu used to work for me in the bar, so when she came, I rented this house. She cooked. Then I bought the house. Now, my God, there is much to be done: grind tef, make injera, clean chicken, make wot, sweep the house. It takes three or four people. Ethiopians arrive at my door like newborn lambs, everything they have tied up in bedsheets, their X-rays still in their hands. I try to help them.”

  “You really are the Queen of Sheba.”

  There was an impish grin on her face. She switched to English, a language I had never heard her speak. “Marion, you know what I had to do to feed my baby in Addis. Then in Sudan, I was even lower than that— I was no better than a bariya,” she said, using the slang word for “slave.” “In America they said you can be anything. I believed it. I worked hard. So when they say, ‘Queen of Sheba,’ I think to myself, Yes, from bariya to queen.”

  I told Tsige about seeing her on the day I left Addis so hastily, seeing her getting out of her Fiat 850. “Today, what do I see before I see your face? Your beautiful leg getting out of a car. The last glimpse of you in Addis was also your beautiful leg coming out of a car. I wanted to say good-bye to you then. But I couldn't.”

  She laughed, and self-consciously pulled her skirt down. “I knew you disappeared right after Genet,” Tsige said. “No one knew if you were part of the hijacking.”

  “Really? People thought I was an Eritrean guerrilla?”

  She shrugged. “I didn't think you had anything to do with it. But when I saw Genet, she never said anything one way or the other.”

  I was puzzled. “How could you have seen Genet? She left the same day I left. That's why I had to go—did you see her in Khartoum?”

  “No, Marion. I saw her here.”

  “You saw Genet in America?”

  “I saw her here. In this house … Oh my God. You didn't know?”

  I felt the air leave my lungs. A sinkhole opened up under me. “Genet? Isn't she still fighting with the Eritreans?”

  “No, no, no. That girl came here as a refugee, just like the rest of us. Someone brought her here. She had her baby in her arms. She acted as if she didn't recognize me at first. I had to remind her.” Tsige s face turned hard. “You know, Marion, once we come here, we are all the same. Eritrean, Amhara, Oromo, big shot, bariya, whatever status you had in Addis it means nothing. In America you begin at zero. The ones who do the best here are those who were zero there. But Genet came here thinking she was special, not like the rest of us—”

  “When was this?”

  “Two, maybe three years ago. She said she'd lost touch with you. She didn't know where you went. She acted as if she didn't know you had escaped from Addis.”

  “What? She was lying,” I said. “It was the Eritreans who helped me escape. She was their star … their big heroine. She must have known.”

  “Maybe she didn't trust me, Marion. I never knew her the way I knew you, never exchanged two words with her. People change, you know. When you leave your country, you are like a plant taken out of soil. Some people turn hard, they can't flower again. I remember she told me she got sick in the field. She got sick of the fighting, too, I think. She had the baby. Some women she knew in New York had a job for her and offered to help take care of the baby boy. So I didn't really have to do anything for her.”

  “My God,” I said, sinking back into the sofa. I was glad I didn't know of this before, glad I didn't know she was in New York. “Is she still there?”

  “No.” Tsige hesitated, as if she wasn't sure whether to tell me the rest. “There were lots of rumors. What I heard is … she met a man and they got married. Something happened. She almost killed him. I don't know exactly why or how. All I know is that she's in prison. Her baby was given up for adoption …” Tsige saw the shock on my face. “I'm sorry. I thought you knew all this … I could find out if she is still in jail.”

  “No!” I shook my head. “You don't understand. I don't want to ever see her again,” I said. I don't want to see her other than to spit in her face, I thought.

  “But she was your own sister.”

  “No! Don't say that,” I said sharply.

  We sat there in silence. If Tsige found my reaction unexpected, I couldn't blame her. I had to wait a few minutes for the turmoil in me to subside.

  “Tsige,” I said, at last, reaching for her hand. “I'm sorry. I must explain. You see, Genet was not my sister. She was the love of my life.”

  Tsige was shocked. “You were in love with your own sister?”

  “She's not my sister!”

  “I am sorry. Of course.”

  “What does it matter, Tsige? If she was my sister or not my sister, either way I was in love with her. I couldn't change what I felt for her. We were going to marry after we finished medical school …”

  “What happened?”

  “My own brother betrayed me. She betrayed me.” This was so hard to say. “They were pillows for each other,” I said, using an Amharic expression.

  I realized Id just told Tsige what I'd never told anyone else, not even Hema. I'd come close to telling Thomas Stone in the restaurant, but I hadn't. There was such relief now in the telling. I left nothing out—my being falsely accused, Genet's genital mutilation, Rosina's death, Hema's suspicion that I was responsible. In six years at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, with all the close friends I had made—Deepak, B.C., various medical students—not one of them had I told this tale.

  Tsige s hand was over her mouth, her eyes showing her astonishment and empathy. After a while, she put her hand down and shook her head sadly. “Your brother wanted to sleep with me,” Tsige said. She grinned when she saw my j
aw drop. “Oh, yes. You both were young then, fourteen or fifteen. Not too young, though. Shiva was so direct. ‘How much to sleep with you?’ “

  She laughed at the audacity of this, gazing out of the window, her mind conjuring up that faraway time.

  “Did he?” I said at last, my throat so dry that the words could have set fire to the tejin my stomach. She had no idea how important her answer was to me.

  “Did he what?”

  “Sleep with you?”

  “Oh, you sweet thing. No!” She pinched my cheek. “You should see your expression. No, no.” I let out the breath I had been holding. “Don't you know that if it had been you, it would have been different? If you'd ever asked … I owe you, Marion. I still owe you.”

  I was sure I was blushing. As quickly as Genet had appeared in my head, she had disappeared. “You don't owe me anything, Tsige. And I'm sorry, I never should've asked you that—it's personal, your business.”

  “Marion, you must have lots of girlfriends. A surgeon in New York! How many nurses share your pillow, eh? Where are you going? Why are you standing? What's the matter?”

  “Tsige, it is late, I'd better—”

  She pulled me firmly down, so that I landed almost on top of her. She held me. The scent of her body and of her perfume had shot up my nostrils. My eyes were on her throat, her chin, her bosom. I had thought of her many a night in the house-staff quarters at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, never imagining that I might really touch her. I was a board-certified general surgeon, but now I felt like a pimply adolescent.

  “You are turning so red! Are you all right? Oh, bless me, Mary … blessed Gabriel and the saints … you are still a virgin, aren't you?”

  I nodded sheepishly “Why are you crying?” I asked.

  She would only shake her head, studying my face while swiping at her eyes. At last, holding my cheeks in her hands, she said, “I am crying because it's so beautiful.”

  “It isn't beautiful, Tsige. It's stupid.”

  “No, it's not,” she said.

  “I saved myself for Genet. Yes, I know—ridiculous. But then when she and Shiva … I threw myself into my studies. The worst part is I still loved her. Shiva didn't. I loved her. I felt responsible when she almost died. Can you believe that? Shiva slept with her, and I felt responsible? Then, when she and her friends stole that plane, she betrayed me again. She never worried what might happen to me or Hema or Shiva. But at least at that moment, on the day I left Ethiopia, I was free of her. When I came here, I tried to forget her. I hoped she was dead in that stupid war—her damn war. Now I find she's here. Maybe I should leave the country, Tsige. Go to Brazil. Or India. I don't want to be on the same continent as that woman.”

  “Stop it, Marion. Don't talk foolishly. How much tej did you drink? This is a big country and you're a big man. Forget about her! Look where you are and look where she is. She's in jail, for God's sake!” She touched my hair, and then she pulled me to her bosom. “You are the kind of man that women dream about.”

  I was aroused. There was nothing about my life that I could hide from her, even if I wanted to. Not my shame, not my secrets, not my embarrassment.

  She kissed me on my lips, a brief exploratory brush first, then a leisurely probing kiss. I could feel the adrenaline pouring out of me, the reserves of unused, stockpiled testosterone announcing their availability. So this is how it is going to happen, I thought. On the day I pass my surgical boards. How fitting. My hands reached for her.

  She sighed and pulled back, pushing me upright, then straightening her hair. Her expression was serious, like that of a clinician making a pronouncement after the detailed physical exam.

  “Wait, my Marion. You've saved yourself all these years. That is not a small thing. I want you to go home. After you have thought about it, if you want me, I will be here. You can come back here or we can go away, go on a trip together. Or I will come to New York and we will take a beautiful hotel room.” She read the disappointment on my face, the rejection. “Don't be sad. I am doing this out of love for you. When you have something this precious, you must think carefully how you give it away. I'll understand if you don't give it to me. If you choose me, I will be honored, and I will honor you. Now, I'll get a taxi to take you. Go, my sweet man. Go with God. There is no one else like you.”

  This is my life, I thought, as my taxi slogged through heavy traffic and inched through the tunnel to Logan Airport. I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?

  CHAPTER 50

  Slit the Thew

  NOW THAT I HAD the income of an attending surgeon, I bought a duplex at one end of a row of such units in Queens. The roofline above the dormer window on one side was peaked like an eyebrow, and it cast a proprietary gaze over an overgrown wedge of land, thick with maples. In summer, I put my jasmine pots on the little patio and I grew salad staples in a tiny garden. In winter, I brought the jasmine indoors while the empty wire cages outside stood as memorials to the succulent, blood-red tomatoes the earth had given up. I painted walls; I repaired roof shingles; I installed bookshelves. Uprooted from Africa, I was satisfying a nesting impulse. I'd found my version of happiness in America. Six years had gone by, and though I should have visited Ethiopia, somehow I could never quite break free.

  One day, when coming out of an ice-cream shop, a tall elegantly dressed black woman, her leather coat dancing above her ankles, brushed past me. I held the door for her, and as she slid past, an intense disquiet came over me. She turned back to look at me, smiling. Another evening, while driving back through Manhattan from a trauma conference in New Jersey, a streetwalker caught my eye as she stepped out from under an awning near the Holland Tunnel. She was ghost lit by car headlamps and reflections off the puddles. She tit-flashed me in the rain. Or I imagined she did. I felt the disquiet again, like the hint of something afire, but one doesn't know where. I circled the block, but she was gone.

  At home, I prepared for the next day's work. I could have gone into private practice when I finished my five-year residency, or else I could have gone to some other teaching institution. But I felt a great loyalty to Our Lady. And now, Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and Walter Reed in Washington were sending us a few of their senior surgical residents. In peacetime, we provided the closest thing to a war zone, a place where they could hone their skills. I was Our Lady's Head of Trauma; we were blessed with new resources and more personnel. There was no reason for me to be unhappy. But that night, with a fire going in the grate, I felt restless, as if a paralysis would soon set in if I didn't take certain measures.

  That weekend, I decided my life needed a dimension that did not involve work. I looked over the Times for events, readings, openings, plays, lectures, and other matters of interest. I forced myself to leave the house on Saturday and again on Sunday.

  THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY, I came home after work and deposited my briefcase and the mail in my library. In the kitchen, I lit the candle, set the table, and warmed up the last portion of a chicken casserole that I had cooked the previous Sunday from a Times recipe.

  There was a knock on the door.

  I panicked.

  Had I invited someone over for dinner and forgotten? Other than Deepak coming over once, no one had ever been here. Could it be that Tsige from Boston had decided to take matters into her own hands, since I had failed to call her? I'd picked up the receiver a dozen times, and then lost courage. Or could this be Thomas Stone knocking? I hadn't told him where I lived, but he could have found out easily from Deepak.

  I looked through the peephole.

  In that convex fish-eye image, I saw eyes, a nose, cheekbones, lips … My brain tried to juggle and rearrange the parts to come u
p with a face and a name.

  It wasn't Stone or Deepak or Tsige.

  There was no mistaking who it was.

  She turned to leave, went down the two steps.

  I could have watched her walk away.

  I opened the door. She stood frozen, her body facing the street, her face turned back to the door. She was taller than I recalled, or perhaps it was that she was thinner. She looked to see that it was me, then she dropped her gaze to a spot near my left elbow. This allowed me to study her at will, to decide whether to slam the door on her.

  Her hair was straightened, lank, without benefit of ribbons or bows or even a good combing. The cheekbones were intact, more prominent than ever, as if to better buttress those oval, slanting eyes which were her prettiest feature. Even without makeup, hers would always be a stunning face. Although it was summer, she wore a long wool coat tied tight around the waist, and she hugged herself as if she were cold. She stood there motionless, like a small animal caught invading the territory of a predator, paralyzed and unable to move.