Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

  I came down my steps. I reached my hand out and tilted her face up. Her eyeballs and lids rolled down just like the eyes of the dolls she used to play with. Her skin was cold to my touch. The vertical scars at the outer edges of her eyes were now seasoned lines, though I recalled the day Rosina's blade gave birth to them, and how they had been raw and choked with dark blood. I jerked her chin farther up. Still she wouldn't meet my gaze. I wanted her to see the scars on my body, one from her betrayal of me with Shiva and another from her becoming more Eritrean than any Eritrean, resulting in the hijacking that drove me out of my country. I wanted her to see my rage through my outer calm. I wanted her to feel the blood surge in my muscles, to see the way my fingers curled and coiled and itched for her windpipe. It was good she didn't look, because if she'd so much as blinked, I would have bit into her jugular, I would have consumed her, bones, teeth, and hair, leaving nothing of her on the street.

  I took her by the elbow and led her inside. She came like a woman going to the gallows. In the foyer as I bolted the door, she stood rooted to the mat. I led her to my library—a dining room that I had transformed—and I pushed her down on the ottoman. She perched on its edge. I stared down at her; she didn't move. Then she coughed, a spasm that took fifteen seconds to pass. She brought a crumpled tissue to her lips. I looked at her for a long time. I was about to speak when the cough commenced again.

  I went to the kitchen. I boiled water for tea, leaning my head against the refrigerator as I waited. Why was I doing this? One minute homicide, the next minute tea?

  She had not changed her position. When she took the cup from me, I saw her unvarnished, chipped fingernails and the wrinkled washerwoman's skin. She pulled one sleeve down, passed the cup over, and repeated the process with the other, so as to hide her hands. Tears streamed down her face, her lips pulled back into a grimace.

  I had hoped that my heart would be hardened to such displays.

  “Sorry. I work in a kitchen,” she whispered.

  “After all you have done to me, you're sorry about the state of your hands?”

  She blinked, said nothing.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Tsige sent me.”

  “Why?”

  “I called her when I got out of jail. I needed … help.”

  “Didn't she tell you that I didn't want to see you?”

  “Yes. But she insisted I see you before she would help me.” She glanced directly at me for the very first time. “And I wanted to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “To tell you I'm sorry.” She averted her gaze after a few seconds.

  “Is that something you learn in prison? Avoiding eye contact?”

  She laughed, and in that moment I wondered if, with all she had seen and done, she was beyond being touched by anger. She said, “I was stabbed once for looking.” She pointed down with her chin to her left side. “They took out my spleen.”

  “Where were you in prison?”

  “Albany.”

  “And now?”

  “I'm paroled. I have to see my probation officer every week.”

  She put her cup down.

  “What else did Tsige say?”

  “That you're a surgeon.” She looked around the library, the shelves full of books. “That you're doing well.”

  “I'm only here because I was forced to run. Forced to leave in the night like a thief. You know who did that to me? To Hema? It was someone who was to our family … like a daughter.”

  She rocked back and forth. “Go on,” she said, straightening her back. “I deserve it.”

  “Still playing the martyr? I heard you hid a gun in your hair when you got on that plane. An Afro! You were the Angela Davis of the Eritrean cause, right?”

  She shook her head. After a long while she said, “I don't know what I was. I don't know who I was. The person I was felt she had to do something great.” She spat out the last word. “Something spectacular. For Zemui. For me. They promised me that you and our family would not be harmed. As soon as the hijack was over, I realized how stupid it was. Nothing about it was great. I was a great fool, that's all.”

  She drank her tea. She stood up. “Forgive me, if you can. You deserved better.”

  “Shut up and sit down,” I said. She obeyed. “You think that does it? You say sorry and then leave?”

  She shook her head.

  “You had a baby?” I said. “A field baby.”

  “The contraceptives they gave us didn't work.”

  “Why did you go to jail?”

  “Must I tell you everything?”

  She began coughing again. When the spasm was over, she shivered, although the room was warm and I was sweating.

  “What happened to your baby?”

  Her face crumpled. Her lips stretched out. Her shoulders shook. “They took my baby away from me. Gave him away for adoption. I curse the man who put me in that position. Curse that man.” She looked up. “I was a good mother, Marion—”

  “A good mother!” I laughed. “If you were a good mother you might be carrying my child.”

  She smiled through her tears as if I were being funny—as if shed just remembered my fantasy of our getting married and populating Missing with our children. Then she began to shake, and at first I thought she was crying or laughing, but I heard her teeth chatter. I had rehearsed my lines in my head as I walked out of Asmara, walked all the way to the Sudan; Id rehearsed them so many times since. I imagined every excuse she might offer if I ever met her. I had my barbs ready. But this quaking, silent adversary was not what Id envisioned. I reached over and felt her pulse. One hundred forty beats per minute. Her skin, cool just a while ago, was burning to the touch.

  “I … must … go,” she said, rising but swaying.

  “No, you will stay.”

  She was clearly unwell. I gave her three aspirin. I led her into the master bath and ran the shower. When it was steaming, I helped her undress. If earlier I had seen her as an animal in the predator's lair, now I felt like a father disrobing his child. Once she was in the shower, I tossed her underwear and shirt into the washer and ran the load. I helped her out of the shower. She was on glass legs. I dried her off and sat her on the edge of the bed. I put a pair of my winter flannels on her and tucked her in. I made her eat a few spoons of casserole and drink more tea. I put Vicks on her throat and on her chest and the soles of her feet, just as Hema would do with us. She was asleep before I slid the woolen socks over her toes.

  What was I feeling? This was a Pyrrhic victory. A pyrexic victory— the thermometer I slid under her armpit read one hundred three degrees. While she slept, I moved her wet clothes to the dryer and stuck her jeans in the washer. I put away the casserole. Then I sat in the library by myself, trying to read. Perhaps I dozed. Hours later, I heard the sound of a toilet being flushed. She was on the bed, covers thrown to the side, pajamas and socks off, wrapped in a towel and wiping her brow with a washcloth. Her fever had broken. She moved over to make room for me.

  “Do you want me to leave now?” she said.

  In that question, I felt that she was taking control because there was only one possible answer: “You're sleeping here.”

  “I'm burning up,” she said.

  I changed into my boxers and T-shirt in the bathroom, took a blanket from the wardrobe, and headed for the library.

  “Stay with me?” she said. “Please?”

  I had no reply planned for that.

  I climbed into my bed. When I reached for the light, she said, “Please leave it on.”

  No sooner had I lain down than she pressed against me, smelling of my deodorant, my shampoo, and Vicks. She raised my arm and huddled in the crook of my shoulder, her damp body against me. Her fingers touched my face, very gingerly, as if she worried that I might bite. I remembered that night so many years ago when I had found her naked in the pantry.

  “What's that sound?” she said, startled.

  “It's the dryer alarm. I washed your
clothes.”

  I heard her sniffle. Then sob. “You deserved better,” she said, looking up.

  “Yes, I did.”

  I stared at her eyes, remembering the little fleck in the right iris, and the puff of gray around it, where a spark had penetrated. Yes, it was still there, darker now, looking like a blemish she was born with. I traced her lips. Her nose. She shut her lids at my touch. Tears were sliding underneath them. She smiled a smile from our days of innocence. I took my hand away. She opened her lids, her eyes glistening. Hesitantly she kissed my lips.

  No, I hadn't forgotten. At that moment, my anger wasn't so much with her as it was with the passage of time. Time had robbed me of such wonderful illusions, taken them away far too soon. But right then I wanted the illusion that she was mine.

  She kissed me again, and I tasted the salt of her tears. Was she feeling sorry for me? I couldn't take that, ever. Suddenly I was on top of her, tearing away the sheet, tearing away her towel, clumsy but determined. She was startled, the muscles of her neck taut like cables. I grabbed her head and kissed her.

  “Wait,” she whispered, “shouldn't you … ?”

  But I was already inside her.

  She winced.

  “Shouldn't I what, Genet?” I said as I bucked, my pelvis possessing some intrinsic knowledge of the movements needed. “This is my first time …,” I managed to say. “I wouldn't know what I should or shouldn't do.”

  Her pupils dilated. Was she pleased to learn this about me?

  Now she knew.

  Now she knew that there were people in this world who kept their promises. Ghosh, whose deathbed she never had the time to visit, was one such person. I wanted the knowledge to shame her, to terrify her. When it was over, I stayed on top of her.

  “My first time, Genet …,” I said, softly. “Don't think that's because I was waiting for you. It's because you fucked my life up. You could have counted on me. Money in the bank, as they say here. And what did you do? You turned it all into shit. I wanted to make life beautiful for you. I don't understand it really, Genet. You had Hema and Ghosh. You had Missing. You had me who loved you more than you will ever love yourself.”

  She wept under me. After a long time, she gently caressed my head, tried to kiss me. She said, “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  I ignored her. I was aroused again. I began to move inside her once more.

  “Please, Marion,” she said.

  Without removing myself from within her, I rolled onto my back, holding her, flipping her, and setting her on top of me, her breasts hovering over me.

  “You need to pee? Go ahead,” I said, my breath coming quick. “You've done that before, too.”

  I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to me hard. I smelled her fever, and the scent of blood and sex and urine. I came again.

  Then I let go. I let her slide off.

  I WOKE LATE ON SATURDAY MORNING to find her back in the crook of my arm, staring at me. I took her again—I couldn't imagine how I had denied myself this pleasure for so long.

  When I awoke it was 2:00 p.m. and I could hear her in the kitchen. I went to the bathroom. It was when I returned to the bed that I saw the blood on the sheets. I stripped the bed and took the sheets to the washing machine.

  She brought two cups of coffee, a serving of the casserole and two spoons to me. She was getting feverish again, the dressing gown not warm enough, her teeth chattering, and with spasms of a dry cough. I took the coffee from her. Her dressing gown came apart. She watched me remake the bed.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I am bleeding because the scars … I always bleed with … intercourse. Rosina's gift to me. So that I will always think of her when—”

  “Is it painful?”

  “At first. And if it's been a long time.”

  “What about this fever, how long have you been this way? Have you had an X-ray?”

  “I'll be fine,” she said. “It's a bad cold. Hope I don't give it to you. I took some Advil I found in your cabinet.”

  “Genet, you should—”

  “Really, I'll be fine, Doctor.”

  “Tell me why you went to prison.”

  Her smile disappeared. She shook her head. “Please, Marion. Don't.”

  I knew then it was a story that would do me no good. I knew I had to hear it. Later, when the two of us were seated in my library, I insisted.

  HE WAS AN INTELLECTUAL, a firebrand, an Eritrean who like her had left the cause. He shall remain nameless—it's painful enough already. Suffice it to say he won the heart of her baby. (The baby's father had died in the struggle.) And then he won her heart—all this in New York, after her arrival. She felt her life was just beginning. They married. In a year she was pregnant with his child. She began to suspect that he was cheating on her. She found the whereabouts of the woman, the flat where they conducted their tryst. She broke in and hid in the woman's clothes closet and waited there for half a day till the couple arrived in the late afternoon. When her husband and his white lover were on her bed, seeking carnal knowledge of each other in a noisy, effortful way, Genet debated whether to announce her presence.

  “Marion,” she said, “as I stood in that closet, with this woman's belts in baskets like snakes at my feet, it all came back to me. Everything I had been through from the time of Zemui's death till then.

  “I somehow came to America, and what did I do? For the first time in my life, for the one person who deserved it the least, I gave my love completely. I loved him—what is it you said earlier?—more than I loved myself. I gave it all up for this useless man. Standing in the closet, I knew that if I tried to get vengeance, I had to be willing to lose my life. There has only been one man in my life worthy of such a sacrifice, Marion, and it was you. I was too stupid to know that when I was young. I was too stupid.

  “He wasn't worth it, but now I couldn't stop myself. You see, in loving him, it had happened again, Marion—I wanted to be great. I thought he was destined for greatness as an academic, as an intellectual, and my greatness would be in being with him.

  “For the first time I understood who was the proletariat. The proletariat was me, the proletariat had always been me, and now I needed to act for the proletariat. I had my straight razor in my hand.

  “I began to sing in my softest voice. They could not see me though I could see them.

  “I opened the door of the closet with one intention for him: to slit his thew, slit it like a stalk of henna. You can only do that when you have loved someone so completely that you have held nothing back and there is nothing left of you—it has all been used. Do you understand?” I understood all too well. “Otherwise, I'd have said to her, Take him and keep him. Good riddance. Instead, I jumped on them.

  “I cut them, but not as badly as I had in mind. They escaped. I waited for the police. I felt as if I had taken off handcuffs that had been on my wrists the whole time. I had been looking for greatness, and I found it then. I was free at the very moment when my freedom would end.”

  She saw my expression as I followed the story, and she smiled.

  “Genet died in prison, Marion. Genet is no more. When they take your living child away, you die, and the child growing inside you dies, too. All the things that matter are gone, and so I am dead.”

  There was a tiny part of me that wanted to say, You have me, Genet. But for once, I stopped to consider myself, to save myself

  I felt compassion for her of a sort that I hadn't felt before: it was a feeling better than love, because it released me, it set me free of her. Marion, I said to myself, she found her greatness, at last, found it in her suffering. Once you have greatness, who needs anything else?

  CHAPTER 51

  The Devil's Choice

  IN RETROSPECT, my illness began that Sunday morning in the crystalline moment of waking to a silent house in which I knew I was alone and she was gone. Forty-three days later, the first shudder of nausea arrived, an ocean surge as if a distant Vesuvius had collapsed into the sea. Next a
n ancient fog, an Entoto mist full of shifting shapes and animal sounds descended on me, and by the forty-ninth day I had lost consciousness.

  How remarkable that a life should turn on such a small thing as a decision to open a door or not. I ushered Genet in on a Friday. She let herself out two days later without a good-bye, and nothing would be the same again. She placed a pinwheel cross at the center of the dining table, a gift for me, I presumed. That St. Bridget's medallion she wore on a necklace had been her father's, and it had belonged to a Canadian soldier named Darwin before that.

  The tale of her ex-husband lingered like a nasty flu. I'd insisted on hearing the story. I discovered that Genet was capable of selfless love— just not with me. Still, in my home I'd found a momentary equilibrium with her, or the illusion of it, as if we were again like children playing house, playing doctor.

  I HURRIED HOME each night after work, hoping to find her waiting on my stoop. My heart would sink when I glimpsed the yellow sticky I had left for her inside the screen door, telling her the key was with my good neighbor, Holmes, and to feel at home. Once inside, I felt compelled to retrieve my note, checking to be sure I had, in fact, written on it. I confess, I even left a stub of a pencil by the door in case she felt inclined to compose a reply.

  By Friday, a week after I first dragged her into my home, the sight of that yellow square of paper screamed, FOOL! The stubby pencil said, FOOL OF THE HIGHEST ORDER. I tore up the paper and flung the pencil stub into the street.

  I wasn't angry with Genet. She was consistent, if nothing else. I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn't change them. That hurt.