Abraham Verghese - Cutting for Stone

The observer, that old record keeper, the chronicler of events, made his appearance in that taxi. The hands of my clock turned elastic while I imprinted these feelings in memory. You must remember this. It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive.

Memory.

I WAS ALONE in my hemisection of Mr. K. L. Hamid's cab, my luggage next to me, and a scratched Plexiglas partition between us. Two strangers, isolated and distant, in a car so broad that the backseat alone could have held five humans and two sheep.

My muscles were tense because of our speed, worrying about a child drying cow patties on the hot tarmac or the cow or goat that surely would wander into the road. But I saw no animals, no humans except in cars.

Hamid's bullet-shaped head was covered with tight black swirls. On the laminated license next to the meter, the camera had caught his shock and surprise. The whites of his eyes showed. I convinced myself it was a picture taken on the day he landed in America, the day he saw and felt what I saw.

Which was why Hamid's discourtesy so wounded me. He wouldn't look my way. Perhaps when one has driven a taxi for a long time, the passenger becomes an object defined by destination and nothing else, just as (if one isn't careful) patients can become the “diabetic foot in bed two” or the “myocardial infarction in bed three.”

Did Hamid think that if he looked I'd want his reassurance? Did he think I'd seek his explanation of every sight along the way so as to assuage my fears? He would have been right.

In that case, I said to myself, Hamid's silence must be instructive! An admonishment of sorts, the gentle warning of one who arrived on an earlier ship: You there! Listen! Independence and resilience. This is what the new immigrant needs. Don't get fooled by all this activity. Don't invoke the superorganism. No, no. One functions alone in America. Begin now. That was his message. That was the point of his rudeness: Find your backbone, or be swallowed whole.

I smiled now, relaxing, letting the scenery rush by. It was exhilarating to have arrived at this insight. I slapped the seat. I voiced my thoughts.

“Yes, Hamid. Screw your courage to the sticking place,” I said aloud, invoking Ghosh, who never got to see what I was seeing, never heard the superorganism. How joyfully he would have embraced this experience.

Hamid jerked back at the sound of my voice. He glanced at me in the mirror, then away, then back again. Eye contact for the first time! Only now did he seem to acknowledge he was carrying something other than a sack of potatoes.

“Thank you, Hamid!” I said.

“What? What you say?”

“I said, ‘thank you.’ “

“No, before that!”

“Oh, that. It's Macbeth,” I said, leaning forward to the Plexiglas, overeager for conversation. “Lady Macbeth, actually. My father used to say that to us all the time. ‘Screw your courage to the sticking place.’ “

He was silent, his gaze flitting from road to rearview mirror. Finally he burst out.

“You insult me?”

“Beg your pardon? No. No! I was merely talking to myself. It is as—”

“Screw me? Screw you!” he said.

My mouth fell open. Was it possible to be so completely misunderstood? His face in the mirror said indeed it was. I sank my neck back and shook my head in resignation. I had to laugh. To think that Ghosh—or Lady Macbeth—would be so misinterpreted.

Hamid still glared at me. I winked at him.

I saw him reach into the glove compartment. He pulled out a gun. He brandished it, showing me its different aspects through the dirty Plexiglas, as if he were trying to hawk it to me, or prove to me that it was in fact a gun, not a cheap plastic toy, which is what it looked like.

“You think I joke?” he said, a wicked energy taking over his face, as if the object in his hand made him not a joker but a philosopher.

I didn't mean to add fuel to the fire. I don't see myself as foolhardy or brave. But I found this little revolver pathetic and I simply didn't believe, indeed I was certain, he couldn't possibly use it. It was hilarious. I knew guns. I'd made a crater in a man's belly with one twice that size. I had buried gun and owner in a swamp (from which he still threatened to rise every night). Just four months ago, I had operated on rebels felled by guns. This popgun of his on this day, in the context of America, where cars stayed in lanes, where Customs never opened your bags, seemed like a prop, a cosmic joke. Could I not have had a proper American driver? Failing that, at least a gun that Dirty Harry wouldn't have been embarrassed to hold? Why escape Addis, flee Asmara, get out of Khartoum, and abandon Nairobi, only to face this?

Being the firstborn gives you great patience. But you reach a point where after trying and trying you say, Patience be damned. Let them suffer their distorted worldview. Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It's a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you know you owe them nothing. I'd reached that point with Hamid. My body was shaking with laughter. Fatigue, jet lag, and disorientation contributed to my finding this so funny.

Hamid's use of the verb “screw” was quite different from screwing one's courage to the sticking place. His saying that word made me think of that story which had circulated when I had more pimples than common sense, more curiosity than sound sexual knowledge. It was the myth of the beautiful blonde and her brother whom one might meet at the airport when landing in America. They offered you a ride, took you home for a drink, at which point the brother brandished a weapon and said, “Screw my sister or you will die!” Long after I knew the story to be ridiculous, it retained its charm as a comic fantasy. Screw my sister or you will die! Here I was, well after the tale had slipped my mind, newly landed in America, and, sure enough, a man brandished a gun. I wished I could have shared the moment with Gaby, the schoolmate who first reported the story to me. A perverse impulse in me made me now repeat the phrase we schoolboys loved to say to each other, a challenge, a veiled threat, even though I was laughing hard: “Brother, put away the gun, I'll screw your sister for free.” I don't know if he picked up the change in my tone and mood, or even if he heard me. Perhaps he just decided that my kind of lunacy wasn't to be toyed with. In any case, he had a change of heart.

THE WROUGHT-IRON GATES of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour were wide open. Dr. Abramovitz, the chief of surgery, was supposed to interview me at 10:00 a.m. My plan was to finish my interview, take another taxi to Queens, and then look for a hotel in which to get over my jet lag. I had interviews lined up in the next few days in Queens, Jersey City, Newark, and Coney Island.

A man with LOUIS embroidered on his blue overalls approached just as Hamid's taxi pulled out of the gate.

“Lou Pomeranz, Chief Caretaker of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour,” he said, gripping my hand. A soft pack of Salems showed in his breast pocket. He was barrel-chested and top-heavy. “Do you play cricket?”

“Yes.”

“Batsman or bowler?”

“Wicketkeeper and opening batsman.” That was Ghosh's legacy to me.

“Good! Welcome to Our Lady. I hope you'll be happy,” Mr. Pomeranz said. He thrust a sheaf of papers at me. “Here's your contract. I'll show you to the interns’ quarters and you can sign. This silver key is for the main door. The gold key is for your room. This is your temporary identification badge. When Personnel take your mug shot, you'll get a permanent badge.”