Abraham Verghese - Cutting for Stone

Seated in my mother's chair, the scent of Cuticura in the cardigan, I spoke to her, or perhaps I spoke to myself. I complained about injustice at home; I confessed my worst fear: that Hema and Ghosh might one day disappear, just as Stone and Sister were no longer in our lives. It was one reason I loitered around Missing's front gate—who was to say Thomas Stone might not come back? My fantasy was that on a sunny morning when the air was so crisp that you could hear it crackle, Gebrew would open Missing's gates, and instead of the stampede of patients, Thomas Stone would be standing there. The fact that I had no idea what he looked like, or what my mother looked like, was inconsequential to this fantasy. His eyes would fall on me. After a few seconds he would smile with pride.

I needed to believe that.

I RETURNED TO OUR BUNGALOW to face the music. There was music, all right, and the sight of Hema leading Genet and Shiva in dance. All three of them wore dance anklets, not Shiva's usual kind, but big leather thongs with four concentric rings of brass bells. They had moved the dining table against the wall. Indian classical music with a snappy tabla beat marked time. Hema had tucked her sari so that one loop ran between her legs, creating what looked like pantaloons. She'd taught Shiva and Genet a complex series of steps and poses in the time I'd been out. Arms in, arms out, arms together, pointing, dipping, drawing a bow, firing an imaginary arrow, the eyes looking this way and that, the feet sliding, a cymbal clash of anklets every time their heels thumped the floor. It hurt me to see this.

Shiva, Genet, and I had entered the world almost in unison. (Genet was a half step behind and a womb across from us, but she'd caught up.) As toddlers, we had freely traded milk bottles and pacifiers, much to Hema's dismay. Shiva's propensity to jump into buckets, puddles, or ditches full of water terrified the adults, who feared he'd drown. To keep him from deeper water, Matron purchased a Jolly Baby wading pool. Here the three of us splashed naked and posed for pictures that would embarrass us one day. Our first circus, our first matinee, our first dead body—we arrived at these milestones together. In our tree house, we'd picked at scabs until we found red, and then we took a blood oath that we Three Missketeers would stand together and admit no other.

Now, we'd arrived at another first: a separation. I stood outside, looking in. Hema beckoned me to join. She was no longer angry. Her forehead glinted with perspiration, strands of hair stuck to her cheeks. If she planned to punish me, perhaps she saw in my expression that it had already happened.

Genet, with an anklet, looked more feminine, more like a girl than the tomboy I knew. I never gave much thought to that sort of thing. In the games we played, she was like any boy. Now, as she danced, she was a step off, struggling; despite that she was graceful, extraordinarily so, as if the anklet had unlocked this quality in her. Even when she missed her cue, or bungled the turn, suddenly she was—and I couldn't help but notice—all girl.

My twin had no miscues. Hed learned the dance in a flash, I could see. He had a way of holding his chin high as if fearful that otherwise the curls he balanced on his head would slide off, and it made him seem taller, more upright than me. That mannerism of his was exaggerated in the dance. When Shiva was excited, his irises turned from brown to blue, and they were that way now as his heels hit the floor in unison with Hema's, and he matched her every dip and flourish. It was as if his anklet moved him, and that in copying the sound of Hema's anklets, the requisite movement of his body came about. I studied this lean, supple creature as if seeing him for the first time.

My brother who could draw anything from memory, who could juggle huge numbers in his head with ease, had now found a new vehicle for locomotion and a new language for his will to express itself, separate from me. I didn't want to join in. I was certain that I would look clumsy. I felt envious, almost as if I were a handicapped child, unable rather than unwilling to participate.

“Traitor,” I said to Shiva, under my breath.

But he heard me; there was nothing wrong with his ears and he'd have known what I said even if I had said it only to myself.

My twin brother, my skull mate, this little dancing god skated away, averting his eyes.

THE WEEK BEFORE Shiva gave up his anklet, we were all driving into town when a motorcycle, siren wailing, went tearing by, waving us off the street.

“All right, all right,” Ghosh said, pulling to the side. “His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie the First, Lion of Judah, needs the road.”

We piled out onto Menelik II Avenue. Down the hill was Africa Hall, which looked like a watercolor box standing on its side. Its pastel panels were meant to mimic the colorful hems of the traditional shama. Outside the new headquarters for the Organization for African Unity the flag of every country on the continent had its spot. The building in its short existence had already been graced by the likes of Nasser, Nkrumah, Obote, and Tubman.

The Emperor's Jubilee Palace was on the other side of the avenue. I could see the mounted Imperial Bodyguard sentries, one on each side of the palace gate. The Emperor's residence rose behind the lavish gardens like a pale hallucination of Buckingham Palace. At night, the floodlit building glowed ivory. Since it was that time of year, one of the pines in the compound was strung with lights and became a giant Christmas tree.

Pedestrians, gharries, cars—everything came to a stop. A barefoot man with milky eyes took off his tattered hat to reveal a ring of curly gray hairs. Three women in the black cloth of mourning, umbrellas over their heads, also waited next to us. They were sweating from the effort of walking uphill. One of these ladies sat on the curb. She eased off her plastic shoe. Two young men stood back from the curb, looking displeased at having to interrupt their walk.

The seated woman said, “Maybe His Highness will give us a lift. Tell him we can't afford the bus. My feet are killing me.”

The old man glared, his lips moving as if working up the spittle to chastise her for such blasphemy.

Now a green Volkswagen with a siren and loudspeaker on top sped by. I never thought a Volkswagen could go that fast.

“I bet you His Majesty is in the new Lincoln,” I said to Ghosh.

“The odds are against you.”

It was 1963, the year Kennedy was assassinated. According to a schoolmate whose father was a member of Parliament, the Lincoln was President Kennedy's used car, but not the one in which hed been shot. This one was covered and was spectacular, not for its curves but for its impossible length. A joke had circulated in town that for the Emperor to get from the Old Palace on top of the hill, where he conducted his official business, down to the Jubilee Palace, all he had to do was climb into the backseat and come out of the front.

Of the twenty-six cars at His Majesty's disposal, twenty were Rolls-Royces. One was a Christmas present from the Queen of England. I tried to imagine what else was under a monarch's Christmas tree.

A LAND ROVER PASSED BY—Imperial Bodyguard, not police— moving slowly, its tailgate open, men with machine guns across their thighs looking out. We heard a rumble that sounded like war drums; a phalanx of eight motorcycles emerged out of the ether, two abreast, the air shimmering around the engine's fins. The sun glinted off chrome headlights and crash bars. Despite their black uniforms, white helmets, and gloves, the riders reminded me of the wide-eyed, monkey-maned warriors who came out of the hills on horseback on the anniversary of Mussolini's fall, looking mean and hungry to kill again.