Abraham Verghese - Cutting for Stone

“Sissy game,” I said. “Stupid girls’ game.” But she was already hunting for a blindfold.

I never understood why blind man's buff was so popular at school, particularly in Genet's class. I'd seen the mob dancing just out of reach of “it,” pushing or “buffing” the blind man till he (or she) captured a tormentor. The blind man had to name the captive or set the person free.

We modified the game for indoors: no buffing of the blind man. Instead, you hid by standing silent (though with the din on the roof you could be whistling and it wouldn't matter). You could hide anywhere but the kitchen, and not under or behind a barrier. Time was the object of the game: how fast could the blind man find the other two.

THAT MORNING, Genet went first. It took her fifteen minutes to find Shiva, and ten more to get me.

You would think after twenty-five minutes of standing there I would be bored. I wasn't. I was intrigued.

It took discipline to stand stock-still. I felt like the Invisible Man, one of my favorite comic book characters. The Invisible Man stood as the world moved around him, as his archenemy tried to find him.

Blindfolded, wearing white tights, her arms reaching in front of her, putting one foot out, then the other, Genet looked helpless, as if she were walking the plank on a pirate ship. She had the upright carriage and the balance of one who could do cartwheels with an arm tucked to her side, and who could walk on her hands with more grace than Ghosh on two feet. Barrettes made of yellow and silver beads were snug around her hair, which was parted in the middle and pulled up into two stalks. Genet wasn't vain about her dress. But when it came to headbands, combs, pins, and banana clamps, she was most particular. Of course, this trait might have been more Hema's or Rosina's or Almaz's doing: they were forever brushing her hair or braiding it into ponytails or rows. Hema sometimes put kohl inside Genet's lower lid. That black line highlighted her eyes, made them catch fire and flash like mirrors.

Girls matured faster than boys, so they said, and I believed it, because Genet acted older than ten. She distrusted the world and was more argumentative and always ready for combat; if I was too willing to defer to adults and assume they knew what they were doing, she was just the opposite, quite willing to think of them as fallible. But now, blindfolded, she had a vulnerability I'd never been aware of before; all her defenses seemed to reside in the high heat of her gaze.

Twice, Genet almost walked into me–as–Invisible Man, veering off at the last second. The third time, she was millimeters away, and the Invisible Man snorted to suppress a laugh. Her hands, sweeping like windmills, found me and nearly took my eyes out.

Then things turned strange.

When I wore the blindfold, I found Genet in thirty seconds, and Shiva in half that time. How? I followed my nose. I had no inkling such a thing was possible. I was “seeing” through olfaction. I heeded an instinct that only made itself known when my sight was gone.

Shiva, when it was his turn, found us just as quickly. Suddenly, we forgot about the rain.

When I blindfolded Genet again, it took her even longer than the first time. Her nose was no help. For half an hour, I watched her shuffle this way and that.

Frustrated, she whipped off the blindfold and accused us of moving and of being in collusion. On both counts we were innocent.

When Ghosh came home for lunch, Genet and I rushed to tell him about our game. “Wait! Stop!” he said. “I can't hear you when you speak over each other. Genet, you first. ‘Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end: then stop.’ Who said that?”

“You did,” Genet said.

“The King in Alice in Wonderland,” Shiva said, “page ninety-three. Chapter twelve. And you missed four words and two commas.”

“I certainly did not!” Ghosh said, acting offended, but unable to conceal his surprise.

“You missed ‘The King said, comma, very gravely, comma.’ “

“Right you are …,” Ghosh said. “Now, tell me what happened, Genet.”

She did and then begged him to referee. Ghosh stationed Genet here and there, and each time, blindfolded and sightless, I went straight to her. We blindfolded Ghosh at his request, but he was no better than Genet. We would have further “explored the phenomenon,” as Ghosh put it, but he had to return to the hospital.

GENET'S FOREHEAD STAYED FURROWED all afternoon, her eyebrows meeting in a V. I felt the venom of her gaze on my face.

“What are you looking at?” she said.

“Is it against the law to look?”

“Yes.”

I stuck my tongue out. She flew out of her chair and came at me. I expected that. We tumbled to the floor. I soon pinned her flat on her back, her arms above her head, straddling her, but it was far from an easy task.

“Get off me.”

“Why? So you can have another shot?”

“Get off, I said.”

“I will. But if you start again, I will do this.” I dug my knee under her armpit and into her ribs. Her anger dissolved into screams and hysterical laughter. She begged me to stop. Knowing her and how quickly the fire could flare when you thought you had put it out, I gave her another dose to make sure. When I stepped off, I did not turn my back on her.

Genet could sprint faster than Shiva but could not quite beat me over a short distance. Her gait was so effortless, her feet barely touching the ground, that she could run all day. I wouldn't race her over anything longer than fifty yards. Climbing trees, playing soccer, wrestling, or sword fighting—in all these she was just about our equal.

But blind man's buff had found a difference.

DURING DINNER with Hema and Ghosh, Genet was quiet. The yellow and silver barrettes had given way to a vicious claw clamp and a knitting needle going across. When Hema asked, she reported on her Secret Seven book. She sat next to me and Shiva, fending off Almaz and Rosina, who bustled around, trying to add to our plates. The two of them always ate later in the kitchen.

After dinner, Genet said her good nights and retreated to Rosina's quarters behind our bungalow. I found Ghosh hunting through Alice in Wonderland. I looked over his shoulder as he found page ninety-three. Shiva was right, down to the two commas.

The rain stopped when we got into bed, precisely when it was too late to take advantage of the lull. The silence was both a relief and nerve-racking, because at any moment it would start back up.

Hema read to us in our bedroom, a nightly ritual that she had never interrupted once she began it in response to Shiva's silence. R. K. Nara -yan's Man-eater of Malgudi was our text the last few days. Ghosh sat on the other side of our bed, head bowed, listening. The book had started slowly and it had yet to pick up any pace. But perhaps that was the point. As we adjusted to the slow, the “boring” world of village India, it revealed itself to be interesting and even funny. Malgudi was populated by characters that resembled people we knew, imprisoned by habit, by profession, and by a most foolish and unreasonable belief that enslaved them; only they couldn't see it.

The sound of the phone ringing was foreign to Malgudi and it broke the thread of the story. Ghosh picked up the receiver. “Right away,” he said, gazing at Hema. When he hung up he said, “Princess Turunesh is in labor. Six centimeters. Pains five minutes apart. Matron is with her in the private room.”

“What does that mean, ‘six centimeters’?” I asked.

Ghosh was about to answer, but Hema, already at the dresser, brushing her hair, said quickly, “Nothing, sweetie. The princess will have a baby soon. I have to go.”