Abraham Verghese - Cutting for Stone

When you have just minutes to leave the house in which you've spent all your twenty-five years, what do you take with you?

Hema had my diplomas, certificates, passport, a few clothes, money, bread, cheese, and water packed in a roomy Air India shoulder bag. I wore sneakers and layers of clothes against the cold. I threw in a cassette which I knew had both the slow and fast “Tizita” on it, but left the cassette player behind. I contemplated taking Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine, or Schwartz's Principles of Surgery, but with each book weighing about five pounds, I didn't.

We left on foot, a small convoy heading to the side wall of Missing, but first I insisted we go by the grove where Ghosh and Sister Mary Joseph Praise were buried. I walked with my arm around Hema. Shiva assisted Matron. Almaz and Gebrew had gone ahead. I felt Hema's body trembling.

At Ghosh's grave, I took leave of him. I imagined how he would have tried to cheer me up, make me look at the bright side— You always wanted to travel! Here's your chance. Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels. I kissed the marble headstone and turned away. I didn't dwell at my birth mother's grave. If I wanted to say good-bye to her, this wasn't the place. I hadn't visited the autoclave room for more than two years. I felt a pang of guilt, but it was too late to go there now.

At the wall, Hema held me. She laid her head on my chest, and the tears were flowing freely, in a way that I'd only seen at Ghosh's death. She couldn't speak.

Matron, a rock of faith in moments of crisis, kissed me on the forehead and said simply, “Go with God.” Almaz and Gebrew prayed over me. Almaz handed me a kerchief tied around a couple of boiled eggs. Gebrew gave me a tiny scroll that I was to swallow for protection— I popped it into my mouth.

If my eyes were dry, it was because I couldn't believe this was happening. As I looked at my send-off party I felt such hatred for Genet. Perhaps Eritreans in Addis were slaughtering sheep and toasting her tonight, but I wished she could see this snapshot of our family as it was torn apart, all because of her.

It was time to say good-bye to Shiva. I'd forgotten what it felt like to hold him, what a perfect fit his body was to mine, two halves of a single being. Ever since Genet's mutilation, we'd slept separately except for a brief period around Ghosh's death. Once Ghosh died, I returned to his old quarters, leaving Shiva in our childhood room. Only now did I recognize the severity of the penance I'd enforced by sleeping apart. Our arms were like magnets, refusing to disengage.

I pulled my head back and studied his face. I saw disbelief and a bottomless sadness. I was strangely pleased, flattered to get such a reaction from him. I'd seen this only twice before: on the day of Ghosh's arrest and on the day of Ghosh's death. Our parting at Missing's wall was a kind of death, his expression said. And if it was so for him, it was for me, too. Or should have been.

There was a time, ages ago, it seemed, when we could read each other's thoughts. I wondered if he could read mine. I'd postponed this moment, this reckoning with him. It was the deal I'd made with Genet, but I felt no need to honor that now. Now, my mind expressed itself.

Shiva, do you see how deflowering Genet, a biological act as far as you were concerned, led to all this? It led Rosina to kill herself, led Genet to stray from us? It led to this moment where I hate the woman I hoped to marry? Even now Hema thinks that I set all this in motion, that I did something to Genet.

Do you see how you betrayed me?

This good-bye is like cutting off my body.

I love you as I love myself—that is inevitable.

But I can't forgive you. Perhaps in time, and only because that's what Ghosh wanted. In time, Shiva, but not now.

We stood at the foot of the ladder which Gebrew had placed against Missing's east wall.

Shiva handed me a cloth bag. In the darkness it was impossible to see, but I thought I recognized the shape and the color of his dog-eared copy of Gray's Anatomy and below that a pristine copy of some other heavy book. I was about to remonstrate. I bit my tongue. In giving me his Gray's, Shiva sacrificed a piece of himself, the most valuable thing he owned that was removable and portable.

“Thank you, Shiva,” I said, hoping it didn't sound sarcastic. I now had two bags instead of one.

Gebrew slung burlap sacks on top of the bottle shards that crested the wall. I climbed over. On the other side was the road that I'd always seen from my bedroom window but never explored. It was a view that I thought of as pastoral, idyllic, a road disappearing into the mist and mountains to a land of no worries. Tonight it looked sinister.

“Good-bye,” I called one last time, touching my hand to that moist wall, the living, breathing exoskeleton of Missing. Inside, a chorus of voices so dear to me, they who were the beating heart of Missing, called out, wished me Godspeed.

A hundred yards away, a truck sat idling. It carried stacks of re treaded tires. The driver helped me climb onto the bed, where a tarp had been strung over and under tires to make a small cave. Adid had water, biscuits, and a pile of blankets placed there. He had arranged my escape but under the aegis of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. The EPLF had become the common path to leave Ethiopia, particularly if you planned to do it from the north and if you were willing to pay.

The less said about my cold, bumpy, seven-hour ride to Dessie, the better. After a night in a Dessie warehouse, where I slept on a regular bed, and a second night where we rested in Mekele, on the third day of out northern journey we reached Asmara, the heart of Eritrea. The city Genet had loved so much was under occupation. The Ethiopian army was visible in force, tanks and armored cars parked at key junctions, checkpoints everywhere. We were never searched, since the driver's papers showed the tires we carried were to supply the Ethiopian army.

I was taken to a safe house, a cozy cottage surrounded by bougainvil-lea, where I was to wait until we could make the trek out of Asmara and into the countryside. The furniture was just a mattress on the living room floor. I couldn't venture out to the garden. I thought I'd be in the safe house for a night or two, but the wait stretched out to two weeks. My Eritrean guide, Luke, brought me food once a day. He was younger than me, a fellow of few words, a college student in Addis before he went underground. He suggested I walk as much as I could in the house to strengthen my legs. “These are the wheels of the EPLF,” he said, smiling, tapping his thighs.

There were two surprises in my meager luggage. What I thought was a cardboard base at the bottom of the Air India bag that Hema packed was instead a framed picture. It was the print of St. Teresa that Sister Mary Joseph Praise had put up in the autoclave room. Hema's note taped to the glass explained:

Ghosh had this framed in the last month of his life. In his will he said that if you ever left the country, he wanted this picture to go with you. Marion, since I can t go with you, may my Ghosh, Sister Mary, and St. Teresa all watch over you.

I caressed the frame, which Ghosh's hands must have touched. I wondered why he'd taken so much trouble, but I was pleased. It was my talisman for protection. I had not said good-bye to her in the autoclave room, and it turned out I didn't need to, because she was coming with me.

The second surprise was the book under Shiva's precious Gray's Anatomy. It was Thomas Stone's textbook, The Expedient Operator: A Short Practice of Tropical Surgery. I'd never known such a book existed. (Later I learned that it went out of print a few years after our birth.) I turned the pages, curious, wondering why I'd never seen this before and how it came to be in Shiva's possession. And then, suddenly, there he was in a photograph that occupied three-fourths of the page, staring out at me, a faint smile on his lips: Thomas Stone, MBBS, FRCS. I had to close the book. I rose and got some water, took my time. I wanted to compose myself and look at him on my own terms. When I opened the page again, I noticed the fingers, nine of them, instead of ten. I had to admit the similarity to Shiva and therefore to me. It was in the deep-set eyes, in the gaze. Our jaws were not as square as his and our foreheads were broader. I wondered why Shiva had put it in my hands.