Cutting For Stone Part 39

Tilahoun singing "Tizita," the coc.o.o.nlike atmosphere, and the frank incense brought memories bubbling to the surface. I thought of mornings at Missing and how the mist had body and weight as if it were a third element after earth and sky, but then it vanished when the sun was high; I remembered Rosina's songs, Gebrew's chants, and Almaz's magical teat; I recalled the sight of a younger Hema and Ghosh leaving for work, as we waved through the kitchen window; I could see those halcyon days, s.h.i.+ny like a new coin, glinting in sunlight.

"Do you plan to finish your next four years of residency at Our Lady?" Thomas Stone said, abruptly, breaking into my reverie. "If you were interested in moving to Boston ..." So much for his perceptiveness. Just when I was ready to talk about the past, he wanted to know about my future.

"I don't want to leave Our Lady. The hospital is my Missing equivalent. I never wanted to leave Missing or Addis, but I had to. Now I don't want to leave Our Lady."

Any other man would have asked me why I had to leave Missing. That was my fault-had he posed the question, I might not have answered. And perhaps he knew that.

As she cleared our plates, Anna said to Thomas Stone in English, "How did you like the food?"

"It was good," he said, barely glancing at her. He reddened as she and I studied him. "Thank you," he added, as if he hoped that would help get rid of her. She took two packaged towelettes out from her ap.r.o.n pocket and put them on the table.

I said to Anna, "Honestly, it was good, but you could make the wot hotter."

"Of course we can," she said in Amharic, a little taken aback by the implied criticism. "But then people like him won't be able to touch the food. Also we use local b.u.t.ter, so even if we make it hotter, it won't taste the same as home. Only someone like you would know the difference."

"You mean there is no place to get real habesha food? The real thing? With all these Ethiopians in New York?"

She shook her head. "Not here. If you ever visit Boston, go see the Queen of Sheba. She's in Roxbury She is famous. The house is like our emba.s.sy. Upstairs, in one room, they sell groceries, and downstairs they serve home food. Cooked with true Ethiopian b.u.t.ter. The Ethiopian Airlines crew bring it just for her. All the Ethiopian taxi drivers eat there. You won't see anybody but Ethiopians there."

THOMAS STONE HAD WATCHED this exchange, his face blank. When Anna left, he reached into his pocket. I thought he was reaching for his billfold. Instead, he pulled out the bookmark I had left in his room, the one on which Sister Mary Joseph Praise had written her note to him.

I dried my hands carefully and took it from him. I realized that I had missed it; it felt as if it shouldn't be here on a basket table but in a bank vault. It had been my talisman on a harrowing journey, an escape from Ethiopia which he knew nothing about. I read her last lines-"Also, I am enclosing a letter to you from me. Please read at once. SMJP"-and then I looked up.

Thomas Stone fidgeted in his seat. He swallowed hard, leaning on the basket table.

"Marion. This bookmark ... was in the textbook, I presume?"

"Yes, it was. I have the textbook."

He grew stiff, his hands trapped under his thighs as if an electric current were running through him. "Would you ... Can I ask if ... Do you have ... Was there a letter?"

He looked helpless, sitting so low to the ground, like a parent visiting kindergarten, his knees under his chin.

"I thought you had the letter," I said.

"No!" he said, so emphatically that Anna looked over at us.

"I'm sorry," I said, though I wasn't sure what I was sorry for. "I a.s.sumed that you took the letter when you left. That you left the book with the bookmark in it."

His face, so expectant a moment ago, collapsed.

"I took almost nothing," he said. "I walked out of Missing with the clothes I had on and one or two things from the office. I never went back."

"I know," I said.

He cringed when I said those words. No wonder he was reluctant to probe my past. No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son. But did he really think of me this way? As a son? "But you took the finger with you?" I went on.

"Yes ... that's all I took. It was in her room. I went back there." He looked up.

I said, "I'm sorry. I wish I had the letter."

"And the bookmark?" he said. "How did you get it?"

I sighed. Anna served us coffee. The small cup with no handle felt inadequate for my task of trying to cover a lifetime for this man. "I had to leave Ethiopia in haste. The authorities were looking for me ... It's a long story. They thought I was involved in the hijacking of an Ethiopian Airlines plane. They thought I was a sympathizer for the Eritrean cause. Ridiculous, right? You remember your maid, Rosina? One of the hijackers was Rosina's daughter, Genet. Rosina is dead, by the way. Hanged herself."

It was more than he could digest.

"Rosina and Genet ...," I began. "Suffice it to say, I had an hour to get out of town. As I was leaving, climbing over Missing's wall, I said my good-byes to Hema, Matron, Gebrew, Almaz, and to s.h.i.+va, my brother ..." I stopped. I had hit a roadblock. "s.h.i.+va, your other son ... ?"

Stone swallowed. This was proving impossible. And yet he needed to know, particularly if it was painful.

"My son ...," he said, trying out the word.

"Your son. You want to see what he looks like?" He nodded, expecting me to pull out a wallet. "Look at that mirror behind you."

He hesitated as if this might be a joke, a trick. But he turned, and our eyes met in the mirror, startling me, because it was suddenly more intimate than I'd expected. "s.h.i.+va and I are mirror images."

"What is he like?" he asked without turning around.

I sighed. I shook my head. I dropped my gaze. He turned back to me.

"s.h.i.+va is ... very different. A genius, I would say. But not in the usual way. Impatient with school. He'd never answer an exam question in a way that might make him pa.s.s, not because he didn't know ... He has never understood the need to subscribe to convention. But he knows more medicine, certainly more gynecology than I do. He works with Hema doing fistula work. He's a brilliant surgeon. Trained, but by Hema. No medical school." None of this would have been difficult for Stone to discover on his own had he been interested. He was interested now.

"I was very close to s.h.i.+va when we were little boys."

Stone's eyes were unblinking. I couldn't tell him the details of what had happened since. I had told no one. Only Genet and s.h.i.+va knew the truth.

"He and Genet did something to hurt me that I cannot forgive ..."

"Something related to the hijacking?"

"No, no. It happened long before. Anyway, I was and still am very angry with him. But he is my brother-my twin-and so when I had one hour to leave the city, when the time came to say good-bye to s.h.i.+va- well, it was very painful for both of us." Suddenly I found myself fighting for composure. It was terribly important for me not to cry in front of Thomas Stone. I pinched the inside of my thigh. "As I was saying good-bye to s.h.i.+va, he handed me two books. One was his Gray's Anat omy. That was his most valued possession. He dragged it around like a blanket.

"And the second was your book, with that bookmark inside. I didn't know how he got it, or how long he had it. I didn't even know you had written a book. The book was hardly opened. I don't think s.h.i.+va ever read it, certainly not like he devoured his Gray's. He probably saw and read the bookmark. But you have to know s.h.i.+va. He wouldn't be curious about the bookmark or the letter she referred to. s.h.i.+va lives in the now. I don't know just how he got the book or why he wanted to give it to me."

Stone remained silent, his gaze on the empty basket between us, as if it stood in for all that was unknown about his past, our past. His look of pain was so intense, it pierced me. "I can ask him," I offered. I wanted to know just as much as Thomas Stone did. "I will ask him," I said.

Thomas Stone was a world away. When he lifted his gaze, I understood the depths of his sorrow; I saw it in a darkening of his iris, even though that delicate structure should not change color. I could see that the almost mystical aura of this legendary surgeon-the single-mindedness, the dedication, the skill-was mere surface. The surgical persona was something he had crafted to protect himself. But what he had created was a prison. Anytime he strayed from the professional to the personal, he knew what to expect: pain.

When he spoke, his voice sounded tired, old. "And here I thought you had it, and you thought I ..."

"What do you think is in the letter?"

"How I wish I knew," he said abruptly. "I'd give my right arm ..."

It had been a few months since I met Thomas Stone. The anger I felt obliged to have had subsided. The story he told me of his childhood, his mother's death-it should have been enough to forgive him, but I didn't think I was ready for that. I hadn't forgiven s.h.i.+va, so why forgive Thomas Stone? Even if I had forgiven him, a perverse streak in me refused to let him know that. But I had unfinished business with him.

"There's something I have to tell you," I said. I never thought I would be ashamed in front of this man. "Something I was charged to tell you by Ghosh." Ghosh's wish had seemed irrational to me at the time. But now, looking into that hard, craggy face, I understood why Ghosh had wanted me to reach out to Stone. Ghosh knew Thomas, but Ghosh had overestimated my maturity.

"Ghosh had a dying wish which I promised to fulfill. But I didn't. I ignored it. I hope you-and he-will forgive me. Ghosh told me that he felt his life would be incomplete without my doing this ... His wish was for me to come and find you. To let you know that he considered you a brother."

This was hard, both because I could recall Ghosh's labored breathing, could recall Ghosh's every word, and because I was now seeing the effect these words had on Thomas Stone. Other than his mother, and Dr. Ross in the sanatorium, who had ever expressed love for him? Sister Mary Joseph Praise perhaps, but did she ever get to tell him, and if she did, did he hear?

"Ghosh was disappointed that you never contacted him. But he wanted you to know that whatever your reason was for being silent all those years, it was all right with him." Ghosh had felt it was shame that kept Thomas from looking back. He was right, because it was shame that colored his face now.

"I'm so sorry," Stone said. I don't know whether he was speaking to me, or Ghosh, or the universe. It wasn't enough, but it was about time.

If there were other people in the restaurant, I was no longer aware of them. If there was music playing, I couldn't hear it.

I studied my father as I might study some specimen set before me: I saw the smile that struggled for purchase on his face and failed, and then I saw the haunted and hunted look that came in its wake. G.o.d help us if such a man had tried to raise us, if he had taken us away from Ethiopia. With all the sorrow and loss I'd experienced, I'd never have traded my past at Missing for a life in Boston with him. I should have thanked Thomas Stone for leaving Ethiopia. The love he felt for Sister Mary Joseph Praise had come too late. She was the mystery, the great regret that he would take to his grave-and he would regret nothing more than not knowing what she said in that letter.

"I'll write to s.h.i.+va," I said. "I'll ask about the letter." I suppose I understood Thomas Stone's shutting people out. After Genet's betrayal, I never wanted to have such strong feelings for a woman again. Not unless I had a written guarantee. I'd encountered a medical student from Mecca, a saint compared with my first love; she was kind, generous, beautiful, and seemed to transcend herself, as if her existence was secondary to her interest in the world and the things in it, including me. My belated and muted response must have pushed her away, lost me any chance of a future with her. Did I feel sad? Yes. And stupid? Yes, but I also felt relieved. By losing her, I was protected from her and she from me. I had that in common with this man sitting before me. I thought of a watch that had stopped ticking, and how it showed the correct time twice a day. He paid. I rose with him. At the door of the restaurant, our hands in our pockets, I waited.

" 'Call no man happy until he dies,' " he said. Before I could tell if that was a smile or an expression of sadness on his face, he nodded and walked away.

CHAPTER 48.

Five Fingers

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT on the first Sunday of every month, I would ring Hema at her bungalow. It was seven o'clock, Monday morning, Addis time. The rates were best at this hour, but since Almaz, Gebrew, and sometimes Matron came on before Hema, it could still be a long and expensive call. Ever since Hema delivered Mengistu's-sorry, Comrade Mengistu's-child, we no longer worried about the secret police eavesdropping on us; besides, they were preoccupied with real enemies. Mengistu Haile Mariam, Strength of Mary, Secretary General of the Council of Peasants and Workers, Chairman of the Military Council of Socialist Ethiopia, President-for-Life of the Armed Forces of the Democratic Peoples of Ethiopia, General in Command of the Bureau for Armed Struggle Against Imperial Aggression in Tigre and Eritrea, had adopted an Albanian style of Marxism. The upper and middle cla.s.ses and even the working poor had their houses confiscated and land taken away. But favors to Mengistu and particularly favors to his wife weren't forgotten; Missing's medicines and supplies were not held up in the Customs G.o.down, and there were no palms to grease.

As I dialed Hema's number that Sunday, I pictured my Missing family watching the clock, coffee cups in their hands, waiting for the phone to ring from a continent none of them had seen. Almaz picked up the receiver, with Gebrew leaning in, both of them suddenly shy and self-conscious. Their side of the conversation consisted of repeated Ende-menneh? Dehna-ne-woy?-How-are-you? Are-you-well, then?-until these G.o.dparents of mine were satisfied that their lij, their child, was all right. They told me they kept me in their prayers, fasted for me. "Pray that I'll see you soon and may G.o.d take care of you and your health," I said. Matron was just the opposite, chatty and spontaneous, as if we had run into each other in the corridor outside her office.

I had reported to Hema my first sighting of Thomas Stone. Shed listened without comment, and she must have smiled when she heard of her son breaking and entering Thomas Stone's apartment. I didn't censor information for her benefit; surely, Thomas Stone was no longer the threat he'd once been to her when we were minors. When I had told her about placing the bookmark on Stone's desk as my calling card, I had read from Hema's silence that she'd known nothing about s.h.i.+va's having The Expedient Operator: A Short Practice of Tropical Surgery. I surmised from that and later confirmed from Matron that Hema had made every attempt to banish the book from Missing; she'd never wanted me or s.h.i.+va to see his work, much less a picture of him.

"I had dinner with Thomas Stone, Ma," I said when she came on the line. "I ate injera for the first time in well over a year." She was miffed to learn that Ghosh had a message for Stone-I read that in the fact that she said nothing. When I told her just what Ghosh had wanted me to say to Stone, I heard a vigorous honk on her kerchief. The message said more about Ghosh and his selflessness than it did about Thomas Stone. I asked if she knew about the bookmark or a letter that accompanied it. She didn't.

"Maybe s.h.i.+va knows," I said. "Can I speak to him?"

She called out his name, a summons I had heard so many times since I was a child. I heard s.h.i.+va's reply, and could judge from its echo that it had come from our childhood room. While I waited, I heard Hema asking Matron about the bookmark; her "No!" told me it was news to her.

THE TELEPHONE WAS NEVER a comfortable instrument in s.h.i.+va's hands. He was fine, the fistula work was going very well, and no, he knew nothing about any missing letter.

"Do you remember the bookmark, s.h.i.+va, and the reference to a letter?" I asked.

"Yes."

"But you're saying there was no letter in the book?"

"No letter."

"How did you get the book, s.h.i.+va?"

"Ghosh gave it to me."

"When?"

"When he was dying. He wanted to talk with me about many things. This was one. He said he'd taken the book from Thomas Stone's quarters on the day we were born. He had kept it. He wanted me to have it."

"Was that the first time you'd seen the textbook or seen a picture of Thomas Stone?"

"Yes."

"Did Ghosh mention a letter from Sister Mary-our mother-to Stone?"

"No, he didn't."

"Did he say why he wanted you to have the book?"

"No."

"When you saw the bookmark and the reference to the letter, did you go back and ask him?"

"No."

I sighed. I could have stopped there, but I had come this far. "Why not?" I asked.

"If he wanted me to have the letter, he would have given it to me."

"Why did you give me the book, s.h.i.+va?"

"I wanted you to have it."

There was no annoyance in s.h.i.+va's voice; his tone was no different than when we began-I wondered if he'd picked up the irritation in mine. s.h.i.+va was right: there either was no letter, or Ghosh had the letter and had his reasons for destroying it.

I was about to say good-bye. I knew better than to expect my brother to ask about my health or my welfare. But he took me aback by saying, "How are your operating theaters?" He wanted to know about the layout, how far away the autoclave and the locker rooms were, and was there a sink outside each room, or one common scrubbing area. I gave him a detailed picture. When I was done, I waited. Once again, he surprised me: "When are you coming home, Marion?"

"Well, s.h.i.+va ... I have four more years of residency."

Was this his way of saying he was sorry for everything that had happened? That he missed me? Did I want that from him? I wasn't sure, so all I added was, "I don't know if it is safe for me to come, but if it is, I'd love to come a year or so from now ... Why don't you come visit here?"

"Will I be able to see your operating theaters?"

"Sure. We call them operating rooms here, not theaters. But I can arrange for you to see them."

"Okay. I'll be there."