Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [109]
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.”
“I'll come with you,” Ghosh said. He could assist if Hema opted for a Cesarean section.
I NEVER LIKED IT when they left at night. My dread wasn't intruders, but an anxiety about Hema and Ghosh, a fear that despite their best intentions, they might not come back. I never felt that way in the daytime. But at night, when they went dancing at Juventus or played bridge at Mrs. Reddy and Evangeline's house, I'd wait up for them, imagining the worst.
After they left, I padded into the living room in bare feet and pajamas. I worked the short-wave band on the Grundig.
Above the static, I heard the motorcycle. Halfway up our driveway, Sergeant Zemui would always cut the engine so as not to disturb us. Then in silence, save for the squeak of springs and the rattle of mudguards, he'd coast into the carport. The coda was the metallic whump of cycle rolling back onto its center stand.
I loved that ungainly BMW and the way its udderlike engine bulged out on either side of the frame. Shiva loved it, too. All machines have genders, and that BMW was a royal “she.” For as long as I can recall I'd been hearing her low throb, a lub-dub sound in the early morning and at bedtime, as Zemui left for and returned from work. Whenever I heard the tramp of his heavy boots receding, I felt sorry for him. I pictured his lonely hike home, particularly during this season of mud and rain. Despite the long raincoat and a plastic hood for his pith helmet, it was impossible not to get soaked.
FIVE MINUTES LATER, I heard the kitchen door open. Genet came in wearing my hand-me-down pajamas.
Her anger from earlier wasn't there. In its place was something I rarely saw: sadness. Her hair was held back by a blue headband. She was listless, withdrawn, as if years, not minutes, had passed since I last saw her.
“Where's Shiva?” she asked, sitting across from me.
“In our room. Why?”
“Just asked. No reason.”
“Hema and Ghosh had to go to the hospital,” I said.
“I know. I heard them tell my mother.”
“Are you all right?”
She shrugged. Her eyes looked through the glowing dial of the Grundig, to some planet beyond. There was a little fleck in the right iris, a puff of smoke around it, where a spark had penetrated. We were much younger, exploding cap-gun strips on the pavement, striking