Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [129]
“You told me about him once,” Ghosh said. “You loved him. You said one day you'd tell me all about it.”
There was a long silence. I was tempted to open my eyes, but I knew that would break the spell.
Matron's voice sounded thick. “By staying here, I was responsible for John Melly's death. It wasn't Missing Hospital then. Surely, a hospital will be spared is what I thought anyway. But our own ward boy led a mob here. They snatched a young nursing assistant and raped her. I fled to the other end of the infirmary, where I found Dr. Sorkis. You never met him. A Hungarian. A terrible surgeon, a morose fellow. He operated like a technician. Disinterested. We'd had such a parade of short-time doctors till you and Hema and Stone arrived …” She sighed again. “On that night, though, Sorkis made all the difference in the world. He had a shotgun and a pistol. When the mob reached the infirmary, I pleaded through the closed door with Tesfaye—that was the ward boy's name— ‘Don't be part of this evil, for the sake of God.’ Oh, but he mocked me. ‘There is no God, Matron,’ he said. Said many other vile things.
“When they broke down a panel on the door, Dr. Sorkis fired first one barrel at eye level, and the second barrel at groin level. The sound deafened me. When my hearing came back, I heard men screaming in pain. Sorkis reloaded and went outside, firing the shotgun at knee level.
“I confess I felt pleasure to see them hobble away. Instead of fear, I felt anger. Tesfaye came charging again … I think he thought the rabble was still with him. Sorkis raised his pistol—this very one here—and he squeezed the trigger. Even before I heard the sound, I saw Tesfaye s teeth spray out and the back of his head pop. The fight went out of the rest.
“When the Italians marched into town the next morning, call me a traitor, Ghosh, but I for one welcomed them because the looting stopped. That's when I discovered that John Melly had tried to get me to safety. He stopped his truck to help a wounded man, and when he did, a drunken looter came right up to him and fired a pistol into Melly s chest. For no reason at all!
“I hurried to the legation when I heard. I nursed him round the clock. He suffered for two weeks, but his faith never wavered. It is one reason I never left Ethiopia. I felt I owed it to him. Hed ask me to sing ‘Bunyan's Hymn’ to him while I held his hand. I must have sung it a thousand times before he died.
“He who would valiant be
‘Gainst all disaster
Let him in constancy
Follow the Master.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a Pilgrim.”
What incredible discoveries one could make with one's eyes closed: I'd never heard Matron talk (let alone sing) about her past; in my mind it was as if she'd arrived into the world fully formed, in nun's garb, always running Missing. Her whispered tale, her confession of her fear, of love, of a killing, were more frightening than the gunfire in the distance. In that dark corridor, lit only by the intermittent glow of flares and artillery tracers which made dancing shadows on the wall, I pressed hard against Shiva's skull. What else did I not know? I wanted to sleep, but Matron's hymn, her quavering voice, still echoed in my ears.
CHAPTER 25
Anger as a
Form of Love
BY THE NEXT EVENING, it was all over—the coup had failed. In three days, hundreds of Imperial Bodyguard soldiers had been killed, and many more had surrendered. I saw one man being dragged out of the cinder-block building across from Missing; hed tried to get rid of his distinctive uniform, but the fact that he was wearing just a vest and boxers identified him as a rebel.
As the army tanks and armored cars closed in, General Mebratu and a small contingent of his men fled from the back of the Old Palace, heading north into the mountains under cover of darkness.
The morning