Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [134]
Bachelli took a taxi to the Juventus Club to see if he could get the Italian consul involved, and then he had to return to Missing. With one doctor arrested, and his wife waiting outside the jail, it all rested on the shoulders of the third doctor, namely Bachelli. He could keep things going, oversee the nurses and Adam, the compounder.
Shiva, Hema, Matron, and I returned to the car to rest our feet, to get warm, to huddle. After fifteen minutes we returned to stare at the gates. Back and forth we went, reluctant to leave, even though we were accomplishing nothing.
WHEN IT WAS QUITE DARK, a man with a shama covering his head, mouth, and upper torso walked by, just as we emerged from the car. But for his shiny boots and the fact that hed come from the narrow lane on the side of the prison, he might have passed for just another man heading home. In his hand he swung a cloth showing the outline of a covered pot—his lunch or dinner. He stared at Matron. He paused behind the car, his back to the road as if he were taking a leak.
“Don't turn this way!” he said harshly, in Amharic. “The doctor is here.”
“Is he all right?” Matron whispered.
He hesitated. “A little bruised. Yes, but he is fine.”
“Please, I beg you,” Hema broke in. I had never heard her beg anyone in my life. “He's my husband. What is going to happen next? Will they let him go? He had nothing to do with all this—”
The man hissed. A large family walked by. When they passed, he said, “Talking to you is enough for someone to accuse me. If I want to be safe, I must accuse someone. Like animals eating our young. It's a bad time. I'm talking to you because you saved my wife's life.”
“Thank you. Is there anything we can do for you? For him—”
“Not tonight. In the morning at ten o'clock, be in this spot. No, be farther away. See that post with the streetlight? Be there and bring a blanket, money, and a dish just like this. The money is for him. Go home now.”
I ran over to fetch Almaz, who had not left her spot, her voluminous skirts ringed around her like a circus tent, her white gabby wrapped around her head and shoulders, only her eyes showing. She wouldn't hear of leaving. She was going to stay the night. Nothing would persuade her. Reluctantly we left her, but only after we forced Almaz to put on Hema's sweater and then wrap herself with the gabby.
At home, mercifully the phones were working. Matron got the British and Indian embassies to promise to send their envoys in the morning. None of the royals would talk to Matron; if the Emperor's own son was under suspicion, so were his nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. We heard that there were rumblings of discontent among the junior army officers who felt their generals erred in not joining the coup; there must have been some truth to that, because that day the Emperor authorized a pay raise for all army officers. The word was that only the intense rivalry and jealousy between the senior army and Imperial Bodyguard officers had saved His Majesty.
THAT NIGHT SHIVA and I slept with Hema in her bed. Ghosh's Bryl-creem scent was on the pillow. His books were piled on the nightstand with a pen wedged in French's Index of Differential Diagnosis to mark a page, and his reading glasses balanced precariously on the cover. His bedtime rituals of inspecting his profile and sucking