Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [143]
What would it have been like if ShivaMarion walked around with heads fused, or—imagine this—sharing one trunk with two necks? Would I have wanted to make my way—our way—through the world in that fashion? Or would I have wanted doctors to try and separate us at all costs?
But no one had given us that choice. Theyd separated us, sliced through the stalk that made us one. Who's to say that Shiva's being so different, his circumscribed, self-contained inner world that asked nothing of others, didn't come from that separation, or that my restlessness, my sense of being incomplete, didn't originate at that moment? And in the end, we were still one, bound to each other whether we liked it or not.
I left the autoclave room abruptly, without even a good-bye. How could I expect Sister to help me when I was holding back so much?
I didn't deserve her intercession.
So I was astonished when, an hour later, it came.
It took the form of a cryptic note on a Russian hospital prescription pad. It came to Gebrew from Teshome, his counterpart at the Russian hospital gates. Teshome said it was from a Russian doctor who had made Teshome swear to keep his identity a secret. On one side the doctor had scribbled: “Ghosh is fine. Absolutely no danger.” On the back Ghosh had scrawled: “Boys, SCREW YOUR COURAGE TO THE STICKING PLACE! Thank Almaz and no need to wait. Matron please call in all favors. Hope lovely bride renews yearly contract. XXX G.”
I went back to the autoclave room. I stood behind the chair like a penitent and I thanked Sister Mary Joseph Praise. I told her all. I held back nothing. I asked for her forgiveness—and for her to continue to help us free Ghosh.
I SAW ALMAZ ANEW, saw her quiet strength and determination in the nightly vigil she had held outside Kerchele Prison. Whatever she lacked in education she made up for in character and in loyalty.
But Id lost all respect for the Emperor. Even Almaz, always a staunch royalist, had a crisis of faith.
No one really believed that Ghosh was a party to the coup. The problem was—and it was the same for hundreds of others whod been rounded up—His Majesty Haile Selassie made all the decisions. His Majesty wouldn't delegate and His Majesty felt no haste.
Every afternoon we went to Kerchele to deliver the one meal we were allowed to bring, and to pick up the container bearing the previous day's meal. The relatives outside the prison were our family now. It was also the most fertile place to gather new information and plausible rumors. We heard that the Emperor took a morning walk in the palace garden, during which the Minister of Security, the Minister of State, and the Minister of the Pen came out to him one by one. They walked three paces behind him and reported on rumors and real events of the previous twenty-four hours. Each man worried whether the one who went before him had set a trap by mentioning something which he then failed to mention. Lulu, a royal diviner, peed on certain people's shoes, and the rumor mills were undecided if that was an indication that you were to be trusted or you were under suspicion—this was the sort of thing one learned by visiting Kerchele.
The next day, just twenty-four hours after my visit to Sister Mary Joseph Praise, we were allowed to see Ghosh.
The prison yard with its lawn and giant shade trees looked like a picnic spot. Under that green canopy, the prisoners stood like leafless saplings.
I spotted Ghosh at once. Shiva and I flung ourselves into his arms. It didn't register till we were in his embrace that his head had been shaved or that his face had become gaunt. What did register was that my chest stopped aching for the first time in over a month. The scent on his clothes, on his person, was a coarse, communal odor that made me sad, because it spoke of his degradation. We stood aside to allow Hema and Matron to get near him, but I