Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [167]
So many nights I lay awake dreaming of this horrible, twisted, beautiful fate, wishing I could go to America only for this reason. Brother, put away the gun, I will screw your sister for free, became a line Gaby and I and our little gang said to one another, our secret phrase that signaled our fellowship in adolescent horniness, our simmering sexual heat. Even after we realized the story was absurd, a fairy tale, it still delighted us, and we loved to repeat that refrain.
A few weeks after Shiva and I had seen Tsige outside her bar, I encountered the Staff Probationer walking down to Missing's gate. There was no escaping her. Seeing her always provoked anxiety.
She was with her brood of probationers. She usually ignored me in that situation. But on this day she smiled and blood rushed to her face. I smiled back so as not be rude. She winked and came to me as her students walked on. “Thank you for last night. I hope the blood didn't scare you. Did that surprise you? I waited for you all these years. It was worth it.” She brushed against me. “When are you coming next? I'll be counting the days.”
She swung every bit of flesh that would swing as she shimmied after her students, as if Chuck Berry were strutting behind her, playing his guitar. She called over her shoulder, loud enough for the whole world to hear, “Next time please don't run off afterward like that, okay?”
I raced home. Of late, particularly on weekends, Shiva went off on his own and I hadn't given it much thought. I never imagined this is what he'd been up to.
Shiva, Genet, and Hema were at the dinner table, Rosina serving. Ghosh had gone to wash up. I hauled Shiva off to our room.
“She thinks it was me!” I wished I'd never told him about my dancing with the probationer. “Why didn't you ask me? I would have forbidden you to go. I did forbid you to go. What did you tell her? Did you pretend to be me?”
Shiva was puzzled by my anger. “No. I was me. I just knocked on her door. I said nothing. She did all the rest.”
“My God! Just like that? You broke your virginity and hers?”
“It was my first time with her. And what makes you so sure about her, eh, older brother?” His words were like a punch in my gut. I'd never heard Shiva speak sarcastically to me, and it felt cutting, ugly. He went on as I stood speechless. “It's not my first time, anyway. I've been going to the Piazza every Sunday.”
“What? How many times have you gone?”
“Twenty-one times.”
I couldn't speak. I was stunned, embarrassed, disgusted, and terribly envious.
“The same woman?”
“No, twenty-one different women. Twenty-two if you count the probationer.” He was standing there, chin pointing at me, one arm languidly set against the wall.
When I found a voice I said, “Well would you mind not going back to the Staff Probationer?”
“Why? Will you visit her?”
I no longer felt I had any authority over him, no credible experience with which to advise him. I felt very tired. “Never mind. But do me a favor; tell her who you are if you go back. And stay around and hold her and whisper sweet things in her ear when you are done. Tell her she's beautiful.”
“Whisper what? Why?”
“Forget it.”
“Marion, all women are beautiful,” Shiva said. I looked up and realized that he spoke with conviction and not a trace of sarcasm. He wasn't embarrassed, or angry that I hauled him off, or the least bit upset. My conceit was that I thought I knew my brother. Yet all I really knew were his rituals. He loved his Grays Anatomy and carried it around so much, it had pale indentations on the cover from his fingers. When Ghosh got Shiva a new edition of Grays, my brother was insulted, as if Ghosh had brought him a stray puppy to replace his beloved Koochooloo, who was on her last legs. I knew Shiva's rituals, but not the logic behind them.