Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [183]
Halfway through my second year, I learned that Genet had again missed a few anatomy lab sessions. I felt obliged to check on her.
At Mekane Yesus Hostel, the door to her room was open. Her visitor's back was to me; neither of them saw me at first. Genet shared the room with another girl who wasn't there. The tiny room which had once been so neat was now cluttered and messy. The room held a bunk bed and a small table for two. When he was alive, Genet acted as if Zemui annoyed her. Her brave and loyal father had died in a hail of bullets, and now she had his picture on the ceiling, inches from her face when she lay on the top bunk.
Her visitor's coarse features and his gruff manner made him stand out. I knew him as a student firebrand, organizing others for curricular reform, or collecting signatures to oust an unpopular warden. But he was Eritrean first, just like Genet. The liberation of Eritrea was almost certainly his most important cause, but it was the one he'd have to keep secret. He was speaking to Genet in Tigrinya, but I heard a few English words: “hegemony” and “proletariat.” He stopped in midsentence when he sensed me in the doorway. His bovine eyes gave me a look that said, You will never be one of us.
I deliberately spoke to Genet in Amharic, so her guest would see that I spoke it better than he did. He muttered something to her in Tigrinya and stalked off.
“Who are these radical friends of yours, Genet?”
“What radicals? I'm just hanging around with Eritreans.”
“The secret police have informers on this floor,” I said. “They'll link you with the Eritrean People's Liberation Front.”
She shrugged. “Do you know the EPLF is making great gains, Marion? You can't know that. It's not in the Ethiopian Herald. But I doubt you're here to discuss politics?”
In the past I might have been wounded by her manner. “Hema says hello. And Ghosh says he wants to see you for dinner one of these evenings … Genet, I'm worried about your dissections. There is no one to do your labs for you this year. If you don't show, you'll fail, no matter what. Come on, Genet.”
Her face, so interested and animated when the other man was there, had now become sullen.
“Thank you,” she said icily.
I wanted badly to tell her that Ghosh was ill, to shake her out of her self-absorption. And yet I sat there feeling the witchcraft of her presence. It kept me coming after her and it made me tell myself I still loved her, no matter how she acted, even when our lives were so clearly drifting apart.
IN MY FINAL YEAR of medical school, during my surgery rotations, Ghosh's volcano erupted. I came home to a look on Hema's face that told me she knew. I steeled myself for her tirade. She hugged me instead.
Ghosh had thrown up blood, and also developed a major nosebleed. He'd tried to conceal it but failed. He was resting comfortably in the bedroom. I peeked in on him, then came out and sat with Hema at the dining table. Almaz, red-eyed, brought me tea.
“I suppose I'm glad he didn't tell me,” Hema said. I could see from her swollen eyelids that she'd spent the afternoon crying. “Particularly when there's nothing to do for it. I've been able to enjoy the best of him. Such perfect days, without knowing any of this.” She fingered the diamond ring on her finger, a present that he'd given her the last time they renewed their yearly vows. “Had I known … maybe we could have taken a trip to America. I asked him about that. He said he preferred to be here. The first sight of me every morning is all he wants! Ayoh, he is such a romantic chap, even now. It's funny, but a few months ago, I actually felt that things were so good that something bad had to happen. The signs were all in front of me. But I wasn't paying attention.”
“Me, too,” I said.
I found Almaz weeping in the kitchen, and