Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [190]
As my taxi approached Missing's gates, I saw Tsige stepping out of her Fiat 850 in front of her bar. She'd prospered these last few years, buying out the business next door, adding a kitchen, a full restaurant, and hiring more bar girls to serve customers. Upgrades to the furniture, two foosball machines, and a new television set made her bar the equal of the best in the Piazza. Tsige owned one taxi, and when we last spoke she'd told me she was looking for a second. She never failed to encourage me, to tell me how proud she was of me and that she prayed for me every day. Now, as I saw her lovely stockinged leg emerge from the car, I had a great urge to stop and say good-bye, but I couldn't. This was her land, too, and I hoped that unlike me she'd never have a need to flee.
MISSING'S MAIN GATE was wide open. This was Hema's prearranged signal that the coast was clear for me to come home.
When you have just minutes to leave the house in which you've spent all your twenty-five years, what do you take with you?
Hema had my diplomas, certificates, passport, a few clothes, money, bread, cheese, and water packed in a roomy Air India shoulder bag. I wore sneakers and layers of clothes against the cold. I threw in a cassette which I knew had both the slow and fast “Tizita” on it, but left the cassette player behind. I contemplated taking Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine, or Schwartz's Principles of Surgery, but with each book weighing about five pounds, I didn't.
We left on foot, a small convoy heading to the side wall of Missing, but first I insisted we go by the grove where Ghosh and Sister Mary Joseph Praise were buried. I walked with my arm around Hema. Shiva assisted Matron. Almaz and Gebrew had gone ahead. I felt Hema's body trembling.
At Ghosh's grave, I took leave of him. I imagined how he would have tried to cheer me up, make me look at the bright side—You always wanted to travel! Here's your chance. Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels. I kissed the marble headstone and turned away. I didn't dwell at my birth mother's grave. If I wanted to say good-bye to her, this wasn't the place. I hadn't visited the autoclave room for more than two years. I felt a pang of guilt, but it was too late to go there now.
At the wall, Hema held me. She laid her head on my chest, and the tears were flowing freely, in a way that I'd only seen at Ghosh's death. She couldn't speak.
Matron, a rock of faith in moments of crisis, kissed me on the forehead and said simply, “Go with God.” Almaz and Gebrew prayed over me. Almaz handed me a kerchief tied around a couple of boiled eggs. Gebrew gave me a tiny scroll that I was to swallow for protection— I popped it into my mouth.
If my eyes were dry, it was because I couldn't believe this was happening. As I looked at my send-off party I felt such hatred for Genet. Perhaps Eritreans in Addis were slaughtering sheep and toasting her tonight, but I wished she could see this snapshot of our family as it was torn apart, all because of her.
It was time to say good-bye to Shiva. I'd forgotten what it felt like to hold him, what a perfect fit his body was to mine, two halves of a single being. Ever since Genet's mutilation, we'd slept separately except for a brief period around Ghosh's death. Once Ghosh died, I returned to his old quarters, leaving Shiva in our childhood room. Only now did I recognize the severity of the penance I'd enforced by sleeping apart. Our arms were like magnets, refusing to disengage.
I pulled my head back and studied his face. I saw disbelief and a bottomless sadness. I was strangely pleased, flattered to get such a reaction from him. I'd seen this only twice before: on the day of Ghosh's arrest and on the day of Ghosh's death. Our parting at Missing's wall was a kind of death, his expression said. And if it was so for him, it was for me, too. Or should have been.
There was a time, ages ago, it seemed, when we could read each other's thoughts. I wondered if he could read