Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [249]
Tsige s hand was over her mouth, her eyes showing her astonishment and empathy. After a while, she put her hand down and shook her head sadly. “Your brother wanted to sleep with me,” Tsige said. She grinned when she saw my jaw drop. “Oh, yes. You both were young then, fourteen or fifteen. Not too young, though. Shiva was so direct. ‘How much to sleep with you?’ “
She laughed at the audacity of this, gazing out of the window, her mind conjuring up that faraway time.
“Did he?” I said at last, my throat so dry that the words could have set fire to the tejin my stomach. She had no idea how important her answer was to me.
“Did he what?”
“Sleep with you?”
“Oh, you sweet thing. No!” She pinched my cheek. “You should see your expression. No, no.” I let out the breath I had been holding. “Don't you know that if it had been you, it would have been different? If you'd ever asked … I owe you, Marion. I still owe you.”
I was sure I was blushing. As quickly as Genet had appeared in my head, she had disappeared. “You don't owe me anything, Tsige. And I'm sorry, I never should've asked you that—it's personal, your business.”
“Marion, you must have lots of girlfriends. A surgeon in New York! How many nurses share your pillow, eh? Where are you going? Why are you standing? What's the matter?”
“Tsige, it is late, I'd better—”
She pulled me firmly down, so that I landed almost on top of her. She held me. The scent of her body and of her perfume had shot up my nostrils. My eyes were on her throat, her chin, her bosom. I had thought of her many a night in the house-staff quarters at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, never imagining that I might really touch her. I was a board-certified general surgeon, but now I felt like a pimply adolescent.
“You are turning so red! Are you all right? Oh, bless me, Mary … blessed Gabriel and the saints … you are still a virgin, aren't you?”
I nodded sheepishly “Why are you crying?” I asked.
She would only shake her head, studying my face while swiping at her eyes. At last, holding my cheeks in her hands, she said, “I am crying because it's so beautiful.”
“It isn't beautiful, Tsige. It's stupid.”
“No, it's not,” she said.
“I saved myself for Genet. Yes, I know—ridiculous. But then when she and Shiva … I threw myself into my studies. The worst part is I still loved her. Shiva didn't. I loved her. I felt responsible when she almost died. Can you believe that? Shiva slept with her, and I felt responsible? Then, when she and her friends stole that plane, she betrayed me again. She never worried what might happen to me or Hema or Shiva. But at least at that moment, on the day I left Ethiopia, I was free of her. When I came here, I tried to forget her. I hoped she was dead in that stupid war—her damn war. Now I find she's here. Maybe I should leave the country, Tsige. Go to Brazil. Or India. I don't want to be on the same continent as that woman.”
“Stop it, Marion. Don't talk foolishly. How much tej did you drink? This is a big country and you're a big man. Forget about her! Look where you are and look where she is. She's in jail, for God's sake!” She touched my hair, and then she pulled me to her bosom. “You are the kind of man that women dream about.”
I was aroused. There was nothing about my life that I could hide from her, even if I wanted to. Not my shame, not my secrets, not my embarrassment.
She kissed me on my lips, a brief exploratory brush first, then a leisurely probing kiss. I could feel the adrenaline pouring out of me, the reserves of unused, stockpiled testosterone announcing their availability. So this is how it is going to happen, I thought. On the day I pass my surgical boards. How fitting. My hands reached for her.
She sighed and pulled back, pushing me upright, then straightening