Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [251]
There was a knock on the door.
I panicked.
Had I invited someone over for dinner and forgotten? Other than Deepak coming over once, no one had ever been here. Could it be that Tsige from Boston had decided to take matters into her own hands, since I had failed to call her? I'd picked up the receiver a dozen times, and then lost courage. Or could this be Thomas Stone knocking? I hadn't told him where I lived, but he could have found out easily from Deepak.
I looked through the peephole.
In that convex fish-eye image, I saw eyes, a nose, cheekbones, lips … My brain tried to juggle and rearrange the parts to come up with a face and a name.
It wasn't Stone or Deepak or Tsige.
There was no mistaking who it was.
She turned to leave, went down the two steps.
I could have watched her walk away.
I opened the door. She stood frozen, her body facing the street, her face turned back to the door. She was taller than I recalled, or perhaps it was that she was thinner. She looked to see that it was me, then she dropped her gaze to a spot near my left elbow. This allowed me to study her at will, to decide whether to slam the door on her.
Her hair was straightened, lank, without benefit of ribbons or bows or even a good combing. The cheekbones were intact, more prominent than ever, as if to better buttress those oval, slanting eyes which were her prettiest feature. Even without makeup, hers would always be a stunning face. Although it was summer, she wore a long wool coat tied tight around the waist, and she hugged herself as if she were cold. She stood there motionless, like a small animal caught invading the territory of a predator, paralyzed and unable to move.
I came down my steps. I reached my hand out and tilted her face up. Her eyeballs and lids rolled down just like the eyes of the dolls she used to play with. Her skin was cold to my touch. The vertical scars at the outer edges of her eyes were now seasoned lines, though I recalled the day Rosina's blade gave birth to them, and how they had been raw and choked with dark blood. I jerked her chin farther up. Still she wouldn't meet my gaze. I wanted her to see the scars on my body, one from her betrayal of me with Shiva and another from her becoming more Eritrean than any Eritrean, resulting in the hijacking that drove me out of my country. I wanted her to see my rage through my outer calm. I wanted her to feel the blood surge in my muscles, to see the way my fingers curled and coiled and itched for her windpipe. It was good she didn't look, because if she'd so much as blinked, I would have bit into her jugular, I would have consumed her, bones, teeth, and hair, leaving nothing of her on the street.
I took her by the elbow and led her inside. She came like a woman going to the gallows. In the foyer as I bolted the door, she stood rooted to the mat. I led her to my library—a dining room that I had transformed—and I pushed her down on the ottoman. She perched on its edge. I stared down at her; she didn't move. Then she coughed, a spasm that took fifteen seconds to pass. She brought a crumpled tissue to her lips. I looked at her for a long time. I was about to speak when the cough commenced again.
I went to the kitchen. I boiled water for tea, leaning my head against the refrigerator as I waited. Why was I doing this? One minute homicide, the next minute tea?
She had not changed her position. When she took the cup from me, I saw her unvarnished, chipped fingernails and the wrinkled washerwoman's skin. She pulled one sleeve down, passed the cup over, and repeated the process with the other, so as to hide her hands. Tears streamed down her face, her lips pulled back into a grimace.
I had hoped that my heart would be hardened to such displays.
“Sorry. I work in a kitchen,” she whispered.
“After all you have done to me, you're sorry about the state of your hands?”
She blinked, said nothing.
“How did you find me?”
“Tsige sent me.”
“Why?”
“I called her when I got out of jail. I needed … help.”
“Didn't she tell you that I didn't want to see you?”