Cutting for Stone (31 page)

“You saw the General when you went there?” I asked.

“I wish he hadn't,” Hema said. “He has no business getting in the middle of this,” she said looking cross.

Ghosh sighed. “I went as a physician, Hema, I told you. When I got there, Tsigue Debou, the head of the police, had thrown in his lot with Mebratu. He and Eskinder were pressing the General to attack the army headquarters before the army can get organized. But he refused. He was … emotional. These were his friends, his peers. He was sure that good men in the other services would throw their lot in with him. You know he took the time to see me to the door, he thanked me. He told me he was determined to avoid bloodshed.”

THE REST OF THE DAY
went by with the streets eerily silent. Very few patients came to Missing, and patients who could leave fled for home. We sat glued to the radio.

Genet stayed in her quarters alone. In the late afternoon, Hema sent me to fetch her. I led her back by the hand. She put on a brave front, but I knew she was worried and scared. That night, she slept on our sofa: there was no sign of Rosina.

The next day, the city was so quiet, and the only thing circulating was rumors. Only the bravest of shopkeepers opened his doors. Word was that the army was still wavering, undecided about whether to support the coup leaders or remain loyal to the Emperor.

At noon, Gebrew came to tell us that we should go to the gate. We got there in time to see a huge procession of university students carrying Ethiopian flags, their faces glowing with sweat and excitement. They were grouped under banners:
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
… Marshals with armbands kept order. To my amazement, there was W. W. Gonad marching under the banner of the School of Business. He gave us a sheepish grin, adjusted his tie, and marched on, trying to look like a member of the faculty. There must have been several thousand students and staff, and they chanted in one voice in Amharic:

My countrymen awake—history calls you
No more slavery, let freedom reign anew

Banners in English read:
FOR EVERYONE, A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION
and
LET US STAND PEACEFULLY WITH THE NEW GOVERNMENT

OF THE PEOPLE.

The street was lined with wary onlookers who, like us, had been indoors much too long. Stray dogs gathered, barking at the marchers and adding to the noise. A pretty student in jeans put leaflets in our hands. Almaz pushed the paper away as if it were contaminated. “Hey, miss! Is this why they sent you to university?” Almaz called after her.

An old man with a beard waved his flyswatter as if he were trying to smack the students. “If you were studying, you shouldn't have time for this,” he shouted. “Don't forget who built your university, who taught you to read!”

We learned later from W. W. Gonad that in the Merkato the Muslims and Eritrean shopkeepers received the students with cheers. But elsewhere in Addis, their reception by the public was cold, and when the procession turned to reach the army headquarters, where they had intended to convince the army to join the revolt, they were met at an intersection by an army platoon in combat gear. The young commander told the crowd that they had exactly one minute to disperse or he would give his soldiers orders to fire. The students tried to argue, but the sounds of rifle bolts pulling back convinced the marchers to retreat. That was when W. W. Gonad left the rally.

I was still pleased to be out of school, but the anxiety on the faces of the adults had rubbed off. Ghosh and Matron returned to the hospital to prepare for casualties. Hema had her Version Clinic that afternoon. Shiva, who till then had little interest in what was going on, was uneasy, as if he sensed something no one else did. Unusual for Shiva, he asked Hema if she would stay home and not to go to work.

“I don't want to leave, my love,” she said, agonizing over what to do, “but I have Version Clinic.”

“Take us with you,” Shiva said. Then he added, “We practiced Bick-ham. See my paper? Just as you told us.” His calligraphy was better than the examples of the ornate and round style in the book. “So please?”

“I really can't …,” Hema said. “I have to go to the labor room first before clinic.”

“We'll go with you,” Shiva said.

“No. I won't have you in the labor room.” She could see the disappointment in Shiva's face. “I tell you what, you boys go to the Version Clinic and wait for me. Whatever you do, stay together.”

This was the rarest of invitations. Unlike Ghosh, if Hema carried a stethoscope, she didn't bring it home. The white coat we glimpsed her wearing in the hospital stayed there. I rarely thought of Hema as a doctor because at home she was all mother. Ghosh constantly talked medicine, but Hema never did. We knew she went to Labor and Delivery and that she operated on Mondays and Wednesdays. From what we overheard, she was very good and in great demand, but the specifics were not mentionable to us. She wanted us to always know that her eyes were on us, and no doctoring would distract her from that vigilance. The Version Clinic was a good example. We'd heard of it for years, but we hadn't the least idea what went on there. According to the dictionary, one meaning of “version” was from the Latin,
versus
—”to turn.”

Hema's departures in the night came with cryptic phrases, words stranger than “version” tossed over her shoulder: “eclampsia” or “post-partum hemorrhage” or, that most chilling term of all, the “Delayed Afterbird.” That one wasn't even in the medical dictionary. And you never heard of the Afterbird except when it was Delayed. It was feared, and yet its arrival was necessary. Shiva and I looked for that Delayed Afterbird on the trees of Missing, or high up in the sky.

Shiva drew the Afterbird, and in his many renderings it was like a flying wing, an elongated triangle, sightless, legless, but beautiful, sleek, aerodynamic, and utterly mysterious. Could our mother's death be linked to the Delayed Afterbird? It would have been so easy to ask Hema. But the topic was off-limits. At least that was how Hema made it feel.

THE WOMEN'S CLINIC
behind the main hospital building deviated from the whitewashed decor of Missing, because it had lime-green paint on the outer walls and blue banisters. A hygenia tree dropped orange blossoms on the steps. The soil underneath the tree was aflame with blue lobelia and pink clover. We found a gaggle of pregnant patients seated on the steps, their hair covered by
shashes.
While waiting, theyd tucked fresh blossoms behind their ears and stretched their legs out in front of them. Their white
shamas
glowed in the sun, and with bellies swollen, clutching their pink outpatient cards, they resembled a flock of lively geese. Some were barefoot, and those who weren't had eased off their plastic shoes. It was tense in the city, but looking at these woman, and hearing their laughter, their complaints about swollen ankles, husbands, or heartburn, you would never have known.

When they spotted us, they called us over to shake our hands, ask our names, our age, fuss with our hair, and remark on our similarity. They insisted that we sit with them, and I would have declined, except Shiva happily said yes. I sat there embarrassed, like a chick squished between hens. Shiva seemed to be in heaven.

So often we never truly see our own family and it is for others to tell us that they've grown taller or older. I confess, I mostly took Shiva's appearance for granted—he was my twin after all. But at that moment, I was seeing my brother anew: the large rounded forehead, the curls that piled up on his head, threatening to fall forward and obscure his sight, the equanimity around the brow and eyes, and his mannerism of putting his finger alongside his cheek just like the Nehru portrait on our wall at home. What was completely new was this smile which transformed my wombmate into a blue-eyed stranger, rendering a lightness to his being, so that were it not for the sturdy female arms draped over his shoulders, caresssing his hair, he would have floated off those steps.

A woman read a pink pamphlet that had been dropped over the Piazza and Merkato by an air force plane. She was the lone woman who could read, albeit slowly: “Message from His Holiness, Patriarch of the Church, Abuna Basilios,” she said, and heads at once bowed, and hands made the sign of the cross, as if His Holiness were on the steps with them. “To my children, the Christians of Ethiopia and to the entire Ethiopian people. Yesterday, at about ten in the evening, the Imperial Bodyguard soldiers who were entrusted with the safety and welfare of the royal family committed crimes of treachery against their country …”

Seated in their midst, sweating in the sun, I shivered. I could see that the patriarch's words rang true for these ladies. He was speaking for God. This did not bode well for the man we so admired, General Mebratu.

The women turned naughty after that, mocking the Bodyguard and then men in general, laughing and carrying on as if they were at a wedding. Shiva was in rapture, grinning from ear to ear. His earlier apprehension had vanished. It was as if hed found his ideal spot, surrounded by pregnant women. There was much about my brother I did not understand.

When Hema appeared, the women struggled to their feet, despite Hema's protests. A mother's pride showed in Hema's eyes to see us adopted by her patients.

THREE AT A TIME,
the women mounted the examining tables. They pushed their skirts down just below their bellies and pulled their chemises up to expose their watermelon swellings. When one of the patients on the table waved to Shiva to come close and hold her hand, he stepped in, and I followed. Hema bit her tongue.

“All late third trimester,” Hema said, after a while, without explaining what that meant. She used both hands to confirm that the baby's position was “something other than head down. A baby can't come out easily unless its head is pointing down to the mother's feet. That is why the Prenatal Clinic sent them here to Version Clinic,” she said, mentioning another clinic which we knew she attended in this very room but on a different day.

She pulled out a strange, stunted version of a stethoscope—a feto-scope. The bell of the stethoscope had a U-shaped metal bracket on which she could rest her forehead, and then use the weight of her head to press the bell into the skin, leaving her hands free to stabilize the belly. She held up a finger like a conductor signaling for quiet. Conversation stopped, and the patients on the stretchers and the throng around the door held their breaths, till Hema raised up and said, “Galloping like a stallion!” A score of voices added, “Praise the saints!” Hema didn't offer to let us listen.

She got down to business. “With this hand I cup the baby's head. My other hand I put here where the baby's bottom is—how do I know?” She looked at Shiva as if his question was impertinent. Then she laughed. “Do you know how many thousands of babies I've felt this way, my son? I don't have to think. The head is this coconutlike hardness. The bottom is softer, not as distinct. My hands give me a picture,” she said, outlining a shape in the air above the exposed belly. “The baby's back is to me. Now watch.” She set her feet, then using firm and steady pressure of her cupped hands, she pushed the head one way, the butt the other way, while also pushing her hands toward each other as if to keep the baby curled up. Something in the way her thumbs were aligned with the rest of her fingers, all held close together, reminded me of her Bharatnatyam dance gestures. “There! You see? An initial resistance, a stickiness, then it gives, and the baby tumbles over.” I saw nothing. “Well, of course you didn't
see.
The baby's floating in water. Once I start the turn, the baby finishes the last quarter turn by itself. Now it's not a breech baby. It's a head presentation. Normal.” She listened to the fetal heart again to be sure it was still strong.

In no time, Hema, possessed of the same bustling energy with which she dealt cards or drilled us on our spelling, was done. Only one baby refused to somersault.

“For all I know, this clinic could be the biggest waste of time. Ghosh wants me to do a study to see how many babies float back to where they were after version. You know how he talks. ‘The unexamined practice is not worth practicing.’ “ She snorted, remembering something else. “I had a friend when I was a child, a neighbor boy by the name of Velu. He kept chickens. Now and then a hen would cluck in a peculiar way, and Velu knew, don't ask me how, that it meant an egg was stuck in a transverse position. He would reach in and turn it to vertical. The chicken stopped clucking, and the egg would pop out. Velu was obnoxious at your age. But I remember his trick with the chicken now, and I wonder if I underestimated him.”

I didn't say a word for fear of breaking the spell. It was so rare to hear her think aloud like this.

“Between you and me, boys, I have no desire to publish a paper that might put me out of this business. I
enjoy
Version Clinic.”

“Me, too,” Shiva said.

“Whether it is India or here, the ladies are all the same,” Hema said, gazing at the women milling around. No one had left. They waited for the tea, bread, and vitamin pill that would follow the clinic. They grinned back at Hema with sisterly affection—no, with adoration. “Look at them! All happy and radiant. In a few weeks, when labor starts, they'll be yelling, screaming, cursing their husbands. They'll turn into she-devils. You won't recognize them. But now they're like angels.” She sighed. “A woman is never more a woman than in this state.”

The problems of the city and the country had disappeared, at least for me and Shiva. How fortunate we were to have Hema and Ghosh as parents. What was there to fear?

“Ma,” Shiva said, “Ghosh says pregnancy is a sexually transmitted disease.”

“He says it knowing you will repeat it to me. That rascal. He shouldn't be telling you such things.”

“Can you show us where the baby comes out?” Shiva said. I knew he was utterly serious, and I also knew that with those words hed broken the spell. I was furious with him. Kids need a certain cunning when it comes to dealing with adults, and somehow Shiva had none. In the same mysterious fashion with which permanent teeth arrived, so also self-consciousness and embarrassment came to camouflage my guilt, while shame took root in my body as a price for curiosity.