Cutting for Stone (34 page)

The soldier blinked. Then he exclaimed in a high-pitched voice, “
I
am the army!”

He grabbed her hand and yanked her to him.

“
I
am the army.”

“Yes. This is the doctor's house. If you are taking anything, you should let him know.”

“The doctor?” He laughed. “The doctor is in jail. I'll let him know when I see him again. I'll ask him why he hires an impertinent whore like you. We should hang you for sleeping with that traitor.”

Rosina stared at the ground.

“Are you deaf, woman?”

“No, sir.”

“Go on. Tell me one good thing about Zemui.
Tell me!”

“He was the father of my child,” Rosina said softly, refusing to look him in the face.

“A tragedy for that bastard child. Just tell me something more. Go on!”

“He did what he was told. He tried to be a good soldier, like you, sir.”

“A good soldier, huh? Like me?” He turned to us, as if asking us to witness her impudence.

Then, so quickly that none of us saw it coming, he backhanded her. It was a tremendous blow, sending her reeling, and yet somehow she didn't fall. She held her
shama
to her face. I could see the blood. She brought her feet together and stood upright. Shiva and I instinctively clasped hands.

I felt something wet running down my shin. I wondered if hed notice, but he was preoccupied with a nasty gash on the knuckle of his middle finger. I could see a flash of white, either sinew or tendon or a tooth fragment.

“The devil! You cut me, you gap-toothed bitch.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Genet moving. I knew that look on her face so well. She flew at him. He raised his foot, caught her in the chest, and pushed her off before she could get near him. He pulled out his gun again, cocked it, pointed it at Rosina. “Do it again, bastard child, and I'll kill your mother. Do you understand? Do you want to be an orphan? And you two,” he said, addressing us, “stay out of my way. I could kill the lot of you right now and I'd get a medal.”

We all recognized the plastic key chain that he pulled from his pocket. It was in the shape of the Congo. There was only one like it in our world, and it belonged to Zemui.

In getting the motorcycle off its stand, he almost fell over. After straddling the bike, he looked around for the lever and, finding it, he tried to kick-start the engine, but the bike was in gear, and so it lurched forward, almost toppling him again. When he got his balance, he looked to see if we'd noticed.

He tromped on the pedal, trying to find neutral. It was such a contrast to Zemui, who merely toed the lever and who handled the BMW as if it were featherlight. Zemui would prime the cylinders with a slow-motion stroke, followed by a brisk kick, and the motor would chug into life. Thinking of Zemui, who'd fought to the death rather than surrender, I felt ashamed. It made me want to act in a manner befitting the bike's true owner. I squeezed Shiva's hand. ShivaMarion was on the same page, I could tell, because he squeezed back.

The soldier flailed at the kick-start lever, as if he were stomping an enemy, his face getting flushed, sweat pouring off his brow. I smelled gas. He'd flooded the carburetor.

It was a cool day, the sun filtering through a few clouds and glinting off the chrome of the motorcycle. He paused to get his breath, then took off his jacket, slung it on the seat behind him. He shook out the hand with the bloody knuckle. He was a scrawny, thin fellow, I saw. Annoyed and humiliated by the engine resisting him, his lips drew back in a snarl. His frustration was dangerous.

“Let us push it for you. You flooded the engine and that's the only way to start it now.” This from Shiva.

“When you get to the bottom of the hill, just put it in first gear,” I said. “It'll start right away.”

He looked over, surprised, as if he didn't know we were capable of speech, let alone in his mother tongue.

“Is that how he started it?”

He never ever flooded it, I wanted to say.

“Every time,” I said. “Especially if he hadn't started it for a while.”

He frowned. “Okay, you two help me push the motorcycle.” He shoved his gun deeper into his waistband, behind his belt buckle. He tucked the jacket that he had thrown over the seat under his buttocks.

From the top of our driveway, the gravel road leading down to Casualty started off flat and then descended and seemed to disappear over a ledge, beyond which one could see the lower branches of trees that were just within the perimeter wall. Only when you were halfway down did you see how the road turned sharply, well before the ledge, and then went on to the roundabout near Casualty.

“Push!” he said. “Push, you bastards.”

We did, and he helped by leaning forward and walking the machine. Soon he was rolling, licking his lips, happy. The bike weaved and the handlebars made wide excursions.

“Steady!” I called. ShivaMarion was pushing in unison, a three-legged trot that soon became a four-legged sprint.

“No problem,” he shouted, putting his feet on the pedals. “Push!”

We gathered speed on the down slope now.

“Open the gas cock! Open the valve,” Shiva called out.

“What? Oh, yes,” he said and he took his right hand off the handlebars to feel for the petcock under the tank, precious seconds ticking away.

“It's on the other side!” I shouted.

He switched hands. He'd never find it and it didn't matter because there was enough fuel in the carburetor to take him at least a mile.

The bike was traveling at speed now, springs squeaking and mudguards rattling, its weight accelerating it down the hill, aided by our efforts. He'd taken his eyes off the road to find the petcock. By the time he looked up, ShivaMarion was running as fast as it could, adding every ounce of thrust possible to his progress. I saw his white-knuckled grip on the throttle, while his left hand was undecided whether to continue its search or return to the handlebars.

“Put it in gear, quick,” I shouted, giving the bike a last desperate push.

“Full gas!” Shiva yelled.

He was slow in responding, first twisting the throttle all the way, then glancing down to stamp on the gear lever. For a heart-stopping moment when it slipped into first, the bike seized, the back wheel locking, we had failed …

And just when I thought that, the engine sputtered and roared to life, revving to its red line with a vengeance, as if it were saying,
I'll take it from here, boys.
It surged forward, the back tire spitting gravel at us, nearly throwing the rider off, which only made him cling harder, squeezing the throttle in a death grip instead of letting go.

A howl emerged as he saw what was ahead. He had only a few feet and a few seconds to negotiate the turn before the ledge. It is an axiom of motorcycling that you must always look in the direction you want to go and never at what you are trying to avoid. His gaze, I was sure, was fixed on the approaching precipice. The BMW roared ahead, still accelerating. I raced after him.

The front wheel hit the concrete curb at the ledge and stopped. The back wheel flew up in the air; but for the weight of that big engine, the motorcycle would have somersaulted over. Instead it was the rider who sailed past the handlebars, his howl now a scream. He flew in an arc, shooting over the ledge and then falling until his motion was arrested by a tree trunk. I heard a
whump,
an involuntary grunt as the air in his lungs was evicted. His momentum snapped his neck forward and smashed his face into the tree. He tumbled down and rolled another ten feet.

The BMW, after standing on its nose, fell back to the ground and onto its side; the engine stalled but the back wheel kept spinning. I had never heard such silence.

I CLAMBERED DOWN.
I got to him first. Id wanted this to happen, but now I felt terrible that it had. Amazingly, he was conscious, flat on his back, blinking, stunned, as blood trickled into his eyes and poured out of his nostrils and lips. There was no more army in him. His expression was that of a child whose reach had exceeded its grasp with disastrous results.

His foot lay twisted under him in a fashion that made me want to throw up. He moaned, clutching at his upper belly. His face was a bloody mess. It was a grotesque sight.

Neither his face nor his foot seemed to concern him as much as his belly. “Please,” he said. His breath was short and he clawed at his belt.

His eyes found me.

“Please. Get it out.”

For a moment Id forgotten what he had done to Zemui or Rosina and Genet, or what he'd done to Ghosh. All I could see was his suffering, and I felt pity.

I looked up to see Rosina, her lip swollen and split, a front tooth missing.

“Please …,” he said again, clutching at his chest. “Get this out. For the love of St. Gabriel, get this out.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

He kept rooting ineffectively, desperately, at his belly, and now I could see why. The pistol butt was digging into him—it had just about disappeared under his ribs on the left side.

“Watch out!” Rosina yelled. “He's trying to get his gun.”

“No,” I tried to say, “the gun handle has smashed in his lower ribs.” I did hear myself say to him, “Hold on. I'll get it out!” I wrapped my hands around the handle of that gun and pulled with all my strength. He screamed. It would not budge. I changed my grip.

I felt a mule kick in my hand before I heard the shot.

Then the gun came sliding free in my hand, as if it had never been wedged there but had simply been sitting on his belly button.

I smelled burned clothing and cordite. I saw a red pit in his belly. I saw life slip out of his eyes as easily as a dew drop rolls off a rose petal.

I felt his pulse. It was a variety Ghosh had never shown me: the absent pulse.

ROSINA SENT GENET
to fetch Gebrew.

He came running. He hadn't heard the shot. The bungalow was far enough removed and the gun so muffled by the man's belly that the sound had not carried.

“Hurry. Someone might come for him,” Rosina said. “But first we must move the motorcycle.” With all five of us heaving, we righted the BMW and managed to get it to the toolshed, just past the curve at the bottom of our driveway. Other than a ding on the tank, the bike looked no worse for wear. In the toolshed we rearranged the cords of firewood, the stacks of Bibles, the sawhorse, incubator, and other junk kept there, so that the bike was hidden from sight.

Returning to the body, we had little to say to one another. Gebrew and Shiva fetched the wheelbarrow, and with Rosina and Genet's help, they fed the body into its rusty cavity. I leaned against a tree, looking on. He lay in the wheelbarrow in the kind of unnatural posture only the dead achieve. Now with Rosina leading us, we pushed him through the trees on the perimeter trail, just inside of Missing's wall, until we reached the Drowning Soil. The hospital's old septic tank was located here, deep underground, and for years it had overflowed before it was taken out of use. USAID concrete, Rockefeller funds, and a Greek contractor named Achilles had built a new one. But the old tank's effluent had digested the land. A downy growth of moss served to deceive the eye; anything heavier than a pebble would sink. The odor, present at all times, kept trespassers away. Matron had barbed wire strung around it, and the sign in Amharic said
DROWNING SOIL,
which was the closest translation for “quicksand.”

The smell was powerful. Pushing down the fence post so that the barbed wire was flat on the ground, Rosina and Gebrew got the wheelbarrow as far forward as they dared. I glared at Shiva. He was impasive, looking on. He could have been watching shoeshine boys at work—it was the opposite of what I felt. They were about to pitch the body forward when I said, “No!” I grabbed Rosina's hand, forcing her to set the wheelbarrow down. I was shaking, crying. “We can't do this. It is wrong. Rosina … Oh my God, what have I done—”

Rosina slapped me hard. Shiva put his hand on my shoulder, more to restrain me perhaps than to offer support. Rosina and Gebrew took the handles again, and they tipped the dead man out.

The mossy ground sagged like a mattress. The face on that body no longer belonged to the man who had terrorized us; it was a pathetic face, a human face, not that of a monster.

When the body finally disappeared, Rosina spat in its direction. She turned to me, the anger and bloodlust contorting her face. “What's wrong with you? Don't you know he would have killed us all for the fun of it? The only reason he didn't is he was even hungrier to steal Zemui's motorcycle. Don't feel anything but pride for what you did.”

WE WALKED BACK
in silence. When we were home, inside the kitchen, Rosina turned to us, her hands on her hips. “No one but us knows what happened,” she said. “No one can know. Not Hema. Not Ghosh. Not Matron. No one at all. Shiva, you understand? Genet? Gebrew?”

She turned to me. “And you? Marion?”

I looked at my nanny, her face bloodied and the missing tooth making her look like a stranger. I steeled myself for more harsh words from her. Instead, she came over and held me in her arms. It was the hug a woman gives either her son or her hero. I held her tight. Her breath was hot in my ear as she said, “You are so brave.” This was my consolation: all was well between me and Rosina. Genet came over and put her arms around me.