Cutting for Stone

MR. LOOMIS, headmaster of Loomis Town & Country, saw to it that our long holidays coincided with the long rains. That way, he could be in England in July and August, relaxing, spending our school fees, while we were stuck in Addis Ababa. Old hands in Addis referred to the monsoon months as “winter,” which hopelessly confused new arrivals for whom July could only be summer.

It rained so much that it even rained in my dreams. I awoke happy that there was no school, but that incessant murmur on the tin roof immediately dampened the euphoria. This was the winter of my eleventh year, and when I went to bed at night, I prayed that the skies should open up on Mr. Loomis wherever he was, be it Brighton or Bournemouth. I hoped that a personal thundercloud trailed him every minute of that day.

SHIVA WAS UNAFFECTED BY COLD, fog, mist, or wetness, while I became morose and pessimistic. Outside our window, there was now a brown lake dotted with atolls of red mud. I lost faith that a lawn and flower bed could ever reappear out of that.

On Wednesdays Hema took us to the British Council and USIS libraries, where we returned books, checked out a new pile, loaded them in the car, then she dropped us off at the Empire Theater or Cinema Adowa for the matinee. We were free to read whatever we wanted, but Hema required of us a half-page journal entry to record new words we learned and the number of pages we had read. We were also to copy out a memorable idea or sentence to share at dinner.

I resented this winter curriculum, but it did bring Captain Horatio Hornblower sailing into my life. Matron, whose ability to read my soul I did not yet fully appreciate, asked me to borrow A Ship of the Line for her. I opened it out of curiosity and found I had sailed into a world more damp and wretched than my own, and strangely, I was happy to be there. Thanks to C. S. Forester, I was on a creaking ship on the other side of the world and in the head of Horatio Hornblower, a man who was like Ghosh and Hema—heroic in his professional role. But he was also like me—”unhappy and lonely.” Of course, I wasn't really unhappy or lonely, but in the monsoon season it seemed necessary to think of myself that way. The unfairness of the Admiralty in London, the irony of Hornblower's seasickness, the tragedy of his returning from a long voyage to find his children mortally ill with smallpox … I had my equivalents, trivial as they were, for all these perils.

After hours of reading, I itched to be outdoors; I know Genet did, too. Shiva sketched and scribbled. Hema's calligraphy exercises catalyzed an unstoppable ink flow in Shiva's pen, but his medium was still paper bags, napkins, and end pages of books. He loved to sketch Zemui's BMW and had done so in every season. Veronica, if he drew her, now straddled a motorcycle.

On a Friday, after Ghosh and Hema left for work, the rain came down harder and there was now thunder and hail. The noise on the roof was deafening. I peeked out of the kitchen door and was met by the scent of sopping hide, and the sight of three donkeys sheltering under the roof overhang along with their overseer. If the wood the donkeys delivered was anywhere as wet as they were, it did not bode well for our stove. The animals stood still, resigned to their fate, half asleep, their skin twitching involuntarily.

When I went back to the living room, Genet yelled above the racket, “Let's play blind man's buff!”

“Sissy game,” I said. “Stupid girls’ game.” But she was already hunting for a blindfold.

I never understood why blind man's buff was so popular at school, particularly in Genet's class. I'd seen the mob dancing just out of reach of “it,” pushing or “buffing” the blind man till he (or she) captured a tormentor. The blind man had to name the captive or set the person free.

We modified the game for indoors: no buffing of the blind man. Instead, you hid by standing silent (though with the din on the roof you could be whistling and it wouldn't matter). You could hide anywhere but the kitchen, and not under or behind a barrier. Time was the object of the game: how fast could the blind man find the other two.

THAT MORNING, Genet went first. It took her fifteen minutes to find Shiva, and ten more to get me.

You would think after twenty-five minutes of standing there I would be bored. I wasn't. I was intrigued.

It took discipline to stand stock-still. I felt like the Invisible Man, one of my favorite comic book characters. The Invisible Man stood as the world moved around him, as his archenemy tried to find him.

Blindfolded, wearing white tights, her arms reaching in front of her, putting one foot out, then the other, Genet looked helpless, as if she were walking the plank on a pirate ship. She had the upright carriage and the balance of one who could do cartwheels with an arm tucked to her side, and who could walk on her hands with more grace than Ghosh on two feet. Barrettes made of yellow and silver beads were snug around her hair, which was parted in the middle and pulled up into two stalks. Genet wasn't vain about her dress. But when it came to headbands, combs, pins, and banana clamps, she was most particular. Of course, this trait might have been more Hema's or Rosina's or Almaz's doing: they were forever brushing her hair or braiding it into ponytails or rows. Hema sometimes put kohl inside Genet's lower lid. That black line highlighted her eyes, made them catch fire and flash like mirrors.

Girls matured faster than boys, so they said, and I believed it, because Genet acted older than ten. She distrusted the world and was more argumentative and always ready for combat; if I was too willing to defer to adults and assume they knew what they were doing, she was just the opposite, quite willing to think of them as fallible. But now, blindfolded, she had a vulnerability I'd never been aware of before; all her defenses seemed to reside in the high heat of her gaze.

Twice, Genet almost walked into me–as–Invisible Man, veering off at the last second. The third time, she was millimeters away, and the Invisible Man snorted to suppress a laugh. Her hands, sweeping like windmills, found me and nearly took my eyes out.

Then things turned strange.

When I wore the blindfold, I found Genet in thirty seconds, and Shiva in half that time. How? I followed my nose. I had no inkling such a thing was possible. I was “seeing” through olfaction. I heeded an instinct that only made itself known when my sight was gone.

Shiva, when it was his turn, found us just as quickly. Suddenly, we forgot about the rain.

When I blindfolded Genet again, it took her even longer than the first time. Her nose was no help. For half an hour, I watched her shuffle this way and that.

Frustrated, she whipped off the blindfold and accused us of moving and of being in collusion. On both counts we were innocent.

When Ghosh came home for lunch, Genet and I rushed to tell him about our game. “Wait! Stop!” he said. “I can't hear you when you speak over each other. Genet, you first. ‘Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end: then stop.’ Who said that?”

“You did,” Genet said.

“The King in Alice in Wonderland,” Shiva said, “page ninety-three. Chapter twelve. And you missed four words and two commas.”

“I certainly did not!” Ghosh said, acting offended, but unable to conceal his surprise.

“You missed ‘The King said, comma, very gravely, comma.’ “

“Right you are …,” Ghosh said. “Now, tell me what happened, Genet.”

She did and then begged him to referee. Ghosh stationed Genet here and there, and each time, blindfolded and sightless, I went straight to her. We blindfolded Ghosh at his request, but he was no better than Genet. We would have further “explored the phenomenon,” as Ghosh put it, but he had to return to the hospital.

GENET'S FOREHEAD STAYED FURROWED all afternoon, her eyebrows meeting in a V. I felt the venom of her gaze on my face.

“What are you looking at?” she said.

“Is it against the law to look?”

“Yes.”

I stuck my tongue out. She flew out of her chair and came at me. I expected that. We tumbled to the floor. I soon pinned her flat on her back, her arms above her head, straddling her, but it was far from an easy task.