Cutting for Stone

“Get off me.”

“Why? So you can have another shot?”

“Get off, I said.”

“I will. But if you start again, I will do this.” I dug my knee under her armpit and into her ribs. Her anger dissolved into screams and hysterical laughter. She begged me to stop. Knowing her and how quickly the fire could flare when you thought you had put it out, I gave her another dose to make sure. When I stepped off, I did not turn my back on her.

Genet could sprint faster than Shiva but could not quite beat me over a short distance. Her gait was so effortless, her feet barely touching the ground, that she could run all day. I wouldn't race her over anything longer than fifty yards. Climbing trees, playing soccer, wrestling, or sword fighting—in all these she was just about our equal.

But blind man's buff had found a difference.

DURING DINNER with Hema and Ghosh, Genet was quiet. The yellow and silver barrettes had given way to a vicious claw clamp and a knitting needle going across. When Hema asked, she reported on her Secret Seven book. She sat next to me and Shiva, fending off Almaz and Rosina, who bustled around, trying to add to our plates. The two of them always ate later in the kitchen.

After dinner, Genet said her good nights and retreated to Rosina's quarters behind our bungalow. I found Ghosh hunting through Alice in Wonderland. I looked over his shoulder as he found page ninety-three. Shiva was right, down to the two commas.

The rain stopped when we got into bed, precisely when it was too late to take advantage of the lull. The silence was both a relief and nerve-racking, because at any moment it would start back up.

Hema read to us in our bedroom, a nightly ritual that she had never interrupted once she began it in response to Shiva's silence. R. K. Nara -yan's Man-eater of Malgudi was our text the last few days. Ghosh sat on the other side of our bed, head bowed, listening. The book had started slowly and it had yet to pick up any pace. But perhaps that was the point. As we adjusted to the slow, the “boring” world of village India, it revealed itself to be interesting and even funny. Malgudi was populated by characters that resembled people we knew, imprisoned by habit, by profession, and by a most foolish and unreasonable belief that enslaved them; only they couldn't see it.

The sound of the phone ringing was foreign to Malgudi and it broke the thread of the story. Ghosh picked up the receiver. “Right away,” he said, gazing at Hema. When he hung up he said, “Princess Turunesh is in labor. Six centimeters. Pains five minutes apart. Matron is with her in the private room.”

“What does that mean, ‘six centimeters’?” I asked.

Ghosh was about to answer, but Hema, already at the dresser, brushing her hair, said quickly, “Nothing, sweetie. The princess will have a baby soon. I have to go.”

“I'll come with you,” Ghosh said. He could assist if Hema opted for a Cesarean section.

I NEVER LIKED IT when they left at night. My dread wasn't intruders, but an anxiety about Hema and Ghosh, a fear that despite their best intentions, they might not come back. I never felt that way in the daytime. But at night, when they went dancing at Juventus or played bridge at Mrs. Reddy and Evangeline's house, I'd wait up for them, imagining the worst.

After they left, I padded into the living room in bare feet and pajamas. I worked the short-wave band on the Grundig.

Above the static, I heard the motorcycle. Halfway up our driveway, Sergeant Zemui would always cut the engine so as not to disturb us. Then in silence, save for the squeak of springs and the rattle of mudguards, he'd coast into the carport. The coda was the metallic whump of cycle rolling back onto its center stand.

I loved that ungainly BMW and the way its udderlike engine bulged out on either side of the frame. Shiva loved it, too. All machines have genders, and that BMW was a royal “she.” For as long as I can recall I'd been hearing her low throb, a lub-dub sound in the early morning and at bedtime, as Zemui left for and returned from work. Whenever I heard the tramp of his heavy boots receding, I felt sorry for him. I pictured his lonely hike home, particularly during this season of mud and rain. Despite the long raincoat and a plastic hood for his pith helmet, it was impossible not to get soaked.

FIVE MINUTES LATER, I heard the kitchen door open. Genet came in wearing my hand-me-down pajamas.

Her anger from earlier wasn't there. In its place was something I rarely saw: sadness. Her hair was held back by a blue headband. She was listless, withdrawn, as if years, not minutes, had passed since I last saw her.

“Where's Shiva?” she asked, sitting across from me.

“In our room. Why?”

“Just asked. No reason.”

“Hema and Ghosh had to go to the hospital,” I said.

“I know. I heard them tell my mother.”

“Are you all right?”

She shrugged. Her eyes looked through the glowing dial of the Grundig, to some planet beyond. There was a little fleck in the right iris, a puff of smoke around it, where a spark had penetrated. We were much younger, exploding cap-gun strips on the pavement, striking them with a heavy rock, when that happened. You could only see the blemish close up, and at certain angles. From a distance, the hint of asymmetry made her gaze seem dreamy.

A crackly Chinese station faded in and out, a woman's voice with sounds no throat should be able to produce. I thought it was funny, but Genet didn't smile.

“Marion? Will you play blind man's buff with me?” She asked in a sweet, gentle way. “Just one more time?”

I groaned.

“Please?”

The urgency in her voice surprised me. As if her future depended on this.

“Did you come back just for that reason? Shiva's already in bed.”

She was silent, considering this, and then she said, “How about just you and me. Please, Marion?”

I was never good at saying no to Genet. I didn't think she would have any better luck finding me this time around than before. It would only make her more depressed. But if that was what she wanted …

OUTSIDE, the rain had scrubbed the sky free of stars; the black night leaked through the shutters into the house and under my blindfold.

“I've changed my mind,” I said into the void.

She ignored me, tying a second knot to secure the blindfold. For good measure, she put an empty rice-flour sack over my head, rolling up the edges to leave my mouth uncovered.

“Did you hear me?” I said. “I don't want to do this, I never agreed to this.”

“You cheated? You admit it?” The voice did not even sound like hers.

“I won't admit what is not true,” I said.

A gust of wind rattled the windows. It was the bungalow's way of clearing its throat, warning us to cinch up for more rain.

She disappeared again, and when she returned I felt my hands being strapped against my sides with a piece of leather—Ghosh's belt. “That's so you won't remove the blindfold.”

Now she grabbed me by my shoulders. She spun me around. Her hands were paddles, slapping my chest, my shoulders, turning me like a top. When I yelled for her to stop she added a few more turns.

“Count to twenty. And don't peek.”

I was still turning in that inner darkness, wondering why nausea had to be such a firm companion of vertigo. I crashed into something. A hard edge. The sofa. It caught me in the ribs, but it did keep me from falling. This