Cutting For Stone - Part 8
Library

Part 8

"It's Hema, isn't it?"

"Hema? No. It is Sister Mary Joseph Praise."

"Sister? What happened to Sister?"

"She is with the Lord, may He bless her soul."

"What?"

"Lord help us all, but she is dead." Almaz was sobbing now. "She died giving birth to twins. Dr. Hema arrived but could not save her. Dr. Hema saved the twins."

Ghosh stopped hearing after her first mention of Sister and death. He had to have her repeat what she said, and then repeat again everything that she knew, but each time it came down to Sister being dead. And something about twins.

"And now we can't find Dr. Stone," she said at last. "He is gone. We must find him. Matron says we must."

"Why?" Ghosh managed to ask when he found his tongue, but even as he said that he knew why. He shared with Stone the bond of being the only male physicians at Missing. Ghosh knew Stone as well as anyone could know Stone, except, perhaps, Sister Mary Joseph Praise.

"Why? Because he is suffering the most," Almaz said. "That is what Matron says. We must find him before he does something stupid."

It's a bit too late for that, Ghosh thought.

CHAPTER 12.

Land's End

THE MORNING AFTER the births and the death, Matron Hirst came to her office very early as if it were any other day Shed slept but a few hours. She and Ghosh had driven around, hunting for Thomas Stone late into the night. Stone's maid, Rosina, had kept a vigil in his quarters, but there had been no sign of him.

Matron pushed away the papers stacked on her desk. Through her window she could see patients lined up in the outpatient department, or rather she could see their colorful umbrellas. People believed the sun exacerbated all illnesses, so there were as many umbrellas as there were patients. She picked up the phone. "Adam?" she said, when the compounder came on the line. "Please send word to Gebrew to close the gate. Send patients to the Russian hospital." Her Amharic, though accented, was exceedingly good. "And Adam, please deal with the patients who are already in the outpatient department as best you can. I'll be asking the nurses to make rounds on their wards and to manage. Let the probationers know that all nursing cla.s.ses are canceled."

Thank G.o.d for Adam, Matron thought. His education had stopped at the third grade, which was a shame, because Adam could have easily been a doctor. Not only was he adept at preparing the fifteen stock mixtures, ointments, and compounds which Missing provided to outpatients, he also had uncanny clinical sense. With his one good eye (the other milky white from a childhood infection) he could spot the seriously ill among the many who came clutching the teal-blue graduated Missing medicine bottles, ready to have them refilled. It was a sad fact that the commonest complaint in the outpatient department was "Rasehn ... libehn ... hodehn," literally, "My head ... my heart ... and my stomach," with the patient's hand touching each part as she p.r.o.nounced the words. Ghosh called it the RLH syndrome. The RLH sufferers were often young women or the elderly. If pressed to be more specific, the patients might offer that their heads were spinning (jasehn yazoregnal) or burning (yakatelegnal), or their hearts were tired (lib dekam), or they had abdominal discomfort or cramps (hod kurteth), but these symptoms were reported as an aside and grudgingly, because rasehn-libehn-hodehn should have been enough for any doctor worth his salt. It had taken Matron her first year in Addis to understand that this was how stress, anxiety, marital strife, and depression were expressed in Ethiopia- somatization was what Ghosh said the experts called this phenomenon. Psychic distress was projected onto a body part, because culturally it was the way to express that kind of suffering. Patients might see no connection between the abusive husband, or meddlesome mother-in-law, or the recent death of their infant, and their dizziness or palpitations. And they all knew just the cure for what ailed them: an injection. They might settle for mistura carminativa or else a magnesium trisilicate and bella donna mixture, or some other mixture that came to the doctor's mind, but nothing cured like the marfey-the needle. Ghosh was dead against injections of vitamin B for the RLH syndrome, but Matron had convinced him it was better for Missing to do it than have the dissatisfied patient get an unsterilized hypodermic from a quack in the Merkato. The orange B-complex injection was cheap, and its effect was instantaneous, with patients grinning and skipping down the hill.

THE PHONE RANG, and for once Matron was grateful. Normally she hated the sound because it always felt like a rude interruption. The small Missing switchboard was still a novelty. Matron had declined an extension in her quarters, but she thought it was important to have phones in the doctor's quarters and the casualty room. Even this phone in her office she considered a luxury, but now she grabbed the receiver, hoping for good news, news about Stone.

"Please hold for His Excellency, the Minister of the Pen," a female voice said. Matron heard faint clicks, and imagined a little dog walking on the wooden floors of the palace. She stared at the stacks of Bibles against the far wall. There were so many they looked like a barricade of shiny, cobbled rexine.

The minister came on, asked about Matron's health, and then said, "His Majesty is saddened by your loss. Please, accept his deepest condolences." Matron pictured the minister standing, bowing as he spoke into the phone. "His Majesty personally asked me to call."

"It is most kind, most kind, of His Majesty to think of us ... at this time," Matron said. It was part of the Emperor's mystique and a key to his power that he knew everything that went on in his empire. She wondered how word had reached the palace so soon. Dr. Thomas Stone with Sister Mary Joseph Praise a.s.sisting had removed a pair of royal appendices, and Hema had performed an emergency Cesarean section on a granddaughter who didn't make it to Switzerland. Since then a few others in the royal family came to Hema for their confinement.

Matron only had to ask, the minister said, if there was something the palace could do. The minister didn't touch on the manner of Sister's death, or the fate of the two babies.

"By the way, Matron ...," he said, and she was alert because she sensed this was the real reason for the call. "If by any chance a military ... a senior officer comes to Missing for treatment, for surgery in the next day or so, the Emperor would like to be informed. You can call me personally." He gave her a number.

"What sort of officer?"

She took the silence to mean the minister was giving thought to his answer.

"An Imperial Bodyguard officer. An officer who has-shall we say- no need to be at Missing."

"Surgery, you say? Oh, no. We've closed the hospital. We have no surgeon, Minister. You see Dr. Thomas Stone ... is indisposed. They were a team, you see ..."

"Thank you, Matron. Please let us know."

She mulled over the call after she hung up. Emperor Haile Sela.s.sie had built up a strong, modern military, consisting of army, navy, air force, and the Imperial Bodyguard. The Bodyguard was a force as large as the others, the equivalent of the Queen's Guard in England who stood outside Buckingham Palace. But just like the Queen's Guard, the Imperial Bodyguard wasn't merely a ceremonial unit; its professional soldiers and its units were no different than the rest of the armed forces, and trained for battle. Up-and-coming cadets from all the services went to Sandhurst or West Point or Poona. But those sojourns had a way of expanding one's social conscience. The Emperor feared a coup by these young officers. Having the second- or third-largest standing armed force on the continent was a matter of pride, but it was also potentially dangerous to his reign. The Emperor deliberately kept the four services in compet.i.tion with one another, kept their headquarters far apart, and he transferred generals who were getting too powerful. Matron sensed some such intrigue-why else would the Minister of the Pen call personally?

The minister had no idea what it meant for Missing not to have a surgeon, Matron thought. Before Thomas Stone's arrival, Missing could handle most internal medicine and pediatric patients, thanks to Ghosh, and it tackled complicated obstetric and gynecologic conditions, thanks to Hema. Over the years a number of other doctors had come and gone, some of them capable of surgery. But Missing never had a fully trained and competent surgeon till Stone. A surgeon allowed Missing to fix complex fractures, remove goiters and other tumors, perform skin grafts for burns, repair strangulated hernias, take out enlarged prostates or cancerous b.r.e.a.s.t.s, or drill a hole in the skull to let out a blood clot pressing against the brain. Stone's presence (with an a.s.sistant like Sister Mary Joseph Praise) took Missing to a new level. His absence changed everything.

THE PHONE RANG again a few minutes later, and this time the sound was ominous. Matron brought the instrument gingerly to her ear. Please G.o.d, let Stone be alive.

"h.e.l.lo? This is Eli Harris. Of the Baptist congregation of Houston ... h.e.l.lo?"

For a call from America, the connection was crystal clear. Matron was so surprised that she said nothing.

"h.e.l.lo?" the voice said again.

"Yes?" Matron said gruffly.

"I'm speaking from the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa. Could I speak to Matron Hirst?"

She held the receiver away, covering the mouthpiece. She felt panicked. And confused. What on earth was Harris doing here? She was accustomed to dealing with donors and charitable organizations by mail. She needed to think quickly, but her mind refused to cooperate. At last, she took her hand away and brought the phone up. "I'll pa.s.s the message on, Mr. Harris. She will call you back-"

"May I know who is speaking-"

"You see, we have had a death of one of our staff. It might be a couple of days before she calls you." He started to say something, but Matron hung up abruptly. Then she took the receiver off the hook, glaring at it, daring it to ring.

The Baptists of Houston were of late Missing's best and most consistent funders. Matron sent out handwritten letters every week to congregations in America and Europe. She asked that her letter be forwarded to others if they were unable to help. If a reply came expressing any interest, she immediately mailed them Thomas Stone's textbook, The Expedient Operator: A Short Practice of Tropical Medicine. Though expensive to mail, it was better than any prospectus. Donors, she found, always had a prurient interest in what could go wrong with the human body, and the photographs and ill.u.s.trations (by Sister Mary Joseph Praise) in the book satisfied that desire. A picture of a strange creature with the face of a pig, the furriness of a dog, and with small, myopic eyes accompanied the chapter on appendicitis, and Matron always put her letter there as a bookmark. The legend read "The wombat is a burrowing, nocturnal marsupial found only in Australia, and the only reason to mention it is the dubious distinction it has in joining man and apes in ownership of an appendix." The book, more than any exchange of letters, had won the Houston Baptists' support.

Ghosh arrived half an hour later, shaking his head. "I went to the British Emba.s.sy. I drove around the city. I went to his house again. Rosina's there and she hasn't seen him. I walked all over Missing's grounds-"

"Let's take a ride," Matron said.

As they drove down to Missing's gate, they saw a taxi coming up the hill carrying a white man. "That must be Eli Harris," Matron said, sliding down in the pa.s.senger seat with an alacrity that surprised Ghosh. She told him about Harris's call. "If I remember correctly, I got Harris to fund a project that was your idea: a citywide campaign against gonorrhea and syphilis. Harris has come to see how we are doing."

Ghosh almost steered them off the road. "But we have no such project, Matron!"

"Of course not." Matron sighed.

Ghosh never looked his best in the morning, even after a bath and shave. He hadn't had time for either of these. Dark stubble swept up from his throat, detoured around his lips, and reached almost to his bloodshot eyes.

"Where are we going?" he said.

"To Gulele. We need to make funeral arrangements."

They rode in silence.

THE GULELE CEMETERY was on the outskirts of town. The road cut through a forest where the dense overhanging canopy of trees made it feel like dusk. Suddenly the forbidding wrought-iron gates loomed before them, standing out against the limestone walls. Inside, a gravel road led up to a plateau thick with eucalyptus and pine. There were no taller trees in Addis than in Gulele.

They trudged between the graves, their feet crunching and crackling on the carpet of leaves and twigs. No urban sounds or voices were to be heard here; only the stillness of a forest and the quiet of death. A fine drizzle wet the leaves and branches, then gathered into big drops that plopped on their heads and arms. Matron felt like a trespa.s.ser. She stopped at a grave no larger than an altar Bible. "An infant, Ghosh," she said, wanting to hear a living voice, even if it was only hers. "Armenian, judging by the name. Lord, she died just last year." The flowers by the headstone were fresh. Matron began a Hail Mary under her breath.

Farther down were the graves of young Italian soldiers: NATO ROMA, or NATO NAPOLI, but no matter where they were born they were DECEDUTO AD ADDIS ABABA. Matron's vision turned misty as she thought of them having died so very far from home.

John Melly's face appeared to her, and she could hear "Bunyan's Hymn." It was the hymn they had played at his funeral. At times the tune found her; the words came to her lips unbidden.

She turned to Ghosh, "You know I was in love once?"

Ghosh who already looked troubled, froze where he stood.

"You mean ... with a man?" he said at last, when he could speak.

"Of course with a man!" She sniffed.

Ghosh was silent for a long time, then he said, "We imagine we know everything there is to know about our colleagues, but really how little we know."

"I don't think I knew I loved Melly until he was dying. I was so young. Easiest thing in the world is to love a dying man."

"Did he love you?"

"He must have. You see he died trying to save me." Her eyes welled up. "It was in 1935. I'd just arrived in the country, and I couldn't have picked a worse time. The Emperor fled the city as the Italians were about to march in. The looters went to town, pillaging, raping. John Melly commandeered a truck from the British Legation to come and get me. You see, I was volunteering at what is now Missing. He stopped to help a wounded person on the street, and a looter shot him. For absolutely no reason." She shuddered. "I nursed him for ten days, and then he died. One day I'll tell you all about it." Then, uncontrollably, she had to sit down, her head in her hands, weeping. "I'm all right, Ghosh. Just give me a minute."

She was mourning not Melly as much as the pa.s.sage of the years. She'd come to Addis Ababa from England after getting restless teaching in a convent school and running the student infirmary; she'd accepted a post with Sudan Interior Mission to work in Harrar, Ethiopia. In Addis, she found her orders were canceled because the Italians had attacked, and so she had simply attached herself to a small hospital all but abandoned by the American Protestants. During that first year she'd watched as soldiers-some of the young men buried here-as well as Italian civilians poured in to populate the new colony: carpenters, masons, technicians. The peasant Florino became Don Florino when he crossed the Suez. The ambulance driver reinvented himself as a physician. She had carried on, just as the Indian shopkeepers, the Armenian merchants, the Greek hoteliers, the Levantine traders had carried on during the occu pation. Matron was still there in 1941, when the Axis's fortunes turned in North Africa and in Europe. From the Hotel Bella Napoli's balcony, Matron watched Wingate and his British troops parade into town, escorting Emperor Haile Sela.s.sie, who was returning after six years of exile. Matron had never set eyes on the diminutive Emperor. The little man seemed astonished by the transformation of his capital, his head swiveling this way and that to take in the cinemas, hotels, shops, neon lights, multistory apartment buildings, paved avenues lined with trees ... Matron said to the Reuters correspondent standing beside her that perhaps the Emperor wished he'd stayed in exile a little longer. To her chagrin, she was quoted verbatim (but fortunately as an "anonymous observer") in every foreign paper. She smiled at that memory.

She rose, brushed away her tears. The two of them trudged on.

They walked down the path between one row of graves, then back up another.

"No," Matron said abruptly. "This'll never do. I can't imagine leaving our cherished daughter in this place."

Only when they broke out into the sunlight did Matron feel she could breathe.

"Ghosh, if you bury me in Gulele, I'll never forgive you," she said. Ghosh decided silence was the best strategy. "We Christians believe that in the Lord's Second Coming the dead will be raised from the grave."

Ghosh was raised a Christian, a fact that Matron never seemed to remember.

"Matron, do you sometimes doubt?"

She noticed that his voice was hoa.r.s.e. His eyelids sagged. She was reminded again that this was not her grief alone.

"Doubt is a first cousin to faith, Ghosh. To have faith, you have to suspend your disbelief. Our beloved Sister believed ... I worry that in a place as damp and disconsolate as Gulele, even Sister will find it hard to rise when the time comes."

"What then? Cremation?"

One of the Indian barbers doubled as a pujari and arranged cremations for Hindus who died in Addis Ababa.

"Of course not!" She wondered if Ghosh was being willfully dense. "Burial. I think I might know just the place," Matron said.

THEY PARKED AT Ghosh's bungalow and walked to the rear of Missing, where the bottlebrush was so laden with flowers that it looked as if it had caught fire. The property edge was marked by the acacias, their flat tops forming a jagged line against the sky. Missing's far west corner was a promontory looking over a vast valley. That acreage as far as the eye could see belonged to a ras-a duke-who was a relative of His Majesty Haile Sela.s.sie.

A brook, hidden by boulders, burbled; sheep grazed under the eye of a boy who sat polishing his teeth with a twig, his staff near by. He squinted at Matron and Ghosh and then waved. Just as in the days of David, he carried a slingshot. It was a goatherd like him, centuries before, who had noticed how frisky his animals became after chewing a particular red berry. From that serendipitous discovery, the coffee habit and trade spread to Yemen, Amsterdam, the Caribbean, South America, and the world, but it had all begun in Ethiopia, in a field like this.

An unused bore well occupied this corner of Missing. Five years before, one of the Missing dogs had fallen into the well. Koochooloo's desperate yelps brought Gebrew. He fished her out by dangling a noose around her, almost lynching her in the process. The well needed to be sealed over. In supervising that task, Matron found used prophylactics and cigarette b.u.t.ts around the rock wall; she'd decided the area was in need of redemption. Coolies cleared the brush and planted native gra.s.s seedlings. In two months a beautiful green carpet surrounded the well. Gebrew tended to this lawn, squatting, crab walking, grabbing a fistful of gra.s.s with his left hand and sweeping under it with the sickle in his right hand.

It was Sister Mary Joseph Praise who identified the wild coffee bush by the well. But for Gebrew's regularly nipping the top buds, it would have grown out of reach. With a few old outpatient benches brought to this lawn it became a place where even Thomas Stone temporarily abandoned his cares. Cigarette in hand, mind adrift, hed smoke and watch while Sister Mary Joseph Praise and Matron fussed with their plants. But before too long he would grind his cigarette into the gra.s.s (a practice which Matron thought vulgar) and march off as if to some urgent summons.

Matron prayed silently. Dear G.o.d, only You know what will become of Missing now. Two of ours are gone. A child is a miracle, and we have two of those. But for Mr. Harris and his people, it wont be that. For them it would be shameful, scandalous, a reason to pull out. Missing had no income to speak of from patients. It relied on donations. Its modest expansion of the last few years came because of Harris and a few other donors. Matron had no rainy-day fund. It was against her conscience to hold back money when money allowed her to cure trachoma and to prevent blindness, or give penicillin and cure syphilis-the list was endless. What was she to do?

Matron studied the view in every direction. She wasn't registering what she saw because her thoughts were turned inward. But gradually, the valley, the scent of laurel, the vivid green colors, the gentle breeze, the way light fell on the far slope, the gash left by the stream, and above all this the sweep of sky with clouds pushed to one side-it had its effect on her. For the first time since Sister Mary Joseph Praise's death, Matron felt a sense of peace, a sense of certainty where there had been none. She was certain that this was the spot-this was where the long voyage of Sister Mary Joseph Praise would end. She remembered, too, how in her first days in Addis, when things had looked so bleak, so terrifying, so tragic with Melly's death-it was at those moments that G.o.d's grace came, and that G.o.d's plan was revealed, though it was revealed in His time. "I can't see it Lord, but I know You can," she said.

CHAPTER 13.

Praise in the Arms of Jesus

THE BAREFOOT COOLIES were jovial men. Told by Ghosh what their task would be, they made clucking sounds of condolence. The big fellow with the prognathic jaw shed his fraying coat; his shorter companion pulled off his tattered sweater. They spat on their palms, hefted the pickaxes, and set to it; happened-had-happened and be-will-be as far as they were concerned, and though it was a grave they were digging, it guaranteed the night's bottle of tej or talla and perhaps a bed and a willing woman. Sweat oiled their shoulders and foreheads and dampened their patchwork shirts.

The sky had started off bluffing, convoys of gray clouds scurrying across like sheep to market. But by afternoon a perfect blue canopy stretched from horizon to horizon.

GHOSH, SUMMONED to the casualty room by Matron, spotted a lean and very pale white man waiting by a pillar. Ghosh kept his head down, certain this was Eli Harris, and thankful that the man's back was to him.

Inside, Adam pointed to a curtain. Ghosh heard regular grunting, coming with each breath and in the rhythm of a locomotive. He found four Ethiopian men standing there, three in sports coats and one in a burly jacket. They were gathered around the stretcher, as if in prayer. All four had spit-shined brown shoes. As they squeezed out to make room for Ghosh, he glimpsed a burgundy holster under a coat.

"Doctor," the man lying on the table said, offering his hand and trying to rise, but wincing with the effort. "Mebratu is my name. Thank you for seeing me." He was in his thirties, his English excellent. A thin mustache arched over a strong mouth. Pain had given him a peaked expression, but it was nevertheless an extraordinary, handsome face, the broken nose adding to its character. He looked familiar, but Ghosh couldn't place him. Unlike his companions, he seemed stoic, not fearful, even though he was the one in pain.

"I tell you, I have never hurt like this." He grinned from ear to ear as if to say, A man is going along when out of the blue comes a banana peel, a cosmic joke that leaves you upended and clutching your belly. A wave of pain made him wince.

I can't possibly see you today. Beloved Sister has died and any minute I expect someone to tell me they have found Dr. Thomas Stone's body. For G.o.d's sake go to the military hospital. That was what Ghosh wanted to say, but in the face of such suffering he waited.