I went back to the autoclave room. I stood behind the chair like a penitent and I thanked Sister Mary Joseph Praise. I told her all. I held back nothing. I asked for her forgiveness—and for her to continue to help us free Ghosh.
I SAW ALMAZ ANEW, saw her quiet strength and determination in the nightly vigil she had held outside Kerchele Prison. Whatever she lacked in education she made up for in character and in loyalty.
But Id lost all respect for the Emperor. Even Almaz, always a staunch royalist, had a crisis of faith.
No one really believed that Ghosh was a party to the coup. The problem was—and it was the same for hundreds of others whod been rounded up—His Majesty Haile Selassie made all the decisions. His Majesty wouldn't delegate and His Majesty felt no haste.
Every afternoon we went to Kerchele to deliver the one meal we were allowed to bring, and to pick up the container bearing the previous day's meal. The relatives outside the prison were our family now. It was also the most fertile place to gather new information and plausible rumors. We heard that the Emperor took a morning walk in the palace garden, during which the Minister of Security, the Minister of State, and the Minister of the Pen came out to him one by one. They walked three paces behind him and reported on rumors and real events of the previous twenty-four hours. Each man worried whether the one who went before him had set a trap by mentioning something which he then failed to mention. Lulu, a royal diviner, peed on certain people's shoes, and the rumor mills were undecided if that was an indication that you were to be trusted or you were under suspicion—this was the sort of thing one learned by visiting Kerchele.
The next day, just twenty-four hours after my visit to Sister Mary Joseph Praise, we were allowed to see Ghosh.
The prison yard with its lawn and giant shade trees looked like a picnic spot. Under that green canopy, the prisoners stood like leafless saplings.
I spotted Ghosh at once. Shiva and I flung ourselves into his arms. It didn't register till we were in his embrace that his head had been shaved or that his face had become gaunt. What did register was that my chest stopped aching for the first time in over a month. The scent on his clothes, on his person, was a coarse, communal odor that made me sad, because it spoke of his degradation. We stood aside to allow Hema and Matron to get near him, but I kept a hand on him, frightened that he might vanish. Some men are improved by losing weight, but Ghosh, without his plump cheeks and jowls, looked diminished.
Almaz stood back, her face all but hidden by the tail of her shama, waiting. Ghosh freed himself from Hema and Matron, and he walked over to her. She bowed deeply, then bent as if to touch his feet, but Ghosh grabbed her arms before she could, and he pulled her up and kissed her hands. He embraced her. He said hed been so happy to see her standing and waving when they would take him back and forth in the covered jeeps, even though he knew she didn't see him. Almaz, whose teeth Id never noticed before, grinned from ear to ear, while tears ran down her face.
“The only suffering for me was worrying about all of you. You see, I didn't know if they'd arrested Hema as well. Or maybe even Matron. When I saw Almaz standing in the prison yard, holding that picture of the family in her hands in that frame, I understood she was saying you were all right. Almaz, you put my heart at ease.”
None of us knew till then that Almaz's vigil had included the family picture, and that whenever a car came or left the prison, she'd stand up and hold that picture up and smile.
The minutes were ticking by and we pressed Ghosh to tell us all. I don't think he wanted to alarm us, but he couldn't lie. “The first night was the worst. I was put in that cage,” he said, pointing to a grubby, low-slung shack that looked like a storeroom. “It's a tiny space. You can't stand up. That's where they put common criminals, murderers, along with vagrant boys, pickpockets. The air is terrible, and at night, they lock the door and then there's no air at all. This one fellow, a brute, rules the place, and he decides who sleeps where. The only place where you can get a little air is by the door, and in return for my wristwatch, he let me sleep there. If I spent another night there I thought I'd have died. No sheets, no blankets, sleeping on the cold ground. When the sun rose, I was scratching from lice.
“A major came directly from the palace with instructions to take me to the military hospital and give me everything I needed to care for General Mebratu. The Emperor didn't have much faith in the doctors who were caring for him. When this major saw where I'd spent the night, and saw that my face was swollen, and that I was limping, he was furious. He took me to the military hospital where I could shower, get deloused, and get a fresh set of clothes.
“At the military hospital, they showed me the General's X-rays, then took me to him. Who do I see there but Slava—Dr. Yaroslav from the Russian hospital. Slava was shaking badly and not looking good. As for Mebratu, he was in deep sleep, or else he was unconscious. Slava said the Ethiopian doctors wouldn't go near the General. They were terrified that if he died they'd suffer, and if they saved him they'd be suspected of being sympathizers. ‘Slava,’ I said, ‘tell me he is sedated, and wasn't this way before you saw him.’ Slava said the General had been wide awake, speaking, no weakness in hands and legs when he came in. ‘I was against sedation,’ Slava said. All this time, there was another Russian doctor with Slava, a youngish woman—Dr. Yekaterina. She said, ‘Sedation is very good. He has head injury. We have to operate.’ I said, ‘Head injuries are only important because the head contains the brain. That bullet is not near the brain.’ ‘What you call this,’ she says pointing to his eye. ‘Comrade,’ I said to her, ‘I call it his orbit.’ She didn't think much of me, and I didn't like the way she was disrespectful of Slava. Slava may be an alcoholic, but he was a pioneer in orthopedics before they banished him to Ethiopia. Slava mouths to me from behind her, ‘KGB!’ I called in the major. ‘What are your instructions as far as my authority?’ He said, ‘Whatever you need. You are in charge. Those are my direct orders from His Majesty.’ ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Take this doctor back to Balcha Hospital. Don't let her come back. I need medicinal brandy, some smelling salts, and let's put two beds in this room for me and Slava.’ I dosed General Mebratu with every antibiotic there was, and gave Slava the brandy and he stopped shaking. Then Slava and I debrided the General's eye, right at the bedside, cut away what was hanging without trying to do too much more. The General never stirred. I had no plans to take the bullet out.
“For the next two nights, I had Slava for company, and I slept in a regular bed. It was three days before that Communist sedation wore off. ‘Slava, was that dose of sedative for a horse, by any chance?’ I asked. ‘No, but it was given by a nag named Yekaterina!’ Slava said.
“When General Mebratu woke up, other than a slight headache and a nasal voice, he was in good shape. They wouldn't let me stay there anymore, and they sent Slava off. That's when I scribbled the note. When I came back here they put me in one of the proper cells with some decent chaps. They brought me back and forth once or twice a day, to dress the wound, but I wasn't allowed more than a few words with the General.”
I'd already spotted two giant rats emerging in broad daylight from a gutter between two buildings. Ghosh was hiding things from us, but then we were hiding something from him.
From that day on, we were allowed twice-weekly visits. Now the only question was when he would be released.