“I'm sorry, Marion,” she whispered, her eyes swimming with tears.
“Don't talk,” I said. “It's all right.” It wasn't, but that's what came to my mouth.
“I … should have waited,” she said.
Why didn't you, I wanted to say. I didn't get any of the pleasure, the honor of being your first lover, but I'm getting all the blame.
She moaned when she tried to move, licking her lips. I gave her more water.
“My mother thinks it was you.” Her voice was weak.
I nodded, but said nothing.
“When I told her it was Shiva,” Genet said, “she slapped me. She kicked me and called me a liar. She didn't believe me. She thinks Shiva is a virgin.” She tried to laugh, but grimaced and then coughed. When she could speak, she said, “Listen, I made my mother promise not to tell Hema.”
I couldn't resist a sarcastic snicker. “Well, don't worry. She will tell Hema. She's probably telling her right now.”
“No. She won't,” Genet said. “That was our deal.”
“What do you mean?”
“I agreed to let her do this to me, if she wouldn't … say anything. She's to keep quiet. Not a word to Hema. Not one word. And no more shouting at you.”
I slumped back on hearing this. Genet allowed a strange woman to cut her privates with an unsterilized blade, and it was all to protect me? So now I was to blame for the circumcision? It was so absurd that I wanted to laugh, but I found I couldn't: the guilt had settled on me as if it knew that was its home and it would be welcome.
Shiva came in the evening, his face pale and drawn. “Here, sit here,” I said before he could open his mouth. I didn't trust myself near him and I needed a break. “Stay with her till I come back. Hold her hand. She gets restless when I let go.” There was nothing else I could say to him, now. I was beyond anger, and he was beyond sorrow.
GENET'S FEVER RAGED for three days. I sat by her bed day and night. Hema, Ghosh, and Matron were in and out all the time.
On the third day, Genet stopped making any urine. Ghosh was very worried, drawing blood himself, then Shiva or I would run to the lab, help W.W. line up our reagents and tubes and measure the blood urea nitrogen leveclass="underline" high, and getting higher.
Genet was never completely unconscious, just sleepy, confused at times, often moaning, and at one point horribly thirsty. She called for her mother once, but Rosina wasn't there. Almaz told me Rosina wouldn't leave her room, which was probably a good thing. The atmo sphere in the hospital room was tense enough without the prospect of Hema attacking Rosina.
On the sixth day, Genet's kidneys began to produce urine, and then they produced it in huge amounts, filling up the catheter bag. Ghosh doubled and tripled her intravenous fluid rates, and encouraged her to drink to keep up with the loss. “Hopefully this means her kidneys are recovering,” Ghosh said. “They just aren't able to concentrate the urine too well.”
One morning, when I woke up in the chair and saw her face, the texture of the skin, the relaxation around the brow, I knew she was going to make it. She was skinny to begin with, and now the illness had consumed her, burned her down to just bones. Her color was returning; the sword that hung over her had lifted away. My shoulders began to unknot.
That afternoon I went to my room in Ghosh's quarters, and I fell into a black sleep. It was only when I woke up that I turned my attention to Shiva. Did he understand how he shattered my dreams? Did he see how he hurt Genet, hurt us all? I wanted to get through to him. The trouble was that I couldn't think of any other way than to pummel him with my fists until he felt the same degree of pain he had caused in me. I hated my brother. No one could stop me.
No one but Genet.
When she told me about her deal with Rosina, how she had agreed to be circumcised if Rosina said nothing to Hema, Genet hadn't finished what she had to say. Later that first night, she struggled to consciousness to ask something of me. She had made me swear to it. “Marion,” she said, “punish me, but not Shiva. Attack me and cast me away, but leave Shiva alone.”
“Why? I can't do that. Why spare him? “
“Marion, I made Shiva do what he did with me that night. I asked him.” Her words were like kidney punches. “You know how Shiva is different … how he thinks in another way? Believe me, if I hadn't asked him, he would have read his book and I wouldn't be here.”
Reluctantly, on that first night, I had given Genet my word that I wouldn't confront Shiva. I did so mainly because that night had looked as if it might well have been her last.
I never told Hema what had really happened, leaving her to imagine whatever it was she thought I had done.
Why, you might ask, did I keep my word? Why did I not change my mind when I saw that Genet would survive? Why didn't I tell Hema the truth? You see, I'd learned something about myself and about Genet during her battle to stay alive. I'd come so close to losing her, and it helped me understand that despite everything, I didn't want her to die. I might never forgive her. But I still loved her.
WHEN SHE WAS DISCHARGED from the hospital, I carried Genet from the car to the house. No one objected, and if they had I would have stood my ground. My unceasing vigil at Genet's bedside had earned a grudging acknowledgment from Hema; she didn't dare deny me.
As I carried her daughter into our house through the kitchen, Rosina watched from her doorway. Genet never looked in that direction. It was as if her mother and the room in which she had lived her life no longer existed. Rosina stood there, beseeching with her eyes, pleading for forgiveness. But a child's ability for reprisal is infinite, and can last a lifetime.
I carried Genet to our old room, Shiva's room, which would now be hers.
The plan was that Shiva and I would sleep in Ghosh's old quarters, but separately, he in the living room.
Half an hour later, when I went to get Genet's clothes from Rosina's quarters, she had locked herself in and wouldn't answer despite my knocking. I pushed on the wood in anger, and I could tell from the resistance that she'd barricaded the door or else she was leaning against it. A peculiar silence blanketed the atmosphere. I went to the window. The shutters were bolted, but now, with Almaz helping, I pulled on the flimsy slats till they snapped off. The wardrobe had been used to block the window. I scrambled onto the ledge and tried to shove the wardrobe aside with my hands, but I couldn't. I craned my neck to peer above it. What I saw made me set my back to the window frame, put both feet on the wardrobe, and topple it without a thought to its contents. It hit the ground with a terrific crash, the wood splintering, the mirror shattering, plates smashing. It brought everyone running.
I could see clearly now. We all could see. Hema, Ghosh, Shiva were behind me, and even Genet, hearing the commotion, had dragged herself there.
There is a mathematical precision to that scene as I remember it, but there are no angles in Carr's Geometry or any other text that quite describe the slant of that neck. And no pill in the pharmacopoeia that might erase the memory. Hanging from a rafter, her head tilted on her spine, her mouth open and the tongue looking as if it had been yanked out of her throat, was Rosina.
35. One Fever from Another
THE MOSSY STONE WALLS and the massive gate of Empress Menen School gave it the look of an ancient fortress. In her white socks, light blue blouse, dark blue skirt, and with no headbands, clips, or earrings, Genet was just one of the girls, blending in. Her only adornment was the St. Bridget's cross hanging from her neck. She didn't want to stand out. Her old vivacious self had died along with the corpse we took down from the rafter and buried in Gulele Cemetery.