Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese Page B

his hand and to see if it still answered to his commands.
    The upraised hand was insult enough, but when Hema saw it start to move, she reacted in a manner that made her blush when she recalled it later.
    Hemlatha's fingers shot up the pilot's shorts and locked around his testicles, only his underwear intervening. There was an ease to her movements which surprised her, and an ease to the way the gap between her thumbs and index fingers allowed passage for the spermatic cords that connected balls to body. Years later she would think that what she did was conditioned by her surroundings, by the propensity in East Africa for shiftas and other criminals to lop off their victims’ testicles. When in Rome…
    Her eyes burned like a martyr's. Sweat changed the pottu on her forehead from a dot to an exclamation mark. She had worn a cotton sari for the heat, and earlier, when she had been seated, she had hiked it to her knees—modesty be damned—and now that she was standing it stayed that way, outlining her thighs. Sweat glistened on her upper lip as she squeezed to extract the same measure of distress and fear the Frenchman had caused her.
    “Listen, sweetie,” she said (deciding that there was indeed testicular atrophy and also trying to recall tunica albugineae, and tunica something else, and vas deferens, of course, and that craggy thingy at the back, whatsitcalled … epididymis!). She saw his shoulders sag and the color drain out of his face as if she'd opened the spigot below. Dampness quite different from sweat appeared on his forehead. “At least your syphilis isn't far advanced because you can feel testicular pain, huh?” His upraised hand came floating down and then hesitantly, almost lovingly rested on her forearm, pleading with her not to increase the pressure. A cathedral of silence descended on the plane.
    “Are you listening now?” she said (thinking that she didn't really want to know a man's anatomy this way). “Are we talking as equals? … My life in your hands and now your family jewels in mine? You think you can terrify people like that? That little boy broke his leg because of your stunt.”
    She turned her head toward the other passengers but, keeping her eye on Frenchie's face, said, “Anybody have a sharp knife? Or a Gillette?”
    The rustle she heard might just have been the cremaster muscles of all the males on board involuntarily reeling their dangling sperm factories back up to shelter.
    “We were unauthorized … I had to …,” the pilot wheezed.
    “Take your wallet out right now and pay for this child,” Hema said, because she didn't believe in IOUs.
    When he fumbled with the notes, the young Armenian grabbed the wallet and handed it to the boy's father.
    One of the Yemenis, finding his voice, let out a stream of profanities, wagging his finger in the pilot's face.
    Hema said, “Now, you refund the plane tickets for the boy and his parents. And you get us back in the air very soon, … otherwise, you will not only be a eunuch, but I will personally petition the Emperor to make sure that even a job as a camel driver, let alone flying khat, will be much too good for you.”
    They heard the cargo door open and sharp exclamations from the coolies milling around outside.
    The Frenchman, his eyeballs sinking in their sockets, nodded mutely. France had colonized Djibouti and parts of Somalia, and they had even jockeyed with the English in India before settling for a foothold in Pon di cherry But on this steamy afternoon, one brown soul who would never be the same again, and who had Malayalis, Armenians, Greeks, and Yemenis backing her, showed she was free.
    “Well, how can one be sane in hot weather?” Hemlatha said to no one in particular, letting go and making for the outside to wash her hands, stifling her laughter.

CHAPTER 6
My Abyssinia
    H EMA FIXED HER EYES on the ground below, watching for the transition of brown scrub and desert into steep escarpment announcing the lush,