Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar

Author:Vikram Paralkar
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948226554
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2019-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

EVEN WHEN THEY WERE in the operating room and the door was closed, the teacher did not ask, “Will she live?” and so the surgeon did not answer, “I don’t think she will.” The man just took off his shirt and raised himself onto the operating table, and the surgeon put his stethoscope to his ears.

On the right side of the chest—the side of the stabbing—the surgeon couldn’t hear any air filling the lung. When he tapped in the spaces between the ribs, the cavity rang dull under his fingers, as if he were tapping on stone.

“You bled into your chest. How long was the blade?”

The teacher held his thumb and forefinger about six inches apart. The surgeon looked at the wound, and the teacher brought his outstretched fingers close to his chest in response. With the thumb placed against the gash, his forefinger curved all the way along the rib to the breastbone. A knife that size, driven to the hilt, could have hit anything. The surgeon scratched his stubble, kneaded a knot in his jaw with his thumb.

He had the teacher lie on his side, facing away, his right arm folded up over his head. He picked up the razor he’d left on the shelf. Strands of hair still clung to it, long, fine hair from the back of the woman’s head. He unscrewed and washed the razor, snapped on a new blade. With it, he carefully shaved the man’s armpit and part of the right side of his chest, clearing a broad margin around the wound. Then he scrubbed the chest with iodine and covered the upper and lower areas with drapes, leaving only a strip of skin exposed at the level of the injury.

“Hold your breath.”

The chest under the drapes stopped moving. The surgeon put his scalpel to the skin and extended the wound in both directions—toward the breastbone alone the line of the rib, and backward, first under the shoulder blade and then curving upward along the spine. The teacher’s arm was raised, and his skin was stretched. The edges of the new incision parted as soon as the scalpel passed through them.

“There was a palmist at the village fair,” said the teacher. His chest did not move. He too could speak without having to breathe.

“Um?”

“Sorry. I can keep quiet if you’d prefer—”

“No, go ahead. What were you saying?”

“At the fair, on the day this happened, we had our palms read.”

“Really? You believe in that kind of thing?”

“Not me, Saheb, no. But my wife used to. Who knows, maybe she still does, even after everything.”

“And what did the palmist tell you?”

“That all three of us had perfect lifelines, stretching all the way to our wrists. Not a single break.”

“You should ask for your money back.”

“He was sitting on a mat, Saheb, under a tattered umbrella for shade. He had these dusty signboards around him, with drawings of palms and lines and numbers.”

“And you took pity on him?”

“His clothes were torn. He looked old and tired .

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