have life and blood at dawn, Saheb, so I assume we’ll also have pain. When that happens, we will endure it. We’ll endure whatever we have to.”
The surgeon knocked on the door of the pharmacist’s house. The pharmacist stood at his side, wringing her hands as though trying to scrub them clean of some unseen stain.
Her husband opened the door. “What is it, Saheb? You here? At this time? Is there a problem?”
“Yes, a problem. You could call it that.”
“Go get Saheb a glass of water,” the man said to his wife, but his eyes didn’t leave the surgeon.
“No need for water.” The surgeon waved his hand. “This will seem like a strange request.” It struck him, after he’d spoken, that these were the same words with which the dead had begun explaining their predicament.
“Saheb?”
“Walk up the hill with me.”
The clinic sat on the hillock like a lantern. They walked in silence past the houses and huts of the village, and then, once they had started climbing, the surgeon spoke in slow, careful words, some of which he had to dig out of a vocabulary he’d never dreamed he’d use. The windows of the clinic seemed to grow brighter with every step. The moon had not risen, and it was as though the foot of the hillock were the rim of the world, with only nothingness beyond it. When they reached the top, the surgeon found himself short of breath, as if he’d hiked a great distance, and he stopped speaking.
A few yards from the entrance, the pharmacist’s husband squatted on his heels and slapped his hands to his cheeks. A string of fearful questions poured out of his mouth. What good could possibly come of this? The only reason ghosts ever came back was to harass the living. What if they wanted to possess them all? Haunt them and drive them mad? Maybe even kill them?
The surgeon, exhausted by his own incomprehension, offered answers that barely convinced even himself. What right had he to the allegiances of these two? It humiliated him to be placed in this position, but how else would he get through the night? The pharmacist just knelt at her husband’s side and avoided the surgeon’s eyes.
The man would run, and he would take her with him, the surgeon felt sure. It was futile to hope for anything different. And why indeed should the man not do as he wished? If corpses could walk, what remained to guide any other action?
A silhouette moved in the clinic’s light. The teacher’s son was leaning against the entrance. With the bulb at his back, his outline threw a long shadow across the bright strip that stretched from the clinic door, out over the grass. Behind everything was the sky—an inky spread with pinpricks of white. When the surgeon’s eyes met his, the boy inched back into the corridor, and his face fell in the bulb’s light. He looked guilty, as if he knew he didn’t belong there, in this place and this world. The boy’s parents appeared behind him. “What are you doing here? Saheb told us to wait inside,” said the teacher. He cast a nervous glance at the pharmacist’s husband, then at the surgeon, and began to lead his son away, but the surgeon gestured for them to stay.
The pharmacist clutched her husband’s arm. “There they are, there they are.”
“Yes, there they are,” said the surgeon. “The dead. They’re here to regain their own lives, not to steal yours.”
The pharmacist’s husband slumped back. He rubbed his eyes, stared, rubbed them again, trying perhaps, as the surgeon had tried not that long ago, to scrub away the hallucination. The surgeon himself, observing the dead for the first time from outside his clinic, was struck by how like the living they looked, standing there surrounded by bulbs and benches and discolored paint, as though the corridor were the place where all the entities of this world and the next could blend together seamlessly. Nothing more than a doorframe separated the dead from the living now, and who could say in that moment who stood on which side?
The pharmacist rose, helped her husband up. The surgeon looked away, tried not to eavesdrop as they murmured to each other. Nothing he could say would accomplish more than the sight of the dead themselves.
“If you think this has to be done,” said the pharmacist’s husband, his lips a dull white, “we trust you.”
“If you want to leave, go now.”
“You have done more for us, for the villagers, than anyone else, Saheb. We are in your debt.”
“If you want to go, I understand,” repeated the surgeon, perversely hoping they would take the opportunity to fly. “Really, I understand.”
“We can’t leave you here. We’ll do whatever you tell us. The rest is in God’s hands.”
The surgeon nodded. It was the most he could manage by way of gratitude. His face felt permanently carved in a grave expression of foreboding. He turned and made for the clinic.
The teacher came up to him at the steps. “I was wondering, Saheb, if you think it’s wise to involve more people in this. The fewer who know, the better, don’t you think?”
“There won’t be any more,” said the surgeon. “And without these two to help me, you might as well prepare for your second death.”
Responsible now for both the living and the dead, he dragged himself up into the corridor. The teacher appeared to have more to say, but the surgeon was in no mood to hear it.
“KEEP WATCH HERE,” the surgeon said to the pharmacist’s husband. “If you see anything, call out for me and hide the others.”
“Yes, Saheb.”
“I might have more work for you later, but first I need to find out what these surgeries will involve.”
“As you say.”
“Do you think, Saheb,” the teacher asked, “that someone might be suspicious if the clinic lights stay on all night?”
“I sometimes sit here through the night if I can’t sleep. The villagers are used to it. But yes, it’s possible the light might attract someone. We’ll just have to risk that. So, who’s first?”
The teacher patted his son’s shoulders. “Operate on him, Saheb, then my wife. Treat me only after you’re done with both.”
His wife looked away. From her demeanor, it was clear that this matter had already been decided, that the two had argued over it while the surgeon was away.
The surgeon led the boy to the operating room. The child had appeared quite calm through the evening, but now he hesitated, pulled back at the door. The tiled room seemed to frighten even him, he who had traveled distances that the surgeon couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“Go in, my baby,” his mother said. “It will be done soon. So soon, you won’t even realize it.”
The teacher clasped his son’s hand. “I’ll be with you. Don’t worry.”
The stone slab was covered with a single thin drape, and the surgeon had the boy strip and climb onto it. Over his thin, supine body, his abdomen now rose like a dome, as if he too bore another life within him. His wound still seemed like an elaborate disguise, and the surgeon was tempted to peel back the fake skin and reveal the real one underneath. He hoped that the teacher was right—that the dead couldn’t feel any pain. With gloved fingers, he examined the wound and the skin around it, squeezed the sides and pinched the skin, gently at first, and then quite hard between his nails. As promised, the boy felt nothing.
The surgeon adjusted the Anglepoise lamps to illuminate the boy’s abdomen as best he could, and with the help of the pharmacist he cleaned the skin and wound with iodine. He then masked and scrubbed and gowned as was customary, swabbed the wound with alcohol, made it sterile, draped it. He took