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 every precaution he would have taken with any other patient. The bodies of the dead might well be immune to infection now, but that would change at dawn. He also took care to arrange the drapes so that the boy wouldn’t be able to see his own bowels. Surely there were sights that all humans, alive or dead, were better off not seeing.
With his scalpel in hand, he paused to plan his first incision, and now couldn’t help wondering if the dead were just soulless contraptions. Divine puppets, perhaps. Was this a fiendish test, meant to force him to pluck at his core and emerge with god alone knew what? An outrageous test, if so, by a deity who would stoop this low to wring belief from his subjects. What if he were to turn to the stars and cry out, “I was wrong, I was wrong”? Would the visitors vanish and the three worlds open before him?
He lengthened the wound with his blade, and found himself both fascinated and repulsed by the quality of the boy’s flesh. It resembled nothing so much as the flesh of a corpse—not yet mottled or putrid, but dead enough that the blood had coagulated in the vessels and no longer oozed out as he sliced through the skin. It reminded him of his work in the office of the city coroner. Of course, those corpses never climbed up on tables themselves.
The teacher was seated on a low stool next to his son. He whispered and cooed to the boy, ran his fingers through his hair. The boy’s eyes were half closed, his hands by his side under the drapes. They remained that way until the surgeon said, “Maybe this is a good time for you to explain what’s going on. Explain how you got here.”
The teacher’s eyes, when he raised them, first fell on
