Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

Marina squeezed into place at the crowded baggage carousel and watched the river of bundled possessions flow past. Such enormous suitcases piled on top of one another like sandbags ready to stem a rising tide. Marina waited and watched for her own unassuming luggage, looking away only long enough to help a stranger drag a foot locker to the floor. She thought of Calcutta, the madness of the baggage claim that gave only the slightest preview to the madness of the streets outside. She and her mother and father were alone together among the thronging masses, her father shepherding them from the path of young men with roller carts. Sari-wrapped grandmothers guarded the family luggage by sitting on top of it, zippered soft-sides that strained to open against a series of exterior belts. Marina shook the image from her head, turning her full attention to the scene at hand. She tried to stay hopeful through the dwindling: the suitcases, the crowd, one by one they all left. A pair of child’s swim goggles remained on the belt and she watched them pass again and again. She made a mental list of the items a smarter person would have kept in a carry-on: the dictionary, the zippered bag with the phone, the Lariam, which was in a trash can in the Minneapolis — St. Paul airport.

The unhappy people who crowded the office of lost luggage pressed against the stacks of unclaimed suitcases and together they raised the temperature in the little room some fifteen degrees beyond the heat in the vast cavern of baggage claim. A small black metal fan sat on the desk and stirred hopelessly at the air in a two foot radius. One by one they approached the girl at the desk, making fast conversation in Portuguese. When Marina’s turn came she handed over her ticket and the address of her hotel without a word, and the girl, who had had more than a little experience with these situations, pushed forward a laminated sheet of pictures of various bags. Marina touched the suitcase that most resembled hers. The printer churned out a piece of paper that the girl then handed back to Marina, circling a phone number and a claim number.

Marina went past security and customs and stepped out into the lobby full of people who were looking behind her. Young girls stood on their toes and waved. Taxi drivers hustled for fares, cruise directors and Amazon adventure guides herded their charges into groups. An assortment of cheap shops and money changing stations vied for attention with bright colors and brighter lights, and right in the middle of everything stood a man in a dark suit holding a neatly lettered sign with two words:

Marina Singh.

So certain was Marina Singh that she was alone in this world that the sight of her own name written in a heavy black marker and properly spelled (how rarely anyone found the energy to include that final “h”) made her stop. The man holding the sign appeared to see everything, and though there were easily five hundred people to choose from, he very quickly turned to her. “Dr. Singh?” he said. He was quite far away. She did not hear her name as much as see it shaped by his lips and she nodded. He walked towards her and the sea of life parted easily around him. He held out his hand. “I am Milton.”

“Milton,” she said. She had to remind herself that an embrace was not in order.

“You are quite late. I was concerned.” And he looked concerned. His eyes peered into hers for any sign that things had not gone well.

“My luggage was lost. I had to go to the claims office. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know that anyone would be here to meet me.”

“You have no luggage?” Milton said.

“I have an overcoat.” She patted at the coat and saw that one sleeve was almost to the floor. She pushed it back in the bag.

On his face she saw a look of sorrow and responsibility. “You’ll come with me?” He took the small bag from her and put his hand very lightly on her upper arm, moving her a few steps backwards into

the crowd.

“I filled out all the forms,” she said.

He shook his head. “We must go back.”

“But we can’t go back through security.” To move backwards through a security door, a door clearly marked to indicate that all traffic flowed in one direction, was as likely as going back in time, but there was Milton, his hand now resting on the shoulder of the security guard. He leaned his body slightly forward and whispered something to the man with the gun and the man with the gun held up his hand to stop the people who were pouring ahead to let Milton and Marina through. They walked the wrong way through customs where a man in uniform had two hands deep inside a woman’s purse. He then held out one of those hands to Milton and Milton shook it as they passed.

“I’ll need your paper,” Milton said to Marina, and she handed it to him. Already they were moving past the carousels. They stepped into the claims office which was now crowded with different people who had lost their luggage on later flights. They pushed against one another, angry and sad, thinking they had been the only ones.

The girl working behind the desk saw them, or sensed them, as soon as they stepped inside the door and she raised her head. “Milton,” she said, smiling, and then she was off on a tear of Portuguese. Marina put together the girl’s opening and then lost the thread—“Isso é um sonho.” The girl waved them up to the front where she and Milton began a conversation in passionate animation. When a man who had waited more than an hour for a word of recognition began to protest, the girl made a clucking sound with her tongue and silenced him. Milton gave her the computer printout and she read the report she had typed up herself as if it were a document of compelling mystery, then let out a long sigh. From his wallet Milton took a business card and quickly folded a bill around it, talking, talking. The girl took it from him and he kissed the tips of her fingers. She laughed and said something to Marina that may or may not have been lurid in nature. Marina looked back at her, dumb as a sock.

The outside air was heavy enough to be bitten and chewed. Never had Marina’s lungs taken in so much oxygen, so much moisture. With every inhalation she felt she was introducing unseen particles of plant life into her body, tiny spores that bedded down in between her cilia and set about taking root. An insect flew against her ear, emitting a sound so piercing that her head snapped back as if struck. Another insect bit her cheek just as she raised her hand to drive the first one away. They were not in the jungle, they were in a parking lot. For an instant the heat lightning brightened up an ominous cloud bank miles to the south and just as quickly left them in darkness.

“Do you have what you need in the small bag?” Milton asked hopefully.

Marina shook her head. “Books,” she said, “a coat.” The manual for the phone that was lost. A neck pillow for sleeping on the plane. A copy of The Wings of the Dove , which she brought because she thought it was long enough to see her through the entire trip. A copy of the New England Journal of Medicine , which contained a chapter of Dr. Swenson’s report—“Reproductive Endocrinology in the Lakashi People.”

“Then we must get you some things tonight,” he said. His brother-in-law ran a store in town. Milton took out his cell phone, assuring her the brother-in-law would be amenable to meeting them with the keys despite the late hour, not a problem, and Marina, who very much wanted a toothbrush, accepted.

Milton was careful to maneuver around those potholes which could be maneuvered around. He drove cautiously through the ones that could not. People clumped together on corners of busy streets waiting for a light to cross, but when the lights changed they continued to stand there. Girls dressed for dancing pushed strollers past walls pasted over in handbills. An old woman with a broom swept debris through the middle of an intersection. Marina watched all of it thinking of Anders, wondering if he had seen these same people on the night he arrived. She couldn’t imagine things in Manaus changed very much from one night to the next. “Did you drive Dr. Eckman?” Marina asked.