Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

With everything in her, Marina willed the singers to stop singing, the musicians to put down their instruments in recognition of the unbearable anxiety emanating from the third tier. Such is the stuff of dreams. It wasn’t enough that in this opera the dead were alive and then dead again due to the botched efforts of the protagonist, there were still more reversals of fortune and a very long dance segment to endure, but the ending did at last arrive. Marina and the two Bovenders applauded violently, all the repressed energy of waiting finally able to release itself into their slapping hands. “Brava!” Jackie called when the mezzo came forward on the stage.

“It was hardly as good as all that,” Dr. Swenson said behind them.

As if that sentence were their permission, they stood and turned, the three of them, Dr. Swenson’s chorus. “Probably not,” Barbara said, as if this were a conversation. “But it’s just so lovely to go to the opera.”

“Great seats,” Jackie said.

Marina, who was considerably taller in Mrs. Bovender’s shoes, neglected to take Dr. Swenson’s height into account and so looked directly over Dr. Swenson’s head when she turned. She saw another person in the box, a man in a suit who stayed beneath the eaves. Milton mouthed to her a silent hello.

Barbara put her arm around Marina’s shoulder and pulled her close. The gesture could have been seen as possessive or loving and yet Marina suspected it was really an attempt by the younger woman to remain standing. She could feel Barbara Bovender’s heartbeat as she pushed in hip to hip, rib to rib. A low current of trembling rumbled between them and she could not be sure which of them was the source. “Annick, you know my friend Dr. Singh,” Barbara said.

“Dr. Singh,” Dr. Swenson said, and offered her hand, neither confirming nor denying what she knew. The last thirteen years had not touched Dr. Swenson, except that her skin, which had seen very little sun in those Baltimore winters, was now quite tan, and her hair was more white than gray. It still floated around her broad, open face in the same disorganized cloud Marina remembered. She was blue-eyed, bright, her small hand round and soft in Marina’s own. Her clothing was wrinkled, sensible, making no concessions for a night at the opera. It seemed possible that she had come directly from the dock. This woman who had fixed the course of Marina’s life looked for all the world like somebody’s Swedish grandmother on a chartered tour of the Amazon.

“I’m very glad—” Marina began.

“Sit, sit,” Dr. Swenson said, and sat herself to set the example. “She’s going to sing the Villa-Lobos.”

“The what?” Barbara said.

Dr. Swenson answered her with a tremendous glare and took the fourth chair in the first row next to Marina while the soprano, the tedious and beautiful Euridice, put a modest hand to her breast and bent her head forward to receive the maelstrom of applause. The Villa-Lobos, Brazil’s singular contribution to the classical repertoire, was considerably more beautiful than the Gluck, or the soprano was inclined to sing the vocalise with more tenderness than she had been able to bring to her previous role, and for the briefest moment Marina was able to forget what was behind her (Anders’ death) and all that there was still to come (the now inevitable trip into the jungle with her professor) and she listened. It took eight cellos and a human voice to quiet her mind.

“Now that was worth coming in for,” Dr. Swenson said, when finally, after fifteen minutes of thunderous applause, the soprano reluctantly tore herself from the proscenium. As they picked up their programs and opened the door to the box, Dr. Swenson addressed Marina directly. “What did you think of the Gluck, Dr. Singh?”

Tell us about the patient, Dr. Singh. Marina stopped herself. “I’m afraid I’m not a good judge this evening. I was distracted.”

Dr. Swenson nodded as if this was the correct answer. “I feel certain it’s better that way. The Gluck in one’s memory is always more satisfying than the Gluck itself.” She turned and led the way down the hall to the staircase and the four others followed behind. Milton took Marina’s arm for the stairs and she was grateful for the kindness. She spent very little time in high heels and she could feel a sway in

her ankles.

“No one was expecting her?” Marina said. She made her voice quiet but the crowds were pouring into the hallways now and filling up the space around them, everyone chattering to one another, to their cell phones. The air clicked with the hard, bright syllables of Portuguese spoken by Brazilians well pleased with their evening out.

“There is no expecting Dr. Swenson,” Milton said, tightening his grip on Marina’s arm as two young girls cut through the crowd at a gallop pace, their party dresses flipping up behind them to show white underskirts as they took the stairs three at a time. “But there is suspecting. She doesn’t like to miss the opening of the season. I didn’t take any bookings for tonight though there were plenty of people who wanted to come in a car. That is not because I expected her, but because I suspected.”

Marina had lost sight of Dr. Swenson but not the Bovenders, who were a dozen steps ahead. Mrs. Bovender especially was a virtual lighthouse. “I would have appreciated you passing your suspicions along.”

“I might have made you worry for nothing then. She doesn’t always come. She doesn’t always do anything.”

“I understand that, but had I known there was any possibility of her being here tonight I would have worn my own clothes.”

Milton stopped on the stairs, forcing the people behind him to stop. “There is something wrong with your dress? How could there be something wrong with this dress?”

Up ahead Marina saw the Bovenders ride the river of humanity out the front doors of the opera house, their bright heads bent down. She could assume they were talking to Dr. Swenson or at least that they were listening to her. She ignored Milton’s question and tugged him forward.

The night air was heavy and warm but there was a slight fish-smelling breeze coming from the river. Marina and Milton found the other three on the great tiled landing in front of the opera house, their faces turned in the direction of that breeze. Countless thousands of insects poured towards the electric lights that bathed the sides of the magnificent building and flooded over into the terraces and the streets below them. Even in the noise of the crowd Marina could hear the thrumming of wings, the various pitches of buzzing sounds they made. Their enthrallment of the light reminded her of the audience at the end of the final aria. They were driven mad by it. They could never have enough.

“The Bovenders tell me that nothing has changed since I’ve been gone,” Dr. Swenson said as Milton and Marina approached them. “Is that true? An entire city and nothing changes?”

“I can’t think of any changes in the last ten years,” Milton said.

“There must be something,” Dr. Swenson said. Her face was tilted up and the spotlight above her head seemed to shine on her alone. It was as if she had been cut out of light and pasted onto a dark background, powerfully removed from the crowds around her the way she was in memory. Even though this was exactly the person Marina had been looking for, she could not overcome the feeling that two very distant points in her life were now colliding in a way that should be relegated only to bad dreams. The last time she had actually seen Dr. Swenson was the day before the accident. Throughout the inquisition they had no contact and after the inquisition she left the program. She hadn’t thought of that before.

“Well, Marina’s here now,” Jackie offered.