Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

“I would prefer something I didn’t already know.”

Milton thought for a moment. “Rodrigo is stocking flea collars in his store. He says you can put them under your pillow, it keeps things out of the bed.”

Dr. Swenson nodded her head approvingly, as if this were exactly the piece of information she had hoped to uncover. “I’ll get some in the morning.”

That was when a slightly built boy, a Brazilian Indian, wandered towards them, slipping easily between adults without touching their clothes. He was noticeable even in the crowd because he represented two groups that were largely absent from the evening: children and Indians. He wore a pair of nylon shorts and a green T-shirt that said “World Cup Soccer.” He looked like the boys who sat on blankets in the square selling bracelets and small animals carved out of nuts. He had the same dark silky hair and eyes that appeared overly large, when in fact it was his face that was too small. Logic would dictate that this child would be selling something as well, children were industrious in Manaus: hawking fans and postcards and butterflies in wooden boxes, but his hands were empty.

“Easter!” Barbara Bovender cried, and dropped down to sit on the back of her heels, a perilous maneuver in so short a dress. She held out her arms to the boy who ran into them, burying his face in her neck.

“It’s the hair,” Dr. Swenson said. “He never can get over it.”

Jackie leaned over to pick the child up and his wife came up as well. The boy had filled both of his hands with her hair and was studying it intently, a luminous rope thrown down from the gods. He was too old to be picked up and clearly it delighted him. “I think you’re bigger,” Jackie said, jostling him up and down as if trying to guess his weight.

“He isn’t bigger,” Dr. Swenson said. She tapped the boy on the chest and when he looked at her she spoke. “Dr. Singh.” She raised her right index finger and touched that hand to her left wrist, then drew a line up her throat with one finger and pulled that same finger into the air from her mouth. Then she pointed at Marina. He let go of Barbara’s hair and gave Marina his hand.

“Look at that!” Jackie said, as if this were a particularly clever trick for a boy. “He can shake.” As a reward he tossed the child up in the air a few inches, up and down and up and down, until he laughed a strange, seal-like laugh and had to let go of her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Marina said. The child’s enormous eyes fixed themselves to her and did not look away. “You could have brought him to the opera,” she said to Dr. Swenson. Had he come with her? “There were plenty of seats.”

“Easter’s deaf,” Dr. Swenson said. “The opera would have been more tedious for him than it was for us.”

“It wasn’t such a bad opera,” Barbara said to the boy.

“He likes to wander when he has the chance,” Dr. Swenson said for him. “He likes to take a look around town.” Easter, perched in Jackie’s arms, his attention rightfully returned to Barbara’s hair, did not turn his head. Even with good hearing he would have seemed too small to be walking the streets of Manaus alone in the dark.

“I would have gone with you if I’d known you were out here,” Jackie said to the boy. “We could have cut out together.”

“He could have come. I think he would have liked seeing all the people,” Barbara said. “There’s a lot to look at in the opera house even if you can’t hear the music.”

Dr. Swenson looked at her watch. “I think this is enough of a reunion for now. Dr. Singh and I should have a talk. I assume you don’t mind the late hour, Dr. Singh. Milton tells me you’ve been waiting.”

Marina said that she would be glad to talk.

“Good. So the rest of you go on. I’ll see you in the morning. Milton, tell Rodrigo I’ll be at the store by seven.”

“May I drive you somewhere?” Milton asked.

Dr. Swenson shook her head. “It’s a perfectly good night. I’m sure we can manage a walk. Can you manage, Dr. Singh?”

Marina, in her column of gray silk and her high heels, was not entirely sure she could manage, but she said that a walk would be good after sitting so long.

“We’ll take Easter back to the apartment,” Barbara said. The child had begun to braid the section of her hair that he was holding on to.

Dr. Swenson shook her head. “He hasn’t eaten. He’ll come with us. Put him down, Jackie, he isn’t a monkey.”

Jackie set Easter on the ground and the boy looked from one party to the other. In spite of not having heard he seemed to be in tacit agreement with the plans. “We’ll see you later then,” Jackie said, finding the part in the boy’s hair with his fingers and smoothing it down. Then, remembering what in fact was new, he held out his hand and Easter shook it goodbye. “Brilliant,” Jackie said.

The streets around the opera house were made of flat stones fitted together into an uneven jigsaw and Marina found herself wishing that Milton had come with them, if not to drive then at least to keep his hand under her arm. Marina was a very tall doctor who worked in a lab in Minnesota and those three things: the height, the work, and the state, precluded the wearing of heels, giving her little experience to draw from now that she needed it. She shifted her weight forward onto her toes and hoped not to wedge the heel of Barbara’s shoes into a crevice. Even as Marina slowed, Dr. Swenson kept to her own unwavering pace, a trudge of metronomic regularity that Marina remembered. In her khaki pants and rubber-soled shoes, she was quickly a block ahead without seeming to notice that she was alone. Easter stayed behind them both, perhaps to alert Dr. Swenson in the event that Marina went down. The crowd from the opera had dispersed and all that remained were the city’s regulars who stood on the street corners in the dark trying to decide whether or not to cross. They watched Marina as she pulled her borrowed shawl up over her shoulders.

“Are you coming, Dr. Singh?” Dr. Swenson called out. She had gone around a corner or stepped into a building. Her voice was part of the night. It came from nowhere.

Are you coming, Dr. Singh? She would dip so quickly into a patient’s room that suddenly the residents would lose their bearings. Had she gone to the right or the left? Marina squinted down the street, the darkness broken apart by streetlights and headlights and bits of broken glass that showered the curb and reflected the light up. “I’m coming,” she said. Her eyes shifted constantly from one side of the street to the other in a slow nystagmus. In order to steady herself, she made an organized list in her mind of all the things that were making her nervous: it was night, and she wasn’t exactly sure where she was, though she could have easily turned around and found her way back to the opera house and from there, her hotel; she was unsteady in her shoes, which, along with the ridiculous dress, made her the human equivalent of a bird with a broken wing to any predator who might be out trawling the streets late at night; if there was a predator, she now had a deaf child to protect and she wasn’t exactly sure how she would manage that; as she felt the blisters coming up beneath the sandals’ straps she could not help but think of the countless explorers throughout history who had been taken down by the lowly blister, then she reassured herself that there was very little chance that this was how she would meet her end given the three different types of antibiotics Mr. Fox had sent along with her Lariam and the phone; and since this was a list of anxieties, she could not neglect the most pressing fear of all: assuming she made it to her destination tonight, she was then to sit down with Dr. Swenson and have a discussion about what exactly? Vogel’s rights and interests in Brazil? The location of Anders’ body?