Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

“It doesn’t seem that anything much has changed,” Marina said, looking to the riverbank and the straight wall of plant life, not a single person on the shore now, not a hut, a boat, in any direction.

“Don’t be fooled by the scenery,” Dr. Swenson said. “Things were very different then. You didn’t turn a corner and find a square mile of forest burned into a field. You didn’t see the constant smoke the way you do now. And the Lakashi, even they’re different. They lose their skills as fast as the basin loses forest. They used to make their own ropes, they wove cloth. Now even they manage to buy things. They cut down two or three trees and tie them together, float them to Manaus and sell them, that’s enough money for kerosene and salt, a river taxi ride back home, maybe some rum if they can strike a good deal, but for the most part they are terrible at dealing. They pick up clothing in town, the very junk that Americans drop off at the Salvation Army box. One time when I was visiting, this was years ago, the tribal elder, a man they called Josie, met me at the dock wearing a Johns Hopkins T-shirt. I had left my class at Hopkins that morning and flown to Brazil and taken a boat down a half a dozen splitting rivers only to be greeted by a Johns Hopkins T-shirt.” She shook her head at the memory of it. “Dear God, he was proud of that shirt. He wore it every day. In fact he was buried in it.”

“So you would teach all week and see patients and then fly down here on the weekends?”

“Not every weekend, nothing like that, though if there had been enough time or enough money I might have. There was so much work to do down here. I would leave late Thursday night after my last class. I only had office hours on Friday, and I didn’t keep office hours. I never believed in them. Questions are for the benefit of every student, not just the one raising his hand. If you don’t have the starch to stand up in class and admit what you don’t understand, then I don’t have the time to explain it to you. If you don’t have a policy against nonsense you can wind up with a dozen timid little rabbits lined up in the hall outside your office, all waiting to whisper the same imbecilic question in your ear.”

Marina clearly remembered being one of those same Friday rabbits herself, waiting for hours in the chair beside the office door until another student coming down the hall had the decency to explain that she was waiting for nothing. “The department chair didn’t mind that you didn’t keep hours?”

Dr. Swenson lowered her chin. “Did you attend parochial school as a child, Dr. Singh?”

“Public,” Marina said. “And so you came back on Sunday and taught Monday’s class?”

“It was a red-eye coming back. I’d land Monday morning and have the taxi take me straight to campus.” She stretched her arms overhead, the straying springs of her white hair reaching out in every direction. “I never looked my best on Mondays.”

“I never noticed,” Marina said.

“That’s one thing I have to give to your Mr. Fox: he made it possible for me to stay down here and do my work. I can’t say I am undisturbed, as he makes every effort to disturb me himself, but I am free of the madness that comes from trying to conduct meaningful research when your subjects are in another country. I’ve been down here full time for ten years now. The first three years I pieced together grants but the constant search for funding was more time consuming than flying back and forth to teach. There wasn’t a major pharmaceutical company in the world that wouldn’t have been willing to foot the bill for this but in the end Vogel won. I give credit where credit’s due.”

Easter slowed the boat and then put it in reverse, which, with their forward momentum, achieved a sort of churning stillness. He steered it into what appeared to be a slight indentation in the solid wall of trees and then took the rope that was already in his hand and flung it over a branch that hung out over the water at a better angle than all the other branches.

“Well, that worked out nicely,” Marina said when the rope was safely caught. She would rather talk about branches and rope than her Mr. Fox .

“It always works out well. That’s Easter’s tree. That’s the one he waits for. He knows exactly where to go.”

Marina made a slow circle. Thousands of trees, hundreds of thousands of trees as far as she could see on both sides of the river without a single clearing. Branches ad infinitum, leaves in perpetuity. “He remembers one branch? I don’t see how it would be possible to remember one branch.” From time to time a flock of birds would explode shrieking from the tangled greenery but the jungle looked so impenetrable that Marina couldn’t imagine how birds were able to fly into it. How could one bird ever make its way back to the nest? How could Easter remember the best place to tie the boat?

“It has been my observation that Easter remembers everything,” Dr. Swenson said. “When I said I believed that his intelligence may be above average I didn’t mean it sentimentally.”

Every act the boy performed was done with a graceful efficiency of movement: he shut down the engine, tied a knot, turned around to nod at Dr. Swenson.

“Very good!” she said, holding two thumbs up.

Easter smiled. The minute they were properly moored he became a child again, the one that Marina had first seen outside the opera house, the one Jackie had held in his arms. The boat was now the responsibility of the tree and for these moments he could be on his own. He pointed to the water and looked again to Dr. Swenson. She nodded, and as quickly as she could move her head he pulled off his T-shirt, showing them the smooth brown skin of his chest, the matchstick of his torso. He scrambled on top of two boxes of canned apricots and flying up and over the ropes that stood in place for a proper railing he launched his body rocket-wise, up and over, up and out, out and into the brown water with a resounding splash, his knees pulled up to his chest, his chin tucked in, his arms lifted up to the light. And then he was gone.

Marina was at the edge of the boat in two steps while Dr. Swenson made herself busy looking for something in a brown paper bag. The water was velvety, undisturbed by the weight of so small a boy. It didn’t even trouble itself to give up a reflection the way most water would. There was nothing on the surface and nothing beneath it. “Where is he!” Marina cried.

“Oh, that’s part of the trick. He thinks he’s scaring me to death. That’s the big fun of it all.” Dr. Swenson rooted through a bag of loose items. “Do you eat peanut butter? Americans are all determined to be allergic to peanuts these days.”

“I can’t see him!” The water was as impenetrable as the earth itself. The boy had been swallowed whole, a minnow, a thought.

Dr. Swenson raised her head and, looking in Marina’s direction, she sighed. “There is a great temptation to tease you, Dr. Singh. Your earnestness makes you very vulnerable to that, I’m sure. The child has the lungs of a Japanese pearl diver. He’ll resurface two-thirds of the way across in a direct line with the boat.” She waited one count. “Now.”

And up came the head of the boy who flipped his wet hair aside and raised his hand and waved. The light on the planes of his face made him golden. Even at this distance she could see his enormous inhalation before he dove again, this time kicking his legs up straight so that the light caught the pink soles of his feet before they disappeared. Marina sank down on the case of apricots, the place from which those feet had so recently catapulted, and she cried.

“Peanut butter and marmalade,” Dr. Swenson said, dealing out six slices of bread along the top of a box as if it were a poker game. She twisted closed the plastic bag with a piece of wire and picked up a battered knife with a long narrow blade. She stuck the blade into a jar of marmalade. “Rodrigo got the Wilkins and Son. Now there is a man who knows how to keep his customer’s business. One underestimates the pleasures of marmalade until one has been separated from it. Be sure to enjoy the bread. When this loaf goes that’s it, no more. It just doesn’t keep. I bring back yeast and they bake some but it has almost nothing in common with the store-bought bread. This, I must say, is delicious.”