Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

“I did,” he said, sitting on her desk and looking over her shoulder so he could see it again. “My junior year of college.”

Marina looked up at him then. “Where did you go?” Marina regretted that she had never spent a year abroad. She could never bear the thought of being so far from home.

“Barcelona,” he said, lisping shamelessly. “My parents wanted me to go to Norway. But who leaves Minnesota for a semester abroad in Norway? When I was there I never thought I’d go home. I used to write the letter in my head to my parents, explaining that I was meant for sun and sangria and siestas. I was the happiest American in Spain.”

“So what are you doing here?”

Anders shrugged. “My time was up. Somehow I wound up going home. I went to medical school. I never went back.” He took the passport from her and looked at it again. “Don’t you think the picture is good? I look so serious. I could be a spy.”

Marina didn’t dream that night. Whatever price the Lariam exacted on her subconscious had been paid that afternoon on the boat, but at some point when she was asleep and dreaming of nothing she was awakened by a breathless cry, the high, hopeless call of an animal in a trap. Marina sat up. “Easter?” she said. She turned on the flashlight and saw such a struggle in his hammock that her immediate thought was a snake. She leapt to her feet, meaning to grab the edges of the fabric and flip it over, to save the boy from what was devouring him, but by the time she had made it out of her net she understood what was happening and she took just a second longer to listen to the sound of his voice, then she reached inside and put her hands on his shoulders. She knew how to wake a person from a dream, how no one ever did it and how it should be done. She shook him gently, letting him flail beneath her hands. He was sweating, shaking, his eyes rolled back. She made all the appropriate sounds he couldn’t hear. She whispered, Okay, it’s alright now . She could not have stopped herself. She took him in her arms and let him cry against her neck while she made him promises, her hand tracing circles in the narrow space between his shoulder blades, and when he could breathe easily again and was falling back into sleep she straightened his hair with her fingers and turned to go back to her bed and he followed her there and climbed beneath the net. Marina had never slept with a child before, not since she was a child herself and had slumber parties with other girls, but it wasn’t a science. She made a space for him beneath her arm and pulled his back against her chest and before there was another thought they were both asleep, safe in the white tunnel of net.

At some point during the night the fire juggling, fiercely screaming Lakashi had been replaced by a working-class tribe, a sober group of people who went about the business of their day without fanfare or flame. Marina found them by following a path to a clearing on the banks of the river, although when she had walked through this spot the night before she would have sworn it was solid jungle. There were women washing clothes in the river and washing children, women gathering sticks into baskets and braiding the hair of girls, every movement they made exposed to the merciless sunshine. There was a large assortment of naked toddlers slapping the water with their hands and stamping in puddles, so many toddlers and crawling babies that Marina wondered if she had wandered into the tribal day care. There were fewer men in evidence but still there were a handful of them carving down the inside of a very large log. They were shirtless, shoeless, and when Marina walked by them they gave her a brief, disinterested glance as if she were a tourist and they had seen her kind before. Boats, of course, were key to river life, and other logs carved into boats were jumbled together on the shore, and in the water a man was paddling away. Two small girls came by wearing shorts and no shirts, each of them with a tiny monkey around her neck that held on to its own prehensile tail with its hands to form a clasp. The monkeys both swiveled their heads towards Marina and showed her their pointy yellow teeth in extravagant smiles. The monkeys alone looked her in the eye. Then one of the monkeys caught sight of some infinitesimal life form in the hair of his little girl and reached up and snatched it off her scalp and swallowed it.

Marina had not as yet been able to locate the two people she knew on this river. Easter was not in her bed when she woke up this morning, not in his hammock, and she marveled at the thought that anyone could be quiet enough not to wake her, especially a child who was himself unacquainted with sound. She hadn’t found Dr. Swenson yet either but that she imagined would be more of a challenge. Dr. Swenson was either standing right in front of you or she could not be located, and in this case there was no waiting outside her office door hoping she would turn up.

The pontoon boat swayed lightly on its rope at the edge of the dock exactly where it had been left the night before and Marina took this as a sign that for the moment all was well. When she went on board the men who had been scraping at the log stopped what they were doing and stood up straight to stare at her, their curved knives tapping against their thighs. It was a matter of seconds before she established her bag was not on board. The deck was empty and there was no place a piece of luggage could be hidden away. Marina ran her tongue over her teeth and thought again of her toothbrush. The morning was already hot and the air was thick with the smell of leaves rotting and leaves unfolding. Down by the water the mosquitoes helped themselves to her ankles and dug a well into the nape of her neck. One flew down the back of her shirt to bite beneath her shoulder blade in a place she would never be able to scratch. She wanted this suitcase much more than she had wanted the one that never arrived in Manaus. She wondered if somewhere in the storage shed where she was sleeping there might be a case of insect repellent, and for the first time she considered the word insecticide in relation to the word homicide . Suddenly she felt a shift among the Lakashi, a collective straightening of spines that was followed by an animated chatter she could not parse into any words she knew. Then she saw a very tall black man as thin as a drinking straw emerge from the jungle, his small wire glasses glinting sunlight. He dipped his head in every direction in a gesture that was less than a bow but considerably more than a nod, and from every corner the people stood and dipped their heads in return. A few of them called out a phrase of greeting and he repeated it back to them, capturing perfectly the same rhythmic swing at the end of the sentence that threw the crowd into raptures. The women held up their babies and wagged them towards him, the men laid down their knives. They proceeded then to engage in a sort of call-and-response, a person in the tribe throwing out a phrase and the tall man repeating it. No matter how complicated a sentence they served he managed to volley it back. The Lakashi were rocking side to side in complete satisfaction, at which point the man gave a much lower bow that seemed to indicate it had all been great fun but now was the time to return to work.

“Dr. Singh, I presume,” he said, walking around a fire to offer his hand to Marina. He wore khaki pants and a blue cotton shirt that looked as if they had been banged out repeatedly on rocks. “Thomas Nkomo. It is a pleasure.” His English was so musical and so clearly not his first language that Marina wondered if he had learned to speak it through singing.

“A pleasure,” she said, taking his long, thin hand.

“Dr. Swenson told us you would be returning with her. I had wanted to meet you last night, to say welcome, but with everyone turning out to greet you I could not even get close.”