Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

“This is important,” Dr. Budi said to Marina. “The girl has just completed her first menstrual cycle. The Lakashi rituals are very brief, unsentimental. You are lucky to see such a thing on your first day.”

Nancy Saturn turned some pages in her notebook. “I didn’t realize Mara was menstruating.”

Dr. Budi held up her book. “I have it.”

There were more than enough trees for everyone, maybe two hundred of them spread over two acres of land. The tallest climbed to a height of sixty or seventy feet, but there were plenty of new trees coming up as well. In the places where a tree had been recently eaten, the absence of bark left a mark that was soft and white; growing back, it was the palest of yellows and then darkened over time so that most of the trees at the height of a Lakashi’s head appeared to have been banded by decoupage.

It was easier to breathe in this place, and so easy to see! In every direction the vista was open. No more wondering what might be tearing through the jungle with its wet jaws hinged open. “I never thought there would be so many trees,” Marina said. “I didn’t picture it like this.”

“It’s actually just one tree,” Nancy said. She was counting the women and marking them present by name in her notebook. “They’re Populas, like Aspens, a very rare phenomenon. It’s a single root system. The tree is cloning itself.”

“Very delicate,” Dr. Budi said, nodding to herself.

“The root system changes the acidity level in the soil so that nothing much will grow here except for the trees and a little bit of grass. In a sense you could say the tree poisons the area it inhabits to make sure that nothing else will survive in its space and take the nutrients out of the soil or grow taller and block out the sunlight.”

“Except the Rapps,” Dr. Budi said. “The Rapps thrive right where they are.” She pointed the tip of her pen towards the clusters of mushrooms that grew near the base of the trees, each cap a perfect golf ball on a tall, slender stem. The Rapps were a most unearthly shade of pale blue. They came so close to glowing in the light of day that she wanted to come back with a flashlight and see them in the dark. Marina couldn’t imagine how she had missed them.

“ Psilocybe livoris rappinis ,” Nancy said. “They are considered to be the greatest single discovery in mycology. There has never been any evidence that this ecosystem is duplicated anywhere else in the rain forest, anywhere in the world. These trees you’re looking at here, these mushrooms, this is it. As far as we know, these are the only Rapps in the world. Your passport to spiritual enlightenment.”

“You’ve tried them?”

Nancy Saturn closed her eyes and nodded slightly, holding up one finger.

“Very sick,” Dr. Budi said. “Interesting, everything you see, but too sick.”

“So if the mushrooms are Rapps, are the trees called Swensons?” Marina asked. There was an inordinate number of lavender moths the size of quarters bobbing through the sunlight. Marina didn’t remember seeing them before but then it would be difficult to notice such a small moth in the workaday tangle of vines that suffocated the rest of the jungle.

“The trees are called Martins,” Dr. Budi said. “ Tabebuia martinii.”

“It’s actually the Rapps we’re protecting,” Nancy said. “All the secrecy about the work and the location, it’s so no one can find the Rapps. Scientifically, it’s the Martins that have presented such remarkable potential. The Martins really may prove to be one of the great botanical discoveries of our age. But people have been trying to get their hands on the Rapps ever since Dr. Rapp started writing about them. If the greater world knew where they were—”

Dr. Budi covered her eyes with her hand and shook her head.

“Exactly. This place would be overrun, drug dealers, the Brazilian government, other tribes, German tourists, there’s no telling who would get here first and what sort of a war would ensue. The only thing I know for sure is that the Lakashi would be destroyed. Their entire existence is built around Rapps and while they have easily a hundred times more mushrooms than they need for their rituals they have no interest in drying and storing them. The Rapps present three hundred and sixty-five days a year and so the Lakashi just assume they’re always going to be right here under the trees. I’ve been trying to grow Martins and, subsequently, Rapps, for three years now, and I’m not talking about growing them back in Michigan, I’m talking about growing them in the lab from root dissections, the same soil, the same water, and I can’t do it.”

“You will,” Dr. Budi said.

Nancy Saturn shook her head. “It’s too soon to say.”

Dr. Saturn and Dr. Budi announced that they were talking too much and the window of time for work would not stay open indefinitely. They excused themselves and began going tree to tree asking the women questions that involved the use of four or five words of Lakashi. Nancy took a cuff out of her bag and was checking Mara’s blood pressure. Marina took the opportunity to look at the trees: a small plastic placard, numbered and dated, had been staked in front of each one. She ran her hands over the scarred bark, sniffed at the wood. Had she seen them by a lake in Minnesota she wouldn’t have given them a second look, or maybe one glance back, just because she had no memory of seeing such yellow bark. The Rapps she would have noticed, looking down at the small clump near her feet. They were like a cluster of exotic sea creatures that had washed up a thousand miles inland. How in the world had Dr. Rapp found this place? How had he known to look past the fire waving tribe on the shore and go a mile into the jungle? Marina cut a path between the trees. What a pleasure it was to walk! What a pleasure to take a large step and be able to see where her foot was landing. She raised her arms above her head and stretched. One by one the women stepped back from the trees and began scratching out whatever splinter of bark had lodged between their teeth with their fingernails. Budi picked a handful of women out of the crowd and wiped down their fingers with alcohol swabs and then pricked them to draw the small pipettes of blood. After making notes she carefully pressed the tubes into a small metal case. On the other side of the stand, Dr. Saturn went through a more challenging interaction as she handed three of the women long cotton swabs and waited while they reached beneath their dresses, made a quick flick with the wrist, and handed the swab back to her. Dr. Saturn then tapped the swab on a slide and on a piece of litmus paper.

“What in the world are you doing?” Marina asked.

“Checking the levels of estrogen in cervical mucus.” Dr. Saturn’s carrying case was a more complicated affair and she sat down on the ground to make her notations on the test tube where she deposited her swabs. “The slides are for ferning.”

“No one does ferning anymore,” Marina said. It was the slightly arcane process of watching estrogen grow into intricate fern patterns on slides. No ferns, no fertility.

Dr. Saturn shrugged. “It’s very effective for the Lakashi. Their estrogen levels are quite sensitive to the intake of bark.”

“How in the world did you convince them to—” She wasn’t sure of the appropriate word. Self-swab?

“That,” Dr. Saturn said, “is Dr. Swenson’s genius. The training was in place a long time before I arrived. I cannot imagine how terrified of her they must have been to have gone along with it. These days it doesn’t even seem to register as an invasion of privacy.” The third Lakashi woman handed over her Q-tip without fanfare and Nancy bowed her head as she accepted it.