by Ann Patchett
At some point Barbara had gone to sit next to her husband. They held their wine glasses and watched the growing stack of mail with a flush of guilt on their cheeks. “What will you do with them all?” Barbara asked once Marina had combed the box for the final time.
Marina leaned over to pick up the few strays that had fallen onto the floor. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll take them. I don’t know what I’ll do with them.”
“This one’s different,” Jackie said, and picked up a smaller envelope from the pile.
Marina took the envelope, giving it the most cursory inspection. “It’s from me.”
“You were writing to him too?” Barbara asked.
Marina nodded. There would have been notes from the boys in there as well. Karen would have addressed the envelopes for them.
“Were you in love with him?”
Marina looked up, her hands full of thin blue envelopes. Barbara Bovender was more interested now. She leaned in closer, a glossy chunk of hair swinging forward. “No,” Marina said. She started to say something sharp and just as quick had another idea entirely: yes. The very thought of it brought the blood to her cheeks. Yes. She hadn’t loved him when he was alive, and not when that letter was written, but now? She thought of Anders when she went to sleep at night and when she woke up in the morning. Every street she walked down she imagined him standing there. She imagined being with him when he died, his head in her lap, just so she wouldn’t have to think of him alone, and for a minute at least she had fallen in love with her dead friend. “We worked together,” she said. “We did the same research. We ate lunch together.” Marina picked up the letter she had written. It was no doubt full of statistics on plaque reduction she had thought he might enjoy. She was glad he’d never received it. “You get used to people. You get attached to them. It was seven years. But no.” As far as Marina was concerned the evening was over. She rested the stack of letters in her lap. She was tired and sad, and she couldn’t imagine that she and her hosts had anything left to say to one another.
But the Bovenders wanted her to stay. Barbara said she could make a light supper and Jackie suggested that they watch a movie. “We got a copy of Fitzcarraldo,” he said. “How crazy is that?”
“You could even sleep over if you wanted,” Barbara said, her pale eyes brightening at the thought. “It would be so much fun. We’ll just agree now that we’ll stay up too late and have too much to drink.”
The twenty years between Marina and the Bovenders formed an impenetrable gulf. For whatever she thought of her hotel room, she knew a slumber party might well kill her. “I appreciate it, I really do, but all that sun this afternoon wore me out.”
“Well, at least let Jackie walk you back to your hotel,” Barbara said, and Jackie, in an unexpected flourish of chivalry, was on his feet at once and looking for his sandals.
“I’m fine,” Marina said. She put the bundle of letters in her bag. She wanted to go quickly now, before there was another offer to decline.
Barbara began to wilt as soon as it was clear her company was leaving. Her inability to come up with something more enticing to offer had defeated her. “We manage to make a worse impression every time we see you,” she said. Marina assured her it wasn’t true. Barbara leaned a shoulder against the wall. It couldn’t be said that she was blocking the exit, she didn’t have the girth for that, but clearly she was stalling. “It would be better for me if you didn’t tell Annick about the letters,” she said finally, twisting her bracelets. “I don’t think she’d like it if she thought I was letting people go through the mail, even though you were completely right to get the letters from Dr. Eckman’s wife.”
Marina thought of all the times another resident had asked her not to tell Dr. Swenson something, the lab results that had not confirmed a diagnosis, the details of a badly handled exam. She remembered Dr. Swenson’s canny knack for knowing all of it anyway. “I’m hardly in a position to tell her anything.”
Barbara took Marina’s hand in her two cool hands. “But you will be, when you see her again.”
“These letters belong to Anders and to Karen. They aren’t anyone else’s business.”
Barbara gave her the slightest smile of genuine gratitude. “Thank you,” she said. She squeezed Marina’s hand.
Once Marina was back at the hotel she put the letters on the night table and looked at the neat stack they made. She didn’t like having them there. They were certainly too personal to leave in Dr. Swenson’s box but they were too personal to be with her as well. She moved them to the night table’s shallow drawer beside a Portuguese Bible before calling Karen. She had a need to hear her voice, thinking it would tamp down the guilt for that sudden bout of love she’d felt for Karen’s husband.
“It’s so late,” Marina said. She hadn’t thought about the time until she dialed.
“I never sleep,” Karen said. “And the worst part is nobody calls after eight. They’re afraid of waking up the boys.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“I’m glad. Nothing wakes them up anyway. I called you this morning. Mr. Fox gave me your cell phone number.”
“You’ve heard from him?”
“He checks on us.” Karen yawned. “He’s a better person than I thought he was. Or he’s lonely. I can’t tell. He says you haven’t found her yet.”
“I found the Bovenders.”
“The Bovenders!” Karen said. “My God, how are they?”
“Anders talked about them?”
“And very little else for a while. They drove him out of his mind. He did not love the Bovenders.”
“I could see that.”
“He felt like they were stringing him along, like they were always about to produce Dr. Swenson but they never quite got around to it. He was never really sure whether or not they knew where she was, but he spent a lot of time being nice to them.”
“Well then, I guess I’m right on schedule. How much time was he in Manaus before he found Dr. Swenson?”
Karen thought about it. “A month? I’m not positive. I know it was at least a month.”
Marina closed her eyes. “I don’t think I can spend a month with the Bovenders.”
“What did they say about Anders?”
“They didn’t know he was dead,” Marina said.
There was a long silence on the line after that. Back in Eden Prairie, Marina heard Karen put down the phone and then there was nothing to do but wait. Marina laid back across the bed and stared at the pale water stain on the ceiling that she had contemplated every night since she changed rooms. She wished she could put her hand on Karen’s head, stroke her hair. Such is your bravery. Such is my good fortune. When Karen did come back her breathing had changed.
“I’m sorry,” Marina said.
“It comes on so fast,” Karen said, trying to catch her breath. “They didn’t know he was dead because she didn’t tell them. Why wouldn’t she tell them?”
“She didn’t tell them for the exact reason you just said—they have no means of communication. She only comes to town once every few months. She doesn’t even check her mail.” Marina didn’t know what she was going to do with the letters but she wasn’t going to tell Karen that she had them. That much she could at least be certain of. From thousands of miles away Marina listened to her crying. The boys were asleep in their beds. Pickles was asleep. “Should I call Mr. Fox?” she said. It didn’t seem like a good idea but it was the only one she had.
Karen put down the phone again and blew her nose. She was trying to get a hold of herself, Marina could hear it. She made the sounds of a person who was trying to wrestle an enormous sorrow to the ground. “No,” she said. “Don’t call him. This happens to me now. It’s part of it.”
“I want to tell you something different,” Marina said.
“I know you do.”
“It’
s terrible here, Karen. I hate it.”
“I know,” she said.
That night, which was her first night of fever, she dreamed that she and her father were paddling a small boat down a river in the jungle and that the boat turned over. Her father drowned and she was left alone in the water. The boat had gotten away. Marina had forgotten that her father didn’t know how to swim.
“Now I have something you’re going to like,” Barbara said on the phone.
Marina hadn’t heard from the Bovenders since her visit to their apartment several days before and since that time she had not left the hotel and had very seldom left her bed. She wasn’t entirely sure if the preventative medicine that worked against insect borne diseases was making her sick or if she had in fact contracted an insect borne disease in spite of the medication. It also seemed entirely possible that all of her symptoms, which included body aches and a peculiar rash around her trunk, were psychosomatic—she was willing herself into illness in order to bring this all to an end. But then she wondered if Anders hadn’t reached the same conclusion. I have a fever that comes on at seven in the morning and stays for two hours. By four in the afternoon it’s back and I am nothing but a ranting pile of ash. Most days now I have a headache and I worry that some tiny Amazonian animal is eating a hole through my cerebral cortex. Marina had only read that letter once and still she knew it by heart. “What will I like?” she asked Barbara Bovender, because in truth she could not think of one single thing in Manaus that sounded appealing.
“We’re going to the opera! Annick keeps a box and the season opens tomorrow. We have her tickets!”
“She keeps a box at the opera?” Marina didn’t have the energy for indignation but really, was there no end to this?
“Apparently there was a season several years ago when the rains got so bad she had to come into the city for a long time. She said the opera saved her.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s going to save me. I’m sick. I need to stay where I am.”
“Did you eat something?” Barbara asked. It was the logical question. The market stalls were filled with things that would kill anyone who didn’t have several generations of the proper bacteria in their gut.
“It’s just a fever,” Marina said.
“High or low?”
“I don’t have a thermometer.” She was bored. She wanted to get off the phone.
“Alright,” Barbara said. “I’ll be over in about an hour. And I’m bringing some dresses for you to look at.”
“I don’t want company and I don’t want dresses. I appreciate the gesture but trust me, I’m a doctor. I know what I’m doing.”
“You have no idea,” Barbara said lightly.
Tomo, the concierge, in an act of dogged perseverance and faith that far outreached anything Marina herself was capable of, had continued to call the airport every day regarding her luggage. It had been located momentarily in Spain and then lost again. He was also the hotel employee who was sent up to her room whenever someone called about the screaming, and now he was looking after her because she was sick. He brought her bottles of syrupy cane juice and carbonated soft drinks and hard, dry crackers that stood in for meals. The truth was that Marina, stranded and in decline, elicited the sympathy of the entire hotel staff, but they all recognized that Tomo was in charge of her.
So when there was knocking on her door, how much later she couldn’t say (sleep was like an anesthetic she broke out of and then slipped into again), Marina assumed it was Tomo. She put on the extra bed sheet that was her robe and answered the door.
Barbara gave her a hard stare up and down before speaking. “Oh, you are rough,” she said with her long, flat vowels. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Marina, disappointed that now she wouldn’t be able to go right back to sleep, retreated into her room, which was dark and stale. The Australian followed her.
“I’ve brought you things.” Barbara held up a small, dirty paper sack and a tapestry overnight bag as if they were enticing offers. The housekeepers hadn’t been in for a couple of days because Marina could not stop sleeping. Bits of crackers were scattered over the floor like sand. Mrs. Bovender turned on the light switch by the door and then opened the blinds. “You shouldn’t be living like this,” was all she had to say.
“My standards have changed.” Marina burrowed down into the bed. One would think it would be difficult to fall asleep in front of someone you barely knew but in fact it was the simplest thing in the world.
Barbara took a paper cup out of the bag and pried off the lid. “Here,” she said, and held it out to her. “Sit up. You’re supposed to drink it while it’s hot.”
Marina leaned forward and sniffed the contents of the cup. It was the river, boiled down to its foulest essence. It was even the color of the river. The steam that rolled off the surface was like the heavy morning mist. “Where did you get that?”
“From the shaman stand in the market, and don’t say anything dismissive about the shaman until you’ve given him a try. I’ve been bitten by half the insects in this country. I’ve had some awful fevers, some sores I wouldn’t even talk about. Jackie had food poisoning once. He ate some sort of grilled turtle from a vendor, which was idiotic in the first place. I was positive he was going to die. The shaman’s saved us every time. I could practically open an account with him.”
The shaman would no doubt have direct billing with Vogel. “But I haven’t been to see the shaman,” Marina said, applying logic where no logic could be applied. “What is he basing his diagnosis on? You haven’t seen me either.”
“I explained the situation. Actually, Milton explained the situation for me after I explained it to Milton. The shaman and I don’t exactly speak the same Portuguese, and I think it’s important to get it all right. Milton hopes you’re feeling better, by the way.” She pressed the cup against Marina’s breastbone and held it there until she took it in her hands.
“This is idiocy,” Marina said, looking down at the cloudy liquid. The cup was warm. The smell came up to her in layers: water, fish, mud, death.
“Drink it!” Barbara said sharply. “I’m tired of trying to help you. Drink it all down, one swallow, come on. This is what we do down here in hell.”
Marina, so surprised by the force of the order and by the look of mad frustration on Barbara Bovender’s face, did what she was told and took down the whole foul cup in one long swallow. It was not entirely liquid, it was thicker near the bottom, viscous, and there were tiny bits of something hard and twiglike that caught in her throat. The canoe they were in was a log and it rolled over to the side and she was thrown down with her father into the water. The water filled up her eyes and nose and mouth. She sank before she could swim and all she could taste was the river. She had forgotten until now how the river tasted.
“Put your head back and pant,” Barbara said. “Don’t throw it up.” She got down on her knees in front of Marina, putting her hands on Marina’s knees. Mr. Fox had said the difference between Marina and Anders was that Anders hadn’t had the sense to come home when he had first fallen sick, but oh, it wasn’t a matter of whether she was willing. It was all a matter of able. A chill passed through her, a great shuddering wave that washed over her wet skin and made her spine convulse.
“Okay,” Barbara said quietly, patting at her knee as if it were the head of a very small dog, “here’s the other thing. You’re going to be really sick now, but just for a little while, an hour or so, maybe two. It all depends on what needs to break down inside you. Then you’re going to be absolutely fine. You’re going to be better than fine. I’d be happy to stay with you. I’m free all afternoon.”
Marina looked at her guest but all she could really make out was the light of her hair which appeared to be receding down a tunnel. She said she did not want her to stay.
Barbara sat back on her heels looking disappointed. She took Marina’s co
ld fingers in her hand and bounced them. “Okay, I’ll come back then at five and we can talk about what dress you’re going to wear tomorrow. I brought a few that I think will be pretty on you. It’s good that you have a friend who’s as tall as you are.” She waited. “Are you going to be sick now? Try to wait as long as you can. The longer you can hold it down the better it works. Panting really helps.”
Lines of sweat began to run down Marina’s forehead, down from the crown of her head, down the back of her neck. A clear, thin mucus came from her nose at a rate that exceeded both the perspiration and the tears that were pouring from her eyes. She did not lift her hand to her face. She let the slick wall pour unabated. It was early still but she realized very clearly there was nothing she could do to stop this from happening. The trembling shook her hard enough to knock her teeth and she tried to keep her mouth open. Even if there were an antidote she would never get to it in time. This was the end of the end. She knew what it felt like now. If she lived to see it come again she would call it by name. In one of her last clear thoughts, Marina wondered if she had been murdered, or if by taking the cup herself, she had committed suicide.
Far outside the city the tree frogs were calling her, and the deep, rhythmic pulse of their voices set the blood flow to her heart.
Marina woke up on the cool tile of the bathroom floor, her head resting on a pile of towels. She opened her eyes and watched a bright red spider of medium size slip beneath the sink cabinet. The details of the time that had elapsed, she didn’t know how much time it was, were not clear, and for that she was grateful. She breathed in and breathed out, moved her fingers and toes, stretched open her mouth and closed it again. The shaman-induced illness had left her and in the violence of its departure had scraped out whatever illness she had had in the first place. She was alive, possibly well. Her hip was sore from the angle she had been lying at but that hardly seemed important. Carefully, slowly, she pulled herself upright and then moved the short distance over the ledge of the bathtub where she sat in the bottom just to be safe and let the hot shower beat against her head until the water slipped to lukewarm. After that she brushed her teeth and drank a bottle of water. She was sore and raw but she experienced that distinct mental clarity that marked a fever’s end. She rolled her head from side to side. She walked naked into the bedroom, a towel around her head, to find the room was clean and Barbara Bovender was sitting in a chair by the window reading the New England Journal of Medicine.