State of Wonder

by Ann Patchett

  “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 del
icious.”

  She had thought he was dead, and as stupid as that was she could not control her imagination. Of course the boy could dive, could swim. He would come back in the boat and take them where they needed to go. How had she become so dependent on a deaf child in less than twenty-four hours? What in the world was she crying for?

  “Pull yourself together, Dr. Singh,” Dr. Swenson said, keeping her attention fixed on the even distribution of peanut butter over bread. “He’ll be back on the boat in a minute and it will upset him greatly to see you carrying on. He’s a deaf child. He does everything to make you forget that, so it is your responsibility as the adult to remember. You can’t explain to him why you’re crying. I have not invented a sign with which to convey foolishness, so you cannot tell him you are just being foolish. You’ll frighten him, so stop it.” Easter was on the surface now doing an extravagant backstroke and the sound of his splashing was soothing to both of the women in the boat. Using the same knife, Dr. Swenson cut the sandwiches into triangles and left them there on the box. “Come and get your lunch now,” she said to Marina. It was an imperative rather than an invitation.

  Marina pressed her eyes against the sleeve of her shirt. “It just scared me. That’s all,” she said. Neither her voice nor her explanation sounded convincing.

  “We aren’t even there yet,” Dr. Swenson said, and took a triangle of sandwich for herself. “You’re going to have to toughen up or as God is my witness I will put you on the shore right here. There are more frightening things in the jungle than a boy going swimming in a still stretch of river.”

  After Easter was back on the boat, as sleek and damp as a seal, and the sandwiches had been eaten (he handled the peanut butter jar with such gentle affection afterwards that Dr. Swenson consented to make him another), it was announced that there would be a nap. “Sesta,” Dr. Swenson said, and clapped her hands. The Portuguese made it sound essential. “It is said the sesta is one of the only gifts the Europeans brought to South America, but I imagine the Brazilians could have figured out how to sleep in the afternoon without having to endure centuries of murder and enslavement.” She tapped Easter and pointed to a low trunk in front of the steering wheel, then she closed her eyes and rested her head against her folded hands in a child’s pantomime of sleep. Having his directions, the boy pulled two hammocks from the box and then set to clipping them onto poles beneath the shade of the boat’s tarp.

  “Before I came to the jungle I didn’t believe in napping,” Dr. Swenson said, choosing the hammock nearest the steering wheel for herself. “I thought of it as a sign of weakness. But this country could make a napper out of anyone. It is important to pay attention to what the body is telling us.” She settled herself into the long piece of fabric and when she leaned back and lifted up her feet the hammock swallowed her whole. Marina looked at her teacher, a low-hanging lump cocooned in striped cotton swaying from side to side, the energy of her lying down to rest creating motion. “Go to sleep now, Dr. Singh,” the muffled voice said. “It will do your nerves a world of good.”

  It was as if Dr. Swenson had vanished from the boat, as surely as Easter had vanished from it when he went over the side. Marina watched the hammock until its motion had settled. It was a magic trick: wrap her in a blanket and she’s gone. The quiet that was left without her was layered, subtle: at first Marina heard it only as silence, the absence of human voices, but once her ear had settled into it the other sounds began to rise, the deeply forested chirping, the caw that came from the tops of trees, the chattering of lower primates, the incessant sawing of insect life. It was not unlike the overture of the opera in which the well-trained listener could draw forth the piccolos, the soft French horn, a single meaningful viola. She leaned out from the shade’s protection and looked into the sun. Her watch said two o’clock. Easter sat on the deck in front of one of the many boxes that made up their furniture, a ballpoint pen in his right hand. Marina touched the empty hammock and then pointed to him. She folded her hands together and rested her head on them.

  Easter shook his head, pointed to her, the hammock. He closed his eyes and dropped his chin. When she only stood there watching him he pointed again, this time using the pen for emphasis. She was supposed to go in the hammock.

  It wasn’t a bad idea. She was tired. Still, she had the feeling that vigilance was in order. Didn’t someone need to stay awake and watch the jungle? Didn’t someone need to make sure the child did not fall overboard?

  Easter got up and spread out the fabric with both hands, holding it open for her like an envelope and nodding instructively, as if perhaps the operation of a hammock was confusing to her. So he would watch the jungle. He would make sure she did not fall into the water. Obediently, she sat down, she lay down, and when she was settled in, Easter put his hand on her forehead and held it there as if she were a sick child. He smiled at her, and smiling back she closed her eyes. She was on a river in a boat in Brazil. She was in the Amazon taking a nap with Dr. Swenson.

  She had had a good imagination as a child, though it had been systematically chipped apart by years of studying inorganic chemistry and charting lipids. These days Marina put her faith in data, the world she trusted was one that she could measure. But even with a truly magnificent imagination she could not have put herself in the jungle. She felt something slip across her rib cage—an insect? a bead of sweat? She kept still, looking out through the top of the hammock at the bright split of daylight in front of her. The midday heat tacked her into place. She thought about medical school, the fluorescent halls of that first hospital, the stacks of textbooks that made her back ache as she lugged them home from the library. Had she known that Dr. Swenson caught the last flight to Manaus after Thursday’s lecture on endometrial tissue, would she have wished that she could come along? Could she have seen herself in the Amazon at the side of her teacher on an expedition that forged ahead in science’s name? Dr. Swenson certainly had no trouble envisioning herself in the Amazon with Dr. Rapp when she was a student. Wasn’t it possible that she could have managed the same? Marina attempted to shift the knot of her hair to one side so that she was not lying on it so directly and in doing so set herself back into a gentle rocking. The answer was no. Marina had been a very good student, but she only raised her hand when she was certain of the answer. She excelled not through bright bursts of inspiration but by the hard labor of a field horse pulling a plow. On the few occasions Dr. Swenson noticed her she had approved, but she had never been able to remember Marina’s name.

  When the rocking stopped Marina tilted her hips back and forth to start it up again. There were layers upon layers of scents inside the hammock—the smell of her own sweat which brought up trace amounts of soap and shampoo; the smell of the hammock itself which was both mildewed and sunbaked with a slight hint of rope; the smell of the boat, gasoline and oil; and the smell of the world outside the boat, the river water and the great factory of leaves pumping oxygen into the atmosphere, the tireless photosynthesis of plants turning sunlight into energy, not that photosynthesis had an odor. Marina inhaled deeply and the scent of the air relaxed her. Brought together, all those disparate elements turned into something wholly pleasant. She wouldn’t have thought that would be the case.

  Marina closed her eyes. She could feel the boat wagging gently in the current of the river as it pulled on its line. She could feel the light and layered motion of the water coming up through the boat and up the poles that held the hammock and from there into the hammock and into her bones, and that was the movement that sent her to sleep.

  Her father was there, but he was in a terrible rush. She was going back to the university with him. He was late for the class he was teaching and the streets of Calcutta were packed in a human knot, more and more people pushing to find their place on the pavement, so many students rushing to get to class themselves. She held his hand as a way to keep from losing him in the crowd and she thought of how they must look, the two of them
holding hands. When a woman walking quickly in the opposite direction with a sack of rice on her head wedged herself between them as if there was no other way she could possibly go, Marina latched onto the back of her father’s belt before he had the chance to slip away. She was trying to outsmart the dream. She knew it well enough by now. Her father was so fast! She was looking at the little bit of gray in the back of his hair, which was still very thick and mostly black, when suddenly a man with a cart full of bicycle tires rushed at them. How could he get so much speed in this crush? The dream was intent on its own historical set of rules—it is written that the two of them must be divided—and so he rammed his cart between them as if he meant to go through her arm. The blow hit her with such velocity that she went flying up into the air. It was like a dream, and for the instant she was above the crowd she saw everything, all the people and the animals, the terrible shacks that lined the road to the grand houses, the beggars and their bowls, the gates of the university, her father’s slim shoulders as he dashed ahead unencumbered by her weight. She saw everything, the impossibility of everything, before she crashed down on the pavement, the entire weight of her body coming onto her elbow.

  “Is it a snake?” Dr. Swenson shouted at her. “Have you been bitten, Dr. Singh?”

  Marina was on the deck of the boat. It was a very slight distance to fall. Suspended in her hammock she had been no more than three feet off the ground, but be that as it may the ground had come up hard and knocked the wind out of her. When she opened her eyes she saw feet in tennis shoes and beside them, small brown feet. She took another minute to breathe.

  “Dr. Singh, answer me! Is there a snake?”