by Angela Hunt
Emma propped her cigarette on the edge of her dessert dish, then picked up her spoon. “I have decided that the creative spirit we call god is wrapped up in this bountiful planet that provides all we need to survive. Unfortunately, I also believe she has been appropriated by powerhungry males determined to oppress women and children. The god I see in nature has been reworked and reshaped to fit various political agendas in different parts of the world.”
She turned to Fortier. “What about you, monsieur?”
“Me?” Louis hesitated, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “I am a Christian.”
Alex grinned. “Really?”
“Oui.” The Frenchman nodded as he swallowed a spoonful of his dessert. “I belong to the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. We believe God is love, so we were created to love whomever we wish.”
Glancing at her daughter, Alex wondered if this might be a good time to send Caitlyn from the table. She had trained her child to be tolerant of differing opinions, but she wasn’t certain a ten-year-old needed to absorb a full-blown defense of a homosexual lifestyle.
Fortunately, Emma adroitly steered the conversation away from Louis’s statement. “What about you, Lazaro? You were reared in a Yagua village, right?”
The guide inclined his head. “Everyone in my village is Catholic.”
“But your father was a shaman. Doesn’t that mean he talked to spirits?”
Lazaro shrugged. “Claro. But we still go to church when the priest comes.”
“I think I’m going to be Jewish.”
Alex nearly dropped her spoon when her daughter piped up. “What did you say?”
Caitlyn stole a glance at Alex’s face, then smiled at the others. “My mother has always said I should think for myself, and I have always wanted to study Hebrew. I also think it’d be fun to have a bat mitzvah.”
Alex resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. “Eat your pudding. We’ll talk about this later.”
Baklanov, who had been silently eating his dessert, lifted his head. “I must join my friend Alex on the side of the agnostics. After the Soviet Union crumbled and we were granted freedom of religion, I watched to see what would happen. Many people went to church, read the Bible, and spoke in tongues, but I believe they overreacted to events around them. Now life has settled back into the old routine, and nothing is different about the way people live. If God exists, I have never seen him. I see people behaving in strange ways, but I do not see God doing anything in their lives.”
“Touché.” Alex gave Baklanov a look of gratitude. “In any case, whether I believe or not is immaterial. If I believed in God, what good would it do? I’d still be looking for the needle in the haystack.”
“I hope you find it, señora.” Finished with his dessert, Lazaro pushed away from the table. “And I hope you find God as well. It is easy to need him in the jungle.”
1 APRIL 2003
7:08 P.M.
Sitting at his desk, Michael sipped a lukewarm cup of coffee and reflected upon the story he’d heard earlier. The idea of a lost tribe was unbelievable, of course, but the tattooed native might be proof such a tribe existed . . . if he had told Esma the truth. If he had been babbling in the delirium of fever, it was far more likely he had merely recited stories from his childhood, tales as old as the Amazon itself.
Interesting, though, that he had spoken of a shuddering disease. Michael suspected he meant chills; the man had been febrile and dehydrated when admitted, so he had been experiencing chills. But they would have begun hours after the patient suffered the spear attack, and Ya-ree had told Esma he suffered from the shuddering disease some time ago.
Perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps Esma misunderstood. After all, she had been translating a language she did not speak.
Michael sat the cup on his desk and folded his hands, staring at nothing. The office around him was heavy with after-hours quiet, but the dark skies outside had opened up. The rataplan of rain on the roof usually soothed him, but tonight the pounding rain spoke of drums in faraway villages.
What about the man’s odd tattoos? They had been significant enough to frighten one of the orderlies past the point of embarrassment. And though Esma was a kind woman with more than her fair share of compassion, Michael doubted she would have spent the entire day by the bedside of a tattooed Iquitos merchant with a strange tale to tell. Something about the native seemed to either entice or repel everyone he encountered.
Curious, Michael swiveled to face his computer, clicked away from the medical database he’d been using earlier, and navigated his way into a powerful search engine. When the search box opened, he typed shuddering disease, then clicked the enter key.
He tapped his nails on the desk until the results came up: nothing.
Rethinking his approach, he tried again with trembling disease.
After a long moment, a long list of links filled the screen. The first led to a listing from a medical dictionary: kuru, the trembling disease.
He read on to discover that kuru had been reported only among members of the Fore tribe in New Guinea. The disease involved a progressive degeneration of the central nervous system, particularly in the region of the brain responsible for control of the trunk, limbs, and head. Kuru affected mainly women and children and usually proved fatal within nine to twelve months. The condition was thought to be caused by prions and transmitted by cannibalism.
But Michael wasn’t in New Guinea . . . and his patient had walked out of the jungle, which would be impossible with a disabled central nervous system.
Dismissing the idea of kuru, he clicked on the next entry in the list. The link brought up a personal experience essay by a man with Parkinson’s. That disease also caused shivering and uncontrollable shuddering, so perhaps Ya-ree had suffered from Parkinson’s . . .
No. Michael scratched his chin, acknowledging the obvious. He had not seen his patient twitch at all, and Parkinson’s was incurable. Yet Ya-ree had said the shaman cured him.
He clicked back to the search results page and noted several other entries for kuru and another about a Chinese cure for a trembling disease often found in “hairy crabs.”
He rolled his eyes as he closed out the screen. If Ya-ree had not had Parkinson’s, he could have had some other weakness of the central nervous system . . . maybe some unknown condition, or something like dengue fever, which certainly left most patients longing for death. Perhaps the man had suffered from chills and fever many years before, and the shaman of the second village cured him—or the virus simply ran its course. A simpleminded native might have believed himself cured of a shuddering disease.
Impossible to know for certain, really . . . unless the man’s tissues could be examined postmortem.
Michael pressed his lips together. The hospital did not usually perform autopsies on indigent patients who wandered out of the jungle, but it appeared there would be no family to protest. Burials in the tropics were usually accomplished with great haste, so he’d have to put a note in the patient’s record if he wanted to examine the body after the man expired.
Sighing, he wrote up an autopsy order, then stood to walk down the hall and attach it to his patient’s chart.
1 APRIL 2003
11:45 P.M.
CAITLYN IS ASLEEP. I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD ENVY MY own child for anything, much less the simple ability to sleep through the night, but here I am, scratching this by the dim light of our kerosene lantern while she snores across the room.
And I envy her.
I have been trying to sleep since about ten o’clock, two hours after our party exited the dining hall and promised to meet at seven for breakfast. We will have another full day of climbing tomorrow; the dirigible pilot has already scouted another tree—a wonderful mahogany, he says, not more than two miles from the lodge. The mahogany is one of the giants of the jungle, rising above the canopy into the emergent layer . . . if I am not careful, I shall soon begin to write more like a botanist than a neurologist.
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After dinner, Baklanov and I examined some of his samples under the portable microscope. My Micron is more advanced than the Russian model he carries, and he was thrilled to have the opportunity to use my little machine. But it is hard to know what we are seeing—the cultures will require time to grow, so perhaps in a few days we will have a better idea of what we have gathered. We did not spend too long in our study—the battery is rechargeable, but the people at the lodge are only willing to run the generator for short periods. Odd to think we are actually living without electricity for most of the day.
Let’s see . . . this journal will become too long too quickly if I persist in writing every thought that crosses my brain, but it is the best way I know to take my mind off sleep—or, more accurately, my insomnia. (How I hate that word!)
Deborah Simons, a likable lady despite her religious ranting, told me that her official study will be called “Activity of Tabanids Attacking the Reptiles Caiman Crocodiles and Eunectes murinus in the Western Amazon, Peru.” (Translation: Do horse flies bite crocodiles and snakes more often in the wet or dry seasons?)
She says she is merely taking specimens in the canopy, scouting for new ideas. The work for which she is paid occurs every morning and every night, when she goes out to sit by a caged anaconda and captured caiman, both of whom are treated as pets by the lodge staff. For thirty minutes she counts the number of horseflies landing on both animals, records her observations, then puts her work away in time to join us in the dining hall.
Something in me wants to scream about how silly her efforts are— who really cares how many times horseflies buzz around those reptiles? Yet I have spent my entire career around scientists, and I know that such seemingly insignificant grunt work can sometimes lead to great discoveries. So I say nothing negative. I congratulate Deborah on her brilliant scholarship and tell her I hope her efforts result in a better insect repellant . . . and millions of dollars for the chemical company that must produce it, of course.
I am almost embarrassed to be so cynical at the vast age of thirtysix. My mother would not like to hear me talk like this . . . but we don’t always get what we want, do we? I wanted my mother to watch Caitlyn grow up. I wanted to find a cure for the curse that haunts our family before it took my mom.
But Life is a bitter jokester, and lately it seems intent on raising the stakes whenever I belly up to the table. Here I am, as close to pure biology as I have ever been in my life, and I can no longer deny that the family curse has begun to manifest itself in my body.
I could live with the occasional tremors, the moments of panic, and those occasions when words stick to a stuttering tongue. So far, I think I’ve managed to avoid those symptoms—or the exhaustion of travel has masked them.
What I fear most is nights like this one.
Insomnia.
Eternal alertness.
The inability to sleep.
A condition impervious even to my silly “Twinkle, Twinkle” song. The state in which the brain cannot shut off, REM cannot commence, and dreams do not come, thereby depriving the brain of an opportunity to work out the day’s contradictions and process the day’s events. Dreams, they say, deal with material that’s more personally relevant than we have time to cope with during the day, so the process of dreaming is the very thing that keeps us sane and preserves the essence of who we are.
If tonight’s insomnia does mark the onset of my disease, I suppose I am therefore likely to be a raving lunatic by the time we leave the rainforest.
Lazaro said I might need a god in the jungle. If my disease progresses, I might actually agree with him.
2 APRIL 2003
6:00 A.M.
Sitting up into the noisy chattering of tropical birds, Alex clutched a loose puddle of damp sheet to her chest and blinked. She stared up at the nearly opaque mosquito netting engulfing her bed, then pressed her palm to her forehead and groaned.
After writing in her journal, she had stretched out and stared at the soft weave of the beige netting for hours. Sleep had come, finally, but last night had been one of the longest she’d experienced in weeks.
She closed her eyes as the textbook prognosis scrolled across the blank screen provided by her memory: Stage one of fatal familial insomnia included increasing insomnia, panic attacks, and occasional failure of voluntary muscle movements. Duration was usually four months, but might be accelerated in cases where the onset of the disease occurred before age fifty.
Pressing the back of her hand against her brow, Alex bit back a moan. It wasn’t fair. Her mother hadn’t exhibited any signs of illness until age fifty-two, but apparently life intended to play another of its sick jokes on Alex.
She rolled onto her side, her anguish nearly overcoming her control, but Caitlyn must not hear the sounds of her suffering. She was a bright child, far too intuitive for her own good, yet she couldn’t know how far—and how fast—the disease had approached Alex.
Clapping her hand over her mouth, Alex wept silently, hot tears running into her hair and dropping onto the pillowcase. When she heard the creak of Caitlyn’s bed, she swiped her hand over her cheeks and steeled her emotions to obey her will.
“Mom?” Caitlyn’s voice came through the heavy netting. “You awake?”
“Uh-huh.” Alex didn’t dare say more.
“I gotta run to the bathroom. Can I go in bare feet?”
Alex wanted to tell her to get her shoes, but she couldn’t push the appropriate words over the lump in her throat. “Uh-huh.”
She heard her daughter’s footsteps on the planks, the metallic pop of the latch and the creak of the springs on the door. When Caitlyn’s footsteps faded away, Alex swung her legs free of the netting and sat up, then pulled a tissue from her pack and blew her nose.
What a mess she must be.
Inhaling deeply, Alex lowered her feet to the floor, checking first to be sure no other living creatures occupied the space. She looked toward the open screens—day had dawned misty and pink over the jungle. In better spirits, she might have called it lovely.
She reached for her plastic sandals, picked them up, and gave each of them a solid shake before dropping them back to the floor. She stood and slipped her feet into the shoes, then glanced at herself in the small mirror Caitlyn had propped against her suitcase. She had slept in shorts and a tank top—not exactly modest by her mother’s standards, but fine for the jungle heat. She ought to be able to slip out to the bathrooms without causing a scandal.
She pulled a clean towel and clothing from her suitcase, grabbed her toiletries case from the shelf, then stepped out of the bungalow. Caitlyn was approaching on the walkway, and at the sight of her mother she stopped.
Alex brought her hand up to hide her blotchy face, then looked away. “Hey there, cutie. I’m heading down to the shower, okay? You can go back to sleep if you want.”
Caitlyn’s gaze dropped to Alex’s feet, then slowly lifted. A faint smile appeared at the corner of her mouth. “You wearing that to breakfast?”
“They aren’t serving breakfast for another hour. If you sleep through breakfast, though, I expect you to stay in camp today. You don’t go anywhere without one of the guides, okay? Stay away from the river . . . and the jungle. Just hang around the lodge and wait for me to get back.”
“It’s boring around here when you’re gone.” Caitlyn mumbled these words in a drowsy whisper, and Alex knew her daughter was still treading on the edge of sleep.
“Mr. Myers has something really special planned, I’m sure. And you can always talk to the Somerville sisters or Dr. Whitmore. Last night I got the impression she really likes you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Hey.” Alex reached out and gently squeezed Caitlyn’s earlobe. “You’ve got studying to do, remember? When we get home, you have to take your tests.”
Caitlyn mumbled again, but Alex knew her daughter had gotten the point. Homeschooling—or field schooling, to be more accurate—had never been a problem, for Caitlyn always
scored far above her peers on the standardized tests the state required her to take each year. Occasionally some well-meaning educator murmured something about how much Caitlyn was missing by not socializing with her peers, but Alex had always believed adults provided better company for her child. Besides . . . she’d always found packs of children a little frightening.
“Go back to sleep, hon.”
She took a step, but halted when Caitlyn called, “Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“You okay? Your eyes are all red.”
“Allergies, I think.” Turning, she forced a smile and twiddled her fingers. “Go back to bed. I’ll see you later.”
When Caitlyn had returned to the bungalow, Alex walked down to the bathroom, showered and dressed, then brushed her teeth using purified water from a pitcher. Herman Myers had explained that the showers and toilets dispensed chlorinated river water—clean, but still not safe for drinking. To avoid illness, tourists were advised to use purified water for anything that entered their mouths.
Leaving her nightclothes in a neat stack on a restroom bench, Alex walked down to the dining hall. Valerik Baklanov sat outside on a bench, a cigarette in his hand and a taciturn expression on his face. Alex quickly surmised he wasn’t a morning person, but he returned her greeting with a flick of his cigarette and an abrupt nod.
Inside the hall, the Somerville sisters were sharing a table and a pot of coffee with Emma Whitmore. The anthropologist wore clothing suitable for the jungle: khaki trousers, a long-sleeved cotton shirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. The sisters, however, wore fluorescent orange pants, knee-high rubber boots, and matching T-shirts advertising Hooters restaurants—
Some things ought to be left at home.