remembered a funeral her father had taken her to as a child, thousands of lights in paper cups floating down the Ganges, the people crowded onto the banks, walking into the water, cutting through the night air filled with incense and smoke. She could smell the rot of the water beneath the blanket of flowers. At the time the spectacle had frightened her so badly she buried her face in her father’s shirt and kept it there for the rest of the night, but now she was grateful for the little she had seen. It didn’t explain what was spread out before her but it reminded her of all the things she didn’t understand. “What do you think has happened?” Marina asked. Some of the people on the shore were dropping their fire now. They were walking into the water and swimming towards the boat. It was quite clear to Marina how people could get on the boat but she wasn’t able to see how she could get off.
“What do you mean?” Dr. Swenson said.
Marina, beyond words, extended her open arms to the shore ahead.
Dr. Swenson looked down at the men who swam towards them. They kept their long throats stretched up like turtles so that they could avoid getting water in their open mouths as they called and cried. Then she looked back at her guest as if she could not believe she was yet again being bothered by the timid rabbits and their foolish questions. “We’ve come back,” she said.
Marina turned away from the ebullient welcome, the burning and hopping and splashing, the never-ending sound of
“They never believe it. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell them. Their sense of time lacks—” But she didn’t finish her sentence. The boat had sharply listed to the right as the men began to hang on to the pontoon on one side and then push themselves up. The case of grapefruit juice slid abruptly, hitting Marina in the ankles and very nearly throwing her into the ones who were just now pulling themselves out of the water. She caught a pole and righted herself. This was the reason Marina’s father always insisted on renting a pontoon boat in those early summers: not only was it easier to navigate and impossible to sink, it would have been very easy to reboard if one of them had fallen over. But no one ever did fall over. The theory was not put to the test. Dripping, the men hoisted themselves on to the deck and stood. They were considerably smaller than Marina, though taller than Dr. Swenson, wearing nylon running shorts and sopping T-shirts that advertised American products — Nike and Mr. Bubble. One of them wore a Peterbilt hat. They slapped their open hands against Easter, his arms and shoulders and back, as if he were a fire that they were putting out. Easter, clearly pleased, slapped them away. There were seven men on the boat, and then there were nine, all of them crying out with piercing intent. The black water was churning with swimmers and from time to time Easter would swing down the light and shine it into the water which served to consolidate the men like tarpon. They looked up and waved. No one could fault Easter for driving over them, they were swarming, but when the slow moving pontoon pressed against a shoulder or head the man simply sank beneath it and then popped up again later, assuming it was the same man popping up there. How many boats throughout history had been met by such enthusiastic locals? On the deck a man was looking up at Marina now and he touched her cheek with a wet hand without making eye contact. Two men behind her petted her hair. A fourth man ran his fingers down her forearm in a way that was almost too gentle to be endured. It was as if she were being greeted in a school for the blind. When a fifth reached up and cupped her breast, Dr. Swenson clapped her hands together sharply.
“Enough of that,” she said, and the men with their hands on Marina jumped back onto the toes of ones standing behind them who were waiting their turn, which caused all of them to still their tongues in their mouths and look at Dr. Swenson with expectation. In that moment Marina knew two things for certain: the Lakashi did not speak English, did not know the word
“They don’t touch you,” Marina said, running her sleeve over
her face.
Dr. Swenson nodded. “At this point they know I exist. I’ve been able to do away with the rest of it.”
There was a narrow dock sticking out of the bank, a single, beckoning finger, and Easter brought up the boat snug alongside it, at which point the men handed their burning sticks to the women and boarded the boat in an orderly fashion, picking up boxes and baggage and carrying them off into the night. Most of them gave Marina a tap on the shoulder or stopped to touch the side of her head, but there was work to be done and no one lingered. Now it was the women who were singing out, and as Marina left the boat with Easter and Dr. Swenson they raised their torches overhead to cast a wider band of light. They wore homemade shift dresses in dull colors and kept their hair in long braids down their backs. There were children tied across their chests in slings, children holding on to their ankles, children balanced on hips, their dark round eyes reflecting the fire all around them. Dr. Swenson trudged up the dirt path into the jungle, nodding from time to time at the women who trilled their vowels in rapture. The children on the ground reached out and touched Marina’s pants, women ran their fingers around her ears and tapped at her collarbone. Occasionally a child, a very small one, would extend a hand to Dr. Swenson and the mother would snatch it back.
“They didn’t know you were coming tonight,” Marina said, hurrying a bit to be closer to Dr. Swenson. She even went so far as to put a hand on her arm. “Sometimes you stay longer in Manaus, two nights, three nights.”
“Sometimes I stay a week,“ Dr. Swenson said, looking forward. “I don’t enjoy it but it happens.”
A pregnant woman reached into the path in front of them and pulled back a low-hanging branch from a tree.
“But if they have no sense of time, and you have no means of contacting them, how do they know when you’re coming back?”
“They don’t.”
“Then how did they know to stage all of this tonight?”
Dr. Swenson stopped and turned to Marina. The terrible darkness was broken apart by so many separate fires that the shadows, like the voices, came at them from every direction. From time to time a chunk of burning stick would fall into a pile of leaves. It was hard to understand how the entire forest had not been reduced to a pile of smoldering ash. “I suppose they do it every night when I’m gone. I don’t actually know. You can ask Dr. Nkomo in the morning. I’m going to say good night, Dr. Singh. Easter will get you settled from here. I’m tired now.” As she spoke the words, Dr. Swenson began to weave a bit from side to side and Marina took a firmer hold on her arm. Dr. Swenson closed her eyes. “I’m alright,” she said, and then she looked at Marina. She seemed to struggle for her breath. “Sometimes this is more difficult than I had imagined.” Dr. Swenson held out her hand and a woman standing beside the path, a woman with one sleeping child tied across her chest and two more children, twins perhaps, holding either calf, took that hand and led her forward into the night. As Dr. Swenson walked away, all the light and sound went with her, the crowd formed itself around the fire she was holding. It should have been Marina who asked for a torch because before very long she was standing alone in the dark.
She would have worried about Dr. Swenson then, how the Amazon appeared to be defeating her, but instead thought of the lanceheads. She wondered if they slept on the ground or in the trees and, if it was in the trees, did their coils ever loosen in the night? Her best bet was to follow the crowd, to stay within the light, but after taking a few steps she felt uncertain as to where she should put her feet. There was so much crackling and breaking all around her. Small thorns tugged at her clothes and she was certain something was crawling on her neck. Just as she was about to call out she saw a light coming up from the direction of the dock, a light that formed itself in a long, steady beam. A flashlight! She felt as if she had never seen anything so modern in her life. Clearly it was Easter who was coming for her. Easter didn’t use a flashlight like a boy. He kept the light focused on the path. He didn’t shine it in Marina’s eyes or illuminate the tops of trees. When he got to her he took her hand and together they walked further into the jungle. There was a sort of narrow path, although it could have been nothing more than a random break in the growth of underbrush. Marina stayed one step behind Easter, putting down her feet in the places from which his feet had been lifted while Easter cleared everything in their way, low-hanging vines and
