State of Wonder

“Well, then you wait. The malaria will present in ten days. But it doesn’t present. It hasn’t for any of us.”

“So how can you be certain your mosquitoes are good?”

“The microscope tells us that, and then from time to time we infect one of the men in the tribe from the same batch. Ten days later, clockwork, he has malaria. We bring in some of the women and the same group of mosquitoes can bite them all day long and it’s nothing.” Alan was leaning over another bucket. He blew in before giving them the cotton.

“And this man who contracts malaria, how does he agree to this?”

He stood up and shrugged. “I suppose if this man had a lawyer it could be said that he hadn’t agreed, or that he hadn’t been made fully aware of what he was agreeing to. I’ve got some Cokes in here, I don’t tell Annick that. They love them.”

“You give them a Coke for getting malaria?”

“Don’t make this out to be the Tuskegee Institute. Chances are excellent that these men have had malaria before, or that they would have had malaria eventually. The difference is that when they get it in this room we’re also going to cure it. Curing malaria isn’t the problem, you’ll remember; the problem is figuring out a way to vaccinate against it. If they get sick for a couple of days in the name of developing a drug that could protect the entire tribe, the entire world, then I say so be it.”

“Yes,” Marina said, feeling a little uncomfortable with the argument. “But they don’t say so be it.”

Alan Saturn picked up his buckets and began to arrange them on the counter. “It’s good to get out of the American medical system from time to time, Marina. It frees a person up, makes them think about what’s possible.” He took an empty plastic cup off the table and held it out in her direction. “Do you feel like trying it? At least you can count yourself as fully informed to all the risks, and you will have saved one unfortunate native from standing in your place. The best part is, all you’ll wind up with in the end is five itchy bumps.”

Marina considered her Lariam, long gone. She considered her father. She looked inside the cup and shook her head. “I think I’ll wait.”

“Research doesn’t happen in a Petri dish, you know, and mice only go so far. It’s the human trials that make the difference. Sometimes you have to be the one to roll up your sleeve.”

But Marina didn’t stay. She wanted more bark before she became part of the experiment.

Dear Jim,

I see how this could take years, how no amount of time would ever be enough to figure out everything that’s going on here, but I’m going to begin the business of trying to get home. The first thing I’ll have to figure out is the boat. Given Dr. Swenson’s investment in keeping me I doubt she’ll be quick to offer hers. But boats do go by and I know the direction of Manaus. Some days I think I’ll see one and swim out to it, and if Easter swims with me then who would stop us?

Marina wrote more letters now. She wrote them every day. Dr. Budi left her pack of stationery open on her desk and Nancy Saturn was generous with her stamps. She would take Easter with her to the river and they would skip rocks from the shore or go for a swim. Boats did go by — a child in a canoe, a rare river taxi on its way to the Jinta — but then two or three days would pass with nothing. She made Easter keep watch when she was working, leaving him alone with the letters. It would never have occurred to her that it was possible for the system to work, except that it had worked, Anders had mailed letters, who knew how many letters, and some of them found their way to Karen. Yet as often as she wrote to Mr. Fox she hadn’t really told him anything. She hadn’t told him about the malaria or Dr. Swenson’s pregnancy or Anders’ burial. Those things she needed to say to him herself.

Easter and Marina liked the river best at six o’clock when the sun was spreading out long across the water and the birds had just begun to make their way home for the night. They sat on the damp banks, as far away as they could from the heat of the Lakashi’s fire. It was too early to eat and still she wanted to leave the lab for a while, stretch her legs and roll her neck. Sometimes she would sit for twenty minutes, thirty minutes, and other nights she would stay until it was dark. She had never seen a boat go by once it was dark but it was such a pleasure to sit and watch the hot red ball of the sun sink fully down into the jungle that she made the excuse that one might come. Easter pointed out every fish that broke the river’s surface and she pointed out the bats swimming through the purple evening sky. She had gotten very used to spending her time with someone who said nothing at all. She found that watching the coming on of night without feeling any need to comment on it brought about a sense of tranquility that she had rarely known.

It was in that tranquility a boat was spotted in the distance.

She heard it before she saw it, the sound of a well-maintained engine pushing effortlessly ahead. That was in itself worthy of notice as the boats she was familiar with here came in two varieties: the completely silent canoe/raft/floating bundle of logs, and anything with a grinding motor. She got to her feet with four letters in her hand, one for her mother and one for Karen and two for Mr. Fox. The boat was coming on fast, a small round dot of light fixed to the front that was pointing up river, and Easter, ever the thinker, jumped up and grabbed two long branches from the edge of the fire, one for Marina and one for himself, and they stepped into the water until it was up to their knees and they waved the branches overhead. A boat that fast was surely headed to Manaus eventually, even though it was going in the wrong direction for now. She wanted that boat. She swung the fire over her head and let out a high, bright sound, a sound she never would have guessed she had in her. She hoped it would encompass every language in which the words Stop the boat could be spoken. Whether the people on the boat heard her it would be impossible to say, sitting as they were just on the cusp between near and far, but the Lakashi heard her, and they ran through the jungle faster than any boat could travel and picked the fire apart and lit sticks from one another’s sticks and then let out a giant howl, their own particular shibboleth, and all of this so Marina could send off her mail. Bless the Lakashi, and for this one night bless them for watching her too closely, because suddenly their shoreline was ablaze and the noise they made was deafening and the boat, which was almost on them now was certainly slowing out on the dark river though it wasn’t slowing enough to give the impression of stopping, and Marina, buoyed up on the energy of the people, called out with the lungs of a soprano, “Stop the boat!”

All sound stopped, the Lakashi startled into a brief silence by the intensity in Marina’s voice, even the frogs and insects for an instant held their breath. She wasn’t used to it herself, the power of her own voice, and so in the new silence she called again, “Stop the boat!” And the boat, which was past them now, stopped. It turned and slowly came towards the dock, its spotlight sweeping the crowd on the shore slowly, left to right.

“Correspondencia!” Marina called. She had been reading a Portuguese dictionary at night along with the Dickens. “Obrigado, obrigado.” She came out of the water and ran down the planks of the dock, the letters in one hand, the burning branch in the other, and the light from the boat leapt across her and then returned. It hit her squarely in the face and froze her in mid-step. In her own defense she closed her eyes.

“Marina?” a voice asked.

“Yes?” she said. Why did this not seem strange, someone calling her name? It was because of the light she could not make sense of what was happening.

“Marina!” The voice was happy now. She did not know the voice, and then she did. The second it came to her he spoke his name. “It’s Milton!”

The enormity of Marina’s happiness was caught in that light. Of all the tributaries in all of the Amazon he had wandered onto hers. Milton her protector, Milton who would know exactly how to set everything to right. She threw her branch into the water and let out a scream of joy which took the shape of his name, “Milton!” But the scream that met hers was high and entirely female and there bounding over the edge of the boat and into her arms came Barbara Bovender wearing a short khaki colored dress with a stunning number of pockets. Milton was driving the boat for Barbara Bovender! The light of every Lakashi torch was caught in the reflective sheet of her wind-tangled hair. Marina embraced the narrow back of her friend who clung to her neck and whispered in her ear too softly to be heard above the cries of the Lakashi. She smelled of lime blossom perfume.

“How are you here?” Marina said. There was no sensible way to say it — how did you find us and why did you come and how long can you stay and will you take me with you when you leave? Easter bounded down the dock on a wave of childlike glee and straight into Barbara’s arms, burying his face in her hair. Marina felt the smallest ping of something — jealousy? That couldn’t be right. It was so much to take in and it was all too wonderful and confusing. The Lakashi were continuing to sing and the smoke from all the fires was as blinding as the spotlight from the boat. Marina was climbing over the edge of the boat to throw her arms around Milton, her feet bare, her dress torn at the left side seam, her hair neatly combed and braided because she had been sitting for a long time watching the