State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [103]
“Dr. Swenson was born in Maine and she doesn’t seem distracted.”
“Dr. Swenson may never be cited in conversations about how normal people respond to their environment.” Some freakish brand of great white bird with a wing span of a pterodactyl flapped down the river towards them. It had a bare black head, a long black bill, and a red ring around its skinny neck. They all stood paralyzed by the sight of it, watching until it took a hard left into the foliage and vanished. Dr. Saturn formed his hand into a visor against the afternoon sun. “Anders would have known what that was.”
After a flurry of turning pages, Benoit held up the picture of the bird in Anders’ book, thrilled to have found it so fast. He showed it to Dr. Saturn, who nodded approvingly at the correct match. “Jaribu stork,” Dr. Saturn said.
Benoit, one of those young men who hoped for a career in tourism, had as a child been collected for a missionary school that had popped up briefly several tributaries away. Thanks to a group of Baptists from Alabama he could read and write in Portuguese and had memorized Bible verses which he could recite at will, skills that had made him one of the least contented members of his tribe. Marina came over to look at the picture.
“I’ve brought hats!” Nancy Saturn said, coming down to the water. “I have two. Now you can come with us.” She handed Marina a wide brimmed hat and when Marina hesitated, Dr. Saturn took it from his wife and put it on Marina’s head. The age span between the Drs. Saturn was greater than the span between Mr. Fox and Marina. One could imagine, though it had not been said, that he had once been her teacher. Marina recognized the way the wife leaned towards the husband when he spoke as it was not unlike the way she had often leaned towards Dr. Swenson. In one late-night conversation over a bottle of pisco brandy in which the first Dr. Saturn was holding forth on matters of tropical medicine, the second Dr. Saturn actually took a notebook out of her pocket to write down something he had said. She was discreet, and the paper might have gone unnoticed had Dr. Swenson not asked her rather loudly if she wasn’t capable of simply relying on her memory. Dr. Swenson leaned decisively away from the female Dr. Saturn, whom she clearly regarded as a gate-crasher, a hanger-on, though the younger woman, a botanist with a degree in public health, was probably best qualified to be of assistance. Certainly her credentials were closest to Dr. Rapp’s. “I never rely on my memory when I’m drinking,” was what Nancy Saturn had said.
Easter turned the key and the motor of the pontoon boat began to spit and cough. All of the Lakashi pressed forward now and Marina felt herself jostled from side to side by the shirtless men in running shorts and the women with their pregnant bellies. She found herself looking at their ears and the strings of seeds and animal teeth around their necks and suddenly she realized she had not dreamed of India all week. Her father, who had been missing from her life for so many years, was gone again, and for an instant she had a vivid recreation of that hollow, hopeless feeling of having lost him in the crowd. As she wondered if the Lariam was out of her system now, a mosquito bit the back of her knee.
“Jump!” Alan said, jumping onto the boat himself with the rope in his hand. Immediately the current caught the boat and pulled it away from the shore. He turned around and reached his hand to Marina. “The entire