State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [118]
In fact, she had written just such a sentiment last night to Mr. Fox, sitting on the floor of the sleeping porch and using the chair as a desk because Easter had already gone to bed. (Since the snake, his hammock had hung empty until a marmoset took it up for afternoon naps. It was a filthy little creature.) I find myself following your advice now that I have no direct way of reaching you. You would tell me to wait and observe. You would tell me there is more to this situation than I could immediately understand and you would be right, just as you were right to tell me to come here and right to tell me (I know this is what you would say) to stay. Look how agreeable I’ve become since I’ve been gone! I can hardly believe how close I came to getting on the next flight home. I would have suffered through Manaus only to miss the very thing I had come for.
Far to the west, Budi and Nancy and Marina heard a rustling of branches as two young women laughing and talking in what Marina still considered to be an impenetrable language passed at a distance, nodding their heads with disinterest when they spotted the doctors. One of the older women was walking from the direction of the river holding the hand of a young girl. Three more suddenly appeared from behind a large, dead stump. “You would think they all had alarm clocks,” Nancy said as more and more women stepped from the underbrush and headed in the same direction. They were on a path Marina didn’t think she had been on before although she couldn’t be sure. Paths opened up when she studied the undergrowth carefully and then disappeared as soon as she turned her head. She had a mortal fear of following one path into the jungle and then being unable to find it again when she was ready to go out. If Marina had it all to do over again she would have brought sacks of red yarn with her so she could tie one end of the ball to the foot of her bed every time she entered the labyrinth.
“It is the Lakashi biological clock,” Dr. Budi said, and Nancy and Marina laughed. Dr. Budi smiled shyly, having made so few successful jokes in her life.
It wasn’t often that Marina dwelled on the contents of either of her lost suitcases but there were moments, and this was such a moment, when she would have liked a real pair of shoes instead of the rubber flip-flops. She would have liked a long sleeved shirt that would have saved her arms at least from the smaller thorns, and a pair of pants to protect her from those random blades of grass which when brushed past at exactly the right angle could slice the shin like a razor. The small amount of blood that beaded and then seeped from her leg was an advertisement for all she had to offer. It felt as if they were going a very long way, but distances, like directions, were hard to measure. It could have been that this particular path (were they on a path?) had more fallen trees lying across it that required clambering over, more mysterious sinkholes of standing water heralded only by a sudden sponginess underfoot. It could be that they were only two or three straight city blocks away from their destination but that distance was meaningless given the obstacles they had still to overcome. Marina brushed her hand across the back of her neck and dislodged something with a hard shell. She had learned in time to brush instead of slap as slapping only served to pump the entire contents of the insect, which was doubtlessly already burrowed into the skin with some entomological protuberance, straight into the bloodstream.
The Lakashi women were singing now. No, they weren’t singing. It was just that so many of them were talking at once and when their voices came together it sounded vaguely like a section of Torah as sung by a group of bar mitzvah boys whose voices had yet to change. “Do you know what they’re saying?