State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [122]
“All of them?”
Nancy nodded. “It takes the new girls a while to get it straightened out and no one is perfectly regular after giving birth, but other than that.”
Dr. Budi walked over to a tree near her and looked to find a place where the bark was darkest yellow and dry, then she leaned towards it and bit, her teeth making that same scraping sound. “You’ll try it?” she said, looking back at Marina.
“I should take her vitals,” Nancy said, pulling out the blood-pressure cuff again. “Budi, take her temperature.”
“Why would I?” Marina said.
“We need people to test. People who aren’t Lakashi. We do it.”
“But I’m not going to get pregnant.”
Nancy Velcroed a cuff around Marina’s arm and began to pump it tighter and tighter. Dr. Budi held up a flat plastic thermometer and Marina, sure of nothing, opened her mouth.
“You would not be alone in that,” Dr. Budi said.
“Believe me, there are plenty of things to test you for. You don’t have to get pregnant.”
“Thomas will tell you,” Dr. Budi said, and then as if on cue, Dr. Nkomo broke through the thicket outside the stand of Martins and was walking towards them.
“I see I am sufficiently late,” he said, bowing his head to the three women.
“Men and women don’t come to the stand at the same time,” Nancy told Marina. “The women chew the trees and the men gather the Rapps.”
“Division of labor,” Dr. Budi said. Nancy removed the blood-pressure cuff and pressed two fingers to the side of Marina’s wrist to find her pulse.
“First time, yes?” Thomas said.
Marina nodded, keeping her mouth fixed to the thermometer.
“Ah, very good. Just remember to keep your tongue pushed down. Otherwise you can get splinters.”
“Although we’re geniuses at taking them out,” Nancy said. “Pulse sixty-four. Well done, Dr. Singh.”
Thomas brought his mouth to the tree beside him and, far above the band of scarring, began to scrape down the bark. Marina took the thermometer out of her mouth. “Wait a minute,” she said.
“The Martins have many purposes,” Nancy said. “For years Dr. Rapp thought that part of the hallucinogenic qualities in the mushrooms must come from the root system of the tree, that it must in some way be leached from the trees themselves, so he assumed that by chewing bark the women were, in essence, giving themselves a little bump. It was Annick who made the connection between the trees and extended fertility. Apparently he never noticed that they kept getting pregnant.”
“She still is always giving Dr. Rapp the credit,” Dr. Budi said, not as a correction, simply as a statement.
“If you look at their notes from that time it’s quite clear.” Thomas took a handkerchief out of his pocket and touched it to the corners of his mouth.
“It wasn’t until 1990 that she made the connection between the Martins and malaria,” Nancy said. “And that was definitely her discovery. Dr. Rapp was barely in the field by the nineties.”
“She still gives him credit,” Dr. Budi said. “Says he had mentioned it before.”
Thomas Nkomo shook his head by way of acknowledging the sadness of a woman who was so quick to assign her achievements to a man. “This is the greatest discovery to be made in relation to the Lakashi tribe. Not the Rapps or the fertility but the malaria.”
“I don’t understand,” Marina said, and she didn’t, not any of it.
“Lakashi women do not contract malaria,” Dr. Budi said. “They have been inoculated.”
“There is no inoculation for malaria,” Marina said, and the other three smiled at her, and Thomas bit the tree again.
Nancy Saturn pointed out the small purple moth resting on the white