State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [123]
“You can’t be serious,” Marina said, leaning in for a better look. “Is there anything he didn’t name for himself?”
“The Lakashi tribe was not a Martin Rapp discovery. If it had been, this place would surely have been Rapptown.” Nancy put a finger just beneath the moth which, like the Lakashi, seemed impervious to the invasions of its privacy. “Agruis purpurea martinet. It takes liquid from the pulp of the Martin, not the sap, which is deeper inside the tree. The insect subsists on the moisture in the wood itself. It ingests and excretes almost simultaneously, processing the proteins from the pulp. Once a year it lays its eggs.”
“In the bark?” Marina asked. When the moth opened its wings it showed two bright yellow dots like eyes, one on either side, then it folded back up again. A butterfly rests with its wings open and a moth rests with its wings closed, she had read that somewhere years ago.
Nancy nodded. “Like the Martins and the Rapps, the purple martinets seem to exist right here. You’ll see one in camp from time to time. They’ll go as far as the river, but we have no record of it feeding outside this area. The key to fertility is found in the combination of the Martin tree and the purple martinet, although we haven’t isolated the moths’ excretions from the proteins in its larval casing. What we know is that it works.”
Dr. Budi wiped an alcohol swab over her own finger and then pricked it herself.
“What about the blood samples?” Marina asked. “Can you actually read hormone levels on such a small amount of blood?”
“Nanotechnology,” Budi said. “Brave new world.”
Marina nodded.
“We’ve isolated the molecules as they are metabolized in the bark of the tree,” Budi continued, “but we’re still charting the impact of the Lakashi saliva, their gastric juices, plasma. What we don’t know is what combination of factors is also giving the women protection against malaria.”
Marina asked if the men in the tribe were susceptible to malaria and Thomas nodded. “After they have completed breast-feeding, the male babies are as likely as any member of comparable tribes to contract malaria, as are female children between the ages when they cease to be breast-fed and the onset of their own first menses, when they begin chewing the trees.”
“So they aren’t actually inoculated. The tree and the moth act as a preventative, like quinine.”
Dr. Budi shook her head. “Preventative while breast-feeding, inoculated when eating the bark. The question is why the entire tribe hasn’t evolved to eat the bark in their youth, but considering how many children die of malaria, there could be a terrible population explosion among the Lakashi were they all to live.”
“But how do you know?” Marina asked. Her head was swimming with this. Had they convinced some men to eat the bark? How had they tested the children? “Could you get some of the women to stop eating the bark?” She looked up again at the trees. She could see now far away against the ceiling of sky the clusters of pink flowers that hung as heavy as grapes.
“There have been a few cases of women who were unable to conceive who after a while stopped participating in the group visits to the Martins,” Nancy said. “But because they had already eaten the bark they were inoculated.”
“Mostly we have experimented on ourselves,” Thomas said.
“With what?”
Dr. Budi looked at her, blinked. “Mosquitoes.”
“So what drug is being developed exactly?” Marina asked. A purple martinet dipped past her and then landed on the front of her dress, its purple wings opening and closing twice before flying off again.
“There is enormous overlap,” Thomas told her. “In