State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [63]
A small man in a dirty white apron came out of the kitchen with two plates of yellow rice covered over with chicken. The meat was the same color as the rice and was glossy and loose on the bone. He gave one to Dr. Swenson and one to the child, whose face became incandescent with joy when he saw what was for dinner.
“We haven’t had much luck keeping chickens,” Dr. Swenson said. “We have both been looking forward to dinner.” She tapped Easter’s hand and at that permission he picked up his fork and began to pull the meat apart by holding the chicken in place with two fingers. She tapped his hand again and handed him a knife. “We have Dr. Eckman to thank for Easter’s table manners. All this is new. It frankly wasn’t anything I’d stressed before, the Lakashi table manners are not our own, but I’ve kept up with it. Dr. Eckman took such an interest in the child. I can only think he was missing his own—” She stopped and looked at Marina, leaving the question unspoken.
“Boys,” Marina said. “He had three boys.”
Dr. Swenson nodded. “Well, you could see it. I don’t suppose I’d thought of this before but surely a great part of my sympathy for Dr. Eckman came from his kindness to Easter.”
The original waiter returned and put a piece of tres leches in front of Marina, who shook her head at the sight of it. She was thinking of those three boys on the sofa, the ones whose hearing was so acute that adult conversations were forced into the kitchen pantry and conducted in whispers.
“I ordered it for you,” Dr. Swenson said, and sent the waiter away. “It’s good cake. It goes with the wine.”
Marina saw the boy eyeing her dessert, caught between the joy of his own meal and the longing for hers. “How long was Anders with you before he got sick?”
“It would be hard to say since I don’t actually know when he was infected. In retrospect, I think he may have picked up something here in Manaus and brought it out with him. I didn’t know Dr. Eckman before this. It’s possible that I never saw him when he was completely himself.”
“You did,” Marina said. “You met him at Vogel before you left. He was on the review committee for your financing.” She pictured Anders leaning against her desk. He had been so certain Dr. Swenson had liked him.
Dr. Swenson nodded, her attention given over fully to her chicken for the moment. “Yes, of course, he told me that. But I didn’t remember him. I wouldn’t have any reason to remember him.”
“Of course,” Marina said, and for the first time it came to her with certainty: She does not know me.
The older doctor took a bite of rice. “It’s difficult to trust yourself in the jungle,” she said. “Some people gain their bearings over time but for others that adjustment never comes. It’s simply too foreign. We can’t find a common application for what we already know. I’m not just thinking of moral issues or rules of law, though both of those apply, but the simple concrete facts of existence aren’t what we’re used to. Take the insects, for example. Hundreds of thousand of new species are discovered around the world every year, and who knows how many other species vanish. The means by which we separate out the deadly from the merely irritating are extremely limited considering that the insect that just bit you might not have even been classified yet, and at what point does constant irritation itself become deadly? You’re bitten by so many things, there’s no way of keeping track. You simply have to accept the fact that whatever it was probably isn’t going to kill you.” She motioned to Marina with her fork. “Did you know your arm is bleeding, Dr. Singh?”
Marina had let the shawl slip behind her in the chair and she could see now that there was a thin line of dried blood about six inches long that came from a puncture of her right biceps. Dr. Swenson took the unused napkin from the fourth place at the table and dipped it into her water glass. “Here,” she said. “Clean yourself up.”
Marina took the napkin and wiped her arm, taking a minute to apply