State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [79]
And up came the head of the boy who flipped his wet hair aside and raised his hand and waved. The light on the planes of his face made him golden. Even at this distance she could see his enormous inhalation before he dove again, this time kicking his legs up straight so that the light caught the pink soles of his feet before they disappeared. Marina sank down on the case of apricots, the place from which those feet had so recently catapulted, and she cried.
“Peanut butter and marmalade,” Dr. Swenson said, dealing out six slices of bread along the top of a box as if it were a poker game. She twisted closed the plastic bag with a piece of wire and picked up a battered knife with a long narrow blade. She stuck the blade into a jar of marmalade. “Rodrigo got the Wilkins and Son. Now there is a man who knows how to keep his customer’s business. One underestimates the pleasures of marmalade until one has been separated from it. Be sure to enjoy the bread. When this loaf goes that’s it, no more. It just doesn’t keep. I bring back yeast and they bake some but it has almost nothing in common with the store-bought bread. This, I must say, is delicious.”
She had thought he was dead, and as stupid as that was she could not control her imagination. Of course the boy could dive, could swim. He would come back in the boat and take them where they needed to go. How had she become so dependent on a deaf child in less than twenty-four hours? What in the world was she crying for?
“Pull yourself together, Dr. Singh,” Dr. Swenson said, keeping her attention fixed on the even distribution of peanut butter over bread. “He’ll be back on the boat in a minute and it will upset him greatly to see you carrying on. He’s a deaf child. He does everything to make you forget that, so it is your responsibility as the adult to remember. You can’t explain to him why you’re crying. I have not invented a sign with which to convey foolishness, so you cannot tell him you are just being foolish. You’ll frighten him, so stop it.” Easter was on the surface now doing an extravagant backstroke and the sound of his splashing was soothing to both of the women in the boat. Using the same knife, Dr. Swenson cut the sandwiches into triangles and left them there on the box. “Come and get your lunch now,” she said to Marina. It was an imperative rather than an invitation.
Marina pressed her eyes against the sleeve of her shirt. “It just scared me. That’s all,” she said. Neither her voice nor her explanation sounded convincing.
“We aren’t even there yet,” Dr. Swenson said, and took a triangle of sandwich for herself. “You’re going to have to toughen up or as God is my witness I will put you on the shore right here. There are more frightening things in the jungle than a boy going swimming in a still stretch of river.”
After Easter was back on the boat, as sleek and damp as a seal, and the sandwiches had been eaten (he handled the peanut butter jar with such gentle affection afterwards that Dr. Swenson consented to make him another), it was announced that there would be a nap. “Sesta,” Dr. Swenson said, and clapped her hands. The Portuguese made it sound essential. “It is said the sesta is one of the only gifts the Europeans brought to South America, but I imagine the Brazilians could have figured out how to sleep in the afternoon without having to endure centuries of murder and enslavement.” She tapped Easter and pointed to a low trunk in front of the steering wheel, then she closed her eyes and rested her head against her folded hands in a child’s pantomime of sleep. Having his directions, the boy pulled two hammocks from the box and then set to clipping them onto poles beneath the shade of the boat’s tarp.
“Before I came to the jungle I didn’t believe in napping,” Dr. Swenson said, choosing the hammock nearest the steering wheel for herself. “I thought of it as a sign of weakness. But this country could make a napper out