State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [99]
But if she taught them to tolerate her research she had not made them good company. They rarely offered to share their dried fish and regurgitated manioc root, not that anyone wanted it, but it was the most basic lesson in any Introduction to Anthropology class: the sharing of food was the primary symbol of harmonious communal living. Then again, Dr. Swenson strictly forbade the sharing of the scientists’ food among members of the tribe as she believed that a jar of peanut butter was more corrupting to indigenous ways than a television set, so it was possible that the Lakashi’s unwillingness to offer up their bread was only a matter of passive retaliation. It was Easter alone who ate from both tables, or, more accurately, both pots. The Lakashi didn’t knock on the door of the lab to extend an invitation on the nights they decided for no discernible reason to dance until three in the morning, and they left no note when they cleared out, all of them together, which they did from time to time, leaving behind the most unnerving silence. When they came back twelve hours later they were red-eyed and quiet, walking on their toes in their collective indigenous hangover. Even the children smelled of a peculiar smoke and sat like stumps on the bank of the river, an entire line of them staring straight ahead without scratching their insect bites.
“We used to call it a vision quest in honor of the indigenous Americans,” Dr. Swenson had said when Marina ran to the lab in a sweat-soaked panic asking what had happened to everyone. She had been in camp three days when, in the manner of a horrible scene from a science fiction movie, they all disappeared. “That was the perfect name for what they were doing until it also became the name of a video game and the rallying cry for every pack of middle-aged New Agers who were looking to legitimize their interest in psychedelics. I don’t have a name for it anymore. I wake up and see they’re gone and I think, Oh, it’s time for that again.”
“Have you ever gone with them?” Marina asked.
Dr. Swenson was working through a complicated looking equation in a spiral notebook but she didn’t seem to mind carrying on the conversation while she wrote down strings of numbers. There were computers in the lab but between the undependable electricity and the overpowering humidity that from time to time seized the generators like a fever, everyone was more inclined to do their important calculations by hand, proving legions of math teachers correct. “No one goes with them now. In retrospect, I think it was only Dr. Rapp they were inviting and the rest of us held his coattails. Once he stopped coming on expeditions, the Lakashi simply went out in the middle of the night while we were sleeping. Never have I known a people who could one hour be as loud as a blitzkrieg and the next hour maintain perfect silence while walking through dried leaves. They can move their entire operation out of here without breaking a twig.”
Marina waited for an answer to the question she had asked but Dr. Swenson’s attention had fallen back to the math before her. It occurred to Marina that these sorts of conversations were exactly the reason the Bovenders worked so hard to keep Dr. Swenson separated from society. Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one’s partner on both the left and the right. “But you did go?”
Dr. Swenson glanced up for a moment as if surprised to see Marina was still there. “Of course, when I was younger. It seemed fascinating at the time, as if we had discovered something central to the identity of the people. It was very important to Dr. Rapp, it was important to the entire field of mycology. I picture all those students now, boys from Park Avenue and Hyde Park and Back