The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [142]
Manuzhai seemed to understand his need to return to the apartment, so she stood up and took her leave of the rest to escort him home, afraid he’d fall from the narrow walkways connecting the apartments and terraces; no matter what they told her, she remained convinced that the foreigners couldn’t see in the dim red light of Rakhat’s smallest sun. Askama came with them, clinging to her mother for a change, but she looked up at Emilio and asked with a child’s bluntness, "Sipaj, Meelo, will Dee be gone in the morning?"
Emilio was speechless. It was his unvarying policy to tell the truth and in truth, after Alan Pace’s death, it seemed all too possible that Yarbrough would not live through the night, but he couldn’t find the words to speak the thought aloud.
"Perhaps," Manuzhai answered for him, raising her tail and letting it drop in what he had come to believe was the equivalent of a shrug. "Unless he gets what his heart wants."
Finding his voice, Emilio said, "Someone thinks it was something Dee ate or drank that makes him sick."
"Sometimes food makes you sick but many have eaten the same food as Dee and only Dee is sick," Manuzhai said, with unassailable logic. "You should find out what he wants and give it to him."
THERE WAS NO real privacy in Runa life. The apartments had, at most, alcoves or irregularities that could serve to separate some habitual divisions of use. No one seemed to own any apartment, other than by occupying it. Families sometimes left to visit other villages and rooms might be left empty for a little while, but if another family liked the apartment, they moved in; when the travelers returned, they simply chose someplace else in the village to stay. Anne and George Edwards found the lack of a bedroom door embarrassing and they’d appropriated the most recessed region of Manuzhai and Chaypas’s apartment, going so far as to set up a tent inside the dwelling. The rest had put up their camp beds in a different place every night or, if the apartment was filled with guests, simply dossed down on Runa cushions wherever there was space.
D.W.’s bed was toward the back of the apartment ordinarily, but Anne had it moved to the entrance so he could get out fast. He’d already had several bouts of intestinal distress and was now lying still, curled around a heated rock wrapped in cloth, eyes closed, face rigid. Sitting on the floor next to him, Anne put a hand on his head, pulling the damp hair off his forehead, and said, "Call if you need me, okay?" He made no sign that he’d heard, but she rose anyway and went to Emilio, who’d just returned with Manuzhai and Askama. "Did you find anything out?" she asked, motioning him away from D.W.’s bed and out to the terrace, where they could talk.
"Nothing useful medically." But he told her what Manuzhai had said.
"Thwarted desires, eh? How Freudian," Anne said softly. It was a Runa notion she had come up against before and she thought it might be a fundamental paradigm of Runa social life. It bore thinking about later, when she had the wits to consider it as an anthropologist.
Sofia joined Anne and Emilio outside. "Okay," Anne said unemotionally, "he went down fast, the diarrhea is very bad, and I am concerned. It’s almost like Bengali cholera. If there’s vomiting too and he gets seriously dehydrated, it could be big trouble."
"Anne, everyone’s had diarrhea and gut pain off and on," said Emilio. "Perhaps he’ll just have a bad night and be fine in the morning."
"But." Anne looked at him, her eyes serious.
"Yes," Emilio agreed finally. "But."
"So. What do we do now?" Sofia asked.
"Boil some water and whistle in the dark," said Anne. She stepped to the edge of the terrace and looked out across the gorge. It was a rare night on Rakhat, cloudless and starry, with a single, nearly full moon. The river splashed and foamed around the rocks below her, and she could hear the metallic squeal of a rusted iron gate blowing in the wind—the bizarre call of a redlight moranor. "At home, I’d put him on