The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [207]
Vincenzo Giuliani became very still, but Sandoz did not notice. I deserved that, Giuliani thought, echoing Johannes Voelker’s remark, even if it wasn’t intentional.
"In any case," Sandoz was saying, "he evidently decided to ransom us and brought us to his home and took responsibility for us. He made us part of his household."
"That was when he took you to see the ivy, the sta’aka?" John asked.
"Yes." For once, he did not have to explain. Sitting impassively, his mind drifted as John Candotti told the others about the hasta’akala. About the way the hands were made to look like the trailing branches of ivy, which grows on stronger plants, to symbolize and enforce dependence. John now realized why Marc died. "What if Marc was developing scurvy?" he’d asked Sandoz. "Was there something you ate that Marc didn’t?" It wasn’t scurvy that killed Marc Robichaux, it was starvation and anemia. And, quite possibly, despair.
HE REALIZED LATER that he’d gone into clinical shock about halfway through the destruction of his left hand. Over the next few days, he would come to himself at intervals, damp and cold and suffering from a thirst unlike anything he’d experienced previously. It seemed impossible to draw enough breath and when he slept, there were dreams of suffocation or drowning. Sometimes, dreaming, he would reach for something, trying to pull himself to air, and his hands would spasm as a dog’s legs will twitch during dreams of running, and he would awaken screaming as the involuntary motion sent thin bolts of phosphorescent pain up the long nerves of his arms.
For a time, the heavy immobility of bloodlessness kept him from looking at what had been done. His hands felt clubbed, swollen and throbbing, but he could not lift his head to see them. Periodically, someone would come and exercise his fingers, stretching them flat. He had no idea why this was done. He knew only that the stretching was agony and, sobbing, begged for it to stop. His pleas were in Spanish and therefore unintelligible, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he had spoken a pure and perfect High K’San. They believed it was necessary to prevent contractures from spoiling the line of his fingers’ fall from the wrist. So they let him scream.
As his body slowly replaced the blood he’d lost, he was able to move, but there was no profit in it. The scabs were forming then and the itching that heralded healing maddened him. They tied him down to keep him from tearing at the bandages with his teeth, frantic and weeping with misery. His struggles against the binding may well have prevented blood clots from forming in his legs and breaking loose to kill him with stroke or heart attack. And, God help him, he had eaten the meat on the long march from Kashan and so had undergone the has-ta’akala when decently nourished. These things, for good or ill, probably saved his life.
His first sentence in Ruanja was a request to know Marc’s status. "That one is not strong," he was told, but he was too exhausted from the effort of asking to hear the answer and slept dreamlessly for once.
When next he woke, his head was clear and he was alone, unbound, in a sunlit room. With great effort, he got himself to a sitting position and looked at his hands for the first time. He had nothing left to react with, too weak even to wonder why it had been done.
He was still sitting, hunched and pallid and staring at nothing, when one of the Runa servants came in. "Someone’s heart will sicken if he does not see Marc," he said as firmly as he could.
Like twin infants put in different rooms to keep them from waking each other up, the two foreigners had been separated. The Runa knew that the sheer physical stamina evidenced by screaming meant that the smaller of the two would likely survive. They had hope of the quiet one