State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Author:Ann Patchett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780062049803
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2011-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

At dusk the insects came down in a storm, the hard-shelled and soft-sided, the biting and stinging, the chirping and buzzing and droning, every last one unfolded its paper wings and flew with unimaginable velocity into the eyes and mouths and noses of the only three humans they could find. Easter slipped back inside his shirt while Dr. Swenson and Marina wrapped their heads like Bedouins in a storm. When it was fully dark only the misguided insects pelted themselves into the people on board while the rest chose to end their lives against the two bright, hot lights on either side of the boat. The night was filled with the relentless ping of their bodies hitting the glass.

“Dr. Rapp used to say how easy it was for the entomologists,” Dr. Swenson said, turning her back to the onslaught. “They only had to switch on a light and all their specimens came running.”

Marina was less comfortable in the jungle now that she couldn’t see it. She felt the plant life pressing against the edges of the water, straining towards them, every root and tendril reaching. “Not only do the specimens come to you, they then have the decency to kill themselves.”

“This is worse than a hailstorm,” Dr. Swenson said, spitting a small winged beetle onto the deck. “We can do without the lights.” And then she turned off the lights.

In an instant the veil of insects lifted and Marina saw nothing as she had never seen nothing before. It was as if God Himself had turned out the lights, every last one, and left them in the gaping darkness of His abandonment. “Shouldn’t Easter be able to see where he’s going?” she asked. She could barely hear the sound of her own voice over the engine. A boy who could find a single branch in a thousand miles of uninterrupted trees could surely find his way home in the dark. She was the one who wanted the lights back on.

“Open your eyes, Dr. Singh,” Dr. Swenson said. “Look at the stars.”

Marina put her hands out in front of her and batted at the air until she found the rope at the edge of the boat. She held tightly to it when she leaned to the side. Beyond the spectrum of darkness she saw the bright stars scattered across the table of the night sky and felt as if she had never seen such things as stars before. She did not know enough numbers to count them, and even if she did, the stars could not be separated one from the other, the whole was so much greater than the sum of its parts. She saw the textbook of constellations, the heroes of mythology posing on fields of ink. She could see the milkiness in everything now, the way the sky was spread over with light. And when, finally, she could tear herself away from the theater above them to look forward again she saw yet another light blinking like a mirage on the horizon.

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