State of Wonder

Marina begins making regular morning trips to the Martins, ingesting the bark to turn herself into “medical evidence” before returning to the U.S. Other than these trips, she performs regular surgical procedures on the Lakashi, who now see her as a miracle healer, and thinks of ways to take Easter with her when she departs the station. While she plans her departure, Dr. Swenson appeals for her to stay to deliver her baby, even referring to the upcoming event as “our delivery date” (293).

Now inoculated from malaria by the Martin bark treatments, Marina is able to safely tour the doctors’ huts behind the research lab with Alan Saturn. In one of these huts, stored in buckets covered with pantyhose, are thousands of mosquitos infected with malaria. These malarial mosquitos are used periodically on Lakashi test subjects, the ethics of which practice trouble Marina. While the men are ultimately treated and cured, Marina wonders about the morality of infecting humans with malaria and only giving them coke in the exchange. Alan Saturn explains that the human trials are necessary if they plan to eradicate the disease on a global scale, saving millions of lives. “It’s the human trials that make the difference” (295), he asserts.

During her remaining days at the station, Marina spends more time writing letters to Mr. Fox or sitting on the banks of the river with Easter, waiting and watching for the mail boats that appear periodically. On one of these occasions, she spots a boat in the distance and, assuming it is a mail boat, she calls out to it. The boat changes its course suddenly, heading straight for shore.

A Lakashi welcoming party gathers along the riverbank and Marina is startled to recognize Milton, Barbara Bovender, and Mr. Fox himself on board. The reunion with Mr. Fox is awkward for several reasons. Although he has been her lover for some time, their relationship is a secret and she represses her impulse to embrace him. Furthermore, he has received none of the letters she has sent, and when he notices blood stains on her Lakashi shift dress, she becomes self-conscious about her appearance. Beyond all of this is the fact that Mr. Fox was supposed to wait for her return to the U.S.

The brief reunion between Fox and Marina is interrupted by Dr. Swenson; she is visibly upset by the arrival of uninvited guests and all it portends. Dr. Nkomo cuts the tension by offering to help the new guests find sleeping accommodations. Walking with Barbara to her sleeping porch, Marina inquires about their journey to the station.

Barbara’s story of their dangerous river journey reveals some important details. She tells Marina that Mr. Fox used his considerable power as the CEO of Vogel to pressure the Bovenders into assisting him and because Jackie had a surfing event and gets sick on boats, Barbara agreed to act as his guide.  Their journey lasted two days and included one nearly fatal wrong turn. Thinking they had found the turnoff for the Lakashi and the research station, Barbara motioned for Milton to take the tributary. After a few hours, and with the river narrowing, they suddenly saw the river bank crowded with tribesmen. Their assumption that these were the Lakashi was dashed when the tribesmen, the dreaded Hummocca, begin firing a barrage of poisoned arrows at the boat. If not for Milton’s quick thinking and adept maneuvering of the boat, they would more than likely be dead. As they travelled away from the Hummocca tribe, Barbara looked back to see a man who looked exactly like Barbara’s father, who had died when she was ten, running through the trees towards the boat.

Later, at the lab, Dr. Budi, in an uncharacteristically forceful manner, breaks up a tense argument between Mr. Fox and Dr. Swenson. However, the tension between the scientist and her patron remains palpable. When Mr. Fox asserts that he is taking Marina back to America with him, Dr. Swenson argues that Marina has agreed to stay and deliver her baby. Mr. Fox is stunned by the revelation that the seventy-three year old Dr. Swenson is pregnant and offers to bring a specialist from Rio or Johns Hopkins, but Dr. Swenson declines, not wanting to publicize the sensitive secrets of the station. Furthermore, she places great faith in Marina’s capabilities. While initially insistent on taking Marina back with him, unwilling to risk another employee’s health and safety, Mr. Fox’s resolve fails when Dr. Swenson offers him a finished sample of the fertility drug to take back with him as long as he lets Marina stay until the delivery. Marina, uncomfortable at being used like a negotiating chip, is disillusioned by this exchange, for it reveals that Mr. Fox values the drug, and the company profits, more than he values her. Mr. Fox’s journey has been little more than an effort to collect on his investment.

When Marina later insists that she is not going to remain at the station any longer, Dr. Swenson informs her that she won’t have to: she miscarried a few days before, a diagnosis that Marina confirms with a stethoscope.

Dr. Swenson then confides to Marina that the fertility drug has actually been completed, but the drug she plans to give Mr. Fox—the drug he thinks is a fertility drug--is the malaria vaccine. To ensure that Vogel funds the vaccine and its broad dispersal to the impoverished, she plans to withhold the fertility drug for a few more years until corporate financing of the vaccine is assured. In the meantime, she expects Marina to keep her secret from Mr. Fox.

That night, back at the sleeping porch, Barbara, still shaken by the journey, asks Marina if she could have the comfort of Easter’s company that night. Marina, alone in her hammock, dreams, not of her father, but of Barbara’s. In the dream, she pictures Barbara’s father running through the jungle away from the Hummocca and towards the boat.

Later, Marina along with a company of researchers and Lakashi women guide Mr. Fox to the Martin grove. She realizes that she is not only withholding from Fox the secret of the drug that Dr. Swenson plans to give him, but she is also lying to the all the doctors about the nature of her relationship with Fox. Touring the Martins, they have a brief private moment, and exchange a kiss.

Back at the station, Marina goes to check on Dr. Swenson, but Barbara intercepts her along the way, insisting that she is resting and should not be bothered. Barbara, still trying to perform her duty as Dr. Swenson’s protector, worries aloud about whether she and Jackie will be fired for giving Mr. Fox access to her secret research station.

Soon after, Barbara, Milton, and Mr. Fox depart, and Marina consults with Dr. Swenson as they make the final preparations for the surgery. Dr. Swenson reveals that she not only remembers Marina’s accident back in Baltimore, but that she has deliberately put Marina in a position to perform her delivery as a form of redemption. She expresses her remorse that Marina switched careers the section ends with them making final preparations for the surgery.

Marina performs the delivery of the miscarried fetus by C-Section, a procedure that leaves Dr. Swenson severely weakened and she contracts a fever.

In her weakened state, Dr. Swenson asks Marina to consider replacing her as the lead researcher at the station. Marina’s skill as a physician, and the respect and admiration she has earned from the Lakashi and the other doctors makes her the natural heir apparent. She then urges Marina to sit down because she has something important to tell her. Before Barbara left, she chronicled their harrowing encounter with the Hummocca, including the account of seeing her father. The man Barbara described as her father was, like her, very tall, blonde, and pale skinned, physical qualities that also describe Anders Eckman. At this point, Dr. Swenson reveals that no one ever actually saw Anders die but, one night, suffering from the ravages of his fever, he simply wandered off and disappeared into the jungle. Since no one saw him again, they assumed he was dead, but Barbara’s story has convinced Dr. Swenson that Anders has in fact survived and has been living with the Hummocca. The man that Barbara thought was her father from a distance is very likely Anders Eckman himself.

Stunned by this news, Marina makes preparations to make a dangerous boat trip down the Amazon to rescue Anders from the infamous Hummocca. Not wanting to have any of the doctors risk their lives as part of her expedition, she ditches Dr. Nkomo, literally pushing him off the boat, and leaves, accompanied only by Easter and some gifts she hopes to trade for Anders.

Turning off the Amazon at the tributary Alan Saturn pointed out to them several weeks ago, Easter guides the boat down an increasingly narrow river. With the jungle seeming to close in on them from both sides, there is a growing fear at how this inevitable encounter will play out. After several hours, Marina tells Easter that she “would like to be out of here before dark” (336), and that is when the Hummocca arrows begin to fall all around them. They stop the boat, and she wraps Easter in a tight protective embrace as the arrows strike the boat and water all around them. A few moments later, the arrows stop and Marina cries out in Lakashi, “I have brought gifts” (337). A group of about thirty Hummocca men emerge suddenly out of the dense foliage along the riverbanks, wearing loin cloths, their foreheads painted canary yellow. Behind the men are scores of women carrying babies. 

Marina offers them a box of oranges, throwing them from the boat towards the middle of the main group. The Hummocca part in front of this offering and out of the crowd walks Anders Eckman himself. He is significantly thinner, wears a ginger and white beard and his hair has grown extremely long, but it is Anders.

While he is shocked to be reunited with Marina in the middle of the jungle, Anders soon recovers and asks her what else she has brought to barter with the Hummocca. Disclosing that she has brought the Rapp mushrooms among other things, he insists that she not trade them under any circumstances. He explains that if the Hummocca find out about the Rapps they “will gut every last Lakashi by sundown” (339) in their attempt to take the mushrooms for themselves.

Anders helps her barter with the Hummocca, explaining to the tribe that Marina hopes to trade her goods for him. A man, apparently the Hummocca chief, refuses Marina’s initial offer, insisting that she bring the boat to shore so they can continue their negotiations.

On shore, the Chief spots Easter and there is a dramatic and joyful moment as it appears that this man is Easter’s father. He calls to a woman, Easter’s mother, on the shore, who puts down her infant and runs forward, wrapping Easter in a tight embrace. The Chief then tells Marina that if she wants Anders she will have to leave Easter behind. While Easter no longer seems to remember his Hummocca tribesmen, and is noticeably distressed by this reunion, Anders tells Marina that they have no choice. Either they all die or she leaves Easter with the Hummocca. With great reluctance and painful remorse, she leaves Easter with his parents and they return to the research station in the boat.