Forest of the Pygmies(62)
Alexander burst out laughing. "Tell us what you really think, Grandma."
"Do not call me that! She bought that dress behind my back. Without asking me!" she exclaimed.
"I didn't know you were interested in fashion, Kate," commented Alexander, eyeing the shapeless shorts and parrot design T-shirt that were his grandmother's uniform.
Nadia was wearing high heels and a short, tightly fitting, strapless dress of black satin. It should be said in her favor that she did not appear to be in the least affected by Kate's opinion. She did a slow turn to show off the dress to Alexander. She looked very different from the girl he remembered, the one in khaki shorts, with feathers in her hair. He would have to get used to the change, he thought, though he hoped it wasn't permanent. He liked the old Eagle a lot. He didn't know how to behave before this new version of his friend.
"You'll have to go through the torture of going to the graduation with that scarecrow, Alexander," said his grandmother, waving toward Nadia. "Come in here; I want to show you something."
She led the two young people to the tiny, dusty office where she wrote. As always, it was crammed with books and documents. The walls were papered with photographs she'd taken in recent years. Alexander recognized the Indians of the Amazon posing for the Diamond Foundation; Dil Bahadur, Pema, and their baby in the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon; Brother Fernando at his mission in Ngoubé; Angie Ninderera on an elephant with Michael Mushaha; and many others. Kate had framed a 2002 cover of International Geographic that had won an important prize. The photograph, taken by Joel in a market in Africa, showed him with Nadia and Borobá, confronting an irate ostrich.
"Look, Alex. Here are your three published books," Kate said. "When I read your notes, I realized that you will never be a writer; you don't have an eye for details. That may not be a drawback in the practice of medicine—the world is full of incompetent doctors—but in literature it's deadly," Kate assured him.
"I don't have the eye, and I don't have the patience, Kate. That's why I gave you my notes. I knew you could write the books better than I could."
"I can do almost everything better than you, Alexander." She laughed, ruffling his hair.
Nadia and Alexander looked through the books, feeling a strange sadness because they contained everything that had happened to them during three marvelous years of travel and adventure. In the future they might never experience anything comparable to what they'd already lived, nothing as intense or as magical. At least it was a consolation to know that they, their stories, and the lessons they had learned would live on in those pages. Thanks to what Alex's grandmother had written, they would never be forgotten. The memoirs of Eagle and Jaguar were there in City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon, and Forest of the Pygmies.