True Places(27)
They walked through the fish market en route to the first herbalist. Suzanne covered her mouth and nose with her hand to keep herself from gagging at the smell. The stall to which they were directed was empty. The elderly woman selling sundries next door told Dmitri in broken Swahili that the herbalist had gone to attend to a sickness plaguing his village to the north. Suzanne was only too happy to put distance between them and the fish market, so they hurried along to the second location, a small hut with a rust-riddled roof huddled beside a modern pharmacy. A middle-aged man squatted over a burlap mat. He wore a tall, straight-sided headpiece made of red felt and decorated with feathers. A string of small gourds hung from his neck. He was consulting with another man, who appeared very frail. The herbalist spoke rapidly while he packaged a ground concoction into folds of stiff paper. After the customer left, Dmitri described the Hydnora root as best he could. Suzanne scanned the rough shelves at the back of the stall for a tinge of pink.
Dmitri turned to her. “He knows it. Says it’s very good medicine.”
“But he doesn’t have it?”
He shook his head. “Pretty much all he sells is what he gave that guy who just left.”
“What was it?”
Dmitri shrugged. “It’s for ukimwi.”
One of the few dozen Swahili words she knew. “AIDS.”
Dmitri did his best to question the herbalist about other sources of Hydnora, but soon a queue formed behind them, all wishing to obtain “the cure,” as the man put it.
Suzanne touched Dmitri’s elbow. “We should go.”
The encounter had sobered them, and they returned to the hotel to gather their belongings. They boarded a twin prop to Arusha, where a driver met them on the landing strip. By late afternoon they arrived at the Serengeti Wildlife Research Centre, an array of low buildings slung against the base of a series of worn hills. Suzanne climbed out of the Land Rover and stood with her back to the hills. She stared out at the savanna stretching from her feet to a golden smudge of a horizon, the expanse broken only by sparse stands of fever trees, the sky old and pale. A breeze blew toward her, flattening her long skirt against her legs. She took a deep breath and shielded herself from the letdown she was sure was coming. It was over with Dmitri; she chose to end it in her mind before anything more could take root. Dmitri, with his dark, Mediterranean looks and slow, sensual smile, would distance himself from her, the new college grad. At the research center, others would intrigue him more, scientists from other disciplines, the staff. At the hotel in Dar, Dmitri had been chivalrous, then opportunistic. Here, where light ruled, and where they were not alone, he could shake himself off like a dog and pad away.
But he did not. The first night in the bush, he saved a seat for her at dinner, placed his hand on her knee while they ate, and made a point of including her in the conversation. There was nothing sexier than being taken seriously. Sleeping together wasn’t straightforward in the dorm-style sleeping quarters, but Dmitri put his scientific ingenuity to good use, carving out slots in time and space for them to have sex. Suzanne responded to him as she had to no other man, and this confused her, since with each passing day, her flight response was dampened and she found herself thinking less and less about exit strategies. Dmitri was ardent but not overly serious, attentive but not clinging, and respectful of her intellect. And their intimacy had not diminished her attraction to him; she could see now that this had been a side effect of her skittishness and mistrust. If she could have faith in a man, her passion would not flag.
For six long weeks Suzanne allowed herself to slide, inch by inch, into love.
“You’re beautiful,” Dmitri said every time they made love.
Then, while watching her study a map or identify a plant before he could: “You’re incredible. Do you know that?”
One night they sat shoulder to shoulder on the hood of a Land Rover drinking Tusker. In the middle distance, a herd of zebra bowed their heads to the ground and, nearer, a secretary bird stood frozen, then loped on, its head nodding to the slow rhythm of its legs. The sun hung low before falling precipitously to the earth like a meteor, sending up a splash of vermilion into the deepening blue. Suzanne felt wondrously alive in this moment, with the sun-warmed metal underneath her, the buzz from the beer, her skin taut from a day in the sun, her mind slaked by knowledge and possibilities, the wild beauty all around her, this man beside her. This man.
Dmitri touched her chin with two fingers, turning her face toward him. Her body hummed.
“You’re perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
She smiled and allowed the tears pooling in her eyes to fall.
“Especially like that.”
“Crying?”
“No. Being honest.”
He understood her. She hadn’t had to tell him about her father, show him that rough scar. With him, in those moments, those boundless moments, her father didn’t matter. Neither did her mother. The big, beautiful earth had spun away from her parents and their parody of love. Suzanne was far, far away in every sense. She at last was free, and that inspired confidence. She not only was worthy of love in the abstract but also could trust its sudden appearance in the palm of her hand, the instantiation of it. She had become someone entirely different from the girl at the science fair waiting for the father who never came, or the adolescent daughter of the mother whose confidences and complaints she had no choice but to bear.