Right of Thirst (7 page)

“What's wrong?” she asked, and I was in the present again.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm a little tired, that's all.”

“Here,” she said, handing me her water bottle. “Maybe you are not drinking enough water.”

“Thank you,” I replied, taking it. I must have been thirsty, because I drank nearly half the bottle before handing it back.

“That's better,” I said, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand.

“Maybe you should lie down.”

“I'm fine, Elise. Let's talk about something else.”

“All right,” she said, puzzled.

“Why don't you tell me about your research,” I said, less sharply. “I'd like to hear more about it.”

“It is very exciting,” she replied. “When the refugees come, I will draw their blood and later we will sequence their DNA. They are isolated populations. They have been in the mountains for a long time, but we do not know how long. We know very little. We will look at the mutations and see where they have come from. From East or West or South. Probably it is a combination. But we do not know. No one has done this here before. It is a new technique. And this camp is good because many people will come through. Better
than the camps where they will stop. It is an excellent opportunity.

“I would like to get started soon,” she added, wistfully. “I must collect many samples.”

“How are you getting permission?”

“I will pay them,” she said. “It is only the men, so I hope this will not be a big problem.”

“Why only the men?”

“Here we are looking only at the Y chromosome,” she said. “It is passed down from father to son. It is a straight line back. We can follow the mutations. It is a very elegant technique. The other chromosomes can come from both men and women. They are more complex to study, you know? Too many possibilities.”

“So you're not studying women?”

“For women, we use mitochondrial DNA,” she said. “It is also a straight line back. But it is more difficult. So we have decided not to do this for now.”

“I'm curious,” I said, a bit more bluntly than I intended. “How did you convince them to let you come here? You're doing research, but they told me that they only took people with practical skills and didn't have time for anything else.”

“Yes,” she said, uneasily. “I feel a little bit bad about this. But Scott let me come if I take some classes. So I am a nurse assistant also. I will do this first, and only then take the blood. I made this promise.”

I studied her for a few seconds.

“I'm not really sure where my ancestors were from,” I said. “I think they mostly came from Holland and England. My grandmother was Russian. She immigrated as a child. But I don't know much about the rest past a generation or two.”

“The United States is interesting for genetics. People came
from so many places. Anderson is a Scandinavian name. Were your ancestors from there?”

“They were English Andersons. Though maybe they were from Scandinavia before that. I don't know.”

“Where were you born?”

“Georgia. I spent my childhood there.”

“Georgia,” she said. “That is the South? Where there were slaves?”

“Yes,” I replied. “One branch of my family had slaves a long time ago. But I think most of the others were sharecroppers, although my mother never talked about them.”

The lithograph of the family plantation, circa 1840, was one of my mother's most treasured heirlooms. There were slaves in the lithograph—stylized figures, at work behind the oxen in the fields.

“Well,” she said, smiling, “that is interesting. Maybe you are even a little bit from Africa. There is always mixing. More than everyone admits. Or maybe some of your ancestors are Indians. This was very common also. If you want I can draw your blood and you will see. We have a large database. It would be easy.”

“I know they're mostly from Europe.”

“Of course. But in the U.S., often there are surprises.”

We were quiet for a moment.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll do it. Draw my blood. I'm curious.”

“Will you care if some of your ancestors are from Africa?” she replied.

“I've never considered it. Did you think I'd be upset?”

“No,” she said. “But sometimes people are upset by these things. So it is good to ask subjects about this first.”

She spoke very seriously, and I smiled.

“Well,” I said. “My mother wouldn't have liked it, I admit. But I think it would be fascinating.”

“Okay,” she said, cheerfully, “then I will get my case. Also it will be good practice for me to draw blood. I have not done this since my course.”

She stood, and left the tent, and I sat there for a while, thinking about the work she was doing—how all of human history could, in part, be measured in this way. It was astonishing to think that modern men and women had the signs of those ancient journeys within them. I envied her, in that moment, studying that, and suddenly I wished those opportunities might also have been mine.

She returned with an oversized black aluminum briefcase, like the kind photographers use for traveling. I had not seen it before. She knelt on the ground at my feet, undid the clasps, and opened the case.

Inside were hundreds of tiny glass vials, each lying in its own indentation on thin sheets of dark foam rubber. The vials were smaller than those of my experience, smaller even than the ones used on children.

“Do you always have to draw blood?” I asked. “Can't you take hair, or epithelial cells?”

“Yes, you are right,” she said. “But blood is better. There is more to work with, and we can repeat the tests if there is a technical problem. Of course, if they are afraid I will swab their cheeks instead. For children also I do this.”

She pulled a pair of latex gloves from the case, and an alcohol wipe, and then the syringe, with its capped needle. I watched her, and rolled up my sleeve, feeling a hint of childlike dread as I did so. Then she was readying the syringe, tying the yellow rubber tubing around my upper arm, handing me a square of gauze. My forearm looked very pale beneath me, nearly translucent as I clenched my fist, and braced myself, like diving into a pool.

She crouched before me, ran her naked fingertip gently over
my white skin, and then, finding a blue vein coiling up from the hollow of my elbow, she tore open the alcohol pad with her teeth and touched it there, tingling and shining in the cool air of the tent. She looked up at me, the needle poised in her free hand.

“Okay?” she asked, and I nodded, forcing myself to watch as the needle drew hesitantly near, as she steadied herself, and let out a little hiss between her teeth, and eased the tip of the needle into my vein a bit too slowly. The sting of a thorn, her hand tight on my wrist, the smell of medicinal alcohol in the air, and suddenly there it was, red and warm, springing into the glass vial. In an instant she released my wrist, undid the yellow rubber strap from my bicep, the jet lessened, and blood rose in the vial like an hourglass. I felt her breath against the alcohol on my arm, her nearness, intent on the task, and then the vial was full, the needle was out, and she was done. A few drops fell from the tip, a few others gathered in beads on the sides of the glass. She wiped the vial carefully with the alcohol pad, then held it up between her fingers, and I flexed my arm, pressing a tiny square of gauze to the oozing circle. In the vial, my blood looked black.

“You did that very well,” I said, and she smiled.

“Thank you,” she said. “I'm a little bit nervous.”

“Why?”

“Drawing blood from people you know is different,” she said, simply.

“Insert the needle a little faster,” I said. “Flick your wrist.”

She nodded, seriously, carefully placed a sticker on the vial, and wrote a number on the label with an indelible marker she also took from the case.

“There,” she said. “You are the first in my study.”

She placed the vial carefully into a slot in the foam rub
ber beside the empty vials. I looked at it, full as a tick with my blood, and all the men and women whose residue somehow remained within me.

She reached beneath the foam rubber in the case and withdrew an oversized loose-leaf notebook with a red plastic cover, with stenciled black German lettering on the front. She opened the book, then placed another sticker carefully on the page, and wrote down first the number, and then my name.

“What are you doing?”

“I must keep a record of each sample,” she said, “so I do not confuse them. This is very important.”

“But I'm not really part of the study.”

“No,” she said, “but the specimens look the same.”

I looked over her shoulder at the page.

“It's a book of family trees,” I said.

“Yes. For three generations only,” she replied. “Grandfather, father, and son. These are the most I will see, I am sure. And so I can keep track of their relationships more easily.”

There were several hundred empty pages in the book.

“Do you need that many samples?”

“As many as I can,” she said. “Many will be cousins, if they are from the same village. So I have a new page for each village.”

She closed the case, and locked it again.

“When do you think they will come?” she asked.

“Rai said in the next week or two,” I replied. “They have to spread the word. He said they're dropping leaflets into the villages from the air.”

“You know,” she said, “we have evolved from things like this earthquake.”

“What do you mean?”

“When life is not so hard,” she said, “traits are not selected so strongly. But when there is a catastrophe, that is when new traits
emerge. Without these events, we would not be the same. If life were simple and easy we would be something else.”

“That's interesting,” I replied. “I suppose I never thought of it quite that way.”

We were in the same companionable moment, in a tent on the most remote hillside imaginable, on the other side of the world. For a while at least it didn't matter that there was nearly another whole adult lifetime—Eric's, for example—between us.

“I've been thinking,” I said. “Why don't we give a clinic to the village? Until the refugees show up there's nothing to do. Maybe then they won't be so suspicious, and you can draw their blood.”

“Yes,” she said, with sudden enthusiasm. “That is a good idea. I will pay them also, of course.”

“I'll talk to Rai about it,” I said

“This is a very good place for research,” she said. “Europe is not so interesting. Families usually come from nowhere else.”

“Where are you from in Germany?”

“I am from Munich. I was born there, I went to school there. That is all.”

“Your parents?”

“My father is a professor. My mother is a professor, too.”

“And now you're going to be a professor as well.”

“Yes,” she said, and smiled. “Of course. Was your father a doctor also?”

“No,” I said. “He wasn't. He injured his back in the war and most of the time he was out of work. It was difficult for him to stand.”

“Was he a soldier?”

“He was in the navy. He fell down a flight of stairs on a ship.”

“And your mother?”

“She taught school. She supported us, really.”

“So you didn't have much money.”

“No,” I said. “We didn't.”

“That is better, then,” she said, cheerfully.

“Better for whom?”

“For you, of course,” she said. “It is always better to earn things than to be given them.”

Elise had gone to bed. We were sipping rum and talking about rifles.

“Western armies,” Rai said, “most of them use 5.56. It is too light in my opinion. You need something with more punch. You need to drop him right away.”

I have no guns myself, but I've read about them, their nuances and characteristics, their endlessly argued differences.

“It still kills you,” I said.

“Of course. But with full metal jacket, 5.56 is like a needle. It just goes through. He can still fire back. Not like 7.62. That will stop you in your tracks.”

“A soldier can't carry as much ammunition, though,” I replied. “And the recoil is harder to control.”

He looked at me with surprise.

“How do you know this?” he asked.

“I like military history,” I said, thinking of my study, and how I used to sit with a glass of whiskey and let the blur of the hospital recede into my books—Shiloh and Ypres, Normandy and Tet.

“Yes,” he said. “That is the traditional objection. But one round of 7.62 is as good as a burst of 5.56. That is all you need. Just one.” He held up a finger.

“What rifle does the army use here?” I asked, pretending to myself that I was humoring him. But in fact I was interested.

“G3,” he said. “German. Heavy, but very reliable, very good weapon. We make them under license.”

“In 7.62?”

“Of course,” he said, and smiled.

“How far away could you hit someone with it?” I asked.

He pondered as if it was a serious question.

“With a scope?” he asked.

“With the basic rifle issued to an average soldier. Nothing more.”

I think he was struggling for honesty—he might have made any claim. But he wanted his answer to be true. He thought about it. I saw his youth in the effort.

“The target is standing?” he asked, and I nodded.

“With a G3, assuming good light and no wind, with iron sights, and from a prone position,” he said, finally, “five hundred meters. Perhaps a bit more. But a sniper rifle, 7.62, with a scope, much farther, of course. One thousand meters in good conditions, no problem.”

“Are you a good shot with a rifle as well?”

“I am better with handguns. But I am okay with a rifle also.”

We sipped at our rum, and he lit a cigarette.

“In the old days there was tourism in the northern areas,” he said, after a bit. “And mountain climbing. Now there is much less.”

“Is it really that valuable?” I asked. “Does it matter which side has it?”

“It is complex,” he said. “There are resources, but also it is about other things.”

“Such as?”

“It is about national interests,” he said. “About wrongs. These are important.”

I made a dismissive sound.

“When you look at your country,” he replied sharply, “and the wars it has fought, how many were not the same?”

“Some were just, and some were unjust,” I said. “Which one is this?”

“A just one, of course. There have been many provocations. And it is not so much a war.”

“What is it then?”

“It is an almost war.”

“I was never in the military,” I said, after a while, “but it seems to me that in order to be a good soldier you have to enjoy it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to enjoy killing the enemy.”

He thought for a moment.

“You must enjoy aiming the gun,” he said at last. “But pulling the trigger—that is duty. It is not the same.”

“Do you enjoy pulling the trigger?”

He looked uncomfortable, and, suddenly, a bit sheepish.

“I don't know,” he said.

He chewed on the corner of his mustache.

“I need to do it,” he continued, finally. “At least once. For the experience. It is important to understand what it is like in combat. That is where you find out who you are. Whether you are cool under fire.”

“What if you're not?”

“Yes,” he said, and smiled. “That is a big problem.”

His desire for the experience of war, even to kill another soldier, would have disgusted Elise. I could picture her shaking her
head, looking away. But I understood him perfectly.

“Just imagine,” I said, “all the young officers on the other side thinking exactly the same thing.”

He inclined his head, and didn't answer me. No doubt it was a strain on him—small talk with foreigners, the ambivalence he must have felt toward us and toward himself as well, so far from the action.

“My English,” he'd said, “is helpful to me in many ways. But sometimes it is not so good to speak so well.” I'd been complimenting him, shortly after we first met.

“Why is that?”

“I am a soldier,” he'd replied. “But really this is civilian work.”

I didn't press him, but I was reminded of a television interview given by the leader of the country I'd seen before I'd left. The general spoke perfect English—I'd seen him on TV before—but he gave the interview through an interpreter. He talked about national identity, of past wrongs, of provocations. But, he said, he was a man of peace. He said he was looking forward to a fruitful discussion with the foreign secretary, and hoped only that the other side would be as open to compromise. He wore his uniform, he looked drawn and severe, he was speaking to the endlessly restless crowd at his back—of that I had no doubt—and every word was in his native tongue.

The tea had gone through me. I stood, retrieved my jacket from where it lay on the top of the table.

“You are going to bed?”

“I'm going to the bathroom.”

“Oh,” he said. “Then I will go with you.”

We stepped out of the tent together, into the darkness that had abruptly fallen over the valley. The moon was half full, and I didn't need the headlamp in my pocket.

To the south, all the stars were up. For an instant I thought of those long-ago summers on the Michigan lakes, where I'd sit with Eric in our canoe and try to pick out constellations that trembled through the haze that rose from the surface. We'd sit quietly, and drift among the fish rings, shining our flashlight on the book, feeling the cold of the water seep through the aluminum at our feet.

But at that height, the stars were close to their pure state, untouched by anything, let alone the forests of the upper peninsula, or the voice of my son as a child, or other people's fires in the campgrounds through the trees.

To the north, however, the sky was blank, and I realized there were clouds moving toward us through the darkness.

“There is a front coming,” Rai said, pointing. “I listened to the radio this afternoon. There will be snow, I think.”

“The tents look old,” I replied.

“They will be okay,” he said. “The snow is very dry.”

Elise's tent was dark, and we walked past in silence so as not to wake her. Soon we were out in the field, the dining tent glowing in the distance behind us. The rest of the camp was invisible.

Rai stopped then, turned carefully away from me, and unzipped his fly. His urine splashed loudly on the ground, and it must have embarrassed him, because he stopped midstream and walked farther into the dark before continuing. It was not the kind of thing a Westerner would have done, I thought, as I emptied my bladder into the ground at my feet. His physical modesty, his unease—had women been present, his discomfort would have been natural. But there were only the two of us, on a dark night. He must have been listening to me, also, because he returned only when I'd finished.

I kept walking, and he followed. The blank part of the sky
lent promise to the air. We walked for a while, in silence, and then he lit a cigarette, letting out a stream of smoke that mingled with his breath in the cold.

“When are they going to come?” I asked. “Why aren't they here?”

Rai sighed.

“It is difficult to communicate with them,” he said. “They are scattered across a wide area. It will take time. We must be patient.”

“At least a few of them should have shown up by now,” I said, but he did not reply.

We reached the first of the shadowy tents on the field. No wind, for the moment, but I imagined that would change soon, and by morning they would all be flapping and shaking.

“Does it ever rain up here?” I asked.

“Not at this time,” he said.

“So the trees in the village and the crops—is that all irrigation?”

“Yes,” he said. “Irrigation from the river. They have many channels. It is an old village.”

“How old?”

“I don't know. A long time, I think.” He paused. “They are very backward people.”

“They've stayed away from us. I expected them to be more curious.”

“They do not like us,” he said. “They are afraid.”

“Why? What are they afraid of?”

He turned to look at me.

“They are afraid of the army,” he said. “And also they are afraid that when these tents are full they will have no wood and their animals will be stolen.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know them,” he said.

I thought for a moment.

“Are you worried about them?” I asked.

He laughed.

“No,” he said, “I am not worried. There are too few. Perhaps forty men. And they have nowhere else to go. And they know I have a satellite phone.” He smiled. “I told them that I can have a company of soldiers here in two hours if there is any trouble. It is always the same in the tribal areas.”

“Is that why the camp is by such a small village?”

“Yes, Doctor, that is why. There are some larger villages in this region. But there are always more problems then.”

The moon began to pass back and forth behind clouds. It would get very dark for an instant, then brighten again.

Rai stretched, then pressed a button on his cheap watch to light up the time. It was early, but I felt the day's work catching up with me.

“I'd like to give a clinic to the village,” I said. “I'm doing nothing. I'm sure some of them could use my help.”

He hesitated in the darkness.

“If you wish,” he said, finally. “But if you give them anything, they will ask you for more. Always they are this way. You should know this.”

“Can we do it tomorrow?” I said.

He took a last drag on his cigarette, then threw it down and ground it out with his boot.

“If you wish,” he said, finally.

“I know Elise wants to draw their blood for her study, also. She'll pay them to do it. Will that be a problem?”

“If you pay them,” he said, with reluctance, “probably it will be okay.”

“Good.”

He stared moodily out into the dark.

“Well, then,” I said awkwardly, “good night.”

“Good night,” he replied, and I left him there, standing among the rows of empty tents. I wondered what was in his thoughts, as I took out my headlamp for the first time, and let it play over the ground at my feet on the way back to my bed. Probably he was simply planning ahead, thinking of all those who soon would be sleeping in the empty tents all around him—the water they would need, and the fuel, the problems of the latrines, and how they would be fed, and when they would learn that we were there.