Costa Rica: The Language
In The Jungle (cont.)
When I entered Serena, one of the
first people I met was an Icelandic biologist. She
was friendly and pretty, with a long gray-brown braid
and a quixotic air. She worked at a Texas university,
which had given her a grant to bring her graduate
students here to study little orange pickles. It wasn’t
going well.
“Ah,” I nodded in what I hoped was an encouraging
sort of way. I knew she didn't mean 'pickles'—I was
pretty sure you couldn't get a grant to hunt for wild
pickles of any hue—and that it was just her accent
that prevented my understanding; but I couldn't guess
from context what she'd meant. Still, I didn't ask
right away; I really liked the idea of someone from
Iceland, working out of Texas, traveling all the way
to the Costa Rican jungle, to tell a stranger from
California about her unsuccessful search for little
orange pickles.
It was something out of a brightly
illustrated children's book.
My smile seemed to make her happy. Not many hikers
had shown interest in her research, and she was tired
of talking to the same small group of scientists.
She spoke of how much money and effort had gone into
finding them, these pickles, how much knowledge her
group had hoped to gain, and that her students were
growing discouraged.
Finally, I had to interrupt her, afraid I would laugh
aloud, "I'm sorry, what is it exactly you're
looking for?"
Possibly thinking I was slow, she
enunciated clearly: "Orange Pickles. They're
very small."
A group of scientists passed us by on their way to
their bunkhouse and waved. It was dusk, and they all
carried long sticks, tapping the grass ahead of them
like wild blind men, to clear snakes from the long
grass as they walked.
The scientist waved back to them,
continuing with a sigh, "But we've only found
four. I've been here three months, and we've only
found four pickles. We're hoping they'll breed."
I coughed. "Pickles?"
"No, not pickles. Pickles! B-E-E-T-L-E-S"
That night, on the high, screened
second story of the Serena ranger station, I slept
on the open plank floor along with two dozen other
backpackers. The moon lit the screens around us, which
dipped in and out like loose ship sails, touched by
the night breeze and the insistent buttings of bats
and flying insects trying, trying to get in. I heard
their buzz and hum as a cacophony; but the Icelandic
scientist heard taxa: Alouatta, palliata; diastema;
migratoria. She told me she listened at the screened
edge of her bunk before she went to bed. She knew
their voices, their language, and I imagined her nodding
at each recognition, half-smiling to herself, enunciating
the Latin name as though a welcome guest had just
arrived. She listened through the monkey howls, ranger
guitars and hiker voices, listening until she could
pick at least three individual insect voices from
the chorus. And then, she said, she could go to bed.
Anne Campisi is most
often at work on The Lime Tree, an historical novel,
which received the 2005 James Jones First Novel Fellowship.
She holds an MFA in fiction writing from UC Irvine and
was the 2001-02 writer-in-residence at Phillips Exeter
Academy. Her last article for Pology, on Palmyra, Syria,
appeared in the October 2005 issue. She lives in the
Twin Cities. Page 2
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