Free The Devil Tree by Jerzy Kosinski Page B

tow release and retract the landing gear. Now all you hear is the wind, and all you see are clouds puffed up around you like cotton balls.
    “You swoop up and down, and clouds swirl as you rush toward them. The glider, as it gets up to a hundred and forty miles an hour, begins to tremble—but you do not; you nose up and everything’s peaceful again. The best part of all is that perfect mixture of feeling safe yet knowing that just one little thing going wrong can shake you apart.”
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    Having realized that to practice a sport is to turn ordinary experience into personal drama, I once became a sponsor in an international sand-yacht race in East Africa. I watched the dozen yachts take off as if catapulted from a single slingshot. Slender kayak-shaped plywood bodies with tall masts and bright sails, they moved on three wheels that were fitted with treadless tires, the front wheel linked to a tiller that fell neatly between the racer’s knees. As the yachts sped along the strip of hard-packed Ukunda beach, the flutter of their sails stirred up birds and monkeys that were hidden in the dense bush. Reaching the far end of the beach one after another like pale dots of color dissolving in the heat, the yachts turned back, into the wind now, askew to the ground, one side wheel skidding over the shallows, the other high up in the air. Sails close-hauled, the yachts tacked diagonally, rushing at the wall of the jungle, making the monkeys shriek with fear and dive deep into the bush and the frightened birds fly off. Then the yachts turned again toward the ocean, side wheels going up over the shriveled roots of the bush, then touching the sand, and once more the monkeys returned to their watching posts.
    Just before the finish, the racer I sponsored lost control. During a sharp jibe his yacht overturned and one wheel broke off, rolling into the bush and striking a snake that was wrapped around a tree trunk. The thin ribs of the smashed cockpit pierced the man’s chest; his blood seeped into the sand and onto the yellow sail. The snake slithered across the beach, circled the wreck, then coiled itself around the broken mast.
    After the race, a European racer on his way overland to Zanzibar agreed to let me join him. We took off in his old safari-rigged jeep for Dar es Salaam, but at dusk we left the roadway and drove along narrow jungle trails toward the ocean. In the rapidly descending darkness our headlights picked up the glowing eyes of jungle cats. While the sand was still warm, we stopped on the beach and spread out our blankets beside the car.
    Before retiring, the racer turned on a bright carbide lamp, opened a small plastic bag, and removed a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a thin glass vial, a tiny disposable syringe, and some cotton pads. I watched him disinfect his left forearm and fill the syringe with white fluid from the vial. Running the short needle carefully up under the skin’s surface, he slowly injected the fluid into his arm. He explained that he was using a vaccine to counteract a rare virus that was damaging the optic nerves in both of his eyes. The virus could cause blindness, so a vaccine was required to counteract it, and since there was no commercially prepared remedy effective enough to kill the virus without severely damaging the eye itself, the doctors had recommended a vaccine made of his own virus.
    The vaccine was prepared for him by a researcher in the laboratory of a well-known New York hospital. When I asked if there was a risk in taking such an untested vaccine, he answered casually that if for any reason his organism failed to develop defenses against the virus, the same virus might also attack other organs; suddenly stricken, left without prompt medical attention, he could die. Nevertheless, each week he increased the vaccine dosage, hoping his body would combat the virus and thus save his eyesight.
    “How many of these injections have you already given yourself?” I