Free Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles

themselves to disenchantment. Somehow, in their presence, observation is filled with drama. “We cannot,” Gould pointed out, “render this corner of natural history as anything but story, combining the themes of grim horror and fascination and usually ending not so much with pity for the caterpillar as with admiration for the [wasp].” 59
    Poor parasitized Fabre! A fine host indeed. If he had only seen it this clearly perhaps he would not have told us quite so much about the
Sphex
, the
Bembix
, and the rest. He might have thought twice before dwelling so long on the details of their hunting strategies and, in particular, on the precision of their surgical skills. But the point, of course, is that he couldn’t help himself. From the moment he wept before the
Ammophila
, the die was cast. And that surrender was both his undoing and his triumph. When it came to it, he let the animals tell their tales. In this, at least, his instincts were exactly right.

F ever/Dream

1.
    That too-hot, too-shadeless morning, pushing the outboard motor to its very limit, first one river, then the next, those never-ending Amazon rivers—never realized anywhere could be so far, worrying about the gas tank, worrying about fallen trees in the water, worrying about the time, heading for the medical post with poor, sad Lene, her hair hacked short in an act of rebellion that only confirmed her madness; Marco, her husband, stone-faced, watching over her, her body now sprawled under the bench seats in the hull of the bouncing dinghy, motionless, lifeless but not quite dead, lifeless on the outside, but everything happening within, malaria coursing through her veins, bloating her liver, fevering her poor, troubled brain.

2.
    Everyone got sick. It made no difference that the area around the house had been cleared of forest, as the public health leaflets insisted. Nor did it matter that each house had its neat, handwritten number on the doorpost to confirm that it had been sprayed with DDT. Everyone got sick, some worse than others, the weakest—the children and the elderly—as always, worst of all. When it was my turn, I just lay in my hammock, burning with icy shivers, my body racked from top to toe, eyes dull, mind listless, utterly dependent on the kindness of people who knew there was nothing to do but wait it out. Every day as night fell, it returned. And then, afterward, in the morning, a feeling of weaknessthat was pleasantly ascetic, as if I had been purged and cleansed, had survived a trial. But within, the knowledge that my body was stitched fatefully to the rhythm of the day in a new and previously unanticipated pattern.
    And my sickness was as nothing compared with that of others. Dora, young and strong, my best friend here, came that close to death. She, like Lene, had
falciparum
, the most dreaded, she told me. I’d been away when she took ill, and that absence gave her the chance later to narrate with the full melodrama that the crisis deserved. It was the
três cruzes
, three crosses, she said, though, like me, she had never quite figured out why it was called that.
Um cruz, dois cruzes, três cruzes.
Some people said it referred to the intensity of the infection. But the printed slip they had given both of us at the clinic in town had three Latin names (although there are really four
Plasmodium
protozoa that inhabit human hosts) and a space for a tidy little cross beside each. Mine had just one cross, and the box next to
P. falciparum
was unmarked. Lene and Dora both had three crosses, so one cross had to be inside the box for
P. falciparum
, the parasite that swims all the way to your brain.

3.
    It makes little difference if you clear the vegetation around your house the way the leaflets tell you. It can even make it worse. This is the Amazon floodplain, for heaven’s sake; the houses are on the banks of the river, and when the tide falls, it leaves pools of standing water everywhere. For a few weeks each year, the mosquitoes