Read Online Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) by Audrey Schulman - Free Book Online Page B

startling how many people and belongings could fit on a moped. On the back of one were strapped two young goats, swaddled tightly as babies, eyes narrowed into the wind. Tied on another was an industrial-sized sink, a child peeking out of it forlornly.
    Everyone wove from lane to lane, with little regard for the direction of traffic, unless the oncoming vehicle was bigger.
    About an hour into the journey, an oil truck abruptly pulled onto their side of the road, roaring toward them. It was painted to look like a shark grinning. Tires squealing, Mutara swerved out of the way, rocketing now along the dirt of the shoulder, nearly sideswiping a family of four on a motorbike. For a moment it seemed the truck would still hit them, looming over them. Max could see jagged scratches in its paint.
    There was a terrific clang as its side-view mirror broke off on the roof of their van and then the truck zoomed past, without having slowed at all.
    Even through her headphones, Max could hear the way all the cars around tooted their horns, the honks somehow very third-world, not loud and outraged at someone else’s transgression, but surprised and nearly joyful at survival.
    Mutara glanced sideways at her, then did a double take. She was still grinning. When the side-view mirror had hit, pieces of glass had spun through the air. The shimmering beauty stunning. Like the sky itself was broken and spinning.
    Death, to her, had never seemed that terrible.
    Satisfied, she leaned back, closed her eyes, and just let the smells of the landscape waft over her. She sniffed at the air. Some days, she imagined herself as a mole: unreliable blinking eyes, hiding in her burrow, poking out just her twitching nose to experience the world that way. Unlike vision or touch, smell never betrayed her, never shivered or popped, electric and confusing. Instead it grounded her. She might not be able to hug her mom or more than glance at her face, but she could bury her nose in her mom’s clothes all she wanted.
    On the wind rushing in the window, she smelled wood smoke, rotting meat, cow manure, human feces, and something that kept reminding her of cough drops until she opened her eyes to identify a passing tree as eucalyptus.
    In college she’d once met a woman who’d been born without a sense of smell. “Anosmia,” the woman had declared matter-of-factly, the way one might say, “Parking ticket.”
    And Max jerked back from the word as fast as though she’d been slapped.
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    After three hours of driving, they parked in the lot of the Virunga National Park. Above them, the mountains loomed craggy and immense. Even here on the equator, two of the peaks had snow on them. Stepping out of the van, Max finally saw real jungle. Mile after mile of it swept up the steep sides of these mountains. No roads, no houses. Up there, the land would be empty of people except for a few researchers. Instead in every direction would be plants, massed thickly, rich and glossy. Waiting for her to study them.
    Fifteen porters were in the parking lot waiting for them. They were not dressed as nicely as the people in the airport. These men wore the cast-off clothing of different countries and climates: a Manchester United T-shirt, a pair of ripped Brandeis sweatpants, a woman’s cowl-neck sweater. All of the porters were barefoot except for one who wore ancient bowling shoes, the toes held together with duct tape. These men unloaded her bags out of the van and divvied them into approximately even allotments, then tied each pile up tightly in a sheet. Each man wove himself a padded crown of grass, hefted up his bundle and placed it on his head like some whimsical hat. Her Olympus microscope on top of two pieces of Samsonite luggage. Twenty boxes of tofu on her Plant Encyclopedia. Then, balancing these weights effortlessly, the men lit three cigarettes and passed them around, talking, while Mutara locked up the van. He pulled off his own clean and