BANYAN
The banyan’s thick roots suggest a secret fluidity, like wax, uncommon to plants: frozen over Pitsamai’s shoulder, beginning where bone used to jut from her thin flesh, sliding down her shoulder blades, curling around her upper arm (carefully trained not to restrict movement), stretching across her collarbone and down her breastbone, down the neat lines of her ribs. They frame her right breast. I always think they will flow when Pitsamai is alone, even though she tells me this isn’t the case.The thick leaves advertise Chiang Mai University. Veins curl in the letters in Thai and English, artificially white against dark green. Pitsamai loves her university.
The tangled trunks rise from her shoulder, as tall as her forehead. Aerial roots dangle from its branches, always reminding me of hair (sometimes tangling with Pitsamai’s hair), and they are my favourite part. I always tilt my head when I kiss Pitsamai’s lips, so the aerial roots brush my cheek. When I kiss the base of the tree, that special place where root is fixed to flesh, the aerial roots tangle in my hair.
I considered, years ago when no skin-tree grew on me, acquiring a banyan. Perhaps it’s retained its allure because I have to be with Pitsamai or another of my girlfriends to enjoy it: a double pleasure, like spicy meat inside a rice ball.
“I am worried,” Pitsamai, biological engineer at Chiang Mai University, said in English.
“Oh, don’t say that!”The previous night, Kim Cuc had torn off the infected leaf and fastened it in her third notebook. She’d written in the lizard-spined one, summarising this latest infection. By the light of glowing Buddhas, she’d wiped the tears from her cheeks and pretended the sickness was only a small thing, a two-hour stomach upset among the skin-trees.
The look on Pitsamai’s face when she took the leaf from Kim Cuc’s notebook ended that flimsy lie.
They stood on the edge of Pitsamai’s lab, where the Asian skin-trees had been created. Behind them were rows of tables, glass equipment, remote-controlled machines that tended to the cultures and plants in secure and biohazard cabinets. One of Pitsamai’s colleagues sat at a table, inputting data to a computer. Graphs arced across its screen.
Several specimens in the cabinets — skin-trees grafted to synthetic limbs — bore the dark marks of the disease.
“It’s beginning to spread very quickly,” Pitsamai said, “and in many parts of the world. Örn is seeing them in Iceland now. Neroly in Venice has begun a clinic, and noticed a dramatic rise two days ago — partly due to people only just hearing about the clinic, only just getting concerned, but many were new. This afternoon I v-chatted with one of the first cases in Australia. Half the leaves on his tree are brown and shrivelling. I think the skin-trees will die from this.”
Skin-trees were not meant to do that before the person’s death.
Kim Cuc played with the amulet at her throat, hating the nausea that wriggled in her belly like a troublesome naga. “What more can I do to help?”
“Keep collecting samples for me. Talk to some of the older cases in your notebook.” Pitsamai tangled her fingers into Kim Cuc’s. “I know it will be hard, seeing their trees so ill, but I need to know if any of them have managed to slow down the illness’ progression. Or if any of them have got healthier. I’m still trying various treatments.”
Inside the synthetic limbs flowed blood from infected people. Pitsamai and the others had already learned that they battled a virus that passed fluidly from person to person, by sweat and other excretions, flowing into the tree through its thin, nutrient-drinking roots. It was not like a fungus, where removing the affected areas might save the rest of the plant. So far it hadn’t reacted to general or specific antivirals. Containment didn’t work on something so eager to transfer in such a small quantity of liquid.
“Do you want to take some of my blood?” Kim Cuc asked, looking away from the ailing specimens. “Maybe you’ll find a cure with it.”
Such outright selfishness made her guilty, but she couldn’t bear the thought of her durian withering. Maybe, just maybe, Pitsamai would find a cure from one of the injections into her blood. And another sample always helped.
Pitsamai smiled. “Of course I’ll take some.”
After Kim Cuc’s blood filled a small container and Pitsamai found some sugary biscuits, they kissed. Banyan aerial roots brushed Kim Cuc’s ear, drawing a small sigh from her mouth. The banyan’s leaves, speckled brown, rustled against her hair.
“Work hard and well, as always,” Kim Cuc murmured.
“I hope you find something useful, love.”
