Then Martina arrived. She just opened the door and walked right in. Sat down as if she already knew them all, as if she’d just been gone a few minutes to run some errands.
“Hi, guys. Have you been waiting long?”
She was wearing thin cotton trousers, so thin than one could see her panties under the cloth. Her hair was knotted up, and she carried a camera on a wide strap, a large, advanced model.
One of the Norwegians whistled.
“A Nikon? Is it an F4?”
“Yeah,” said Martina. “It’s my work camera.”
“You’re a photographer?”
“No, a freelance journalist, actually. But then you have to do the photos yourself.”
“That must weigh a ton. Are you really going to schlep it through the jungle?”
“I’ve schlepped it over half the world this past year, so I don’t see why not.”
She was going to be the youngest participant. She was twenty-five years old, and used to traveling by herself. “Martina has promised to write up a piece about our excursion,” said Nathan. “She is going to help with marketing for my new firm, and you all are the pioneer group. Everything will depend on you…”
Everyone laughed.
Ben went through a few of the things that they had to know about. He was the one who decided that everyone should speak English at all times.
“That way, no one will feel like an outsider. You need to think about one thing, all of you in this room, and that is you belong to the few lucky people who will be able to visit one of the most beautiful places on the planet, the rain forest with all its animals and exotic plants. The rain forest, which presently still exists, but is shrinking greatly. I also want you to be ready for what this expedition will mean… A few of you will think in the beginning that things are getting really heavy; we also have to carry our stuff. There are no roads or paths in the jungle. We will have to crawl, climb, and keep our balance. We will have to cut our way through with these parangas, these jungle knives that we are going to buy tomorrow as part of our equipment. We are going to be crossing land that no white man or woman has ever set foot on before. You still have the chance to back out. You have all night to think about it.”
In the evening, Ben took them to a Chinese restaurant where there was beer. Justine would rather have had wine, but it appeared to be impossible to procure in this country. She ended up next to Heinrich, one of the Germans, with whom she felt an affinity right away. He and his wife had planned to start traveling once he had retired, but she got cancer and died less than a year ago.
“I stopped working when she died; now I travel for both her and me,” he revealed to her. “Sometimes it feels as if she were with me the whole time. I talk to her in the evenings; I tell her what I’ve been up to. Having someone to share experiences with is half of the enjoyment.”
The beer helped her relax.
“It’s not easy to lose someone you love,” she said. “Elsie was so sweet…” He took out his wallet and quickly showed her, somewhat embarrassed, a photo of his deceased wife. She looked rather plain. Justine didn’t know what to say. “We were married almost forty years. What about you? How long have you two been married?”
“We two? No, Nathan and I… we are, I don’t know how to say it in English. We are together, but we are not married and we don’t live in the same house.”
“Lovers?”
“More than that. We will probably get married, we’ve talked about it.”
Martina had changed into a dress; her hair was newly washed and shining. She kept silent for long stretches, observing them, one at a time. When she came to Justine, she said quickly in Swedish: “The first white women in this jungle. What do you think about that?”
The younger German man, Stephan, hollered and put his arm around Martina.
“Hey you! Only English, remember?”
“I just told Justine that she and I and your girl Katrine are going to have a great time out in the jungle with all these good-looking guys.”
When they returned to their hotel room, they packed their things; they were going to leave early the next morning. They were going to travel into the countryside by bus until they reached a small town on the outskirts of the jungle. There they would stay overnight and finish up getting whatever else they might need.
Justine was done, she crept into bed. An unusual melancholy had come over her. She thought it was due to her period; her body felt swollen and heavy.
“Have you met any of these people before?” she asked. “No.”
“But Martina said she’d promised you an article.” “I met her yesterday while you had your beauty sleep.” “You didn’t mention that.”
“Do I have to account for everything I do?”
“I didn’t mean it to sound like that…”
“You didn’t?”
“I think it’s a bit reckless, a young Swedish girl heading out all by herself like that.”
“You do? Girls are tough, nowadays.”
She couldn’t stop herself:
“Nathan?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think she’s sexy?”
“Don’t be silly. No one can compare with you.” “You sure?”
“She could be my daughter, for God’s sake.”
The fever and shakes came that night. She woke up right in the middle of a dream. A body in the leaves, herself. Thirst was eating her from the inside, unquenchable, plowed her tongue full of furrows. She felt around in the dark; everything was pitch-black. She lay on her side, one leg weighing down the other, knees and joints.
She cried without making noise.
“Nathan…”
When he came up out of sleep, he was angry.
“For Christ’s sake, we’ve got to sleep; we have a rough day tomorrow.”
It was five past two in the morning.
His fingertips.
“Dammit, you’re burning up.”
He got some Alvedon, a fever medication, and water. “Get better, my darling, it will be extremely difficult tomorrow otherwise.”
“I know, Nathan, I know.”
The call to prayer. That hard, echoing voice. She froze more than she ever had in her life.
“I have to go to the bathroom…”
He helped her out; he cleaned her face. She saw something move in the corner. She screamed and hit around wildly.
“It’s nothing, just a cockroach. Take it easy, Darling, take it easy…”
Then back to bed.
“I can’t, I just can’t…”
“Shall I get a doctor?’
“No, just let me be…”
He went down to the registration desk and came back with two blankets. It didn’t help. She grabbed his arm tightly.
“I can’t go with the bus…”
“I understand, Sweetheart.”
He had to go out. She hallucinated due to the fever. She was in the jungle and she was sinking; Martina stood widelegged in the river. Then it seemed she was lifted from the lumpy mattress, a shimmering flood of cockroaches; she hung down. Someone was holding her. Someone was rubbing ointment into her back. She was freezing between her shoulder blades. A glass came to her lips. Someone said, drink. She drank and fell back into the rising shadows.
In the evening, he was with her again.
“Nathan, I was calling for you so…”
He said, “I was sitting here pretty much the whole time.
I’ve been keeping watch over you; you have been very sick.” “What day is it?”
“It’s Wednesday.”
“Tuesday was yesterday already?”
“Yes, it was Tuesday; you’ve been very sick… but now you’re better; the crisis has passed. I got some medicine from Ben. We can take the bus tomorrow.”
As soon as she thought of that, she wanted to close her eyes again; she tried to get more air.
“Ben said that you’d be much better tomorrow. You’ve gotten a fantastic medicine. But now
you have to drink a lot. Drink both of these bottles.”
He did not let her sleep. If her eyes were closed for too long, he woke her up again and forced her to drink more water. She was no longer freezing. The aches in her legs were beginning to lessen. He was sitting next to her; he didn’t go out.
“Forgive me…,” she whispered. “Forgive me for hindering you… us.”
“You don’t need to ask for forgiveness; you couldn’t help it. On a trip like this, you have to expect that anything can happen.”
“What about the others?”
“It’s better it happened now than in the jungle. Right?”
“Ew,” she complained. “Do you think I’ll be able to go?”
The next day it was over. She was feeble and exhausted, but the fever had left her. Nathan helped her take a shower. She was still bleeding from her period. He wasn’t irritated. He was singing as he kneaded her dry.
They took a taxi to the train station. She had her backpack between her knees. She was very weak; she couldn’t handle the weight on her shoulders.
The bus was old and worn out and was quickly filled with people. Ben had made sure that they all had places together. The seats were jammed tight; there weren’t enough for all the passengers. Some young boys had to sit on folding chairs. She felt immense sympathy for them.
The group received her with great warmth.
“You really need to forgive me,” she said.
“Well, our turn next time,” said the Icelander. She liked his accent.
Heinrich had bought her a small bag of rock candy. “You need a little sugar,” he said, as he gave her a friendly nudge. “At home in Hannover, we always used to get a little sugar when we were small and sick.”
“Thanks,” she said. “You’re all being so kind.”
Martina had gotten the seat in front of Justine.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
Justine nodded.
“I had something similar in Peru. It hung on in my eyes afterwards. I was afraid that I was going to go blind. Imagine trying to fumble your way around a foreign country without anything but darkness in front of you.”
“How did you manage?”
“A man I got to know found me some kind of powder, something the Indians used. It stung like hell, but the next day, everything was all right.”
“To think you’d dare try it! You could have really been blinded!”
“Yeah, you could say that after the fact. But sometimes, you have to take a risk.”
“I got a fantastic medicine from Ben.”
Martina snorted.
“Our Swedish social system would shit on themselves if they saw the stuff you get here.”
“That’s true.”
“Try and rest during the drive. It’ll probably take all day.”
A fat, temperamental Chinese man drove the bus. He stopped twice, once for a quick lunch and the second time for an eight-minute bathroom break. He held up his sausage-like fingers with thumbs folded in: “And I tell you! Only eight minutes! After that! Bus is gone!”
The toilet was unbelievably dirty and consisted of a hole in the floor. Justine barely kept her balance in there, and her shoes got wet.
There was no such thing as toilet paper.
She said so to Nathan.
“Do they have to have such dirty toilets? It smelled disgusting in there; how can they not notice that?”
“Do your best to put up with it,” laughed Nathan. “It’ll be better in the jungle. At least there you get fresh air and leaves.”
“Also leeches!” Martina added.
Justine didn’t understand the English word leeches. She waited a minute and then asked Nathan. He glanced at Martina and smiled conspiratorially.
“Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.”
In the bus, Martina sat turned toward them with her legs in the aisle. The arm rest of her seat was long gone. She had a fine little face with dark eyebrows. A vague smell of soap surrounded her. She took some photos of them.
Suddenly the bus lurched so strongly that she almost dropped the camera.
“Damn idiot!” she cussed.
Nathan had caught her.
“You okay?”
“Oh, yeah. But that asshole up there has certainly not gone to driving school.”
“That’s for sure, but you have to realize that we still have a lot of miles to go and he probably doesn’t want to drive in the dark. God knows if there’s any headlights on this monstrosity.”
“In Guatemala, I rode the whole night long in a vehicle that makes this one seem like a luxury bus. We rode from Tikal to Guatemala City, and the bus had stone-hard seats without any cushioning… talk about a sore butt when we finally arrived at the crack of dawn.”
“Were you reporting?” asked Nathan.
“Yeah, I sold a piece to the travel magazine Res. They gave me a number of pages and even the cover.”
He ruffled her hair.
“Well done, Martina. Do the same here.”
“How much are you offering?”
“How about, you know, in natura? We’ll come to some kind of agreement, you and me.”
She gave him a shrewd look.
“There’s an old English saying, old but true: Don’t screw the crew!”
The Icelander said, “Martina, weren’t you nervous in Guatemala?”
“Oh yes, the soldiers stopped me a few times.”
“I think that’s unwise, even stupid, to tempt fate like that, going out into the world as a young woman on her own.”
“Why not? Shouldn’t a gal have the same freedom of movement as a guy?”
“You understand what I mean.”
“Well, no one ever tried to rape me, if that’s what you mean. The worst thing that ever happened was once I lost my passport. But the embassy fixed that up.”
“Have you seen the whole world?” asked Justine.
“Never been to Iceland, but I don’t really have any desire to go there, either.”
They arrived late in the evening. It was still very hot. The air was filled with birds; they looked like swallows. Their shining silver bodies filled the telephone wires, which ran back and forth over the streets. Ben was thrilled.
“Oh, I’m so glad that you get to see this. They’re migratory; they’re only here a few times a year.”
“But I don’t think you’re supposed to walk under them,” said Nathan. “I hear that’s unlucky.”
Everyone laughed.
They were quartered in a bare and simple guest room. Justine was very tired; she stretched out on the bed. The room was as hot as a Swedish drying cabinet. She would need to wash up a bit; she smelled funky; her whole body was itching.
“How are you feeling now?” asked Nathan. He had already taken a shower; he was standing with his feet wide apart, under the ceiling fan to dry off. The golden hair on his legs. He was handsome. She longed for him, that he would embrace her and kiss her, reassure her that nothing dangerous was going to happen, and that they always, always would be together. “Fine,” she whispered.
“You seem down.”
“Nothing, I’m just tired.”
“Let’s go downstairs and eat something.”
She shook her head.
“Not me.”
“Well, I have to get something to eat.”
He left. There were no sheets on the bed, just a thin, flowery spread over the mattress. It felt like she was lying on sand, but when she tried to brush it off, she saw that it was smooth. She wanted to wrap something around herself, not because she was freezing, but because she was used to it. She felt naked and unprotected.
She heard the others getting together downstairs. The room was square; the floor was cement. The bed was the only piece of furniture. On the other side of the window lathes, a growing chorus of cicadas and frogs.
She sat up; she itched and burned in all the places where skin rubbed against skin. She got on her clothes and went into the hallway. At the en
d of the hallway, there was a laundry room painted an unfortunate color. To the right, there was a shower and an Asian toilet. She went into the shower room and took off her clothes. There were no hooks for them. She hung them over the door, but while she showered, they managed to get wet.
She rinsed her bra and panties. Covered just in her bath towel, she ran back to the room. What if someone saw her like this? It certainly would not be acceptable to appear in a Muslim guest house, wearing nothing but a bath towel. Maybe she’d be whipped or stoned to death? She put on a T-shirt and long pants, spreading out the wet clothes on the floor. Her wet hair felt good against her head. She felt a pang of hunger. She was returning to health.
She carefully walked down the steep, dark stairs. A TV was on; some young boys were sitting in front of it. They didn’t notice her. A woman looked out from behind a veil. “Have you seen my friends?” she asked in English.
Then she found them. They had taken a few tables, which stood on the street. She stood in the doorway. They didn’t notice her. Martina was sitting in the center. She was in the middle of telling them a story.
Nathan sat next to her, so close that his hand was resting on her leg.
She stood there for a long time, watching them, their shining faces, their intensive listening. Something inside her closed down. She couldn’t bring herself to go to them, nor could she face returning upstairs. All the sounds of the day were still in her head: motors, voices, cicadas. She stood there as if she had turned into a statue-of a middle-aged, charmless, pale, fat, female tourist.
Ben saw her first. He got up and approached her.
“Sit over here, Justine. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“What are you guys doing?”
“Nothing. We’ve eaten and now we’re just sitting around, relaxing.”
She slipped in between the chairs.
“I thought you were sleeping,” said Nathan.
“Uh-huh,” Justine said, feeling stupid.
Heinrich patted her on the cheek.
“It’s good that you’ve rested. You’ll have strength for tomorrow.”
Good Night, My Darling Page 20
