“No, I mean strike here, on us!”
“It’s worse for the others out there.”
“What if they don’t find their way back?”
“They’ve got the Orang-asli guy, the one with the scar; I forget his name. He’s certainly going to find his way around. People who live in the jungle have an inborn radar system.”
“What do you think, Justine?”
She didn’t answer. The night was coming; the jungle increased its power. A cutting sound like sawing very close by.
“What the hell is that?” asked Heinrich.
Stephan looked up.
“It’s an insect, I think.”
“Has to be one big fucking insect, in that case.”
“Maybe it’s a frog, though. Anyway, one of the night creatures.”
“How are we supposed to sleep in this noise?” said Katrine.
“Maybe it’ll stop soon. I hope so.”
They saw the roving light of a flashlight.
“Thank God, they’re coming back,” Katrine said enthusiastically.
The thunderstorm seemed to be retreating against its will, but it was still raining. Nathan peered in under the plastic sheeting. He touched one of Justine’s feet.
“So, here you are, enjoying yourselves.”
She couldn’t meet his glance.
“You should have seen the waterfall! What a high!”
“You could have told me,” she said. “Suddenly, you were just gone.”
“Yes but you were so tired. You wouldn’t have made it. It was almost impossible to get there.”
“You still could have said something.”
He crept inside; his forehead was wide and dripping wet. He looked at the backpacks.
“We’ll have to spread out a plastic ground cloth, you know. We can’t just sleep in the middle of the mud.”
He carried in her dinner: hot tea in a plastic mug, fish and rice. “No need to get your dry clothes wet.”
“Thanks,” she whispered.
A moment later.
“Is it going to stop raining soon?”
“It rains almost every night at this time of year.” She spread out their sleeping bags, made them up nicely.
The rain had slowed somewhat.
One of the men went around the camp carrying a bag and spreading out a powder. It shone with a weak golden-white gleam.
“Snake powder,” he grinned.
Inside the circle was a protected zone.
They had eaten. They were full. The orange plastic plates were heaped together out in the rain. Martina was wearing a head lamp and sat fussing with her camera. Nathan took it from her. He held it against his eye and photographed her where she sat. The flash lit up her face.
“The photographer almost never makes it into a picture,” he said.
“I had a press photographer as a boyfriend once.”
“Had?”
“Yep. Had.”
“Shouldn’t we clean up and brush our teeth and stuff?” asked Katrine.
“We’ve already taken a shower,” said Martina. “In the waterfall. It was so unbelievably wonderful. Soft and warm water, clear as crystal.”
Justine put on her raincoat and her wet gym shoes.
“Where are you going?” asked Nathan.
“Behind a bush,” she said.
“Watch out for snakes!”
She walked out right into the mud and almost slipped. Had to turn around, ask for a flashlight. Lit up the slimy, dark leaves. Stepped over the line of phosphorus and went a few steps beyond it. Sat in the dark.
It rustled. She saw a flecked branch that resembled a snake; her heart was pounding, a scream in her throat.
“Shut up!” she whispered. “Don’t be hysterical!”
She saw the camp down there, the flickering light of the fire and some paraffin candles. Ben and the men lying down under their own plastic covers. One of them was sitting and stirring the fire; he appeared to be a hunched shadow to her eyes.
When she came back, the others had already crept into their sleeping bags. Martina was lying next to Nathan’s right side. She was turned away from him. Next to her was Ole, and out on the edge was Steinn.
“Everything all right?” mumbled Nathan.
She didn’t answer. She kicked off her shoes outside the cover and pulled down the zipper on her sleeping bag. The ground underneath her was cold and lumpy. She longed for a pillow.
Nathan leaned over her and gave her a hard, silent kiss. “You’re ice cold,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of the night. Of the jungle. Of the fact we’re lying direct on the ground with all the snakes and tigers and elephants.” “I’m not afraid.”
“Great. Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
They fell asleep, one at a time; she heard how their breathing got heavier. She lay on her back; there was no other way to sleep. Her knee was throbbing. The sound of the forest came at her from all directions, shrill and piercing. She thought she saw two eyes. She turned on the flashlight, and they were gone. As soon as it was dark again, they reappeared.
A tiger? she thought. Well, come on then. Come here and rip out our lives with your strong jaws, kill us all!
The eyes stayed where they were. Nervously watching her.
She turned toward Nathan. He lay with his face away from her, bent like an embryo. She reached out and touched his lips while she whispered, “Nathan?”
He was sleeping.
“Good night,” she whispered. “Good night, then, my darling.”
The rain stopped at dawn. Instead there were layers of fog. As it lifted, the tree trunks slowly took shape. A new kind of noise took over, the sounds of dawn. The apes woke up, as well as the small swift birds.
Had she slept? Had she slept at all? She sat up in her sleeping bag; the others were sleeping with hidden heads. She massaged her sore fingers.
The sun broke through like a warm and bright curtain.
Justine took her towel and swimsuit and sneaked away to the river. In the cover of some bushes, she changed clothes and then stepped into the yellow, warm water. She was wearing her gym shoes. Who knows what lurked in the water, but she had to get clean; she felt the smell of her own stale, sour sweat.
She washed herself with sand, scrubbed the marks left by the leeches. They started bleeding again.
She stayed in the water for a long time. She thought that Nathan might come, that they would hold each other, that he would embrace her there in the water and reassure her that everything was still the way it was, that nothing had changed between them.
But he didn’t come.
At camp, Ben was busy making breakfast. The sun warmed them; they hung up their wet clothes to dry on branches and bushes. She saw two pale mushrooms. They were the eyes that were shining in the night. She would have to tell Nathan how they fooled her. Nathan would laugh and think it was a funny story.
But Nathan wasn’t there.
She asked Ben.
“They’re out to get some roots. I’m going to boil them for our breakfast.”
One of the Orang-asli men squatted and smoked. It was the same man who had accompanied her and Heinrich. They were always smoking, these men. They learned how to roll their cigarettes when they were only a few years old. It could take some time until the hunters returned to the village. Smoking held the hunger pangs at bay.
Justine tried to shape her tangled wet hair. The man gave her a quick look, smiling shyly, before he glanced away.
“Mahd is going out hunting,” said Ben.
“Hunt what?”
“Whatever we can eat. A monkey or a small pig.”
“Can people eat monkeys?”
“Sure they can.”
Mahd’s blow pipe was leaning up against a tree. When she touched it, it fell over. She hurried to set it right again.
The man named Mahd plucked
a dart from his wooden quiver.
“Is it poisonous?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Ben.
She scratched her arm strongly. During the night, she had gotten a number of itchy small bites. She thought they might be ants. When she got up from the sleeping bag, she saw many of them scurrying about where they were resting.
“Would you like to go hunting with him?”
“Would he mind?”
Ben said something to Madh. Madh grinned. His teeth were long and uneven.
“He says it’s fine.”
He ran like a ferret through the bushes. Even though she had hardly slept, she felt strong. She followed him, tried to move as noiselessly as he did. At times he turned around to see if she was keeping up. They went along the river for a while. The heat was beginning to return; the sun glittered in the dark green leaves. The fog was almost gone.
He chose paths where she could walk. He held branches back for her. Once he took her wrist and pulled her up a hill. He was short, but very strong. She wanted to say something to him, but he couldn’t speak English. She was wondering about figuring out some sign language when the man suddenly stopped. Justine halted in the middle of a step. She could smell his odor-tobacco and something vaguely like vanilla.
He slowly lifted his hand and pointed through the bushes. She didn’t see anything. He placed the blow pipe to his lips; she held her breath. She saw his ribcage flatten. At that moment, there was a shrill shriek, which cut off. It seemed as if it came from a child. The whites of the man’s eyes were bloodshot. He made a quick grimace, then relaxed.
There was a body in the water. The body of an animal. When she came closer, she saw that it was a small wild pig. The dart had pierced its throat. Madh said something to her, which she didn’t understand. Then he imitated the sound of a pig. She reached out her hand and stroked the pig’s rough, muddy fur. The animal’s eyes were wipe open and appeared to look at her.
She felt something hard against her arm. The blow pipe. Madh gestured at her to try it out. He looked enthusiastic. She looked around, shrugged her shoulders.
He pointed to a tree hanging over the water. He walked over to the tree and put one of his long brown rubber shoes on a broken branch. He then returned to her and showed her how to hold the blow pipe. Pointed to his shoe and laughed, took hold of his knees and laughed again.
The blow pipe was long, but lighter than she thought. In one end, the end for blowing, there was a dry piece of resin. A simple design was carved into the bark right below it. The air was thick with sound; the heat pounded against her head.
She lifted the blow pipe to her lips. It smelled rancid next to the hole. She concentrated, took a deep breath, blew with her diaphragm the same way she had done at home with her horn. She noticed the dull thump of a dart that hit something. She heard Madh take a sharp breath.
The dart had gone into the tree, a few millimeters from his shoe. It sat so deep that he almost didn’t get it out again.
Their clothes did not dry during the night. There was the stench of them beginning to rot, but they still had to put them on.
They had struck camp and gotten ready to go further. Justine stuck her feet into her socks the stains had gotten stiff and brown.
Ben stood before them, looking worried.
“You think you’re wet now, but I’m afraid you’re soon going to be even wetter.”
Heinrich grimaced.
“We will, huh!”
“I’d hoped that we could avoid it, but it seems that we will have to cross the river again, close to the waterfall, and it’s fairly deep there.”
She had a panic fear of water… how it forced its way into you, filled you up, weighed you down, took away your air; how you fought and hit wildly, forgetting that you’d learned to swim. She really did not want to be here anymore; she didn’t want to go along…
She looked at Nathan.
No, she thought. You will never see me hysterical again.
They didn’t say anything. They hiked in silence. Then they arrived at the spot where they were going to cross the river. The water rushed and whirled in rapids, large tree trunks and branches floated along. A bit farther on, the water rushed down into a thundering waterfall which drowned all other noise and beat apart everything that washed down with it, beat it all to bits.
They had to go to the other side.
She felt strangely exhausted.
Madh had already gone to the other side. He was born here in the jungle, born and raised here. Nothing here was too difficult for him. He had tied a tough, clean rattan line over the river rapids; it went from shore to shore. Now Ben and the Orang-asli men stepped out into the river. They braced their feet and held on to the line. They were going to help them in the rapids, they were their stop blocks.
Nathan went first.
“Wish me luck!” he said, and pulled at the band under his hat. His eyes were large and happy.
“Here comes a Viking, and for a Swedish Viking, nothing is impossible!”
He stepped into the water and began to move forward single-mindedly. First it went fine, but then he slipped under the surface. Justine saw his joints, holding tightly to the line.
She clenched her fists so that the nails went into her palms.
Yes, she could see him again. He sneezed and shook his head;
then he made his way up the other side of the river bank. He stood there and waved his arms, hit his chest like Tarzan. The backpacks were sent over. The men in the water lifted them from to hand and Nathan stood on the other side and picked them up.
“Do you want to go now, Justine?” asked Ben. “Sure.”
She sat on the slippery slope and glided into the water. It was deep. She felt a block of stone under her toes. But the water drew at her legs and ripped them off the stone. Ben grabbed her hand, showed her how to hold the line. His mouth was stern.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go!”
She heard the thunder of the cataracts and the waterfall. “Now what?”
“Quiet! Use your toes to search for a foothold.” She took a step. The water rushed around her, wanting to pull her down. She tried to make herself as heavy as possible.
She saw Martina on the shore; she was on her knees with her damned camera. I hope she falls with it into the water; I hope she drops it and it disappears down into the cataracts. One more step. A man was next to her; she crept under his arms. The water rushing past, one more step. Hold tight to the line. Now she was approaching the middle.
“Great, Justine!” called Nathan.
She felt the beat of her heart.
Right at the spot he’d fallen, she fell, too. It was a peculiar spot, where it was too far to reach the bottom. Her head was underwater, white and green whirls, her hands gripping tightly to the rope. The water attacked her, ripped and pulled her; she felt its power. With a violent effort, she moved her right hand farther along and let the left hand follow. Her right hand found a stone and she climbed on it and held fast.
“Just a little more, Justine. You’re almost there!” She took a deep breath; there was another arm to creep under, one more second of respite. Then out again, and through the last bit. Nathan reached for her. She got up, and the water streamed from her clothes.
“I did it!” she panted.
“You sure did!” he answered, but then turned for the next one.
When evening came, they made camp next to a wide and stony riverbank. The native men began at once to collect twigs and light fires.
Martina was changing film.
“They’re lighting fires so that the animals won’t come,” she said. “The big mammals. The elephants come here to drink; we found their droppings over there, a few piles.”
“Do we have to be in the middle of their private area?” said Steinn. “That’s not very thoughtful toward the elephants. We can be anywhere in the jungle.”
“We can’t go any farther. Darkness is falling,” said Ben.
They helped each
other tie up the plastic shelters. Madh stepped out into the river with his fish net. Then Justine remembered the wild pig.
“What about that pig we shot?” she asked.
“He gave it to his family. They have six small children.”
“Where is his family?”
“Somewhere here in the jungle.”
Martina took her towel and a plastic bag with soap and shampoo.
“I’m going to wash off all this shit. What about you, girls? Let’s take a ladies’ bath together.”
They found a small inlet where the water had made a lagoon. Justine had taken her swimsuit with her. Katrine and Martina slid into the water naked; they were as slippery and shiny as animals.
“Oh, if only I could live like this all the time! I wish I belonged to a tribe,” said Martina as she poured shampoo into her cupped hand. “Away from civilization and all its demands; return completely to nature.”
“Don’t you already live like that?” said Katrine. “All your world travels and the like.”
“Well, yes, in a manner of speaking. I’m never going to work nine to five. I can’t settle down anywhere. I’m looking for something new all the time. New experiences, new people.”
“Stephan and I have also traveled quite a bit. But once we get home this time, we’re going to get married and have some kids.”
“We’re planning that, too,” Justine said. “Getting married, having some kids.”
Martina was already climbing out of the water. A leaf had attached itself to her stomach, right over her black field of hair.
She wrapped the towel around herself.
“You and Nathan?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that he wasn’t going to tie himself down any more.”
Justine’s throat burned.
“What would you know about it?”
“Nothing. That’s just what I was picking up on.”
Morning came again. Heinrich had given her a sleeping pill. She had fallen asleep immediately. During the night, she awakened a few times, and thought about the elephants, half dozing. At one point, she thought she heard the trumpet of an elephant from a distance. When she saw that there still was smoke from the fire, she fell asleep again.
They ate fish and rice. Nathan was sun-tanned; his eyes were two blue stones. He looked at her with those eyes. He said, “We’re going to see the elephants.”
Good Night, My Darling Page 22
