Martina came near with the camera.
“Hold still. This will take only a few seconds.”
Justine screamed in Swedish, “Go to hell!”
She threw herself on the ground, shook her leg against the ground, kicked, howled.
Nathan gripped her shoulders.
“Don’t get hysterical, Justine. Dammit, don’t make an idiot of yourself.”
She froze, sniffled.
“Take them off, then! Take them off!”
“You take them off! We’ve all gotten leeches on us.”
She forced herself, fingers on slimy, soft bodies, fingers that trolled, her eyes closed; in with her fingernail next to the sticky, rubbery mouths: there! They twisted in her grip, black and aggressive rings. With a grimace of disgust, she struck them against a stone.
Her wounds wouldn’t stop bleeding, but there wasn’t any pain.
“They spray in something that kills the pain and prevents the blood from coagulating,” Ben said. “They figure they can suck out quite a lot before they’re noticed. They’re not dangerous, even if they’re not all that pleasant.”
“If they’re in the river, we don’t have to walk right there,” suggested Katrine.
“They’re everywhere. They wait for their victim. They have an incredible sense of smell. When an animal or a person comes by, they get ready to jump, and they almost never miss.”
Gudmundur said, “All living beings have their place in the circle of life, but leeches? What is their function? I think they don’t have the right to live.”
And he pulled a mightily swollen leech from his ankle and mushed it to pieces under his heel.
Later in the afternoon, they reached the river again. They were going to camp on the other side. One of the native men, who barely seemed older than a boy, took Justine’s hand and led her carefully into the water. The bottom was slippery and full of stones. She held onto the boy tightly. When she was almost on the other side, she lost her balance and fell head first into the water. The boy lost hold of her; she came up sputtering.
Two hands gripped her from behind. Nathan.
“You clumsy little thing!” he said. “Now you’ve gotten your whole backpack soaked.”
Martina behind her, Martina’s ringing laughter.
“Sorry, Justine. It’s just looked so hysterically funny!”
She lay on a large, fallen tree trunk. A group of small flies swarmed around her. Everywhere there was rustling, buzzing, chirping.
She heard how the others were setting up camp. She lay unmoving on the trunk. The flies crept into the corners of her eyes; she was too tired to sweep them away. Martina’s clucking small sounds, content and mocking, soft as the sound of the gibbons high in the treetops.
She could discern hands and arms through her eyelashes; she heard voices and their calls.
In the distance, thunderclouds rumbled. When she opened her eyes, the first raindrops began to fall. She had never experienced rain from this perspective, from beneath. The white drops like pearls, she lay there and let them come, let them soak and be sucked up by her skin and clothes, let them clean her and bring her body back to life.
Ben was squatting under a shelter. He had changed into a sarong. He was stirring a tin pan.
“Justine?” he called.
“Yes.”
“Everything OK?”
“Yeah… I guess.”
“Go and change into something dry.”
She looked at her fingertips. They were wrinkled, as if she’d spent a long time in a bathtub. Her hands were full of pricks.
She said to Ben, “My fingertips are blue.”
She wanted to say bruises, but didn’t know the word in English.
He nodded without listening.
A plastic covering had been set up between some sticks. She bent over, ran there. Heinrich and the German couple were already sitting there. She put down her backpack. Lightning flashed among the trees. Thunder followed immediately.
“Where’s everyone else?” she asked.
“They went to look at the waterfall.”
She sat down and tried to untie the damp gym shoes. There was a hole in her pants; she was bleeding from a scrape on her knee. Everything in the backpack had been wrapped in plastic bags. That had worked to keep out the water. Everything in the belly pack was ruined: headache medicine, three tampons, a notebook and paper tissues had all turned into one big glob.
She got out a towel and began to rub herself dry. Out in the river, the man wearing the Pepsi shirt was walking around with a large fishnet. He pulled it up occasionally and picked out the fish, stuffing them into his pockets. After a while, he waded back and gave his catch to Ben.
Justine put on her shorts and a dry shirt. It wasn’t cold. The thunderstorm increased its intensity; it thundered both at a distance and directly over them. The rain came down in sheets now, making the ground even muddier.
“They didn’t have to go to the waterfall,” said Stephan. “There’s just as much water here.”
“Why didn’t they say anything?” asked Justine.
“They did, but we’d had enough of climbing for one day; we had no desire to go with them.”
“I was lying right there on the tree trunk.”
“They probably thought you were sleeping.”
She saw Nathan’s backpack and moved it next to her own. The forest seethed and hissed; the lightning flashed. Katrine crept closer between them.
“It looks so dramatic,” said Heinrich. “You can feel how small we human beings really are.”
“Just so long as the lightning doesn’t strike the ground.”
“But it does, all the time. Look around and you’ll see trees split in two.”
“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.”
