“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.
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?”
