“Do it before the bird has destroyed it and left bird shit everywhere.”
“You don’t get it. I want to live here. My mother chose this house. I have lived here my entire life.”
“That’s why you should sell it. How many houses do you think I’ve lived in? I don’t even know myself. You have to move around a bit, get a new perspective. You get stunted by the same damn view each and every day. Don’t you get it? You have to keep growing, Justine. Try a little adventure.”
They all got together at Ben’s office. The two Norwegian men were already there when Justine and Nathan arrived. They were just under thirty; they were named Ole and Steinn. A little while later, the Icelander and the three Germans appeared: Heinrich, Stephan and Katrine. Heinrich was the oldest in the group, just over sixty. The Icelander’s name was Gudmundur.
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.