Good Night, My Darling

Chapter ONE

A noise woke her. A knock. She was wide awake right away. She had slept stiffly and straightly, arms down her sides. Sweat covered her body, gave her goose bumps.

She looked around in the room. Nathan wasn’t there. Another knock, then the door opened.

A woman stood next to her bed. She wore a scarf which covered her forehead and even her shoulders. She stared at Justine.

“Cleaning!” she said, loudly in English.

“Cleaning? No, you don’t have to clean up; it is not necessary,” Justine replied in English. She sat up, leaning against the wall, with the sheet up to her chin. The aroma of curry swept in through the doorway. From the street, she could hear the sound of motors, and a thumping sound, as if a huge jackhammer was attempting to beat something into the bedrock.

The woman grimaced, turned, and disappeared. The door shut.

Justine carefully got up. She felt dizzy. She went into the shower room. Her head felt like exploding. A piece of paper was on the floor and while she was sitting on the toilet, she saw a gecko creep in underneath it and hide itself. Something was written on the paper. She read while she was still sitting: Out and about a few hours. See you this afternoon. Kisses.

She didn’t dare touch the paper. She took off her panties and laid them on the bed, afraid that the geckos would creep into them and make themselves at home. There was only one towel. Nathan had used it; it was hanging on the chair. Between the walls and the ceiling, there was a gap. She heard shrieking female voices speaking a foreign language.

She washed herself carefully in the lukewarm shower water. She felt tender and aching all over. The trip had taken over thirty hours. In London, they had to wait in a crowded, smoke-filled lounge, whiny children, not enough seats. She had to go to the bathroom, but was afraid to leave the lounge, fearing that their flight would be called while she was gone. When she said this to Nathan, she noticed that he was irritable.

Then they had to run across the entire large terminal to find the right gate. Nathan did not like losing control of the situation. He didn’t like asking directions.

Once in the airplane, their seats were far apart. Nathan ended up among the smokers. She ended up next to an elegant Belgian couple wearing fine clothes. She felt big and bloated. She turned and looked for Nathan, but couldn’t see him. She stopped one of the young flight attendants, all of whom were gliding around in beautiful dresses. In halting English, she requested to change places. The flight attendant was named Hana; her name was on a small brass nameplate over her breast. Hana moved her lips; they had been carefully painted. Hana’s lips told her that if she wanted to change places, sorry, she had to work that out for herself.

The Belgian man was listening in.

“Next to husband?” he asked, deciding to take part in the conversation.

“Yes,” she said in English.

The man shook his head.

“Very long journey,” he muttered.

She decided that she did not have the energy to confront all these foreigners, speak English, fall asleep next to them, long for Nathan. She stood in the aisle, and it was extremely narrow. She worked her way toward the back, looking for Nathan. Nathan was wedged into a middle seat. He gave her a pained smile.

“Damned airline,” he said.

“I asked them to help us, and they said we had to work it out ourselves.”

“I’ve asked these people sitting next to me, but they won’t move. They’re smokers.”

An attendant pushed past her, carrying some pillows.

“It’s best you go sit down again,” he said. “You’re in the way.”

They took a taxi to the hotel. The heat was oppressive and surprising. On the wall of a house, she saw an enormous thermometer; it showed 34 degrees Celsius in the shade. She looked in her backpack for her sunglasses but didn’t find them. As they drove through the suburbs, she tried to think that the city was beautiful. She looked at the palms and the bushes with large red blossoms, which were growing along the median strips. She was so tired that she felt ill.

The radio was on in the taxi, music with loud talk in between. It seemed like a heated discussion. She didn’t understand a word. Nathan sat in the front seat. The big backpacks were in the back seat with her. They had bought them at a supply store, Overstock, fifty crowns apiece. They had gotten most of their equipment there. That was part of Nathan’s concept. Advice on where to get equipment for the people joining his groups. These were not supposed to be journeys for rich people.

He had taught her how to put on the backpack, helped her with the buckles, showed her how to fold in the ropes so they could be pulled out in one jerk. A name was written in ballpoint pen on the inside of the backpack’s top: Bo Falk. He was the former owner, a short time in his care. She imagined him as a young man with peach fuzz, not yet had his growth spurt; wondered if he were content with his life, if he was happy.

The evening before they left, Nathan had given her a mascot. It was a shaggy, bear-like animal; she had tied it to one of the straps. The animal was supposed to be with her out in the jungle, and when they returned, she would put it on her bedpost as a constant reminder of what she had endured and successfully accomplished.

“It’s going to be tough, Justine. Are you sure that you really want to come?”

She was sure.

Her eyes were blinded by the sharp white light. Looking like shadows in the front seat, she saw Nathan and the taxi driver, waving their arms around and gesturing. Nathan turned back toward her.

“How’s it going?”

“Fine,” she whispered. “But overwhelming.”

“You know what the taxi guy’s saying? That there’s no such hotel. But I’m going to hold out until he gives in.”

“Maybe it closed.”

“The hell it did.”

Building was going on everywhere. Half-finished skyscrapers pointing straight to the skies, shining windows of glass. Rows of cars and scooters, helmets on fluttering head scarves. Finally, the taxi pulled up to a bit of road between broken sidewalks and heaps of soil. The driver pointed.

“Hotel Explorer?” he said irritably.

That was it. Nathan had a look of triumph on his face; he patted the driver on the shoulder. The driver jumped back as if he’d been hit.

A teenage boy was lying on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. At first Justine was afraid that he was dead, but then she saw his ribcage rise and fall. His feet were naked and black. Justine wanted to say something to Nathan about the boy, but he was already carrying their stuff into the hotel. They were given their keys, Room Fifteen, top floor.

She was too tired to notice what the room looked like. It was somewhat dark and that felt nice. Nathan turned on the ceiling fan. It started up with a whine. He pointed to the bed nearest the wall.

“You look like you’re about to fall to pieces. Go lie down.”

“Did you see the boy on the street? He was just lying there, what if he’s sick?”

“Uh-huh.”

“To think he’s just lying there with people all around. And no one seems to care.”

“The world is full of poor people.”

She lay on her back, wearing nothing but her underwear; the fan whirled around. Nathan kissed her on the cheek. His forehead was thick with drops of sweat.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said. “Take a nap. I’m thinking of going out for a minute or two.”

No, she thought. Don’t leave me. Stay next to me and be with me each and every second.

Nathan had slept for most of the trip. He never had trouble sleeping no matter where. He explained that you learned to sleep standing up if you had to during his time in the military. It was important to save your energy. A few times she had gone past him as she walked up and down the aisle, keeping her blood circulation going. She saw he had his blanket drawn up over his head. Once he moved and she thought he would wake up and look at her. But he kept sleeping.

She wondered what the time was. Maybe the middle of the day, one or two in the afternoon. At home it was early in the morning. She thought of the bird with a tug of worry, but he had his entire attic filled with food; he was going to be all right.

Her long pants were hanging on a hook, wrinkled and somewhat damp. She smelled them. She was sweating again. Her skirt was in the suitcase; it was also wrinkled and it was tight around the waist. She chose to put on a T-shirt and when she saw herself in the mirror, she began to cry.

The hotel was built like a patio, with an inner courtyard covered by a ceiling. When she came out of her room, she could see all of the floors. Down on the stone floor, she could see heaps of laundry. A woman was standing on the stairs with a mop. When Justine walked past, she looked away.

She walked down the flights of stairs carefully. On one landing, she saw a little house altar with incense and candles. She drew in the sour aroma.

This is as far away from home as a person can get, she thought. She felt wiped out from exhaustion.

A large man, wearing a patterned short-sleeve shirt, sat in the hotel foyer. The shirt clung to his back. A fleck on the counter, a fleck on his shining forehead. Justine gave him the keys to her room and asked if he would be able to exchange some money for her.

“No, no,” he answered in English. He pointed down the street.

She stepped into a burning wall of heat. She had to go through it. She had to get money and get something to eat, some water and food. The boy on the street was gone, and she felt relieved. She started to walk in the direction that the doorkeeper had indicated. The traffic was lively, the air heavy. The direct light made her eyes hurt. It was one great dizziness, a whirling, smoking inferno with pieces of street all around, like a labyrinth. She followed what she believed was the main street, thought she saw a sign with the word “bank.” She turned to the right, trying to imprint on her mind the look of the houses and the signs.

It wasn’t a bank, but some kind of office. She saw how people milled about in there behind the shiny window panes. She grasped the door handle, but the door was locked.

She stood in the way of two women with colorful dresses and head scarves.

“Excuse me… but where can I exchange my money?”

They both stuck out their chins, the same confused gesture.

She had to turn back, but then realized that she didn’t know where she was. Everything looked the same-same signs, same cars, same buildings. She felt faint; everything was going round and round, smells and sounds and thirst.

She heard someone call her name. She didn’t know where she was. She looked around, but didn’t see anything, blinded by the light and the sun. A taxi had stopped, the door opened.

“Justine, what are you up to?”

Nathan.

She grabbed the pocket of his shirt, heard a ripping sound from the seam loosening.

“Hey, relax!”

He led her to the taxi, helped her in.

Up in the room, he gave her water from a large plastic bottle.

“You better make damn sure that you don’t go out there without having a lot of water in you,” he admonished her.

“I didn’t have any local currency,” she said.

“You could have asked the guy at the desk. You could have gotten something in the room.”

“And you, you could have stayed here with me and not taken off like that.”

“I didn’t want to wake you up. You said you hadn’t slept a wink on the plane. It was out of consideration to you that I went out by myself.”

She curled up in the bed and began to wail.

“But Justine… you should know that I would have to explore the area.”

“You didn’t have to start immediately.”

“Yes, I did. I already had made some appointments. I’m here to work, you know. This is not a vacation if that’s what you thought.”

She lay there in her wrinkled dress and the elastic cut her waist. Her fingers were swollen from the heat.

She thought, maybe if we made love.

But when she touched him, he broke free.

She had met him at the dentist’s. It was during a period of time when she was there fairly often; she had problems with a bridge. Every time she entered the waiting room, he was sitting there, and finally, they both broke into laughter.

“It seems our dentist is also a matchmaker,” he said.

He was a few years older than she was. He had gray, tufty hair that would normally look ridiculous on a man of his age, but strangely did not on him. She heard someone call his name, Nathan Gendser.

Finally, they managed to come out into the waiting room at the same time. She was numb in her jaw from the Novocain. He was paying at the cashier.

“I’m finally done,” he said. “Feels great.”

She felt a twinge of disappointment.

“Lucky you!”

“Do you have much left?”

“Once or twice more. It wasn’t just the bridge; there were some cavities, too.”

“I have my car outside. Can I drive you somewhere?” Her own car was around the corner. She thought a moment, then said, “Thanks.”

It was summer. His plump, tanned hands; no ring. “Dalvik…,” he said. “I was wondering about that. Are you related to the Sandy Candy business?”

She nodded.

“Oh, I get it. That’s why you have to go to the dentist’s so often nowadays. Too much candy when you were a child!” “I didn’t eat too much of that candy. I didn’t like it much.

But I ate a lot of other kinds of candy.”

“I’m not surprised.”

He sat quietly for a minute. Then he asked her where she was going.

“Where are you going yourself?”

“Well, I can let you off at the subway station next to Odenplan? I live in the vicinity.”

“That’d be perfect.”

“Are you on vacation now?”

“No, I don’t work.”

“What! You don’t work! Are you unemployed?” “Not exactly.”

She felt his look; she stared stubbornly straight ahead.

People often were bothered when they found out that she didn’t work. She had never really started a career. She had been sick most of her teenage life. Then she thought it was too late for anything. But you just couldn’t say this to strangers. In order to avoid questions, she sometimes said that she’d worked for the family concern but was now thinking of trying something else. And then she would change the subject.

“I usually call myself an odd-job man,” he said. “But the last few years, I’ve been working as a tour guide.” He let her out in front of the medical building on

Odenplan. When he drove off, she went into the subway and rode back to the dentist’s to get her car. Once she got home, she looked up his name in the telephone book. He lived on Norrtullsgatan. She got out the city map and found the exact place where he lived.

The next day, she did something unusual. She went there. This was unlike her. She talked to herself: what are you doing here, what are you expecting?

It was as if she were tipsy.

His car was parked next to the building. She glanced up at the façade, wondered which window was his. So that he wouldn’t discover her, she went into a nearby bookstore and thumbed through some books, finally buying a paperback just for appearances. Then she walked along the sidewalk, up and down, in front of his building. As if she knew he was coming any minute, an intuition.

Her sixth sense was correct. He came out of the apartment building a half hour later. He was alone. She sped up, as if she were just walking along that minute, she said, “Hey, it’s you… I didn’t expect to see someone I knew!”

His face: a look of surprised happiness!

“I was just going out to grab a bite to eat. Do you want to come, too?”

They took a boat out to the royal palace island of Drottningholm. He invited her to lunch at the exclusive restaurant. She felt she was waking up from a period of paralysis.

She had been silent for so many years. With him, the language began to return, one word at a time.

He stroked life into her body; he awakened her. “You are so beautiful, I love women who are not anorexic.

Like you, you’re so alive.”

She became violently jealous of all the women he had made love to.

“How do you know that I’m so alive?”

“I feel it, even though you’re in your shell. I’m going to peel it from you, pluck your shell off, and show you to the world.”

She thought it was just something that a man would say, but she gave herself to him, totally.

She had never made love as a grown woman. After her child, her life came to an end.

Fragments of discussions between her father and Flora. Flora like an attack terrier: “It’s not just protecting her, you have to let her get well. We can’t do this here at home. You can’t, I can’t. She has to go to a clinic.”

She listened to her father’s footsteps, how doors slammed, how it thundered and shook through the entire house.

Finally he allowed a psychiatrist come to the house to examine her. He spoke of what happened and called it a miscarriage.

“You have to go on,” said the psychiatrist. “You have your whole life in front of you.”

He did not realize that for her, the reverse was true.

Yes, all the experts came to see her. He bought the best ones there were. Talk, talk, talk. He let her come with him on his trips, put her in the firm. Numbers and calculations, but nothing stayed in her mind. He brought home an electric typewriter, and Flora covered the keys so that she couldn’t see them. She learned a and ä.

When Flora traveled to Maderia with her, her father set her up in his bedroom.

“Sleep in my room, so you can see when I fall asleep and when I wake up. If I have done you wrong in life, know that I didn’t mean it, I’ve only wanted the best for you, Justine; you are all I have left of what was once my whole world. You are all I have left.”

“What about Flora?” she whispered.

“Flora? Oh yes, of course, Flora, too.”

She lay in Flora’s bed, on Flora’s pillow. She saw her father with new eyes. She saw that he had long ago passed his youth. His hair was no longer brown, but thinner and drab; his eyebrows shot out like bushes. He was sitting on the chair by Flora’s vanity. He was looking in the mirror.

“What do you wish for in life, Justine?” he asked, and he had resignation in his bearing.

She had no answer.

He leaned forward over the table.

“That man who… came so close to you? You don’t have to tell me who he was. But… was he important to you?”

She ran away from him wearing her nightgown. Stood behind the door and refused to talk.

Her father had to coax and cajole. He handed her the horn, as if that would help, as if she still were a little girl that could be comforted with a musical instrument.

The horn’s mouthpiece against her lips, the song of the horn.

She turned around, reflected in his eyes; his eyes were filled with pain. She wanted to cling to him and disappear into nothing. She was his only daughter, with great sorrow.

After some time, she began to stabilize. Flora had great patience. Whenever her sister came to visit, that was all they talked about, Flora’s great, endless patience.

“You’re certainly giving her just as good care as she would have gotten in a mental hospital,” said Viola, smelling like perfume and flowers. “It must give her a sense of security to have you around her. And it gives him some peace of mind, too.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference whether she were here or in a hospital; she hardly makes a fuss these days. And Sven feels better, having her here at home. His little girl.”

She said the last words with a bit of sarcasm.

Viola crossed her nylon-covered legs, and called Justine over.

“If I took you into the city, Justine, bought you a dress.”

“Believe me,” said Flora. “We’ve bought her so many clothes! I can’t stop you, but it’s a wasted effort. She never wears new things. At the very most, she will put it on for one day, and then she’ll never wear it again. She says that it feels uncomfortable and affected. But it doesn’t really matter. I mean, she hardly ever leaves the house.”

“Don’t give up, Flora. Clothes create grace and bearing. It could be a way to help return her to normal.”

Flora lowered her voice.

“Normal! That child has never been normal! It’s genetic, an inheritance from her mother. She has also been, let’s just say, a little unusual, to put it mildly. Now I’m attempting to give her basic knowledge about running a house. That won’t be wasted. And once Sven and I are old, she can care for herself and for us. Then she’ll be of some use, both to her and to us. A human being has to have some value; that’s among the most important things in life, to be useful.”

Viola could not understand why Flora didn’t hire help for the house or the garden. Married into wealth and still no additional household help.

“You could sit here like a member of the nobility and just be waited on. And you would still be valuable as the wife of the well-known Sven Dalvik, just that alone.”

Flora had her unusual reasons.

“I don’t want strangers in my home. This is my territory.”

The territory became Justine’s as well. Slowly, she greased herself into it, although Flora didn’t realize that. Wearing her father’s cast-off overalls, she scrubbed the walls and the floors in the house. Spring and fall, year after year.

In the water were a few drops of blood from a cut on her finger.

Chapter TWO

The day her father died, she was working her hardest up in the attic. She usually began at the top and slowly worked her way down. She was on her knees, scrubbing and scrubbing. The floor boards cut into her knees and the pain felt good to her. The raw wood, the smell of well-scrubbed pine.

Then from far below a draft of cold air. She heard Flora call. Her father had collapsed on the outer stairs. He had lost a shoe. Mechanically, she took off his other shoe. Her hands were still damp from the cleaning water.

Together they managed to pull him into the blue room. Flora ran up and down the stairs, changing clothes, smoking.

“You should change clothes, too, if you’re coming with us. You can’t wear those overalls.”

She sat with her father’s head in her lap. It felt hard and little.

Only one of them could ride in the ambulance. Justine took the Opel. She had gotten the Opel as a present for her thirty-fifth birthday. She followed closely behind the ambulance with its shrieking sirens.

As she already realized, there was nothing that could be done. A worn-out doctor took them aside to a room. She remembered a bandage over a cut on her father’s throat. She sat and wondered what he’d done. Did he cut himself? Or was it a hickey? She thought of anything and everything in that room, just not her father.

“So here’s what’s going on. At the most, he’ll manage to live through the night. I want you to be aware of this.”

“We’re aware,” she said.

Flora became angry. She scratched her hands like paws. “How much do you want… to do your utmost?”

“My dear Mrs. Dalvik, there are some things that can’t be bought. We have done our utmost.”

They sat, one on each side.

“Poor Justine,” said Flora. “I don’t think you realize how serious this is.”

Her cheeks were spotty with mascara. Justine had never seen her cry before. The sniffling bothered her; she wanted to be left alone with her father. She thought of death as a woman, maybe her mother, who had been sent to bring her husband home. She could imagine her coming through the window, big and tall, taking off his blanket, taking his hand, and leading him away from them. She would look at Flora with a spiteful little smile: “I’m taking him now, because he is mine.”

Nathan took her to the biggest shopping center in Kuala Lumpur. It looked just like a large department store in Sweden, and she was amazed at the assortment of goods. She must have forgotten her sunglasses at home, or lost them on the plane. Finally, she would be able to buy a new pair.

Nathan made clear that she could not hold his hand or show any affection because that would be offensive. People just did not show public affection in this country.

“We’ll resume all of this in the hotel room,” he said. He was in a good mood again.

He also thought she should look at some clothes.

“It’ll cheer you up. Women love to shop; just ask an expert like me!”

He had been married twice and had a live-in girlfriend once. There were photos of all his children in graduation outfits or wedding dresses on the living room shelf. He had six children. She asked about their mothers, punished herself with details.

“Ann-Marie is the mother of these two. They look like her, same blue eyes, but thank God not the same mental status, if I may say so. Nettan is the mother of the twin girls and Mikke, the boy. I was legally married to both Ann-Marie and Nettan, for five and seven years respectively. After that, I’ve been careful not to get married. When I met Barbro, we agreed to just live together. She also didn’t want to get married. She had just gotten divorced from some crazy guy who used to beat her up. I lived with her for four or five years. Little Jenny is ours.”

He was very proud of Jenny, who was a model. A thin girlish young woman with doe-eyes, a copy of her mother.

“And then, did you live by yourself?”

He waved his hand.

“In a matter of speaking.”

“Why did it never work out? Are you so difficult to live with?”

“All three had one thing in common: they were a bit hysterical.”

“What do you mean hysterical?”

“I don’t want to go into that now.”

“Am I also hysterical?”

“Not what I’ve seen so far. But if I notice it, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“And which one was the best in bed?”

He pushed her into his bed, lay over her, put a hand over her mouth.

“The first one is you, the second one is you, the third one is you, Darling.”

She looked through the clothes, but everything was too small. Malaysian women barely reached her shoulders. They appeared stamped from the same mold, and their waists were as narrow as one of her legs.

Let’s go, she thought.

Nathan was speaking to a shop assistant; they were observing her. The assistant came up to her with a measuring tape around her neck.

“She’s wondering about your size.”

“Why? Nothing here I want.”

Nathan held a dress up to her. It looked made for a pygmy.

“I thought you might want something more elegant when we’re out and about among people. This is still civilization, you know.”

“Just look at that, Nathan, do you really think I can squeeze into that? Can you really believe that? It’s made for a child!”

“Well, maybe not this exact one, but a larger size.”

He turned toward the assistant; she had big, brown eyes.

“Bigger size?” he asked in English.

The assistant smiled crookedly, took the dress, and went away to search.

“Let’s go,” Justine whispered.

“Don’t be such a troublemaker.”

“But Nathan, you don’t get it.”

“The hell I don’t. I want to give you a nice dress, and you’re acting like a stubborn child.”

He began to walk to the counter. Justine followed him. The assistant came. She looked at Nathan expectantly.

“Well?” he asked.

“Sorry, sir, not bigger size.”

“As if I were an incompetent, stupid child!” Justine burst out once they returned to the street. “She ignored me completely!”

“Huh.”

“She turned to you; she talked to you.”

“She must have noticed how grumpy and unwilling you were.”

Justine put on her sunglasses. She was crying again, and she had a headache.

That evening, her period started. She thought that was the explanation. She told Nathan, forgive me that I was so whiny.”

“I pretty much thought that was the deal. I know women; they have their whiny phases.”

She did not want to be one of those women he knew like that. She crept into the narrow bed. Just wanted him to hug her, nothing more.

He said, “Tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to meet Ben. He’s coming with us on the expedition.”

She took his arm, drew it over her, placed it on her tummy.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

He kissed her.

“Turn more to the side so I can hold you for a little while.”

During the night, she bled horribly. She stained not only the sheets, but the mattress underneath. She didn’t want the cleaning women to see it. She tried to clean the stains herself, but it didn’t work.

She and Nathan ate breakfast at a restaurant which was next door to the hotel. They ordered juice and coffee with milk and there was a sweet, creamy mess at the bottom, which appeared to be some kind of sweetener. She stirred it suspiciously. Nathan was eating roti, a dish that looked like pancakes with meat sauce. Men and women were sitting around eating, all using their fingers.

“You might have noticed that they’re using their right hands. Their left hands are unclean,” Nathan explained.

“What do they do with their left?”

“Figure that one out for yourself.”

Justine’s stomach hurt, it cramped like tiny, digging nails. That’s the way it always was, the first few days of her period. No pain medication in the world could help.

“Maybe you should just stay at the hotel,” suggested Nathan. “You look a little ill.”

She thought about the cleaning women.

“I’d rather die. Take me with you.”

They took a taxi through the city. Nathan pointed out a few sights for her: the National Mosque, with its sun feather column and its minaret, which was over seventy meters high. For fun, he used a tour guide’s voice.

“And here to the right, you will soon be able to see the famous twin towers…”

He was acting like an eager boy.

“I love you,” she said loudly. “Oh, Nathan, put me in your shirt pocket and take me with you wherever you go, and never ever take me out!”

The man called Ben was waiting for them in a room with air-conditioning. There was tea and juice on a table. Justine felt a spontaneous confidence in him. He was relaxed and had nothing of calculation or malevolence about him.

“So you’re going out in the jungle to frolic with tigers and elephants,” he joked, while handing her a glass of juice. He spoke excellent English.

“I hope I don’t exactly frolic,” she answered.

“You know that there are both tigers and wild elephants in the area we’re going to,” he said.

He observed her reaction; then he laughed.

“You don’t see them very often. They keep away from humans; they’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”

“But they have attacked humans?” asked Nathan.

“Of course, but that hasn’t happened in a while.”

“Elephants scare me more than tigers,” she mumbled. “Once a man let me ride an elephant. Pappa and I were at the circus. They didn’t ask me; they just lifted me up and plopped me down right on that wrinkly skin. A few weeks later, Pappa told me that an elephant had gone crazy, managed to escape its chain, and ran amok.”

Ben smiled at her. His brown chin was round, his nose wide and flat. He was born in the jungle, but he had received a decent education and even studied at the university in Kuala Lumpur.

“Elephants shouldn’t be in a circus,” he said. “No wonder they go crazy there.”

They sat with Ben for a long time, talking and looking at maps, making long lists of the things that they would do and the things they had to purchase. In the evening, they went out to a restaurant. There was just one dish: fried rice with chicken. Justine was hungry. There wasn’t much meat on the chicken; it was mostly bones. They each ordered a Coke.

Nathan said he longed for a cold beer.

“No beer here,” he said. “I know another place; we can go there next time.”

That night she slept soundly and didn’t even wake up when the muzzien called to prayer at six in the morning.

She and Nathan took a shower together. She soaped up his big, light body; she could never get enough of touching him. Her hands could long for him, long to feel his skin, his warmth; he was so filled with life and strength. There in the shower, he had a strong erection, and she knelt and took him in her mouth.

Afterwards, he had tears in his eyes.

“Sometimes, I feel I need to rethink my idea of never getting married again,” he said, stroking her cheek.

“Do you think it would work out? Or do you think that I’ll also become hysterical?”

“You’ll just have to refrain from it.”

She had pulled up her underclothes, they were still a bit damp, but would dry on her body.

He said: “Today we’re going to meet the others who are coming with on our excursion.”

“Who are they?”

“Two Norwegians, I think; some Germans, a guy from Iceland and-believe it or not-a Swede. We’re going to meet them at Ben’s in about an hour.”

Chapter THREE

Her father was not buried in what had been seen as the family grave, the grave where the French wife was at rest. Rather, he was buried on the other side of the cemetery, where the newer and smaller graves were.

Justine heard Flora say to Viola: “Should I let the two of them be together in death, and have all three of us there later? No! Once I die it will just be him and me, just him and me!”

“And little Justine?”

Flora began to laugh. “Don’t you see that little Justine is not so little anymore? Soon, she’s going to be past her best years, overripe.”

Viola’s tone changed, as if she’d been insulted herself. One could see her as “overripe,” almost sixty. She had been bought out by NK and she had been recommended to start her own business. The truth was that the department store did not want old ladies at the perfume counters. They didn’t have the same results in sales; in fact, they could have a frightening effect on the customers.

Viola had no choice but to take the money, and now she was renting an expensive little place near Hötorget. She started Viola’s Body Shop, where she sold soaps, perfumes, and expensive lingerie. She had offered to take Justine as an apprentice; maybe she could be trained to take over the business. A few days later, Justine had indeed gone there. She stood behind the counter in a rose nylon skirt Viola had picked out, and Viola had also made her up and had taken her to a hair salon.

It didn’t work.

“Quite frankly, she’s rude to the customers,” Viola reported later to her sister. “She pretended not to hear what they were asking her; just stood there drifting away in her own thoughts. Take her back.”

“I didn’t try to force her on you; it was completely your idea. I told you it wouldn’t work out. I’ve always said there was something wrong with her mentally, but you never believed me.”

After her father’s death, they lived as usual in the house. Nothing had changed; all the routines remained the same. Flora continued to speak to her husband after she had closed the bedroom door; Justine could hear her voice through the wall which separated them. Flora talked loudly. She rebuked him for leaving her; she threatened to sell the house and buy an apartment in the city.

She also said this to Justine.

“Don’t think that we are going to live here forever and ever. Anyway, it’s not normal for two grown woman to share a house like this. Normal would be that you would have moved away from here many, many years ago; you have just been growing like an abscess on Sven and me during our entire life together. Your father has protected you and overprotected you, but he’s not here anymore. Now I’m free to throw you out. He wouldn’t be offended; he should have thanked me. He knows that everything I’ve done for you has been for your own good. Women understand these things better than men.”

Justine would make herself scarce whenever Flora was in that mood. Sometimes she took the car and drove up to the cliffs near Lövista, wandered on old paths; never for long, though, anxiety drove her back home. What was Flora thinking of? Had she brought a real estate agent to the house, who was now wandering around figuring out how much it was worth?

All this remained unchanged for many years.

During the morning, they drank their coffee on their own side of the table, each fully dressed, neither wanting to appear in a robe in front of the other one. That would be a defeat. Flora was always made up, her eyelashes large and blue. These days they were a bit more uneven; her sight had started to weaken.

When the warm days came, she would move to the balcony or into the garden. She had always loved the sun. She asked Justine for help with the lounger and had her also bring out a carafe with white wine and water. Wearing her strong glasses, she would paint her nails, layer after layer.

Her stroke came on such a day, while she was sitting in her lounger on the balcony. It was a fine, clear spring day, one of the first really warm ones. She was wearing a bikini and she told Justine she had the same bikini since she was a young woman; her body was as cute and small as a girl’s. But now she had difficulty walking up and down the stairs.

Then she said that she had called a real estate agent. “There is an apartment on Norr Mälarstrand which I am thinking of buying. One floor with a large terrace. I can sit there and sunbathe. You know how I love the heat.”

“What about me?” asked Justine.

“You’ll just have to find something for yourself. The house is definitely going to be sold. The real estate agent said that there were a number of interested buyers.”

And she sank into the cushions and made herself comfortable. The sun shone on her knotty, hairless legs. She rubbed in lotion, stomach and arms; she raised her glass to her lips and drank.

Afterwards Justine told Nathan that she was extraordinarily angry at Flora that moment.

“So angry that I could have killed her. I thought I could put something into her drink, some poison or something. But where would you get that? Poison? Not like going to the drug store and asking to buy some strychnine. Don’t they use that in the mystery stories? I went to the garden, got in the boat and roared off; Pappa never liked it when I would take off like that: you ought to be calm and careful, he always said. But I was angry, furious; I think he would have understood me; he also wanted to keep the house. Because of Mamma. I made a few rounds out there, because it was a normal workday and people were at work and I thought about what it would be like if we had to move and whether I would have the chance to stop her.”

“But didn’t you both own the house?”

“We probably did, but I never paid attention to that stuff.”

“You never signed any papers?”

“Maybe I did. I don’t know, I was really depressed after Pappa died.”

He shook his head. “You need to remember those kinds of things, Justine.”

“Need, whatever. Now I pay more attention. At any rate, when I returned to the house, the sun had disappeared, and I thought that Flora had gone in. I started making dinner right away; it was probably five in the evening. I had been out for an unusually long time, landed somewhere that was completely still all around me, only the birds. I stood there on the beach and wished she would die, Nathan. I really did.”

“Did you ever give her a chance to be a mother to you?”

“Don’t you get it? Flora isn’t someone that you give something to. Flora is a taker.”

“Maybe I should come with you when you visit her in the nursing home?”

“No,” she said hastily, as if the old witch woman would arise from her sickbed, as if she would become strong again and begin to threaten them.

“Eventually I went upstairs. There was a draft from the upper level. I looked out and saw her sitting there in a somewhat distorted position. It looked so macabre, that dry old woman stomach and that bikini… She’d had a stroke. I tried to get her going, but she was slurring her speech and was strange. Later, they found that she was completely paralyzed and couldn’t even speak. Well, then I sent her off to the hospital and she never came back.”

He took both of her hands.

“You seem to be a bit grim to me, my darling.”

“She had me in her power for so many years.”

“Please pardon me in advance, but it sounds a bit exaggerated when you say that.”

“It’s not exaggerated.”

“It was surely not easy for her to become the step-mother of a spoiled child like you.”

“If you had met her, you wouldn’t think so.”

“Oh yes, you probably deserved a whipping or two!”

“Nathan!”

But the conversation had turned into play. He had that ability, to get her to forget that evil and hurtful past; he loved wrestling with her and taking off her clothes piece by piece, as if they were trophies. Then he placed himself between her legs. He kissed her and manipulated her until she was taken over by spasm upon spasm of orgasms. He enjoyed her amazement and her gratitude. A woman of her age so completely without experience.

But still she had carried a child.

When she explained more about that to him, he said that he had already surmised it. She was wider, not closed in the same way much younger women were. He was careful to say that it didn’t make her less attractive. It was one of the contrasts that made her so fascinating to him: so grown and wonderful but without any dissemblance.

He thought owning the bird was complete craziness. He came home with her once and the bird came flying, and he had to shout out in surprise. She had hoped that he would feel friendly. She had to close the door to the attic while Nathan was in the house. The bird did not like that. She heard him screech and fly around up there.

“I’m going to let him go into the wild,” said Nathan. “This is animal cruelty.”

“Do that and he’ll die. The others will attack him out there; they’ll hack him to death.”

“Isn’t it better to die a quick, albeit cruel, death rather than be forced to live in a house that was made for human beings?”

“You don’t get it. He likes this house, and I am his friend.”

“It can’t be all that hygienic, either.”

“People are always going on about cleanliness. Do you think that my house looks messy?”

“No, but…”

“Let’s forget about the bird. Come on, I’ll show you something else.”

She showed him photos of herself when she was little, pictures of her mother and the wedding photo of her father and Flora.

“Ah… so this is the notorious Flora.”

“Yes.”

“Such a skeleton.”

“She has always been thin and beautiful.”

“She probably rattled when she walked. No, Justine, you’re the beautiful one; you’re round and plump, something for a guy to sink his teeth into.”

And he pressed his mouth against her underarm and gave her a large, dark-red hickey.

When he saw her post horn, he lifted it from its hook and tried to blow it. Not a single sound came from it. He blew until he turned red.

“It doesn’t work, does it?” he said.

She took it from him. She had composed a few melodies when she was a child, but they were simple and easy to remember. Now she played them for him.

He wanted to try again. He blew and snorted, and finally managed a hoarse, deep sound.

“I’ve always been able to play it,” she said quietly. “My Pappa gave it to me. He said it was made for me.” Even Nathan thought she should sell the house.

“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.

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 end 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.”

She nodded. She felt about to cry, so she hastily put on her sunglasses.

“Now you look like Greta Garbo,” said Stephan. He had a fairly thick German accent. Katrine imitated him unmercifully, and then she repeated the phrase again, very clearly. Stephan and Katrine were engaged. They were well-trained; she noted the muscles on their calves. They were certainly not going to have trouble keeping up in the jungle.

She forced herself to say something.

“What have you eaten?” she asked.

“Guess!”

“I have no idea…”

“Fried rice and chicken.”

“It’s the national dish of Malaysia,” said one of the Norwegians.

Justine had difficulty telling the Norwegians apart.

“Are you Stein or Ole?” she asked.

“Ole, of course. Maybe we should wear name tags.”

“Well, you guys look identical.”

They both burst out laughing; they had the same clucking, well-meaning laugh.

“Are we? That wasn’t very nice!”

“Maybe because you’re both Norwegian.”

“So you think we Norwegians all look alike? I don’t think you Swedes look alike.”

He looked over at Martina.

“She’s dark-haired, for example, and you are blonde.”

Ben arrived with a plate of food and an ice cold Coke. She drank eagerly.

Ben said, “We talked about packing yesterday. Nathan will show you. Take the least amount of things necessary. Remember that you have to carry everything that you pack. And think that wet clothes are heavier than dry clothes. All the stuff that you’re not going to take with you, we can store here at the house until we return.”

“OK.”

“You’re going to get another pill from me. Tomorrow you’ll be stronger than ever.”

She couldn’t sleep. Nathan lay beside her; he snored slightly. In spite of the heat, she wished she had something to wrap herself in. She also had to go to the bathroom, but she didn’t want to put on all her clothes, and she didn’t have the energy.

Martina had said, “Good night, everyone! And remember that tonight is the last time we get to sleep in a bed for a long, long time!”

Justine thought that she was going to be longing for a bed, even this one.

She must have fallen asleep after all, because when she woke up, Nathan was already up and busy packing all his things. The aroma of food drifted into the room. The chorus of frogs was intense.

“Good morning, Sweetheart,” said Nathan. “How do we feel today?”

She stretched.

“Fine.”

He was sitting on his haunches, pressing his stuff into the backpack.

“Nathan…”

“Hmmm?”

“No, nothing.”

“Well, get up then. I just heard someone leave the shower.”

“Can you help me pack?”

“Nah. You can manage yourself. I have to talk to Ben a little bit. Take a change of clothes and something to sleep in when we make camp. Don’t forget the malaria pills! OK, I have to go now. Come down as soon as you can.”

Chapter FOUR

A truck covered with a tarp took them away from the town. Out of consideration, perhaps because she was the oldest woman in the group or because she had been sick, Justine was allowed to sit up front with the driver. The others crowded into the flatbed with the equipment.

Once she turned. Nathan sat with his legs pulled up. Leaning against them was Martina.

She drank some of the lukewarm water from the bottle. The man next to her drove jerkily; he seemed not used to this truck. Every time he changed gears, he tore the gear control so that the small cogs squeaked and howled. This appeared to make him nervous. The windows were rolled down; dust was sucked into the driver’s cab. He took a peek at her from time to time but he couldn’t speak English. He had very dark skin. The jungle was right next to them on each side of the road.

Once, he called out something and pointed at a place on the road. A python, many meters long, was lying there. It was dead; it had been run over. She heard the others asking about it; she didn’t hear the words, just the excitement in their voices. She thought about nighttime. She shuddered.

After a few hours, the truck turned onto a sandy road, heading right into the jungle. The tires slid a bit; they almost got stuck. Then the man turned off the engine, and the jungle noises began to come toward them like a great and growing orchestra.

Justine was sore over her entire body. She jumped down onto the red sand; she massaged her legs.

Nathan stood next to her.

“Here’s your backpack. And I bought this for you.” He gave her a knife in its sheath; it was wide and black and a half meter long.

“A knife?”

“A parang,” he said.

“It’s unlucky to give something sharp.”

“Whatever. But you’re probably going to need it.”

Justine pulled on the backpack. She let her water bottle hang from one of the metal hooks on the side. She had her fanny pack around her stomach, and she attached the knife there. The heat radiated, pressing sweat drops from her hair fastener. She thought… no she didn’t want to think. If she began thinking, she would lose all her energy; she wouldn’t be able to make it through.

They started off slowly. The first leg was a steep, sandy hill; then the primal forest took over. Ben and Nathan went first. After some time, she noticed that some native men had joined them. She hadn’t noticed them at first. Immediately she thought they had evil intentions, but then she understood that they were going to accompany them on the journey. Ben explained to her that they were members of the Orang-asli, the original people.

They climbed up a slick and slippery slope. Her backpack kept pulling her off balance. She held tight to roots and branches, trudging upwards with difficulty. Heinrich was right behind her, a whistling sound when he breathed.

“How’re you doing?” she panted.

“I hate to complain when we’ve just started,” he said. “But this goddamn heat.”

Yes, the heat was enervating; it made movement slow and breathing heavy. It forced out sweat so that their clothes became wet, made the cloth from their pants cling to their legs making their steps even more difficult.

Once at the top, the plant growth stood like a great green wall. The native men began to clear a path. Justine tried to use her knife, but it was hard to grasp, she needed both hands to hold on to it. One of the men took the knife from her and showed her how to hack. It seemed so easy when he did it.

They cut their way through up there, and then there was a sharp drop, a ravine full of mud and slippery leaves.

“Do we have to go down right here?” said Gudmundur.

“That’s right, they really didn’t give a damn about informing us how the jungle is constructed,” said Heinrich. “They should have told us all the way to the very last vein in the very last leaf.”

Ben came up to them.

“Having a rough time?”

“If only it weren’t so damn hot. We’re not used to it.”

“Drink a lot of water. Don’t forget to drink.”

One of the native men started the descent. He was wearing a shirt with “Pepsi” written on it, and dark blue shorts. His legs were skinny and scratched. She thought she might slip and roll all the way down to the ravine’s stony bottom. Her muscles shook from the strain; she climbed down extraordinarily slowly, holding tightly to vines and branches. Fell on her butt and slid down quite a ways until a tree stump stopped her. She sat for a moment, hugging it like a lifesaver. Once she let go, she managed to set her hand right into a thorny bush. She swore to herself.

Nathan was quite a bit ahead of her. “Aren’t you coming?” he called.

Martina had already reached the bottom.

“We can take a short rest,” Ben said.

The yellow river ran rapidly; from a distance came the thunder of a waterfall.

“Take off your backpack,” said Nathan, but she was too tired; her hands were shaking. He helped her, lifted it off; the straps had cut into her shoulders. Her arms had swollen so that her watch was too tight. She had to loosen it a few holes. She looked at her fingers; they were swollen like small sausages, and she could hardly bend them.

Heinrich was the last one down. His eyes wandered; his clothes were soaked and dirty.

Ben looked at them all.

“You’ll get used to it. It’s hardest at the beginning.”

“I wonder,” said Heinrich. “I’m not sure you can teach an old dog new tricks.”

They had stopped at a beautiful place. Large white flowers were blooming at the river’s edge; higher up they saw grottos, and a group of bats came out into the light, frightened by their closeness. Justine fell to her knees by the river. She let the water run over her hands and face. An enormous butterfly was sitting on a twig which was sticking out over the water. She noticed more of them all at once; they circled around her and she held out her hands. One of them landed on her thumb. She felt its small cool feet and its antennae as it slid across her skin.

“Don’t move!” said Martina. “I want to get a close-up.”

But when she approached with her camera lens, the butterfly became scared and flew off. She sighed with disappointment.

“Damn! That would have been the best picture!”

“They’re looking for salt,” said Ben.

“They are? I thought butterflies looked for sweet.”

“Well, that’s why they’re landing on Justine,” said Heinrich. He had taken off his shoes and dropped his feet into the water. He grimaced strongly.

“Usch. Have any of you gotten blisters?”

“I don’t know,” said Justine. Her gym shoes were soaked through and muddy. “I don’t dare take them off. I doubt I’ll ever get them back on.”

One of the native men came up to Ben. He was somewhat younger; he had a scar running across one of his cheeks. He was holding a blow pipe in his hand. A quiver hung on his hip. He appeared excited. He kept repeating the same word again and again.

“What’s he saying?” asked Nathan.

“Tiger tracks.”

“Where?” Martina forced herself forward. “Let me see so I can take some pictures.”

About ten meters away they saw the prints of large paws in the sand. “Ben, you did say that they are more afraid of us than we are of them,” mumbled Katrine. “I really hope that’s true.” “Oh yes, of course it’s true. He certainly heard us and ran away. He’s far away by now.”

They started off again. They were going to follow the edge of the river. The mountain stood straight up on their left side. They had to balance on slippery roots and cliffs right where the mountain met the water. One of the men had tied a rope of rattan between the twigs and branches. They held to the rope and slowly moved forward.

Eventually, the mountain leveled out, and they turned into the forest.

She and Heinrich were always coming last. She was stressed by the pace the others kept. She managed as best she could. She struggled with breathing and she lost her rhythm. In the beginning, Nathan waited for her and helped her over the most difficult passages. In the beginning, he also exhorted her.

“Try and go a bit faster, Justine; you’re holding up the whole group.”

Later, Ben let one of the native men go with Justine and Heinrich. Every time they caught up to the others, they had already rested for a while and were ready to keep going. This kept increasing her stress and her feeling of incompetence. Heinrich noticed this and he tried to comfort her.

“Not everyone has the same ability; that’s just the way it is. And if Nathan wants to arrange jungle adventures in the future, he should inform his customers that you have to be a marathoner and an elite gymnast in order to go.”

She was noticing so clearly how her body had become more limited. She wasn’t young any longer.

They sat on some stones and rested. Justine kneaded one of her ankles and felt something warm in her hand. It was blood. Her socks had large red stains. She touched one of the stains and felt something rubbery. She screamed aloud.

The native men laughed.

Four leeches had attached themselves through her socks. Their bodies were swelling and thickening. She had drawn up her socks over her pant leg, but they had sucked their way through.

“There’s leeches for you,” said Nathan.

“Take them off!” she screamed.

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.”

“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.”

A thud against her ear, like an ache.

“Why?”

“Martina is going to take pictures of them. Jeda and I are going, too.”

“Who’s Jeda?”

“He’s the one in the green shirt.”

He had gotten up, the golden hair on his legs. He said,

“Martina and I are going with Jeda. He’s going to show us the elephants. We can’t all go, or we’ll scare them away.” The words pierced her, exploded.

Martina was ready to go, her camera hanging over her shoulder.

They were gone until the middle of the afternoon. When she saw them appear again from between the trees, she knew everything was over.

A blast of cold went from the roundness of her heels, through the bones of her pelvis, her chest and right into her heart.

She could no longer speak.

She waited. Something was going on with her skin, as if it were shrinking. A throbbing pain in her head, as if something was clamped too tightly.

Nathan was walking along the riverbank in order to find a spot to piss.

No one saw her take Madh’s blow pipe. No one saw her follow him, follow Nathan.

He stood and contemplated the water and the rapids. He stood and rolled a cigarette. He had formed his mouth to whistle, but she didn’t hear anything but the thunder of the waterfall.

The dart hit him right between the shoulder blades. He fell straight into the whirling, yellow water.

Chapter FIVE

^Someone asked where Nathan was. Someone was asking with a whiny voice, Nathan, has anyone seen Nathan?

Maybe she was asking.

Maybe she herself.

She remembered voices, sounds.

And Nathan’s backpack in the middle of everything.

Eventually, they had to decamp. She remembered the way the grass caught her shoes and undid the knots. How she had to stop again and again to tie them, how much effort it took to bend down, how the dizziness gripped her, and the heat. They had left the jungle. They walked over a steaming hot field; she broke a leaf, as big as the ear of an elephant. She held it over her head like a shield.

They had searched for a long time, even she did. Madh searched with her, his eyes were black, his blow pipe hanging on his hip.

Early the next morning, Ben came up to her. She saw him come. She stood straight and silent.

“I know you don’t want to, but we have to go. We can’t search any longer.”

She started between the trees, as if she heard a sound.

She said, “The elephants.”

“The elephants?” he repeated.

“The elephants can go crazy if you get too close.”

He closed his eyes tightly.

“Poor little friend,” he said flatly.

She was put on board a train.

Maybe she was alone.

Someone came with coffee in a mug, someone came with water.

“Drink,” said a light, Swedish voice.

Martina’s.

The windows were open; the heat swept in; a swaddled infant screamed. The mother’s headscarf, held to her hair by two red pins. It looked like they went right into her temples. Martina’s fingers had white, clean nails.

The camera was no longer there.

She smelled her own body odor. A man came down the aisle, tottering. When he came closer, she saw it was Ben.

The train stopped for a moment. A village was out there. Two girls on a scooter; they smiled and waved.

The toilet was a hole in the floor. She got on her knees and threw up.

Then the city.

Ben said:

“I’ll take care of the tickets. There’s a plane tomorrow afternoon.”

He had found a hotel. He put her in the same room with Martina.

“It’s good that you’re not alone. At least you can speak Swedish to each other.”

He was extremely kind.

“Do you have a wife?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Yes, I do.”

“What’s her name?”

“Tam.”

“Tam.”

“Yes.”

“Do you love your wife Tam?”

“I love her and respect her.”

“Nathan!” she screamed, and then was quickly silent.

She got out of the shower; she was clean. She had showered for so long that the water finally ran cold.

Martina stood in the room, her thin back, her sarong like a skirt. She was holding something in her hand; it was the mascot. She had untied it from Justine’s backpack.

“What are you doing?” said Justine, her words coming like gravel and spikes.

“Nothing, just looking.”

Justine bent over her luggage, unhooked her parang.

The pain in her head returned.

She remembered the strength of the blood as it hit her arms; she remembered it burned.

They brought her in to talk, again and again. Her head cramped. Some policemen and a woman named Nancy Fors. She was light-skinned; she was a Swede. She had been sent from the embassy.

The windows in the room had bars.

She repeated.

“I came out of the shower, and there was someone there, a man. She lay on the floor. Martina lay on the floor and I screamed, and he turned toward me. No, I don’t remember his face, dark, thin. I ran into the bathroom. I slid and hit myself and the towel got wet. I heard him close the door. Then I went out. She was lying there, already dead.”

“Where did you hit yourself, Miss Dalvik?”

She drew up her skirt and showed them, here, here on my thigh. She was full of scratches and strange bites.

There was a doctor in the room. He touched her leg and made her scream.

She remembered a syringe and the smell of ether. Or was that later?

Maybe that was later.

“That man?”

“Yes.”

“How old do you think he was?”

“I don’t remember, I told you already.”

“Was he thirty? Or just twenty?”

“He was dark and thin.”

“Tell us everything again.”

“She lay on the floor, and the parang was in her back.” “Did he threaten you, Miss Dalvik?”

“He didn’t have time. I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. He had killed Martina.”

And it turned heavy and hard to breathe. The air didn’t make its way to her lungs. She tried to find oxygen and finally screamed right out loud.

Then there was a hospital, because everything was white: the sheets, the walls. Nancy Fors had a pleasant, long face. She sat next to the bed every time Justine opened her eyes.

“Ben, the man who was in the jungle with you, asked me to say hi.”

She cried when she heard his name.

But mostly she slept.

Nancy Fors said:

“They’ve caught a man who specialized in hotel burglary.” “They have?”

“Yes, they wonder if you can come by and identify him,” She had been sleeping for many days. Now she put on the clothes that Nancy Fors chose for her, wide long trousers and a patterned tunic with long arms.

“They’re my clothes. I think we wear the same size. You can keep them.”

She looked through a peephole. A man was sitting there; he was thin with a hollow-cheeked face.

“They’re wondering if he is the one,” Nancy Fors said.

She said she didn’t know.

She would have liked to say goodbye to Ben, but she wasn’t going to get the chance.

She would never see him again.

Nancy Fors went with her on the plane, to be either her support or her guard. They went together all the way back to Stockholm.