Inger Frimansson - Good Night, My Darling

“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.