Stig Dagerman - Island of the Doomed

Just then he walks past the bush where she’s hiding and she calls to him softly so as not to frighten him and cautiously takes hold of his arm. When he turns to face her and dives into the green, stifling shade under the bush there’s a glint of fear in his eyes and she can see the tension in his face, and his hesitant movements as he approaches her tells her how suspicious he still is.

You’re so scared, she thinks, but she half-closes her eyes so that they won’t radiate triumph and give her away, you’re so scared, you’re sweating with fear, your shirt is damp and stained, everything about you stinks of fear.

Someone walks past just then, next to the bush where they’re hiding, and she pulls him quickly towards her and gently places her hand over his mouth and with a surge of pleasure she feels his tongue tickling her skin. They stand there for a minute or so, hugging tightly, both of them pretending to listen to the rustling noise as whoever it is walks quickly away through the grass; but in fact, they’re just listening to each other. She can hear his hot breath hissing past her ear, he’s swaying backwards and forwards on his feet and making the leaves rustle, and with a strange feeling of excitement she can feel his heart beating hard, hard between her breasts. Then she suddenly lets go of him and takes her hand away from his mouth as she kisses him quickly just under his eyes and then the cloth falls away from her and she presses her naked body forcefully against his. With a shudder, she feels his horrible hot hands stroke her back with eager caresses, he leans back and lets her rest on his quivering body and he bites on to her mouth like a leech and his crazy hands have intertwined behind her shoulder blades. Just as they’re about to fall, however, she braces herself and whispers vehemently, ‘No, not now, wait, wait, you must wait, you must wait a minute, just a minute.’

A little branch has come between them and she takes hold of the branch and tickles his naked chest with it until he’s smiling again, and with her other hand she caresses his back tenderly until she finds the little hollow made by the bite and her lips remember it and they grow agitated as well and when she bends over the branch and bites his lip he just thinks she wants to be kissed and he strokes her with both hands in the most disgusting way.

‘When,’ he whispers at the same time, and there’s a heavy veil over his eyes, as on a drunk, ‘when shall we meet?’

Carefully, so as not to annoy him, she removes his clammy hands from her body and returns them to their owner.

‘Just as the sun’s setting,’ she says, ‘the moment the sun sets, I’ll meet you in the grass below that plateau where you usually go in the evenings.’

Then he’s back again with his wet mouth and suddenly he’s sucking away at one of her breasts, but she controls herself, she keeps control until he lets go of her and disappears into the high grass with a knowing, intimate wink. Then she punches the little branch with her clenched fist, punches and punches at the bush until she falls flat on her face with the effort, and lies panting on her stomach in the deep shadow of the bush.

Maybe she dozes off for a while in the suffocating closeness under the big bush, or maybe she just glides away from reality for a moment, for suddenly the pain in her back returns, it’s a stabbing pain which cuts into her like a knife, a knife being thrust in and pulled out by some inexhaustible hand. Now, as then, she wriggles about in an attempt to get away from it, but there’s no respite, she can’t get away from anything at all, she has to go through it all again.

It’s a hot jungle and a green haze filters through the quivering roof of the treetops, tall grass and trembling parasols of leaves on slender flagpoles. It’s a wet jungle, and where she’s slinking along its floor with tortuous steps there are stinking green pools, covered with green membranes that heave but don’t burst as creatures move underneath. She’s hot and sweaty in a more unpleasant way than ever before, a shameful sort of sticky heat wraps itself round her body like a wet bathing costume, and in order to be rid of it she flings off all her clothes, screws them up into a rough bundle and hurls them into a serpentine bush, which lets them sink down whispering through its hairy branches. But nothing is any better even though she is naked, the jungle has a fever and she herself is enclosed by the jungle’s fever; the trees themselves are feverish, their crowns whistling in the wind and balancing on shaking, sweaty trunks; poison is dripping from the parasols, falling down in sizzling drops to the ground, and the ground itself is feverish, hot, evil-smelling vapours are rising from it and the dirty pools with their green membranes are the ground’s wounds.

Oh, she’s so frightened of hurting herself, of cutting herself on something, and her blood spurting out in a green spray until the wound is suddenly covered by one of those green heaving membranes. She throws herself down before one of the ponds and wallows in her heat, then she breaks a little twig from a bush and, frightened but nevertheless convinced it’s the only thing to do, she pokes a hole in the skin over the pond and watches in horror as it slowly grows bigger and bigger and an animal or at any rate some living creature wriggles its way under the membrane towards the hole. And she wants to drop everything and run, drop everything: dignity, reason, and every trace of courage and every trace of protection from her fear, and to race pell mell into the redeeming maw of the jungle, but she’s incapable of moving, she can’t even raise her eyes and look away, she has just to lie there outstretched by the pond and watch the animal she’s aroused by poking a hole in its prison come closer and closer and suddenly, suddenly its head emerges unseeing and slowly from the water and wriggles its way forward over the membrane, its body comes pouring out of the water, yard by yard, there’s no end to it, and spreads itself over the whole of the membrane, strong enough to bear it all, and at first the snake just lies there motionless, at first the red snake just lies there with its eyeless head not moving at all, as if surprised by all the new sensations it’s come up against: the sudden dryness, the heat which is so different, and the noises that have lost all their muffled quality and are now piercingly shrill.

They lie there quite still, she and the snake, and she can’t move and wouldn’t want to do so for fear the snake would realize she existed and perhaps chase after her or make some other of the jungle’s inhabitants aware of her existence.

The hot, damp ground suddenly starts shaking beneath her and the sound of a terrifyingly shrill trumpet cuts through time. The snake grows nervous and its long body starts shivering slightly while its eyeless head, with no place for any eyes even, rears up as if listening. There’s a sound of snapping twigs and dry grass breaking quite close by, and suddenly the elephant trumpets again, she turns to look and sees the elephant has come to a halt among a clump of parasols and its red tusks gleam ominously, its mighty body is still trembling with a desire to crush everything in range, its little eyes are glinting evilly in their little sockets, and suddenly it raises its trunk and squirts its thick, red, evil-smelling jet straight into her eyes.

While she’s still blinded, she hears the elephant departing, crashing through the jungle quite close by her, and a little tree falls over right across her back and wounds her superficially with its sharp trunk, and the hissing animal gets further and further away and its trumpeting rides off through the jungle with it, while she’s trying to rub her eyes clean, and she feels weak and scared as what has happened dawns on her. Then at last she can see again, and the first thing she wants to do is to find some grass so that she can dry her red hands and get rid of all the elephant’s fluid, but it’s only when she throws all caution to the wind and sits up with a start and looks down in horror at her body that she realizes the whole of her is this same, poisonous red colour, her skin has disappeared and her blood has acquired a thin, blood-coloured membrane to replace it. Carefully, she feels her body, frightened this membrane will suddenly burst, and she feels hotter than ever and more ashamed than ever, something dirty has happened to her, something which means she’s suddenly got problems when it comes to staying alive.