After several hours of cruising through the river, Jona and the delegation are spending the night at the transition village. Come morning, they will continue with their expedition to the indigenous village deeper in the jungle.
-Part 1-
We had been on the riverboat for hours.
The heat of my body hung around me, suffocating me with humidity so thick I could drown from the vapor alone. Sweat trickled down my neck. I leaned on the boat, and my shirt slid up my back.
The half-filled cabin was pitch black now, save for a weak oil lamp hanging above Dr. Chen's head and a flashlight in an indigenous man's hand on the far left. This cabin could fit fifty people, but the dark aggravated my claustrophobia. My night-blindness prevented me from having to adjust to the dark. Still, I didn't see the need to search for my glasses, because Aarón was here. His musky, cinnamon-like scent calmed me.
The incessant whir from the boat's engine and the sporadic loud chatting in a foreign language disturbed my nap. Someone coughed throughout the trip and a baby cried now and then. But I welcomed the commotion as it saved me from being sucked into the whirlpool of suffocating darkness.
A hint of smoke mixed with sweat and something sweet I couldn't put my fingers on hung in the air. The smell of tobacco raised a craving on my dry tongue. I refused to drink more fluid. My bladder felt like bursting, and there was no toilet on this boat.
I nudged Aarón's shoulder. "Que horas são? Oi." [Aarón, what time is it?]
He shifted in his sleep and snored.
"Not sure what you were asking, but Robinson Crusoe there has slept for five hours straight. Crazy lad," Dr. Chen said, grimacing as he untucked his shirt. "I should know better than to wear linen. Damn me. Should've just shut my trap and listened to my wife."
"A psychiatrist like you shouldn't blatantly call someone mad. If he's mad, then that would make me a deranged sociopath." Professor Smit snuffled. "It's 23:00, da Graça."
Professor Smit seemed fine throughout the journey. He was talking and laughing with Dr. Chen, discussing something about the Brazilian hydroelectric complex and ethnocide. I wondered if he was really claustrophobic as he had claimed to be. Maybe he had lied just to make me feel better.
I need space, I thought as I grabbed the flashlight beside me and stood up. As if on cue, something huge and hairy crawled up my ankle. My head slammed on the roof. A ball forming in my throat stopped me from breathing, and my heartbeat shot into orbit.
"What's wrong? Need the loo or something? The closest thing you can get to a toilet is the river. There are leaping fish around nevertheless. You're lucky if they're not piranha." Dr. Chen laughed.
I threw the flashlight onto Aaron's lap and yanked the Deet in my pocket, spraying my limbs like my life depended on it. "Shine! Jigoku ni modere, akuma no yarou!" My legs moved on their own, stomping against the creaky deck for the spider I couldn't see. I strode out of the cabin, stumbling twice on somebody's legs.
The chirping from the surrounding forest calmed my frantic heart. Leaning against the boat, I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. The howling gale hit my face. The night smelled muddy and... green, like moss. As I lit my cigarette, someone rubbed my lower back. The lamp in his hand illuminated his face.
"Hey. ¿Estás bien, querida?" [You good, honey?] Aarón yawned and pulled me into his arms. "El grito me despertó." [The scream woke me up.]
"Está quente. Vão," [It's hot. Go away,] I said, but not pushing him. "Juro que uma tarântula gigante subiu pela minha perna." [I swear a giant tarantula crawled up my leg.] A shiver escaped my sweaty back when I took a long drag on the cigarette.
"Tienes que llevar las gafas." [You need to wear your glasses.] He tapped my palm with my glasses. "It's dark."
"I doubt anything will change." I wore them and rested my head on his damp chest. I gazed around, but darkness obscured my sight. The only reasons I knew we were cruising the river were from the sloshing of water against the boat and the engine coughing up every second. I angled my head toward the sky, but it looked dreary. Feeble moonlight spread over the clouds. "Are we still far away from the caboclo village? I need the toilet." I sighed. My groin squirmed uncomfortably.
"It should be near." He peered at his watch. "Yep. We should arrive before midnight."
"You know the place? You've traveled to the Amazon like... what? Ten times?"
"No. I talked to the boatman earlier. I never reached the Brazilian Amazon. It was the Peruvian Amazonia that I went to."
I smothered my cigarette in my portable black pocket ashtray.
"How's your leg?" He touched my right hip. "We trekked quite a distance today."
We did travel seventy miles in the last thirty-seven hours, and a quarter of that was by walking. After we had reached the transition port in Manaus, a boat took us upstream for an hour before we had to switch to a bigger boat. In order to do that, we had to cross the jungle for two hours and take a boat on the other side of another slimmer river (which was not slim at all).
"I'd no idea the village would be this deep." I scratched the crater scar on my nose. "I took Oxy a while ago, so I'm good. It doesn't feel like I'm gonna lose my leg any moment here. We've been in this boat for five hours. I've had enough rest."
He laughed. "We're still at the border of the jungle, querida. You haven't experienced what is enough yet. We have another five days of boat rides to reach the village."
"Ah... Por favor me matar agora." [Please kill me now] I banged my forehead on his chest.
Aarón's laughter gave me shudders. I had never heard his voice echo so far before. It felt as if we were in a vast black cave. I couldn't see it, but I heard what sounded like a group of birds took flight from a big tree on our right, following his voice.
A white light suddenly flickered on our right, as if signaling to us.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Our stop for the night."
The man holding the flashlight on the riverbank shouted in a foreign language. Our boatman said something in return, and the whirring of the engine died. The boat glided closer to the riverbank. Since we left the port in Manaus, I couldn't understand the language talked by the native here. It even sounded a bit like German. Professor Smit apparently could, because he translated what the boatman said to his student, Ethan.
As soon as the boat docked, Professor Smit lit up the ground with a flashlight and jumped out onto the jetty.
"He's so fluent in Portuguese and Spanish," I said, impressed. Probably Italian too, now that I remembered the lady at the airport.
"¿Quién?" [Who?] Aarón asked.
“Professor Smit.”
"Because he teaches Portuguese. I think he speaks the Romance languages. The whole gamut." He jumped onto the jetty when everyone in our group had left the boat. Protesting under his weight, the wood creaked. "Come to papi." His tone was business-like, but I had known him long enough to know that it was his manner of joking.
"Fuck you." I laughed and slapped his hand away, but took it again.
"Really? You've decided to end your celibacy and fuck me?" he breathed into my ear when he hauled me down into his arms. "Tonight is a great day for a change. New place... new you."
"Shut up," I whispered, my ears heated. "Not funny."
"Because I'm not joking."
I could feel his mustache and smile against my chin. Shivers ran through my back. “We're in public. Stop it.” I pulled away from him and followed the delegates.
"Hey, Jona! Espérame," [Wait for me,] he called out.
I ignored him. Yes, that was no joke. I didn't know how long I could resist him. We never had sex, but we kissed a few times throughout the years. There was a reason why he could easily lure women into his bed. He had a charm no woman could resist. He was vulgar, yet he was a gentleman too. He was a great guy in his own crafty way; a good man, nevertheless. He loved me. I had feelings for him, but I wouldn't count my feeling as true love. It was more of a… dependency. Reliance. Desperation.
I could only take advantage of Aarón's feelings toward me. He knew it, but he let me. And maybe he took advantage of my reliance on him too. Like the gentleman he was.
Comments (1)
See all