-I-

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.

-II-

The morning came too fast. It felt like only a second ago that I fell asleep in Aarón's arms. He didn't wake me up. I woke up to a drenched pillow. The small fan whirled and creaked above me. The wind from the window carried hot air, so it was almost useless to have the fan. Aarón's stuff was nowhere to be seen inside the small lodge, but I heard his gravelly laugh outside. I took a quick shower in the six by six square feet bathroom. As expected, the water was not as cold as I would love, but at least, it washed off my sweat. Stepping over the threshold, my thigh spasmed again for the hundredth times since the last five days. I grabbed the Oxy on the side table and swallowed one pill together with a big, satisfying gulp of water.

The sun peeked through the foliage far on the horizon when I stepped out of the cabin. The overcast sky impeded the orange glimmers; the gloomy clouds contradicted the hot wind. It was useless to have clouds too. The air smelled of burned leaves and something savory. My stomach made a flip. I was putting on my shoes when the door on the adjacent cabin creaked open. Professor Smit was stretching his arms behind his back, yawning. His black diamond ring caught the morning light and gleamed.

I greeted him as I strapped my rucksack on my back.

"Yes, morning," he answered, tying his hair into a bun. He had taken off his stud earrings; he had several of them on both ears until yesterday.

This village was the transition point to the other part of the jungle. Like us, the people here stopped by to restock on boat fuel and sustenance. Trucks and bikes passed us every minute. Naked children ran after the moving vehicles, lobbing stones over their heads. One boy, around five years old, threw a stone toward a bike that carried a rattan-like plant, but it collided with his friend's rock and hit Professor Smit's chest instead.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Uh oh!

He scanned the crowded village with a clenched jaw, not moving his head an inch. Then he saw the culprit. "Brats." He approached the kids. They screamed, scampered away for their lives.

I bit my lower lip to stop myself from laughing out loud.

Professor Smit halted when two monkeys climbed down the tree beside him. He seemed lost on what to do when they approached him; his face scrunched up.

Uh oh!

He clearly wasn't a fan of monkeys. Feeling somehow responsible, I reached him and shooed the monkeys away.

He turned back and stared at me, then gave me a curt nod before putting on a beige fedora hat, the same kind Indiana Jones wore.

A collective of laughter came from the triangular hut across the lawn, where the delegation was having breakfast.

"Hey, Jona, Luuk. Únete a nosotros." [Come join us.] Aarón showed something that looked like a flimsy flatbread in his hand. Several tribeswomen were serving them food.

"Since when am I Luuk to you?" Professor Smit said, but too low for Aarón to hear. He glanced at the monkeys that were now on the cabin's roof and made a sharp U-turn.

"You're heading to the boat, Professor? Aren't you having breakfast?" I asked when he took the path toward the river. "We have an hour before the next boat ride."

"I don't eat breakfast."

"But it's the most important—"

"It's important to Japanese like you, and only if I chose to make it important. I've disregarded it for thirty-four years."

Woah. He's an old man!

"I'm sure your mother fed you as a child though," I whispered to myself, still wrapping my head around the fact that he looked ten years younger than his age.

He stopped mid-stride and spun around. "No, she didn't."

That broke my heart, even when I didn't know what he meant by that. Although breakfast wasn't Japanese-specific, as a Japanese, my mother had been very meticulous about it, making sure the family ate a complete meal every morning.

"And why are you following me?" he asked, brow raised.

I gave him a grin. "I don't feel like eating either."

He hummed. Turning around, he continued walking through the open ground stretching back to the woods. There was a wide trampled path in the grass and low bushes that led to the river.

Every now and then, we passed the villagers who were carrying things needed for sustenance. A group of four tribeswomen carried a bucketful of tapioca each toward the river. Ten seconds later, a man without teeth, who looked at least ninety, toted two containers full of gasoline in each hand. He greeted Professor Smit in an accented Portuguese. They talked about the river and rain or something for a minute. I couldn't tell for sure. The accent was alien to me. The old man walked away after he gave Professor Smit the same leaf-wrapped food I saw a tribeswoman had put on the delegation's breakfast table just now.

"Professor, posso lhe perguntar algo?" [Professor, can I ask you something?]

"Faça outra pergunta então." [Ask something else then.]

He really sounds like a native.

We moved to the side when a flat-bed truck full of planks passed us. Thick dust that looked like ground fog rose around our legs.

"Você morou em Portugal ou no Brasil?" [Did you live in Portugal or Brazil before?]

"Não. Eu sou holandês. [No. I'm Dutch] Came to America when I was twelve. We lived in Ohio for some time, then moved to California."

"Ohio?" I had no idea why the answer made me laugh.

"Why? Ever been to the Buckeye state and experienced something funny? Well, that's the only kind of experience you could get there." He chuckled himself.

"No. No, never been there. The closest was Kentucky. Went there for Christmas at my friend's hometown once. Sorry." I laughed. "I just... didn't expect that. You're so fluent in Portuguese and the dialect here. I couldn't even understand the boatman yesterday. It even sounded like German."

"Because it was German. Though his accent sounded funny."

"Falam alemão aqui?" [They speak German here?]

"Minority of Brazilian, yes. Maybe two percent of them?" He scratched his nostrils. "Two hundred thousand Germans settled here in the nineteenth century. They bred like cats, so by the year 2000, twelve millions of Brazilians claimed to be of German descent. Some of them refused to give up their native tongue, so German dialects make up the second most spoken first language in Brazil after Portuguese."

"How many languages do you speak?" I asked.

"Are you writing a biography on me or somethin'?"

I looked at my green shoes, suddenly afraid I was intruding. “Sorry. I—”

He tsked. "Enough to survive this dystopia. You could say I have an obsession with learning languages."

We forked to the right. On the right was the long, gentle slope of the riverbank. The green slow boat was in view after several seconds.

"Really? Why? I can barely store four languages in my head. It has been so long since I have had a proper conversation in Japanese. I might forget it someday."

"Four? That's hella impressive." He scanned me up and down with a skeptical frown. Then he took off his hat, gazed at the sandy ground, and suddenly put it on my head. "Hold it for me." He bent down and tied his shoelaces. "Doesn't it scare you when you don't understand strangers? What they could be planning in front of your nose, and you don't even know what they're talking about?"

He had an interesting view of life. But it sounded tough for him to think that way. "You make it sound as if the whole world is against you."

"And I have plenty of evidence to prove that." He closed his eyes for a second and glanced at me. He took his hat and continued walking.

"I've never viewed the world that way. We couldn't possibly know all the languages in the world. Our brain is not made to cater to that. And strangers don't scare me." I shrugged.

"Posso ver isso claramente." [I can clearly see that.]

The sound of the torrent became clearer as the trees around the path thinned out. It must be raining upstream. The river was violent. The dry path we were walking on earlier was now muddy as we reached the berm. When the sky was clearly visible, my assumption was proven right. On the far south, heavy and oppressive clouds were concealing the sun.

"I teach martial arts for a reason. Poison can't harm you if it's far away. You should be aware of the people closest to you. They are the ones who tend to be toxic. The moment you realize it, it already runs in your blood." I ended up whispering the last few words.

"You sound like a paranoid mother."

The back of my eyes prickled. I brushed my palm down my face and said, "You're right. My paranoid mother told me that."

He flinched and gritted his teeth. "Ah. I'm—"

I looked down, and the first thing I saw was three crocodiles a few yards away from me. My whole body jerked. "Holy shit!" I slipped and almost fell down when I reached out for Professor Smit.

He wrapped his arms around me when I was falling face-first into the cinnamon current. My shoes were drenched.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" He helped me stand straight.

My heart pounded in my ears. I pointed at them and stepped away, dragging him with me. "Crocodiles."

He glanced at the three crocodiles sprawling on the riverbank. They were probably more than ten feet long. "They're the Black Caimans. There are no crocodiles in the Amazon." He pulled me away from the spot and scraped his soiled red shoes on the grass behind us. "You sure you don't want to pull back from the trip? We're yet to start the journey."

"Why would I do that?" I stared at the caimans. Now I know I'm not only afraid of spiders. Even Karma scared me at first... at times.

"I know about your cataclysmic accident with the bus."

I looked at him. "Aarón told you?"

"No. Instead of opinions and facts, my students enjoy trading hearsay."

"Dr. John said I'm good to go, as long as I don't push myself. Staying idle is no comfort at all. I need to move to recuperate."

He shook his head. "Now you sound like a naïve kid."

"I told you I'm not a kid."

"I hate to break it you, but you should know this trip isn't going be a comfort."

I rolled my eyes at him and whispered, "As long as I can join the trip, I don't even care if the fucking crocodile eats me."

"Watch out!" He pointed behind me. His eyes widened.

My heart jumped into my throat. I gripped his arm, not even trying to look behind me.

"See, kid? You don't really wanna die. Don't speak of death casually. I've seen death, and it's not something fun to see again." He patted my cheek a little too hard, and my skin prickled. "Let go." He shoved my hand away. "They're still lounging there."

I shoved him. "Não é engraçado, porra!" [It's not funny, dammit!]

He shrugged and strolled along the jetty, leaving me alone on the riverbank with the caimans. He threw his rucksack into the boat. One caiman was moving and my heart almost stopped.

"You getting on board or what?" he shouted.

As much as I didn't want to get near to the caimans, I didn't want to approach Professor Smit either. He seemed like he had a stick up his butt at times. I sat on a big root away from the caimans. I would wait for Aarón. I should have followed him and not the mad professor.

"Goodness gracious. You're such a veritable piece of work," Professor Smit said when he grabbed my arm. "Let's go, kid."

I shook my head, pulling my hand away.

"For God's sake. Shall we go before we become the caimans' food? They're coming, and I'm not joking this time, ya know?"

I peeked at them. Yes, one of them was crawling toward us, ever so slowly. I took Professor Smit's hand, and half of my worry went away.

"Let's go." He then said something in a language I was not familiar with as he pulled me across the creaking jetty.

I pushed my dignity aside and clenched his arm for dear life. He must have hated my guts. Even I hated my own guts. First the airport, now this. I had been to more than ten jungles all over America, but none gave me this level of jitters. I had become a pussy after my accident.

He took the rucksack in my hand and threw it on board. "Go on."

I stepped into the swaying boat, thanked him, and entered the cabin. I had no plan to engage in a conversation with the mad professor, but he knocked on the wooden door. I ignored him and took out a book from my bag. A few days before the expedition, I had found a fiction book about an entomologist studying ants in the Amazon jungle. I had thought it was a good book to ready myself for the environment of the jungle. I thought wrong.

He tapped my shoulder with something. "Here. Eat this. You're Japanese." He grinned.

I looked at it from the corner of my eye. The food from the toothless man. "Breakfast isn't Japanese specific. I don't need it." I swallowed my saliva and took out my cigarette instead.

"Can you not smoke?"

"Then I'll smoke outside." I left my book in the cabin and stepped outside.

Several wooden crates were stacked on my right. They were the rations for our five-day journey to the village we were heading to—dry foods, water, gasoline, and research tools.

Professor Smit stood next to me and inhaled deep.

"I thought you hated the smell of cigarettes," I said.

"I said not to smoke. Never said I hated it. My father is big on cigars. He smokes his Upmann like Winston Churchill."

"Then why did you even care to ask me not to smoke?" I couldn't help but feel annoyed.

"You should at least fill your stomach with food before you fill it with the toxins. You could get gastritis, you know." He put the banana leaf-wrapped food on his palm and offered it to me. I didn't know what it was, but it filled his whole palm, and his palm was massive for a short man like him.

I was still in a bad mood, so I just stared at it while swallowing my saliva.

"But..." he unwrapped the leaf, "maybe the fish knows how to appreciate hunger more than you." He slanted his palm above the river.

I grabbed the food. "I'll eat it. I'm sure the wild fish can survive on their own." Then I sat on one of the sturdy crates.

"Acho que não." [I don't think so.] He laughed when he pointed to a caiman that was swooping up a fish as big as me.

I cringed from the blood flowing through the caiman's teeth. I butted the cigarette in my portable ashtray and ate the dry tapioca bread. It didn't have any distinctive taste, but it did satisfy my hunger.

Professor Smit sat next to me, offering me a water bottle. "Listen. I didn't know what precipitated the episode, but I'm sorry that I made you cry at the airport."

"It's okay. It wasn't your fault. I... wasn't like this before. After the accident, things changed." I swallowed the dry food. "Sorry I'm such a crybaby."

He chuckled. "It's not your fault either. I used to cry a lot too."

"Everyone cries as a child."

"Who said anything about a child?" he said, shoving a wide dead leaf that just swirled into the boat with his leg. "You see, when my brother, Alex, got married three years ago, I cried every day for two weeks straight."

"You did? Why?" Then I realized it sounded stupid to ask that. Of course it was because he loved him. I had sacrificed so much for my brother because I loved him too.

"Because I love my brother very much?" He smiled, and a tinge of pink colored his cheeks. "We are nineteen years apart. He's like a father to me. More than my father has ever been." He drank from the same bottle he gave me earlier. "But truth be told, it was because I hate the woman he got married to." He stood up.

"Is it okay to ask why?" I scanned the dark clouds. Three big blue birds cawed as they flew away between the heavy treetops.

"Just because. I don't trust women much."

"That's all? Isn't it unfair to her?" I asked.

He hummed. "Wouldn't you just... hate someone who takes away the person you love?" he asked, scratching his nostrils.

That hit home. Goosebumps ran through my arms. I had lost my brother too, but it was God who took him away. And I hated Him for that.

I looked to my left when lightning flashed above us while kneading the tattoo on my neck. Thunder boomed threateningly behind the dark clouds. God must be angry with me for having this grudge against Him. But He too took away the people I loved. If I didn't blame Him, who should I blame for what had happened to me?

There was only one person to blame if not God. Me. And I couldn't live with the guilt.

"Yes, I know that feeling, Professor Smit. Very well."