-I-
I groaned at the milieu of the airport as thousands of humans swarmed the terminal like fire ants. Better give them a wide berth. One could never be sure of their agendas. They could be concocting a plan to sell someone's kidney to a dialyzed Belarusian for all I knew.
I took my black mask off the table and looped it around my ears again.
Only an imprudent fool is never cautious. My vigilance hovered implacably at the back of my brain when I schlepped along the curtain wall, passing the group of research delegates.
Eleven of us were going to the expedition site. I was the Principal Investigator of the research in lieu of Norman, supervising his Ph.D. student and research assistant—who had become my burden; those burdens apparently felt as light as feathers, laughing and selfie-ing in front of the chocolate kiosk. Three forestry students were buying beverages at the café I just left. Dr. John, his medical assistant, and Dr. Chen from the School of Medicine tried to get me to engage in their conversation, but I decided that the talk about aero engine system was too humdrum for me, so I checked in my luggage.
I was about to head to the security when a voice stopped me in my tracks.
"Good dawn, Professor Smit."
Vapor warmed my face under the mask when I sighed.
Should I laugh? Forget it, too late.
My eyeballs had to glide upward to look at Professor Chaves's face. A small tattoo of a queen in a tutu marked the skin under his right ear. Chaves bore a resemblance to the Brazilian footballer, David Luiz—save for the hair. Though it annoyed me to admit it, he looked rather cool in his pompadour. Not everyone could pull it off. I tried, once. I looked like Brienne of Tarth.
He extended his stocky arm to me. I stared at it, feeling no urge to take it.
I hate countless things in life. One of them is handshakes.
Handshakes are kind of an uncanny ritual. My father's company had a tradition at the beginning of the year where everybody lined up and shook everyone else's hand. The social hand gripping wasn't gripping at all, and it started to feel surreal after awhile with the constant blur of faces going by and the different styles of handshakes (limp, firm, grabbing only the fingertips, not letting you get a good grip). And by the end, your hand felt gross, while you imagine the places they had touched.
But for the sake of civility, I took his hand briefly. "Morning."
As if on cue, the sun glinted off the metal rails of the curtain window.
"You good?" He gesticulated a circle around his mouth. "I can call John if you're not feeling well." His unibrow hoisted toward Dr. John who was rummaging through his backpack at the security.
"I'm healthier than a horse, so no, thanks," I said.
“Funny, cuz horses have a lot of underlying diseases.”
"Sure, Dr. Dolittle."
His laughter sounded like he needed a Heimlich maneuver. "I believe we haven't met yet. You left right after the final meeting. Aarón Chaves, Forestry."
"Yes, I saw you at the last meeting." I knew I would need to engage in a conversation with him at some point. He would be going for his own forestry research, on top of being our tracker for the expedition.
He gave me a once-over. "So at last, I get to meet the celebrity professor. You're damn popular in our department. You do look like one, especially with the mask getup." The nuance of jocularity laced his voice.
I laughed. "That's what they call me in Forestry? My students call me a pompous alien if not an asshole."
"Alien? If all aliens look like you, I'd love to blow in on your planet to find some chicks." He scratched his five o'clock shadow. "But how are you holdin' up? I'm sure this expedition is not what you bargained for. Nobody expected Norman to associate with a Brazilian drug cartel. He looked so... urbane."
"I knew a seventy-five-year-old woman with a knitted sweater that stank of mothballs who used to traffic children to Russia. You shouldn't expect someone to be a principled human in the first place."
He nodded. A small grin crooked his lips. "That's another way to view the world."
"That's the only way to view the world."
"Oh?" He was about to say something when his phone blared. "Excuse me." He shoved his hands in his black cargo pants pocket and craned his neck toward the entrance. He took the call and spoke in the smoothest Spanish dialect—one I hadn't heard for a long time. Peruvian. "¿Dónde estás? Estoy en la terminal A." [Where are you? I'm at terminal A.]
I took the opportunity to flee the scene.
"Oi! Estou aqui," [I'm here,] a petite man shouted in Portuguese a few steps away from me.
I couldn't see the face as he drank from his plastic cup, but his voice sounded familiar. The exotic karate sensei.
He passed me, then halted and looked at me. His eyes bulged behind his glasses, and he choked on his drink. A fountain of spluttering strawberry milkshake dribbled down my face as he coughed up the rest of the beverage into his tissues.
"Jona. Dios mío, ¿qué pasa?" Chaves asked him what was wrong.
I pulled off my wet mask and wiped my forehead. It felt as if Hell's door just opened and burned my face. I swallowed the heat in my chest together with a big gulp of air, and I could taste the strawberry on my tongue.
"How... What... Oh, sir, I'm so so sorry!" He shoved his cup into Chaves's hand and dabbed my milkshake-saturated shirt with his filthy tissue.
Lord! Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us... as we forgive those who trespass against us... Fuck it!
I pushed his hand away. "Stop it, kid."
He bowed over ninety degrees and apologized ad infinitum. His ears were redder than his bright shirt.
I glanced at the cynical-looking small crowd beside the check-in counter. A damn brat was pointing at me with skepticism on his round face. A distressing foreboding rose in my throat. I grabbed the sensei's arm. "Pode parar? Vá lá, estás a fazer-me fazer figura de ursa." [Can you stop? You're making me look bad here.]
He sprung up with wide eyes, probably didn't expect to hear me talking in Portuguese.
"Come here, querida." Chaves wiped his boyfriend's chin with the hem of his long sleeve.
Querida? What is he? A girl?
"Never mind, Aarón." The sensei glanced at my shirt and said, "Today it's me who made the mess. I'm so, so sorry."
"You know Professor Smit?" Chaves asked.
The sensei nodded and passed me a clean tissue.
"That's the thing with living in a census-designated place. You tend to know everyone in the damn county," I said, dabbing my shirt with it.
"El mundo es un pañuelo," [The world is as small as a handkerchief,] Chaves said to the sensei.
I wasn't familiar with the idiom, but contextually, I got the meaning. So I said, "Yes, the world is indeed as small as a handkerchief, but I'd appreciate it if you have a handkerchief with you right now. Jesus."
The sensei pulled my arm when I turned around to find a clothing store.
"Sir... Professor Smit, wait. I... Let me buy you a new shirt. Please." Before I could reject his offer, he said "See you in a while" to Chaves and dragged me toward a souvenir kiosk behind us.
I glanced at his slender fingers around my forearm. "Is this how martial arts instructors act all the time? I don't remember any of my jiu-jitsu instructors ever acted as touchy-feely as you."
He let me go as if my words were some galvanizing current running through my arm. He didn't say anything, but his nape flushed.
I stared at the kiosk he brought me to. "My mother would prune me out of the family tree if she saw me buy a cloth from this dime-store." I threw my wet mask into the wastebasket on my left. I picked the first shirt I found in my size (a preposterous black shirt with SAN FRANCISCO stamped on a coconut tree and a beach) and took out my wallet to pay.
He almost pushed my hand. "Let me, please." Three platinum cards tumbled onto his yellow sneakers when he tried to get one out of his wallet. "Kuso," he whispered and shoved another credit card into the store assistant's hand, who stifled a laugh.
I shot her a look that shut her augmented tits and picked up the cards.
"Oh, sir, don't pick them up!" He took the cards with two hands with a small bow.
Tsk. Japanese.
"You don't have to pay for me," I said, but not feeling guilty in the slightest. He owned the same credit cards as me. I read about him in the alumni magazine after his accident. He was twenty-four, yet he already had three combat gyms in Santa Clara County. He was a martial arts wunderkind.
"I insist."
I raised a shoulder. "Alright then. I guess you're well-heeled enough to pay for me."
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"No problem. It's just a dime-store shirt." He passed me the paper bag with a simper.
-II-
The sensei was talking on the phone near the security gate after I had cleaned up. With this many people around and me not having a mask to hide from them, I couldn't help the gnawing apprehension in my brain. Yet I shoved the thoughts away and focused on him.
"Why are you still here?" An accusatory, survival instinct built up in my mind: Is he a pervert?
"Waiting for you, just in case. The delegates have gone in." He stared at my hand. "You left your shirt."
"What? Oh, yes. No. It was too cumbersome to carry, so I threw the soiled shirt away. I have enough clothes to dress a village of people."
His eyes narrowed as he grinned. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but decided against it.
"You're going somewhere?" I asked when he joined the dilatory line after me. "I thought you were sending off your boyfriend."
"I'm Aarón's RA." His hands and eyes were busy looking for something inside his brown leather sling bag. With each word, his speech became slower. "I've… been assisting him with the rural settlement research for... a year now."
I glanced at his leg. His gait didn't show any resistance. "You're aware that the research is in the Amazon, right?"
His eyebrows bumped together, hands still busy. "Un, yes?"
"And that the Amazon is not Muir Woods?"
"I signed the consent form with a hundred percent sobriety, so yes, I'm aware of it. Why?"
"Nothing." I shrugged and entered the airside area, waiting for the sensei to walk in front of me once he presented his I.D. to security.
He's young. Kids heal faster. Maybe he's healthy enough to hike the jungle.
He walked slower with each step because he was still busy finding something in his bag (I thought he was searching for his I.D. earlier). I tugged his shoulder when he almost stepped on a middle-aged Italian woman who was sitting on the floor while talking to the phone, leaning on GATE 8's glass wall, with her rucksack on her side. He bowed at her and suddenly apologized in French. The woman sat straight, swaying her thick hand to him as she smiled.
"Jesus Christ. She's Italian. Look straight ahead when you walk," I said.
"Didn't I apologize in Italian?" He peeked over his shoulder and gave her a small bow once again. “Oh, wait. That was French.” He then continued searching for something in his bag, clearly wasn't paying attention to his surroundings.
The airside area was almost deserted. Tilting my head, I checked my watch. It was five minutes past six, and we were getting late for departure. "Pick up your pace, sensei. We have ten minutes before the gate closes." I looked ahead, and he suddenly stopped walking. I almost kissed his head. "What the hell..."
"I..." He spun around. His eyes reddened.
"What's with you?"
He stared at me, but his hands were still ferreting around for something in his bag.
"Hey, you alright? Let's go," I said.
But he was not all right. His face was as pale as the floor. I wouldn't associate it with good health. He leaned low on the wall as if his legs gave up on him.
I stared at him, trying to extrapolate his facial expression. "Sensei, are you, perhaps... afraid of flying?"
He shook his head, then he nodded. "I was so sure I brought my pills," he said, barely audible.
"Well, that is massively inconvenient. Regardless, you have to get on that plane." I glanced at my watch. "We have less than ten minutes. Let's go."
He sat on the floor, hugging himself. "I don't think I can. I couldn't do it before."
"Yes, you can. Let's go. I'm leaving you here if you don't stand up."
"Then just leave me the fuck alone." He sounded more annoyed than frantic.
Gah! Now he's annoyed with me?
"Jesus. What are you? A teenage girl?" I clicked my tongue and walked away.
He suddenly burst into sobs.
My damned legs stopped moving forward. I turned around against my better judgment. He cried between his legs like a child who just scraped his knee. A small hole from the past emerged in my heart. I kneaded my temple and cleared my throat. "Listen. I need you to relax, okay? You should slow down your breathing before you hyperventilate."
He continued crying as if he didn't hear me.
What a strong reaction. It would've taken a big trauma for him to act this way. Perhaps the bus accident?
Considering the pro et contra, I glanced at the deserted area (thank God) and hunkered down beside him. I then said in the most earnest tone I could voice. "Hey, kid. What's your name again?" No answer. "You wanna know something? So... the thing is, I'm claustrophobic."
I was, at least. The nagging apprehension was still there somewhere in my subconscious mind, but I had mostly dealt with it years ago. So the fear was internalized now, boxed and pushed to the back of my brain. I wonder if the claustrophobia is feeling claustrophobic stuck in that box.
The sensei looked at me. His ivory cheeks were slicked with tears.
"I don't know whether you're afraid of flying or if you're claustrophobic too, but you know what my brother would do every time I'd have a panic attack?" I stared at his golden irides. "He'd ask me to look into his blue eyes and imagine that the surrounding room is as big as the sky, and that the sky is always expanding." The sensei was young, but he seemed like a child when he cried. "You see, I'm kinda scared too, but you don't see me panicking, right?" I patted his knee. "So come on. Look into my eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine that we're the only people in this world. There's plenty of space for us to frolic on."
He took off his black-framed glasses and dried his face, sniffling still.
"My brother always said, just because a task is disconcerting, doesn't mean we can't deal with it. Now let's go. It's gonna be alright. How about... we save each other? Okay? You're safe with me as much as I'm safe with you. Alright?" I took a step away, but he pulled my arm.
"Please, wait." He exhaled and stood with jellied legs. "Can... can I hold your hand?"
I stared at his trembling grip on my wrist, and it became firmer when I scrutinized him.
"It doesn't look like you're letting go any moment now." I didn't like the idea of someone grabbing me, so I took his hand instead and strode toward our gate. "Let's go, kid. I don't wanna pay for my own damn ticket if we miss this one."
"Jona," he whispered.
"What?" I craned over my shoulder at him.
"You asked my name. I'm Jona. Jona da Graça. And... I'm not a kid. I'm twenty-four."
"Don't blame me that you look like an eighteen-year-old. Blame your Japanese genes."
-III-
I only lent him an arm, but he took advantage of me and used my shoulder seventy percent of the nine-hour flight. After such body contact, it felt as if I had lost my virginity.
We had spent the night at a cheap neoclassical-styled hotel in Manaus, Brazil. We were up at first light. It was now just shy of six and we were inside a white van in the middle of a congested road among the early risers, heading to the transition port to the Amazon jungle. The vehicle was air-conditioned, but da Graça let the window open slightly, probably due to his claustrophobia. The salty, hot wind blew my face every now and then. Living in California, eighty degrees wasn't as bad. The bad would come later. The temperature would be in the mid-nineties by noon.
"Thank you for saving me earlier," da Graça said beside me. "I had an accident half a year ago. So I don't do so well with vehicles, especially big ones. That was only my second time on a plane. Well, first. Because I fainted the first time I tried to fly." He grabbed the windowpane.
No wonder he forgot his medication. He wasn't used to this. I thought he was a plain fool.
"You made it sound as if I saved you from a warzone." I wiggled on my butt, trying to get comfortable. Ethan, my Ph.D. student, was kneeling on the seat beside me as he passed a camera to one of Chaves's students behind us.
"It felt that way to me." Da Graça leaned over the opened window. "Have you ever been here?"
"Here? Manaus? This is the first time. But I've gone to the University of Brazil for a conference a few times."
"The people here remind me of my childhood," he said, but his voice was so soft that the cacophony of the road almost prevailed over it. He glanced at me. "Are we really surrounded by the jungle?" He looked half-impressed, half-scared. "Isn't that the ocean?"
I looked over his shoulder. The oceangoing vessels were loading intermodal containers at the wharf down yonder.
"This city is in the Amazon basin. The so-called ocean you talked about is the Negro River. It flows into the Amazon River about ten miles from here, and then into the Atlantic Ocean, which is a thousand miles away. See those ramblers?" I pointed toward the European tourists who were gesticulating all over the place under a knobbly and huge tree. "Lots of them don't come here for the city itself, but for its facilities... as the springboard to the forest."
"The same thing we're doing now."
"Yes," I said.
"It felt a bit odd knowing my Portuguese ancestors used to colonize this country." His lips segued into a small smile.
"Then I can say it's ironic that this city was founded as a fort built by your Portuguese ancestors to fend off attacks from my Dutch ancestors."
He laughed, sleek and smooth.
"Guys, look." Chaves pointed toward his right. "That's the Theatro Amazonas. We'll find some time to stop by the place once we're done with the expedition."
"It's still functioning? I low-key thought it was a museum," one of his students said.
"Next time, I advise you to read a bit about the country you're going to stay at," Chaves said. "It's a working historical landmark. It hosts the Amazonas Philharmonic and the annual opera festival."
"It looks very grand and somehow... out of place. Like it isn't native to Manaus. How old is the place?" the other student, Alicia (I heard she introduced herself to da Graça this morning), said.
Well, she has a good eye for architecture.
"It was built in the end of the 1800s. Wasn't it, Professor Smit?" Chaves asked. "Hey, you guys have introduced yourselves to Professor Smit, right?"
I pulled my gaze from that piece of Renaissance architecture when he mentioned my name.
Alicia answered yes and asked for my expertise.
Ethan answered for me, all agog. "Professor Smit is a linguistic anthropologist, with expertise in history and Romance languages. I did my Masters under him too."
I ignored the unsolicited introduction and said, "Yes, it was. And you have a good eye for details," I told the ebony girl. "By the standards of its time, it was a modern theatre, offering a slice of belle-époque remnant to locals. The architect was an Italian, Celestial Sacardim. Many of the materials to build the place were brought from all over Europe. The roofing tiles and furnishing came from France, in the style of King Louis The Beloved. The materials inside, the stairs, column, et cetera, were brought from England. Not only the materials but the artists were also imported from Italy. It took twenty years to complete the construction."
“Ah, colonialism. I bet all the money to build it came from slave labor,” she opined.
They talked a bit about the Manaus Theather before Ethan asked, "You can understand them, right, Jona? The Brazilian. You're half-Brazilian, right?"
"Half-Portuguese. I don't understand every word, but yes, fairly well. I personally think they're easier to learn and understand than my mother tongue. They're more... modern and informal. But my language is more appealing in my opinion. It sounds… proper." The sensei smiled.
Fluent in both, I agreed with him. European Portuguese is more conventional, thus more pleasing aesthetically. It is like the British or Australian of the English. Flowery.
After several minutes of soporific commentary on the history of the city and a prompt Q&A session with the students, the sensei said: "You do know a lot about a place you haven't been to."
"Know your friend, know your enemy."
"Enemy? Who? The forest? Why?" he asked.
"I hate countless things in life. One of them is the forest. I don't have great memories of it." I shivered. For the umpteenth time, I wondered how I was going to survive in the Amazon, especially with all the monkeys.
He didn't ask me what happened, but he gave me a cut up smile. "That's nice, knowing your enemy and hating it. I wish I could hate my enemy too." His gaze morphed into unfathomable scrutiny.
"I can teach you how to hate if you want."
"Really? How?" He smiled, but his eyes were still empty.
"I'll be your friend. You'll surely hate me more than you like me."
His eyes bulged in their sockets and he burst into laughter. "What's that? Are you trying to make a friend or an enemy? I don't think I'll hate you though. You helped me. I like you. You're good."
"Of course you do. What's not to like? And I'm not putting a damper on your post hoc justification, but the word good has many connotations. If a man were to shoot his mother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man."
I was being serious, but he laughed. Jesus.
"It's a bad habit to assume someone is good just because they help you. You should be suspicious instead. You don't even know me. Humans are nefarious by default."
"Luuk," he said.
"Where?" I traced his gaze. We were approaching the transit port to the Amazon River (according to the driver).
He grinned. "Luuk Smit. Your name is Luuk Smit. I know you."
I rolled my eyes. "Tsk. You're being naïve. What if I'm planning to sell your organs to the indigenous here?"
He stared at me, nodding gently. "You could do that. I don't mind. At least I don't have to go back to reality," he said, resting his chin on the windowpane. "But I smoke. I drink. I've broken six bones. Many things are wrong with my body. So my organs are not gonna sell for much. Consider yourself warned."
"That's one harrowing thing to say."
It wasn't but five seconds later when he turned to me. "My life itself is one depressing thing." He smiled wanly and stepped out of the van once we reached the bustling riverbank.
I hate countless things in life. One of them is a sob story. But something in his eyes reminded me of myself.
There is a door, deep, deep down in my soul that will creak open at times, exposing a monster that has haunted me ever since I was a child.
And I could see it in his eyes.
The same door as mine.