soccer, my knee hadn't absolutely healed and I still had problems with it from time to time when forcing it. I opened my backpack and I took a soda out. It was still a bit fresh and I drank it with avidity. I was sweating abundantly, drops of sweat fell torrentially from my chin, as if it had been raining or I had just come out of a swimming pool. I needed air, so I opened my mouth trying to take in deep breaths. I choked while drinking too fast which got me into a severe sneezing fit. I felt myself drowning. When I was able to cool down a little, though I was still panting, I realized that there was less light, it was getting dark. Alex dead in the accident, Juan riddled with bullets; my two best friends lost in just a small moment by the stupidity of a civil war that I did not understand and that I could not care less about. Why don't they kill each other? Why us? Why did it have to be my friends, Alex and Juan? Bastards! If it was up to me I'd let them expire altogether. Because of them, I was now alone, in this shitty, humid, overwhelming and asphyxiating place, without my friends. Why me? Why them? Juan's death, machine-gunned by those savages, replayed in my head time and time again as if it was a movie. The extinguishing light of his eyes in that last look he gave me. I tried not to think about it, to hide it in some deep fold of my brain, but I failed. Just a few hours ago we were together, laughing while remembering the anecdotes of the trip and now...
I cried for a while, I don't know how long, but it was very helpful. When I managed to stop, I felt much better. Well, I was calmer at least. It was obviously getting dark, the dim forest was submerging in the world of darkness. I had to look for a place to sleep. I was afraid to sleep on the ground, mainly in case the rebels found me, but sleeping in a tree didn't reassure me either, with snakes, those howler monkeys or whatever fierce and hungry beast there could be. I had to make up my mind. Snakes, or armed and furious men? Snakes seemed to be the lesser of two evils, at least they still hadn't done anything to me. I looked for a tree that seemed accessible for me to climb, difficult for the snakes and with some space where I could settle down to sleep.
It was at that moment that I noticed there was an incredible number of types of trees and plants. From the smallest plants, almost tiny, to trees that measured more than 160 feet whose trunk surpassed the others and where you couldn't even see the end. A huge amalgam of different classes of flora sprinkled everywhere; including super high palm trees with painted frayed leaves several feet tall with compact and dense groups of flowers[4]. There was a superior layer of trees about 100 feet tall and ones that went even higher up, then, a second layer about 30 or 65 feet tall with an elongated shape like the cypresses of our cemeteries and a third layer 16 to 26 feet tall where only a small amount of light penetrated. There also were some shrubs, young samples of different types of trees, although only a few, and a layer of moss that almost covered all the shrub in some parts, as well as a multitude of lianas climbing on all the trunks, hanging from all the branches. Flowers and fruit everywhere, mainly on the highest layers, but unattainable to me. You could also see all kinds of animals, it was not easy to see them, but I could hear an innumerable variety of bird calls, monkey chatters, branches being shaken above my head with the passage of one of them, insects humming around flowers everywhere, even some terrestrial animal whose footsteps I could hear as a distant noise. Butterflies and the rest of the insects churned all around. If I wasn't in the situation I was in, I would have enjoyed such a beautiful place, but at that moment, everything was a potential obstacle to my survival. And everything scared me.
After a brief search I found a tree that seemed to be suitable and I climbed it with the two backpacks on my back. It was incredible how heavy they seemed to weigh and my knee begged me for a time-out. When I was sufficiently high to feel safe, but not too high that I could kill or seriously hurt myself if I fell at night, I squeezed myself as well as I could between two heavy branches that went together, almost parallel and I covered myself a little with one of the small blankets that I had brought from the airplane and I used another one as a pillow. I was able to catch a glimpse of an incredible amount of big dark-brown bats, flapping around in the sky, in that special way they usually do, churning erratically and using their impulses[5]. I didn't know how to count them, but there must have been thousands, making stops mainly in the palm trees, eating their fruit, I imagined, or hunting the insects that ate the fruit.
I must have slept about two hours in small intervals of fifteen or twenty minutes. The noises harassed me from all directions, I couldn't stop hearing footsteps, voices, cries, squawks, acute shrieks, humming sounds, whispers, and a constant murmur that increased and decreased incessantly. I even thought I heard the agonized cries of a child several times and elephants trumpeting. I didn't know if it could all be true or if it simply was all in my head. From time to time I heard a disquieting roar that made me imagine that some wild beast was devouring me in my sleep. At times, the anguish prevented me from breathing, I felt a pinching sensation in my heart until it almost hurt for real. Each sound, each movement, each thing that happened around me was like torture, a sensation of immediate suffocation. As soon as I managed to fall asleep, something occurred, forcing me to wake up scared. Sometimes I saw eyes shining in the gloomy night and, in an effort to cheer myself, I imagined that it was only an owl or something from that family of birds that could be found in this area, but those attempts to try and maintain a positive attitude only lasted a little while, then I always ended up seeing felines with unscrupulous intentions or some dangerous hunting serpent. Other times, I heard shots nearby, intermittent bursts, but if I listened carefully, I wasn't able to hear a thing.
“Javier” I heard Alex calling me.
“Yes, where are you?” I said waking up startled.
“Javier” I heard again.
I looked in all directions, distressed, eager, and anxious to see my friend. Until I realized that Alex was dead and that I was alone and without any help, in the middle of the forest. That scared me, not to be able to count on anybody for help, someone with whom I could share my current pain, my desperation. I couldn't let panic take over, I had to expel the bad thoughts from my head to be able to survive, but I was incapable. A suffocating sensation of loneliness forced me to be even more overcome by fear.
“Javier, Javier.”
All during the night his call was constant, inquisitive, inviting. I would have gone with him, if I had known where to go.
|
|
|
DAY 2
HOW I DISCOVERED THE WONDERS OF THE FOREST
“No, don't kill him!” I shouted, convulsively shaking which made me fall off the tree and hit the ground with a thud.
I shook myself from one side to the other, fleeing from my own ghosts, ignoring the pain caused by the fall. I looked all around me totally disoriented and I remained momentarily still, crouched, moaning like a wounded animal. While I rubbed my sore back I realized that it was only a nightmare, a very real nightmare, since I had dreamed that I was reliving Juan's death, the airplane crash, and again I held Alex's inert body in my hands. Drops of sweat fell from my forehead, my hands were shaking. I took deep breaths for a while then I decided to move on. I only wished to move as far away from the airplane as I could, where I had lost a part of my life. My past was terrible and my future looked grim.
My back hurt a lot probably because of the position I had slept in, or the fall or both at once and
