Lost in the Jungle (25 page)

I stood there frightened, staring helplessly at the two rivers. I was certain that the map hadn’t indicated another river emptying into the Tuichi on this bank before San José. I knew the map by heart, and according to it, the next river on the right-hand bank was far beyond San José. Could I have passed the village without realising it? San José was located up in the hills and was not visible from the Tuichi. I was supposed to have spotted it by the wide path and the balsa rafts on the shore. I might not have noticed and passed it when I was walking in the jungle, not along the bank.

Perhaps this river simply wasn’t charted on the map. But how was that possible? The Ipurama and the Turliamos were marked, and they were no bigger than this river. The map wasn’t dependable. Maybe this river had been overlooked because it was so shallow. I didn’t know what to think, whether to backtrack and look for the landmarks on the opposite bank or go on, not knowing where I was. I finally decided to go on walking for one more day. Since I hadn’t reached the village, I was bound to get there tomorrow. If not, then I would have no choice but to turn around and go back.

The remains of a path through the jungle lent credence to my assumption that I hadn’t yet passed the village. The path continued, a narrow, difficult trail that took me about fifty yards from the Tuichi. What I found there surprised me and restored my hopes: traces of a campsite: two poles tied together with vines and a few palm fronds resting upon them. It was an old campsite. The vines were withered and dry, as were the fronds.

I couldn’t have passed San José yet if there was a campsite here, I reassured myself. It also meant that San José couldn’t be as close as I had assumed. Why would anyone bother setting up camp if it was only a few more hours’ walk? I concluded that I must have at least another full day’s hike ahead of me. It made sense. This was the path the villagers used on their way upriver to Curiplaya. It was reasonable to assume that they set out in the morning and set up camp after a day’s walk. That put me a day from San José. I figured that this must be the first camp that they used on their way.

My spirits rose. I was sure it was the first camp; hadn’t I been walking for four days already? So, I’d be there tomorrow.

You did it, Yossi. Congratulations. You made it. Tomorrow night you won’t be sleeping alone in the jungle. You’ll eat your fill. You won’t be exposed to the rain and other dangers. One more day, Yossi, one more day.

It had stopped raining. The path led a little way past the camp and then dwindled and vanished altogether. I figured that this must be where the natives crossed the Tuichi. It was a convenient place to cross. The wadi was muddy. The stream ran through its centre and was only about a foot deep. I crossed to the other side.

The land here was completely flat and well forested. There were no hills or steep inclines. The jungle was dense, and vines were draped from the trees amid bushes and reeds. I could neither go forward nor find traces of the path. I kept on looking for broken branches or machete strokes, with no luck. I returned to the riverbank, searching for signs of where the natives had resumed their march, where the path would be. Sudden claps of deafening thunder set the jungle quaking. Hell, it was going to start pouring again. I had better find shelter. I could use the remains of the camp back on the other side of the river. It would mean wasting the two hours of walking time I had left that day, but the rain slowed me down anyway. Tomorrow the weather would surely be more benign, and I would hurry on.

I crossed back to the camp. Thunder clapped, and lightning lit up the sky. The wind came up. It was going to be a terrible storm. I hurriedly set about reinforcing the remains of the camp. I replaced the vines with fresh ones and went into the jungle to look for palm fronds. It had already started raining. I had never seen such a downpour. The drops came down with a sharp sting. I tore off about twenty fronds. The effort wore me out, but I didn’t give up. I arranged the fronds so that they were closely overlapping one another across the poles. I covered every crack through which the rain might seep. I knew that it would take a thick layer to keep the wet out. The jungle outside was well flooded over, as if the end of the world were approaching. From a distance the Tuichi looked turbulent and gloomy.

I hurried into my shelter. Water leaked through in several places, but I didn’t dare go back outside. I tried to rearrange the fronds from inside. I got out my night time necessities: the rice and- bean pillow, the rubber sack to cover my feet, the nets to use as blankets, and the poncho to wrap around everything else. I took off my shoes and wrung out my socks. Up until now I had managed to keep my feet in fair condition. I had only one more day to go. I prayed that they wouldn’t let me down now.

Drops fell steadily through the leaks in the roof onto the poncho and dripped down to the ground. Outside I could hear the raging storm. In a very short time the ground became muddy, then soggy. I lay drenched in my shelter, miserable, trembling with both cold and fear. There was nothing I could do but pray to God.

The storm grew worse, and my shelter began to blow away, leaving open spaces through which the water streamed down upon me. I wanted to cry, to wail. I wanted away from this horror.

Why, why, did this have to happen to me? Please, God, help me. I’m afraid of dying.

Each minute seemed an eternity, and I had nowhere to flee. It required fierce concentration to immerse myself in fantasy. This time I went home.

I am married and have small children. My brother, Moshe, and I start a ranch on huge tracts of land we have bought in the Upper Galilee. We stock it with cattle I bought in Bolivia and Argentina of a quality not to be found in Israel. Most of Israel’s meat is imported from Argentina, but we have a good climate and unused open spaces for grazing. Why shouldn’t we raise our own cattle?

My brother and I work hard. The ranch prospers. We erect a huge house and all live together: my brother, his wife Miri, his daughter Lilach, and his other children, and of course me and my wife and our children.

We send our children to the regional school in a nearby kibbutz...

‘Ahhh!’ I came out of my fantasy with a scream. There was an ear-splitting din, and the ground shuddered. The trees around me, their roots left with nothing to hold on to, were crashing down one after another. When a tree of that size falls, it takes a few other trees with it.

God, help me! Save me! God...

The uproar died down, and the ground under me grew still. I heard only the rain and the roar of the Tuichi. Drenched and clammy with sweat, I forced myself back to the Galilee.

My brother and I rise at six, have our coffee in large mugs with thick slabs of cake. We leave early for the range on horseback. We check the fencing, take a count of the herd, check on a pregnant cow. At nine we head back home. The kids have already eaten and gone to school, and now the cook devotes herself to us. She prepares omelettes, salads, cheeses. Thick bread and butter, cream of wheat or rice pudding, hot chocolate, and her own special marmalade.

I don’t know the source of our misfortune, but our fabulous cook leaves our employ. We place an ad in the newspaper: ‘Wanted: gourmet cook. Residence on ranch in Galilee. Good terms and pay.’

We receive a great many applications and set up interviews. I am in charge. I sit in the office at the ranch and meet the prospective cooks. Each describes in detail the delicacies she or he knows how to prepare. I interview them one after another, listening to descriptions of every imaginable kind of food. This was my favourite among my fantasies since I could stretch it out and go into the minutest details of every dish and its preparation: Moroccan, European, hot and spicy, Polish dishes, Chinese food, and exotic concoctions. There is no end to the variety of food and no end to the line of applicants.

Outside it seemed that all the biblical prophecies of doom had been fulfilled, and there I was, by myself, the only human in this vast jungle. No other people, no settlements. Only San José, somewhere up there in the hills on the other side of the river, and I might at any instant be crushed to death by a falling tree. Yes, it could happen at any second, and it’s the only thing that will pacify this jungle, let it settle peacefully back into its former calm. It wants to expel this arrogant interloper, this man who dared to think he could survive here alone.

I went on fantasising until dawn. From time to time I was startled out of my daydreams in a panic, thinking my end had come, but despite everything someone was still watching over me.

The morning rays cast their light on nothing good. The rain still came down in torrents. The wind kept howling against my shelter, rattling its rickety poles, but they held fast. My breath under the poncho kept my wet body warm, and my fantasies kept my mind occupied, but I wanted to get up and start marching. I had to get out of the jungle, no matter what. Kneeling, I packed my things, slung the pack on my back, snatched up my walking stick, and dashed outside.

Good Lord! Rain flooded down. I turned to start in the direction of the river and stood rooted to the ground. The wadi was flooded. The entire riverbed was brimming with water, as deep as ten feet, I guessed. Incredible. A shallow stream, a wadi that had been almost dry, had overnight become a wide river, almost over- flowing its banks. The Tuichi, which flowed by about fifty yards from where I stood, looked threatening. Its waters were black, and the current so swift it seemed that someone had filmed the river and was showing it at double speed. So many enormous trees floated downstream that the water itself was barely visible. The river had washed over its shores, gathering up all that booty. I assumed that the signposts that I had so laboriously erected, indicating my presence and the direction in which I was going, had also been washed away. I cursed the day.

How was I going to make it across the river? I started away from the Tuichi following the course of the unknown river upstream, but I didn’t get far. There was no path nor hope of finding a place to cross. I had to go back to my shelter.

I was furious with myself. If I were to stay put, that meant spending another entire day in the jungle, and I wouldn’t be sleeping in San José that night. I had had such high hopes of making it. There was nothing that I could do about it, however. There was no choice but to wait for the storm to blow over, for the river to recede so that I might cross it and be on my way.

I lay back down. My empty stomach was beyond grumbling or growling. I now felt the hunger with my entire body, a primordial need to eat, but all I had were the fruits of my imagination.

I suppose close to half an hour had passed when I became aware of water running down my back and shoulders. How could that be? I had a thick roof of leaves. Cold water reached my buttocks and feet. Then I grasped what had happened and had no time to spare. Both rivers were flooding, and I, fool that I was, hadn’t seen it coming. The ground was level and flooded in a flash. I hurriedly knelt and shoved everything into my pack, including my socks and shoes. I didn’t have time to close the rubber sack but rushed outside in my bare feet and began running. The water was already up to my ankles and would soon be knee deep. I ran in a panic but realised almost immediately that I had forgotten my walking stick in the shelter. I wasn’t about to abandon my trusty walking stick. I set my pack down on a little rise and ran back.

By the time I had reclaimed the stick and had returned to the pack, the water was already past my waist, and the rise was flooded. The pack was floating, and I rushed toward it before it could be carried away. I put my arm through one of the shoulder straps and grabbed hold of a tree. I could feel the water tugging me toward the river. If I lost my hold on the tree, I would drown. I started swimming away, kicking hard, and succeeded in grabbing onto the next tree. All of my muscles ached, and I was afraid that they would give out on me, but the palpable fear of death lent me new, unfamiliar stores of energy. I pushed myself away from the tree with a great thrust, reaching from tree to tree. Once I missed my grasp and was swept away, but the jungle was dense, and I was rammed into trees until I caught hold of one of them. There was no chance of my climbing a tree and, anyway, I might have been stuck up there forever. I would be better off trying to make it to higher ground.

For once I was oblivious to pain. I was quite simply fighting for my life: pushing away, grabbing, pulling, snatching instants to catch my breath. I went on like that for half an hour until I came upon a hill that wasn’t flooded. I stood there panting, water pouring out of the holes in my pack, my clothing drenched and torn, rain beating down upon me mercilessly.

I got my socks and shoes out and pulled them onto my battered feet. The red rash was spreading, and I knew only too well what was in store for me. I was bitter, despondent, and furiously angry that the whole world – all the mighty elements of nature – had ganged up on one solitary man.

On the other side of the hill the jungle had flooded only waist high. Walking was a torment. I sank into the mud, and each step was excruciating, for the mud had seeped into my shoes and socks and had begun to abrade the skin. Places I had passed so easily yesterday presented dangerous obstacles today. Every tiny wadi had become a stormy deluge. Every broad expanse was now a treacherous swamp. The area was suddenly overrun with frogs. Where had they all come from? Their croaking made a din, but, strangely, I didn’t see a single one. The storm had left its traces everywhere. Broken trees lay like corpses on the ground, leaving gaping, flooded craters where they had been uprooted.