Jungle Temptation

The old man's voice was a low, steady hum, like the river we'd just crossed, and I nodded, though I wasn't sure I was listening to his words or just the sound of them. He was talking about the sago palms, how you had to wait seven years before you could harvest the starch, and how his father had taught him to read the wind by the way it moved through the fronds. I liked the way he said *seven years*. Like a promise. Like something worth waiting for.

I'd been in the village for four days. Four days of mud caked on my boots and the smell of woodsmoke in my hair and the strange, unfamiliar quiet that comes when there are no cars, no televisions, no phones buzzing with Haryadi's clipped messages about deadlines and dinner reservations. The quiet had been unsettling at first. Now I was starting to crave it.

Pak Nur walked ahead of me on the narrow path, his bare feet sure on the wet earth. His calves were thin but roped with muscle, and the tattoos on his shoulders, faded blue-black spirals, moved when he gestured. He was telling me about the time a crocodile had taken a dog from the riverbank, right in front of the children. I should have been horrified. Instead, I found myself leaning closer, wanting to hear the details, the way the water had churned, the sound the dog made.

"You're not afraid?" he asked, turning to look at me. His teeth were stained from betel nut, and his eyes were small and dark and very direct.

"Of crocodiles?"

"Of anything."

I laughed. It came out too loud in the stillness. "I'm from Jakarta, Pak. I've survived worse than crocodiles."

He didn't smile. "The city is not the same kind of danger," he said, and kept walking.

We stopped at a clearing where the light came through the canopy in long, dusty shafts. I took out my camera, a heavy Nikon that Haryadi had bought me for our anniversary three years ago, back when he still thought my photography was charming instead of a waste of time. I'd been shooting all morning, close-ups of bark, the veins on a leaf, a spider's web strung between two branches like a sentence I couldn't quite read. But now I turned the lens on Pak Nur.

He was squatting by a fallen log, examining something on the ground. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, and his skin was the color of old leather, wrinkled and spotted and utterly without vanity. I snapped a picture. The shutter clicked, and he looked up.

"What are you doing?"

"Documenting," I said. "You're part of the landscape."

He stood, brushing dirt from his knees. "I'm not a landscape. I'm a person."

"Then let me photograph the person."

He shrugged, but something shifted in his face. A softening. He let me take more pictures, and then, when I asked, he posed with me, his arm around my shoulder. The contact was brief but warm, and I felt the roughness of his palm through my thin cotton shirt. We took a selfie with the remote shutter, both of us squinting into the sun, and I laughed when he made a face. I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed like that with Haryadi. Maybe never.

The clouds came in fast, the way they do in the tropics, and the light changed from gold to gray in minutes. Pak Nur looked up and frowned.

"We need to go," he said. "The river rises quickly."

But we were too slow. The first crack of thunder was so loud I felt it in my chest. Then the wind hit, bending the trees, and the rain came not as drops but as a single sheet of water. I screamed, I think. I don't remember. I only remember the sudden, animal need to be close to something solid. I threw myself at Pak Nur, wrapping my arms around his waist, pressing my face into his chest.

"Pak! I'm scared, Pak!"

His body went rigid for a moment, then relaxed. His hand came up to pat my back, awkward and gentle. "It's okay, Bu. It's okay. Come."

He pulled away, just enough to take my hand, and led me at a run toward a small structure I hadn't noticed before. A hut, barely more than a roof and four posts, with a wooden bench inside and a raised platform covered with a woven mat. We ducked inside just as the sky opened fully.

The rain was deafening on the tin roof. I stood there, shivering, my clothes soaked through, and watched the world dissolve into gray. Pak Nur moved around me, calm and efficient. He took a glass from a shelf, poured water from a plastic jug, and handed it to me.

"Drink."

I drank. The water was warm and tasted faintly of earth. I handed the glass back, and he set it on the table. Then he went to a hook on the wall and took down a sweater, a faded blue thing that smelled of dust and, faintly, of me. My perfume. I'd left it here yesterday, I realized, and he'd kept it.

"Put this on. It's cold."

I took the sweater and pulled it over my head. The wool was scratchy and the sleeves too long, but it was warm. I sat on the bench and hugged my knees. The thunder rolled again, farther away now, and I flinched.

"We can't go back tonight," Pak Nur said. He was standing by the door, looking out at the rain. "The river will be too high. And there are crocodiles when the water rises. You don't want to meet a crocodile, do you?"

"No." My voice was small. I hated how small it was.

He turned to look at me. In the dim light of the hut, his face was all shadows and angles. "You can sleep on the platform. I'll stay here, on the bench."

I wanted to argue. I wanted to say that I was married, that this was inappropriate, that I should call Haryadi. But my phone had no signal, and my husband was miles away in a base camp, probably not even thinking about me. And I was so tired. So tired of being careful, of being proper, of being a woman who didn't cause trouble.

I lay down on the platform. The mat was rough against my cheek, and the wood beneath it was hard, but I was too exhausted to care. I turned to face the wall, away from Pak Nur, and closed my eyes. I could hear him moving behind me, settling onto the bench, and then the hut was quiet except for the rain.

I thought about Haryadi. I thought about the way he'd looked at me last month, when I'd told him I wanted to come on this trip. *Why?* he'd asked, not angry, just puzzled. *What's there to see?* I hadn't been able to explain. I still couldn't. I only knew that I needed to be somewhere he wasn't. Somewhere I could breathe.

A rustling sound came from outside. Not rain. Something else. I sat up, my heart pounding.

Pak Nur was already on his feet, his finger pressed to his lips. *Quiet.*

The wall of the hut creaked, as if something heavy was pressing against it from the other side.