Kattis. Didn’t you bring food with you?
Ota. I brought two apples and four liters of water.
Kattis. How long were you up there?
Ota. Eight hours.
Kattis. Weren’t you hungry?
Ota. Yes. That apple was the sweetest apple I had.
Kattis. I bet it was.
Ota. I wasn’t expecting to be up there for that long.
Kattis. What happened?
Ota. I followed the wrong trail and ended up at a ridge where I couldn’t go any farther. I wasted two hours following that trail and two more hours following it back to find the right one. That’s when I had to stop to have an apple.
Kattis. Didn’t you see anyone?
Ota. No one was up there. I imagined my death up there. No one would have found my body.
Kattis. It must have been lonely.
Ota. It put perspective on things, on my life. Here I was, sitting down in the middle of a jungle, tired, dirty, cold from my damp clothes. I felt like nothing. Strip my clothing and I’m no better than a hungry animal, so I decided to do that.
Kattis. You took off your clothes?
Ota. I shivered against the wind. I felt humiliated. It was almost unbearable.
Kattis. Did you continue without your clothes?
Ota. I crawled down to a level path where there was this tree with fruit on it. I didn’t know what kind fruit it was, but fruit were the size of cherries, but tasted more like guava with tiny edible seeds that rolled on my tougue. I climbed the tree and ate all of them.
Kattis. Weren’t you afraid they were poisonous?
Ota. I didn’t care. After trying one, I had to eat more.
Kattis. But you did put your clothes back on, right?
Ota. Yes, but it was difficult to put damp and mud caked clothing on.
End. Clinging Damp
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