‘When did it happen?’ Ronnie’s voice sounds measured on the other end of the line.
‘Less than fifteen minutes ago.’
‘How did he land?’
‘Flat on his back, but –’
‘Did he break his back?’
‘He broke his lower left leg, the bone is exposed. But he’s not paralysed.’
‘All right.’ Ronnie stays silent for a while. It’s so terrifying that Camilla has to leave the cabin and walk onto the marshy grounds, pressing her phone to her ear.
‘What happened exactly?’ Ronnie asks.
‘It’s raining, isn’t it? One big puddle. It worked, but only slowly. You guys said we had to do it discreetly. We were given shitty material. Nothing to secure ourselves with, just shovels and raincoats. I’m sorry, but what did you expect? He tried to climb back out, but there was some kind of shift, some kind of … All that rain. The problem is the width, there’s nothing to hold on to. You’re digging over here, then the ground subsides over there. He slipped.’
Camilla starts shivering. The wind is a constant, here, on the other side of the wall, where there are vacant, ramshackle flats where even dogs won’t set foot anymore. She shuffles towards the edge of the pit.
‘What if someone sees us?’
‘We don’t have any stations over there, Camilla, so then it’s up to you.’
Camilla thinks back to that day, that one day in the sun with Diego. That was such a long time ago. In that meadow, three days without a mission, which meant three days sprawled out in the grass with bellies full of beer and rice cakes. She felt so sluggish when she climbed on top of him. His body short, broad, calm, receptive like an old chalice. She stuffs her phone into the pocket of her trousers, gets down on her hands and knees.
‘Ronnie is coming,’ she yells over the edge of the pit. Diego is lying there stiffly, half absorbed by mud and rainwater, his dark curls stuck to his temples from the fall, the muck, his head shaking no. He shuts his eyes, bares his teeth.
Camilla goes to get a tarpaulin, pours hot water into a thermos, crushes six painkillers and stirs the powder into the water. She puts her anorak back on and stuffs a blanket into her backpack, along with the thermos and some bread. The sky consists of grubby orange wisps. It’s started drizzling again. On the way back to the pit she curses and kicks their truck.
Diego’s body seems to be sedimenting, that’s how far it’s sunk into the mud. She carefully climbs down and starts building a shelter out of the tarpaulin.
‘Camilla,’ he moans. ‘Hurts, left lung, when I breathe in deep.’ All of a sudden he vomits all over his own shoulder.
A mixture of bile, blood and rain.
She gives him a sip of warm water to drink, wraps him up in the blanket. She feeds him some bread and covers the vomit with lumps of mud. She avoids looking at the awkward, L-shaped position his lower leg is in, dabs the sweat off his brow and neck.
‘You’ll have to stick it out for a day,’ she says. ‘A day. Then Ronnie will be here.’ She wonders whether she should knock him out and drag his unconscious body out of the pit. Would it be able to handle it? Would she?
‘Just wait a day,’ she says. ‘What’s one day? One day is nothing. You could throw it away just like that, like rubbish. We’ll laugh about this later. Together with Ronnie and the others. We’re just animals, two predators sitting in a pit. No one can take us, we’re bloodthirsty monsters! Two animals, Diego.’ He starts mumbling.
She climbs back out of the pit. She watches the rain hitting Diego’s tarp, and watches Diego staring back at her. Then she goes into the cabin, eats what’s left of the bread while standing at the kitchen counter, sits down on the couch, buries her face in her hands and starts crying.
She’d just climbed onto that body of his, and Diego had let her. As if his core was connected, with an invisible tube reaching from his bones to a place deep inside the earth. His body, in the grass, his body half made of grass, crushed or absorbed, not really human anymore, in part because of how it was lying there all relaxed. Fully open. That’s how she liked it. He held out his hand, a fist, thick and as hot as magma. She had rolled on top of him, grabbed both of his hands. An ant had crawled over his nipple, she’d licked it away. She was sitting with her knees as far apart as possible, so that he could go deeper, and he had become no more than a pipe, his dick was a message. He’d kept his eyes closed, his mouth slightly open, as she set the pace. She could see his tongue, the tip of it between his teeth, so endearingly pink. She put her fingers in his mouth and he started sucking. Afterwards, they’d sauntered over to the little lake, naked. He sat down in the water, bent her over his knee, and watched as he came trickling out of her, as he washed away. Then they went again, on the pebble beach. He pulled her hair so hard it went white before her eyes. After that they drove back into the city, him behind the wheel, her hand resting on her gun.
The evening falls, the night. The day breaks. No screams, no calls for help. Maybe I did fall asleep for a while, Camilla thinks. Maybe it came bucketing down, maybe he drowned. Or maybe a wolf came, another predator. Maybe he’s bitten off his own tongue. She is sad that they hadn’t slept together more often.
Maybe, if we survive this, they’ll give him a place in the city to recover, and I can go visit him, we can watch TV together, blowjobs every once in a while, our own kind of friendship. But the thought of him sitting in some lounge chair and her kneeling down in front of it – no, she thinks, it would be better if he’s dead, if I go outside now and find him drowned in a shallow pool of water.
She gets up, looks out the window at the pit, the puddles. From where I’m standing, you can’t see a thing, she realises, no single sign of life or an accident or death or silver or bullets. You can only see mud, mud and grey and flats and wet.