Among Flowers by Jamaica Kincaid Read Free Book Online Page A

sometimes along places that could only accommodate one person passing at a time, so someone would step aside, squeezing themselves into the brush or into a substantial rock.
    On the way to Num, we passed by a nicely built house, it looked like a domicile I was used to; it had a house, a barn, and some other outbuildings. This scene of house, barn, outbuildings, did not look prosperous; it looked more like toil and eking out an existence. It looked industrious. I stopped for a rest outside a building that looked like a place where the cows would be kept, and I enjoyed this scene of familiar domesticity. Not long after, while walking all by myself, Dan and Bleddyn in front of me, Sue behind me, I heard Sue let out a muted, sympathetic scream. From behind me, she could see that my back was covered with blood, my nice blue high-tech synthetic T-shirt was covered with my red bodily fluid. A careful search was made of my clothes and my body but the leech was not found, and this left me with the feeling similar to one I had experienced when I was young and living in New York City and was always afraid of drug addicts breaking into my apartment and stealing my things so that they could then go and buy the drugs they craved. My fear of leeches became way out of proportion to the danger they actually posed. Every step I took was more dangerous than the leech burying itself in my upper back. Dan took a picture of my bloodied back and later when I took off the shirt, I was shocked at how much blood had stained its surface.
    We got to Num, camped in the center of town, and sought out some beer. There was none at first, but then someone had some. The lack of readily available alcohol would come to be evidence of the presence of Maoists, but we did not know that then. The beer was warm. Num never, ever had ice. Num had no electricity. The beer was delicious. We found a seamstress and that was a good thing, for in the three days since we left Kathmandu we had shrunk. In fact, if there had not been a seamstress our clothes would be just fine. But I now see that we were aware that this would be our last chance to participate in life, that part of life in which you needed things done for you, luxurious things; your clothes needed tending, and your clothes were beyond necessary. We employed the seamstress to take in our underwear, fasten buttons, tighten pants, mend something or other. She did it well and we were very pleased.
    That night there was a thunderstorm unlike any I had ever heard or lived through before. Dan and I were in our tent, tightly snuggled into our sleeping bags. It started to rain and the rain felt like water missiles directed at our tent. I was sure at any moment Dan and I would be drenched with water and part of our sleep routine would be sleeping in rain. But the tent remained upright. It was the thunder that was really frightening and remains so even in memory. The sound of the thunder was above and below us, far away and near at once, but whatever direction it came from, however near or far, it was not like any thunder I had ever experienced in real life or the imagination. There was that clapping and that roaring sound that I associate with thunder, but in this case it seemed to come from deep within the earth and the mountains that surrounded Num, and suggested that there was a more profound earth with mountains that was beyond Num. The warlike attack of rain and thunder continued throughout the night and I slept through it, and I was anxiously awake during it and then I slept through it again. We woke up to the continuing rain and then saw that we were completely locked into a thick mass of clouds. We could not see anything beyond twenty feet. We began to plan the day ahead, sitting around in Num, waiting for the weather to change days later, for the rain and the clouds that shut us in looked as if they would be that way forever. Books to be read were set out, journals to be updated, little bits of gossip to be