Paul Theroux - The Lower River

“Jack. I am not having.”

“We’ll stop a car. We’ll borrow one.”

Chuma looked into Hock’s face, seeming to defy him. He said, “Are you noticing any cars?”

They were standing in the sun, breathing hard, their heads pounded by the heat, knowing they were helpless. And the whine of the locusts made it worse, reminding them they were alone. Chuma’s forehead was beaded with sweat. He took off his sunglasses. Unmasked, his face was weak and damp. He dug out his shirttail and lifted the whole front of his shirt to wipe his face. Hock walked a few steps, and when he looked back Chuma was unbolting the spare tire from the trunk. He set it against the car with care, and stared at it, and with sudden fury kicked it.

The only shade was a low thorn tree just down the road. Hock walked to it, but when he prepared to sit he saw a smooth termite mound caked against the lower trunk. He stood for a while, then wandered back to the car, where Chuma was scowling at the tire.

Hearing the roar of an engine, Hock looked up to see a new white van with a gold logo on its side speeding toward them in the center of the road, like a locomotive on a track. Hock waved his arms but to no effect — the vehicle tore past them, its tires chewing at the road dirt, throwing up stones and leaving them shrouded in dust.

Chuma said, “The Agency. They are giving to the people here,” and in a mocking voice, “They are mzungus from your country!”

“They didn’t stop!” Hock cursed and batted at the dust the vehicle had left. “So what’s the plan?”

Because of Chuma’s big sunglasses, all that Hock saw was the lower portion of his face, seemingly impassive.

Hock stood apart from him, watching the dust settle. An hour passed. He kept checking his watch, dreading that they would be stuck there in the night. Looking up from his watch, he saw a boy approach on an old bike. As the boy wobbled by, Chuma spoke to him sharply, not like someone in trouble, but in a domineering way, making the boy wince.

“What are you saying to him?”

“He must get some men and boys from the village. He must help us.”

The boy looked stricken and confused. Hock showed him some money. He said, “ Ndikufuna thandiza. We need help. You understand?”

“Sah,” the boy said in a hoarse voice. He mounted his bike and rode away.

“He won’t come back,” Chuma said.

And for another hour and a half, under the tree, Hock believed Chuma was right. But the boy did come back, with four laughing men, who laughed harder when they saw the car, lopsided on the gravel at the sloping roadside. One of them was carrying a crowbar, holding it less like a tool than a weapon.

They spoke to Chuma. Hock heard the words “jack” and “ palibe ”—none — and more laughter. Without hesitating, the men walked into the bush and came out hugging big rocks, one apiece, which they piled near the flat tire. They repeated this, bringing boulders from the bush and adding them to the pile of football-sized boulders. When they had enough, they pushed some under the axle and the others against the wheels to prevent the car from rolling back.

Using the biggest boulder as a fulcrum, and the crowbar as a lever, they lifted the car, three of the men snatching at the bumper to raise it as the boy added smaller boulders under the axle. This took almost half an hour, the men resting between thrusts of the crowbar, examining the height of the flat tire. They asked for a spanner — they used that word — and loosened the nuts. At last the tire was off the ground and able to turn. They removed the nuts, and when the wheel was off, Hock could see the way the axle rested on a pile of boulders and fitted-in rocks, an ancient but indestructible arrangement, as neatly made and as symmetrical as a stone altar.

One man bounced and rolled the spare tire from the place where it had fallen after Chuma had kicked it. They fitted it, tightening the nuts. And when they were done they removed the boulders from in front of the wheels and pushed the car off its pillar of rocks, rolling it forward.

Hock gave them money, each man a thickness of kwacha notes. They touched the notes to their foreheads and laughed some more and bade Hock a safe journey.

In the car, Chuma said, “You gave them too much money.”

“They saved our lives,” Hock said, suddenly angry, because Chuma hadn’t helped or so much as spoken to the men. Hock felt a pent-up anxiety from watching the primitive display, the laborious work of levering and carrying and piling boulders.

“They are just village farmers,” Chuma said.

“They know more than you.”

Chuma did not reply, but Hock could see that he had stung him.

Hock calculated that they had four hours of daylight left. Then they were passing the road junction at Bengula, and were following the course of the river, on the west bank, throwing up whitish dust and heading straight into the sun, toward the Lower River. By late afternoon they were in Nsanje.

“Keep going,” Hock said.

“You said Nsanje. This is the boma.”

The district commissioner’s house was a ruin, Bhagat’s General Store was boarded up, the railway station had been abandoned, but the greeny-black river brimmed at the embankment, and at this hour of the day the pelicans still roosted on the dock posts at the landing. Hock raised his eyes, looking for the bats, and was heartened to see the sky thick with them, fluttering and swooping from the riverside trees.

“The village I want is farther on.”

“That is extra charge.”

“It’s twenty miles,” Hock said.

“More money,” Chuma said, with menace in the words.

“Stop the car,” Hock said. The driver was so rattled he kept going. “Stop the car — I’ll walk.”

“It is far, sir,” Chuma said, with that same jerkiness of fear in his face.

“It’s not far. I know where we are.” The driver glanced at him. Hock said, “No extra charge.”

And down the road two miles, at Marka, Hock signaled for him to stop, and the driver said, “ Iwe, ” in the familiar form—“You!” But it was an anxious appeal, like a cry of help. Then he saw the men sitting under the tree and said, “They are waiting for you.”

“Yes,” Hock said, but he knew better. Even in his time, it had been the usual place in Marka for men to sit, a log under a mango tree. The logs were never moved, the mango trees never cut down for firewood. Yet the men murmured when they saw Hock, and they shouted a greeting.

Chuma got out of the car but stayed back, smoking a cigarette, watching with fascinated distaste — these yokels at the edge of this ramshackle village, tearing the fiber from sugar cane stalks with their teeth. Chuma seemed uneasy, eager to leave.

“What time you coming back, bwana?”

The air was so still, his cigarette smoke clung to his face. He slapped the smoke but kept puffing on the cigarette.

“You can go,” Hock said.

Chuma relaxed. He was released. The sun slanted into his face. The bush pressed up against the road, and some of it flopped over the tire tracks. The river was not visible, but its smell was in the air: the stagnation, the mud glow, the bittersweet decay of crushed hyacinths, and — strongly, part of the same heaviness, like hot damp fur — a human smell.

“I’m not coming back today,” Hock said.

The great soft cloud of white dust raised by the departing car closed over it as it rocked in the wheel ruts of the narrow road, going much too fast, north toward the boma, the horn blaring at something unseen. Even Hock found the departure a strange breach of etiquette. The man should have lingered a little, eaten something, accepted some bananas or a cup of tea, handed out a cigarette or two.