Paul Theroux - The Lower River

“Welcome, father,” one of the old men said, rising from the log.

This man gave his name as Maso, and introduced the man next to him as Nyachikadza. Hock said that he knew both their fathers, from long ago.

Hock greeted the men formally, holding his elbow as he shook each hand, then said to Maso, “I’m going to Malabo. I used to live there. Can you send a message? I’m looking for the headman.”

“Festus Manyenga,” Maso said. He called to a boy sitting against a bicycle, holding Hock’s duffel bag, and told him to go to Malabo. “Tell Manyenga the American is here.”

They knew of the mzungu at Malabo, they said. They had heard stories about him.

Hock said, “Maybe it was someone else.”

“There was only one mzungu at Malabo!” the man Nyachikadza said.

And he explained: Hock was famous; he had attained the status of an almost mythical figure. He had built the school, which also served as the clinic for the monthly visits of the doctor. He had served as go-between for the White Father and the member of parliament, all those years ago. He’d presented them, at independence, with a dugout canoe, called a bwato, that could hold eight paddlers.

“Come,” Nyachikadza said, and led them all through the low spreading trees and across the hard-packed dirt of a courtyard, which was being swept by a woman. This was Marka village, almost unchanged from what Hock had remembered, an important village for being near the edge of the landing stage into the channel of the great marsh.

They sat before a hut and drank tea, Hock in the place of honor, on a low stool, next to a woven mat. Hock asked about the harvest and the weather and the fishing. To each question he got the same reply, not words; the men made regretful noises, clicking their tongues, meaning, Not good, but they were too superstitious to form words for their bad fortune.

As they talked of other things — the rains, the height of the river, their children — Hock looked around and marveled at the compact village and the sheltering trees, the cooling shade, the way the sunlight speckled the ground, the children playing, kicking a knotted ball of rags. The men sat on simple benches, a woman refilling their cups from a fire-blackened kettle.

The comfort Hock felt was the comfort of a homecoming — a friendliness, the gratitude of the old men, and the dignity of a ritual welcome. He felt important, even powerful, because they knew who he was — all that had been apparent from the outset. Hock wished that someone he had known back in the States — Deena, or Roy — could witness him here, the tableau of his calmly sitting among the elders in the remote village on the Lower River. At first he’d wondered if he’d been too hasty in dismissing the driver. Now he knew it had been right.

He slipped to the mat and fell asleep. Hearing voices, Hock saw three men entering the clearing from the road. The sun was lower, the air cooler.

“Manyenga?”

“Not Manyenga.”

The men were carrying a pole, holding it horizontally. A crocodile was slung beneath it — not a big one, hardly three feet long from snout to tail tip. The creature sagged on the binding, obviously dead, swollen from decomposition, its legs swinging limp, its jaw hanging open. It looked like a child’s toy, but an old one, from an attic.

“ Nyama, ” Hock said — meat. A croc’s tail was eaten in the Lower River.

But the men didn’t answer. Maso was giving them orders, obviously contradicting them, setting them straight, in an I-know-better voice.

“It was found dead in the marsh,” Nyachikadza said. “Just here. Too near.”

Now all the men became serious, eyeing the dead croc as though it was not merely an interloper but a menace that had been sneaked into the village.

“They are wanting to bury it,” Maso said, laughing in mockery. And to the young men he said in Sena, “Don’t bury.”

“Bunning is better,” Nyachikadza said in English.

“If you are burying,” Maso said, “anyone at all can dig it out of the ground and cut its liver, and poison us.”

“But the badness is,” one of the other older men said, and finished the sentence in Sena, which Hock believed he understood: The crocodile has to be completely destroyed.

The men spoke in a sagacious-sounding way when they used English. Hock complimented them on their fluency. Maso said that the older people spoke English because they’d had American-trained teachers, but the younger ones didn’t go to school.

“Paraffin,” Maso said to Hock.

That made sense: douse the croc in paraffin, reduce it to ashes.

They muttered a little more while Hock listened, and as he did, he realized they were being circumspect, talking about money. They needed money to buy some paraffin at the village shop, where there was a drum of it. Still, they were murmuring, discussing the problem softly. Hock sat at the edge of this talk, listening to the repeated word, ndalama —money.

“How much do you need?”

Maso looked up and said promptly, “Five hundred kwacha.”

“Okay,” Hock said. It was about three dollars.

“Or one thousand,” another man said. “Crocodile must be bunned.”

Hock called for his duffel bag. He took it aside and unzipped it so that no one could see what it contained — the fat envelopes of money. He extracted two five-hundred-kwacha notes and zipped the bag shut. Maso took the money with both hands, bowing as he did so, whispering, “Mastah.”

THE MOSQUITOES WERE humming in his dreams, torturing his head, whining in his ears, tickling his eyelids, inescapable. He woke clawing his hair and slapping at his eyes, and only then, just before dawn, in the thickened air like a suspension of ashes, breathing the mud walls of the hut, the dampness of the dusty floor, did he remember where he was. To keep the mosquitoes away he wrapped his head in the dirty sheet and lay back and laughed.

Someone had heard him wake. Someone was snapping twigs for kindling, a cooking fire began to crackle, a kettle lid was clapped down, and soon the clatter of enamel cups. A shy “ Odi? ” A small boy, moving forward on his knees, bowed his head and presented a cup of sweet milky tea. Hock gave thanks for his good luck.

At sunup he joined the men, sitting on a stool, eating a banana. The men were discussing yesterday’s crocodile, the sequence of particular events — the talk of evisceration, mention of the liver, and instead of a burial a cremation, conducted by Maso — as though to reassure themselves that they were safe. They were speaking so quickly, Hock found the argument hard to follow, but listening closely he heard above the words the blatting of a motorbike, growing louder. He looked up as it roared into the clearing.

“Manyenga,” one of the boys said softly.

The man parked his motorbike and approached Hock, saying, “The boy on the cycle said, ‘The American is here,’ and I said, ‘I am knowing him. My grandfather was his friend.’ Welcome, welcome. I am Festus Manyenga.”

“Hello, Festus.”

And there raced through Hock that feeling again, a lightness, a slackening in his flesh, of gratitude. He’d known the Manyenga family as important in Malabo. One of the older Manyengas, perhaps this one’s grandfather, wore a pith helmet, and pinned to his long-sleeved shirt was a brass badge, lettered Headman.

Now the ritual of hospitality was extended to Festus Manyenga: tea, some dry crackers, the offer of bananas, and friendly talk: about the harvest, the condition of the road, the shortage of cooking oil, and the news that Hock had come — what they had heard about him, speaking of him as the long-ago figure of their elders’ stories.