Paul Theroux - The Lower River

“I was a small boy when I first saw you,” one of the men said. He was old, toothless, in a tattered shirt, with reddened eyes, his skin shiny and loose like a reptile’s. “My father said, ‘That man comes from America.’”

“We thought America was in Europe,” Maso said.

“I never saw this man before. My ancestors, they were the friends,” Manyenga said.

They talked in this congenial way, in English, praising Hock, and finally Manyenga got up and began to thank the men elaborately, taking their hands in his, repeating his gratitude, and Hock knew it was time to go.

“What do you have in the pipeline?” Manyenga asked.

Hock smiled at the expression. “Nothing special. Just to see Malabo.”

“I can arrange, father.”

His duffel bag was tied to the rear carrier of the motorbike, and he swung his leg over and sat behind Manyenga. They traveled under the shade trees the short distance to the main road and, after riding a few miles south, raising dust, turned onto the back road to Lutwe, which ran parallel to the Mozambique border. In Hock’s time it had been a path; it was wider now but harder going. Manyenga settled the bike into one tire track and gunned it along the deep groove. After half a hour — twenty miles or so — Manyenga slowed the bike and plunged into the bush, not a road, hardly a track, just an opening in the high grass that led through the yellow bush to a clearing, a scattering of huts, the big upright baskets on legs that were granaries, the crisscrossed paths that marked the edge of Malabo.

Where the trees were greenest, on the banks of Nyamihutu Creek, a woman was beating a blue quilt suspended on a line. Near her a small girl was sweeping the smooth earth with a straw broom.

Though Manyenga had been shouting the whole way from Marka village, the engine of the motorbike kept him from being understood. Now that he pulled up at the hut, he said, “This is your home, father.”

“I can only stay a few days,” Hock said.

“You are welcome, father.”

The woman and the girl fell to their knees and called out their greetings, and children and older boys from the other huts came running. The village gathered, hanging back. He saw that they were afraid of him — some of the older ones were terrified. Their anxious faces made him self-conscious. He wanted to reassure them. He would have handed out money, but he knew it would have created a mob scene.

“My other wife,” Manyenga said of a scared-looking woman. “She was married to my brother.”

“And who’s this?” Hock asked.

The girl, too shy to speak, twisted her wraparound cloth in her fingers.

“Zizi,” Manyenga said, and hearing her name, the girl covered her face. “My cousin’s child. He died some two years ago. She was raised by her grandmother.”

Seeing that the girl had gone shy, one of the small boys ambled near her, seeming to limp, and chattered at her. The boy had twisted fingers and sores on his legs and a battered face, flaky patches where hair was missing from his head. He could have been the victim of a fight, but Hock guessed he was epileptic, with head wounds from continually falling to the ground — and now Hock saw that he was not a boy at all, but a disfigured dwarf, boy-sized, in rags, who could have been any age.

“ Moni, moni, ” Hock said, greeting the dwarf and cajoling him, to distract him from teasing the girl. And rummaging in his duffel he found some candy that he’d bought at the hotel. “ Mankhwala, ” he said — medicine.

The dwarf laughed and ate it, drooling, licking his fingers, then walked unsteadily on stumpy feet, giggling because the others were laughing at him and calling out an English word.

“What are they saying?”

“His name, Snowdon.”

Hearing his name, the dwarf said, “Fee-dee-dom!”

“What is that?”

“Freedom,” Manyenga said in his own way, friddom.

“You speak English,” Hock said to the dwarf, who made a face at him, then stuck out the quivering plug of his greenish tongue. He had the license of the fool, but the candy worked. “Medicine!” they cried. And though the girl did not look up again, Hock could see she was relieved that the dwarf was hobbling away.

“You can stay here, father,” Manyenga said. “The roof is bad”—it was thatch, the bundles loose—“because we had so many challenges. But it’s clean enough. Rest your body. My wife will bring water for your bath. Tonight we will have some chicken and rice. We can discuss your program.”

Another of those words. “I don’t have a program.”

“Your agenda, father.” Manyenga gestured, touching his ear. “Where is your mobile?”

“Cell phone? I don’t have one.”

“Not having?” Manyenga frowned, then drew his lips in a smile, as though expressing disbelief.

“Don’t want one.”

“Everyone wants a mobile.”

“Maybe that’s why I don’t,” Hock said, and saw that Manyenga was smiling broadly.

“Indeed, you are knowing what is best. You are a good example for partnering.”

Partnering — yet another. It was Zizi who brought the water in a basin, with a small chip of soap, and after Hock had washed, he lay on the string bed and let down the mosquito net that hung like a bridal veil, and he dozed, hearing the boys’ raised voices in the clearing, the sound of a ball being kicked. Where else in the world could you arrive unannounced and be welcomed on sight and given a bed? But Hock was still smiling at Manyenga’s choice of words — pipeline, challenges, program, agenda.

Seeing that it was growing dark in the hut, he got up and went to the door, where it was lighter. The sky exploded over Mozambique in a fiery sunset. He searched his duffel for the bag of gifts, then walked toward the rising smoke across the clearing where Manyenga was sitting in a chair. Another chair stood empty beside him.

Hock distributed the presents he’d brought. The ballpoint pen he gave to Manyenga, a shawl he gave to the senior wife, a pocketknife to the junior wife, some books for the children. And he set down a large can of powdered coffee.

“America,” the senior wife said, fingering the cloth.

Then the women served the food — slices from the goat leg that had been grilling on the fire, roasted corncobs, a bowl of nsima and stewed greens, plates of chicken and dried fish. Manyenga poured Hock a glass of nipa, and they toasted each other and drank.

The children sat a little distance away, and some other women were standing, holding babies in cloth slings.

Manyenga was talking, in English and Sena, and Hock nodding in agreement, though he slipped to the ground and rested his head against his chair.

He must have dozed, because he heard someone say, “Tired.”

He found himself on all fours, and then was helped to his feet. Accompanied by someone with a lantern, walking beside him but saying nothing, he tottered to his hut and crawled under the mosquito net into his string bed, his flesh inert, like clay.

He woke before sunrise, as a cockcrow tore at the silence and the darkness. He could not remember ever having slept so soundly: no dreams, a whole night with his mouth open, drawing shallow breaths. They had given him a good meal, killed a chicken for him, brought him smoked fish. He had been almost tearful, thinking, Suppose it had all changed and modernized? He’d have been devastated. But the place was still simple and still smelled of the marsh and the river and wood smoke. He had dreamed of this for many years, awakening in Malabo, his real life, the only one that had ever mattered.

He listened to his compact shortwave radio until it was light, and then he walked the length of the village through the scrub. In the courtyard of most of the huts, crouching women fanned the glowing embers of cooking fires. Hock looked into the woven barrels of the granaries propped near the huts, and was glad to see they were full of dried corncobs. He saw the schoolhouse in the distance — he would save it for the afternoon. It was like seeing an old flame, the thirty-year-old now seventy-odd, thin, pinched, gone in the teeth, with a wan smile. He continued walking to the road, and past it, to the creek.