Paul Theroux - The Lower River

The water of the pool beside the stream, perhaps a hollowed-out part of the embankment that served as a landing place, was perfectly still, reflecting the far bank, the few palm trees, a scrap of cloud in the sky, and after a moment a slim girl stepping into it. She kept her chitenje cloth wrapped around her skinny legs, tugging it up a few inches so it wouldn’t get wet.

As she stepped farther into the pool she kept raising the cloth, hitching it up against her legs. Now the hem was at her knees, now above her knees, still rising as she made her way into the deeper water.

She had a bundle on her head — laundry, he supposed. Maybe she intended to wash it at the nearby reach of the river, where there were rocks to lash it clean and the current was swifter and clearer, not the scummy green of this pool.

The solitary girl hiked her cloth up her bare thighs as she waded, the level of the water rising. Now the loose wrap was bunched in her fists, which held it at either side of her hips, the morning sun shining through her legs, flashing on the water as the cloth went higher.

The whole luminous process of the girl slowly lifting her chitenje wrap as she waded deeper into the still pool was one of the most teasing, heart-stirring visions he’d ever had. Yet she wasn’t a tease. The cloth inched up with the rising water, and when it exposed the small honey-colored globes of her buttocks and she half turned to steady herself, the surface of the green pool brimmed against the patch of darkness at the narrowness of her body, a glint of gold, the skirt-cloth twisted just above it, Hock felt a hunger he had not known for forty years. He stared at the spangled sunlight in the gap between her legs.

He must have sighed, his desire was that strong, because the girl glanced over and bowed and clutched herself in a reflex of modesty. Then she turned away and was soon waist-deep in the pool, her cloth sodden, spread and floating around her like the blossom of a long-stemmed flower, as she waded away, seeming to float like a dark aquatic plant. It was the dead cousin’s girl, Zizi.

Hock sat on a log watching fish nip at flies, disturbing the blur of scum in the stream. Then he returned to his hut. He shaved, wrote some notes in his journal. He unpacked his duffel bag, sorted his clothes, and hung up the empty duffel to keep it away from rats — he saw droppings on the floor, from rats nesting in the thatched roof.

All this, and it was not yet seven-thirty.

Announcing himself, calling out, “ Odi, odi, ” Manyenga visited after eight and invited Hock to breakfast. Now Hock saw how young he was, probably in his twenties, jaunty in a baseball cap and blue shirt.

“You were going about early,” Manyenga said.

Someone had seen him. Now, an hour later, everyone knew.

“I slept so well,” Hock said. “I hate to leave.”

“So don’t leave,” Manyenga said.

They were standing before the hut, Manyenga frowning at the roof.

“But the roof must be replaced. I want to get an iron roof for you, but — eh! eh!”

Hock knew that grunting meant money.

“What about fixing the thatch? There’s plenty of grass.”

“The people who make the thatch are all dead. Even the women. Even myself I am not knowing. We are needing an intervention.”

Hock knew he was asking for money for the roof, and what made him smile was the clumsiness of it — his first morning. Usually such a request came later. But Hock was not dismayed; he was more at ease knowing that Manyenga was unsubtle, and easier to watch. But he was surprised, too — it had all happened so fast.

He said, “We can talk about it.”

“I’m going to the boma today. It is so far, but maybe they are having some iron sheets.” He mumbled, seeming to search for more words. “It’s a big priority.”

Hock knew that Manyenga, in his mind, had already received the money, and bought the iron sheets for the roof, and kept the change, and perhaps put aside the scraps to sell or trade. It only remained for the transaction to take place, for Hock to hand over the money.

“I have provided this table for your projects.” It was at the corner of the veranda; Hock hadn’t noticed it. “You can take your breakfast here. I will find you later, father.”

The girl Zizi brought the basin again and watched him as he washed his face and brushed his teeth. She returned with a plate of nsima, a puddle of oil in the center, and a bowl of vegetables in gravy and some tea. She stood in the shade. He spoke to her but she averted her eyes, perhaps ashamed from his having seen her hitching up her cloth in the stream.

As he was eating, Hock saw a creeping shadow come to rest: the little man, the bruised dwarf Snowdon, hunkered down by the veranda, rocking on his stumpy feet. Neglect and probably fits gave him the look of someone who’d been badly beaten. He was sad, his ugly face lopsided as if in pain, helplessly small, his wounds bright with infection.

Hock beckoned him over and gave him a lump of nsima. He crammed the whole lump into his mouth, crumbs on his fingers and cheeks, and chewed it with his mouth open.

“Snowdon,” Hock said.

Hearing his name, the dwarf opened his mouth wide in satisfaction, showing Hock the half-chewed food on his greenish pitted tongue.

Hock leaned toward him and said, “Rubber buggy bumpers.”

The dwarf hugged himself and gabbled and, sitting down and smiling, seemed to understand it as a phrase of welcome.

It was only nine o’clock. Hock smiled, thinking of the day that stretched ahead — the long overbright day of village somnolence, supine in its stillness, under trails of wood smoke and the confident boasting of the strutting crows and the why-why-why of the nagging shrikes.

HOCK SAT OVER his notebook, smoothed it with the flat of his hand, poised his pen, tried to remember the date. What to say? Two lines, one about food, one about sleep; day and night. Superstitiously he avoided writing anything negative. He’d asked for this, and yet he pondered the clean pages of the notebook and his only thought was that he’d brought it from Medford, to record his memories. So far, there was nothing in Malabo he wanted to remember.

Around noon, he walked to the maize patch, picked up a hoe, stepped into the dimba, and began chopping the dry earth with it, scraping the weeds away. Two older boys saw him and laughed. He knew why: it was women’s work. One of the boys held a rhino beetle on a length of thread; he had pierced the beetle with a needle. The beetle rose, trying to fly away, and fell heavily as the boy tugged it toward him.

Hoeing and hacking at a patch of dry shucks, Hock startled a snake. Deftly, he pinned its head down with the hoe blade, pressing it, then picked it up, and as he pinched it just behind its head, its long whipping tail caught his arm and wrapped it with the whole coil of its body.

“ Kalikukuti, ” he said. A twig snake, a juvenile, hardly two feet long.

The two boys stepped back, murmuring “ Njoka, ” snake. The one with the beetle let go of the insect, which dropped to the scattered trash of the corn shucks and scrabbled away, dragging its thread. Hock stepped out of the maize patch and the boys ran, stamping in the dust. Hock peered at the snake’s odd horizontal pupil. He brought the snake back to his hut and put it into a basket on his veranda and covered it. Sitting near it, he felt less alone.

He slept through lunch. In the afternoon, he walked again to the stream, retracing his steps of the morning — perhaps this was the beginning of a routine? All the while he was followed by children, some of whom carried homemade toys of wire twisted into the shapes of cars and wagons.