Paul Theroux - The Lower River

“You know where she lives?”

The eyebrows again, and the widening eyes that made the face lovely and innocent. All this time she had not opened her mouth.

“Nearby?” The Sena word was one of Hock’s favorites, pafoopy.

A scarcely perceptible nod that was unmistakable, and she drew in her chin for emphasis.

“How do you know her?”

Zizi went shy and knotted her fingers. She swung around as if to see whether anyone was listening, and then in a croaky voice she said, “My gogo, ” and then, unexpectedly in English, “My granny.”

After she’d gone, Hock realized that she had taken him into her confidence. She hadn’t wanted anyone to hear her. Perhaps she was the one person he could trust.

The presence of this tall skinny girl relieved his days, and when he considered that she was the granddaughter of Gala, he thought, Of course. “Auntie” meant many things, but “granny” meant only one: they were directly related. He could now discern a strong resemblance between Zizi and the Gala he had known as a young woman in Malabo, when he’d been a young man — two people in their twenties in a country that had just awakened from more than half a century of colonization. It had been a drama in Blantyre, a big event that Fogwill clearly recalled, the Duke of Edinburgh present as the Union Jack had been lowered. In Malabo it had been a party, schoolchildren dancing, villagers singing, and two days of drunkenness.

“But we are the same,” an old man had said to Hock then. “Maybe wuss.”

“No more British,” Hock said.

“In the Lower River nothing change.”

The man who had said that was Gala’s father, whom Hock had met at the dance performance.

“Gala’s not coming?”

“We are Christians. Myself, I was baptized at Chididi Mission,” the old man said, frowning at the bare-breasted girls, the sweaty stamping boys in the likuba dance, the spectators with fire-brightened eyes. The celebration had been a shock in the Lower River. It was not a patriotic display, with banners, parades, or the pious speeches of the large towns. It was two days of debauchery, a feast of smoked fish and rice, jerry cans of home brew — the frothy porridgey beer that women made of fermented corn — the riotous boys, the shrieking girls. Hock had been startled by the sudden eruption of hilarity, and he’d been afraid, too, because it was his first experience of Sena recklessness, a wild streak, and the binge drinking that had tipped into brawling and rape. Some boys had howled at him for being a mzungu.

Then it was over. No one spoke about how the independence celebration had gotten out of hand.

All that was in the distant past. He remembered the old man saying We are the same and Maybe wuss. But it didn’t matter. They were themselves. In most respects the Lower River had not changed. Perhaps they had never wanted to change and, in helping him put up the schoolhouse, they were merely humoring him.

That seemed to be a feature of life in the country: to welcome strangers, let them live out their fantasy of philanthropy — a school, an orphanage, a clinic, a welfare center, a malaria eradication program, or a church; and then determine if in any of this effort and expense there was a side benefit — a kickback, a bribe, an easy job, a free vehicle. If the scheme didn’t work — and few of them did work — whose fault was that? Whose idea was it in the first place?

That was probably Manyenga’s complaint: not that he’d cheated the charity he’d worked for, but by their very presence they’d taken advantage of him.

He could make the same objection to Hock, who (Hock argued) had arrived and tempted them with his wealth. Manyenga wasn’t at fault. Hock had asked to be fleeced by simply showing up, with his implausible story of how he’d once been happy there.

So he had to leave, there was no point in staying, but he could not leave until he had visited Gala. He needed to satisfy himself that he’d seen one person he’d known before, who would recognize him — especially Gala, someone he had loved.

IN THE TALL, fixed, vigilant way she stood when she was idle, Zizi reminded him of a water bird, head erect, her arms tucked like wings, one skinny leg lifted and crooked against the other, like the elder sister of those stately herons at the edge of the Dinde Marsh, the thin upright birds planted in the mud on big feet. Zizi’s feet were much larger than those of other girls in the village. She was perhaps only sixteen, but for her whole life she’d gone barefoot. Her splayed feet and thin shanks made her seem even more a water bird.

She blinked the flies away and sniffed, a slender sentinel, solitary, looking unloved. When Hock appeared on the veranda in the morning, she flew across the village clearing for the kettle of hot water, the dwarf chasing her with his hopping puppy-like gait.

Just a few days had gone by since Zizi had told him who she was. In those days, though, knowing he had to see Gala, he’d decided to leave Malabo for good and put the Lower River behind him. His decision to go made him impatient with the place; he was unforgiving. It was all hotter, dustier, more ramshackle than he remembered. No one was sentimental about the old days — few people were alive to recall them, and the elders were all dead. These days, an elder was a thirty-five-year-old, like Manyenga, still a youth in Hock’s opinion, though a chief. And Manyenga ruled a decaying village.

Memory mattered, and it demoralized Hock to think that there was no one alive who knew the vigorous village that Malabo had been, and if the unashamed booze-up at independence had scandalized Hock, it at least had shown the vitality of the place. Hock wanted to meet someone who remembered him. In a significant way he was (as he saw it) seeking permission to go home.

But he needed to be covert. If word got out that he was seeing Gala, the villagers would look for a reason why. They might guess correctly that he was making his farewells, and if they knew he was leaving, they’d fuss, they’d make excuses for him to stay. He knew that he was not welcome, merely tolerated, and yet the paradox was that they did not want him to leave. He was a nuisance in the village, as all guests and strangers were, because they were parasitical and had to be catered to. Meager and hostile meals usually drove them away. But Hock had money. If he left, they’d lose it. He was like a valuable animal that needed special attention, a creature prized for its plumage, resented for its upkeep, even as its gorgeous feathers were plucked out for their adornment.

He watched for a chance, and one morning, three or four days after Zizi’s revelation (“My granny”), she had returned with the kettle, and he saw the dwarf in the distance, out of earshot. He said hurriedly to Zizi, “I want to see your granny.”

Zizi showed no surprise; she did not react. Had she heard him?

“Can you take me to her hut?”

She faced him, flashed her eyebrows, sniffed, and continued to pour the hot water into the teapot.

“Today?”

She clicked her tongue against her teeth, a yes.

Only after she’d gone to pick up the bowl of porridge from Manyenga’s fire did Hock consider that Zizi had never said no to him, never refused him anything, never asked for anything, had always submitted — silently, waiting for him at the edge of the veranda like a shadow, anticipating that he’d want tea, bringing him food, dealing with the laundry. And she seemed to imply, by the way she shadowed him, that she needed him for protection from the noisy boys in the village, those turbulent orphans; protection from the dwarf and from Manyenga, who acted like a tyrant toward all the children and the women, too.