Paul Theroux - The Lower River

“How will he get to Magwero?”

“Marsden will lift him on my motorbike tomorrow.”

The very thought of such a trip, trespassing over borders, saddened Hock, as the thought of humble, perhaps hopeless struggle always did. He’d expected such struggle, but he hadn’t imagined so much would be expended in the effort of leaving Malabo and the Lower River. It made Malabo so remote. He was part of that remoteness.

“How much?”

“What you are willing, father.”

Hock nodded, hoping to appear noncommittal, but he knew that they had read his mind. They were masterly at discerning the nuances of gesture, a mere eye blink or a way of breathing revealed a state of mind. It was not sorcery; they were illiterate, and so they could read perfectly with every other sense. Hock thought that anyone who said literacy made a person brighter was wrong. Being illiterate, not speaking a language well, out of your element and perhaps feeling insecure, unnerved, and suspicious — all these made a person much more observant.

Because they saw that he had been moved by the boy standing there, and knew what he would do, they filled his glass again with kachasu and toasted him. They sent the unmarried girls, among them Zizi, to serve him more food, a cut of the impala meat, platters of grilled fish, and roasted slices of cassava.

The older girls, including Zizi, were bare-breasted tonight. Hock felt that they somehow knew this nakedness meant more to a mzungu, that they were appealing to his foreigner’s weakness, teasing him and looking for a reaction.

After the girls served him, the women sang, clapping their hands, and the girls sang with them, and danced before him, standing in a line. He knew some of the words: “Our father, our chief, our mzungu in Malabo.” Their skin shone with perspiration, and dust clung to it, creating a weird plastery cosmetic. Their growly harmonizing resonated in the pit of his stomach. He could separate Zizi’s voice from the others; it stirred something in him — a purring within him that answered her.

On any other night he would have excused himself and crept across the clearing to his hut, flashing his torch. But he was the guest of honor — Manyenga kept calling him nduna, minister— and could not leave, could not rise from his chair, was not allowed to choose his own food. They insisted upon waiting on him, the eager men, the solemn girls, the skinny boys, the cackling women, filling his plate, topping up his glass.

At last he called to the boy Simon, motioning him to his side. He gave the boy some money, folded under his fingers.

Everyone saw. Manyenga said, “You are our nduna, dear father.”

During the night, under the folds of his mosquito net, he conceived his plan. Then he dozed, and when he woke he thought it through again. It was so simple and spontaneous and seemingly foolproof he could not add to it or find a flaw. All he needed was an accomplice, and he knew he had one. After that, in his excitement, he could not sleep.

Or perhaps he had fallen asleep. The bump and scrape of bare feet on the veranda planks startled him, made him remember his plan. He got up quickly, pushed the curtains of the netting aside, and whispered to the figure at the window.

“Sister, come here. Inside.”

But Zizi froze at the words, which she’d never before heard from him. He cracked the door open, reached for her wrist, and she allowed herself to be drawn into the room. Her hard fingers tightened in his as he tugged further.

“Quick, get into the bed.”

Her face swelled with thought and became expressionless. She drew in her lips and pressed down, and she wrapped herself in her skinny arms, confused but stubborn.

Hock took her by her shoulders. Her skin was cool; she must have been crouching by the door awhile in the darkness. She dug her big toe against the floor. She was not resisting, she was bewildered. Quick, get into the bed!

She allowed herself to be helped beneath the mosquito net, and she sat and drew her long legs under the damp sheet that served as a coverlet. It all happened so fast that in spite of himself Hock was aroused — there she lay, the skinny shaven-headed girl in his bed, her fists jammed under her chin, her eyes wide open, looking anxious but not fearful. But Hock felt less like a lover than a father, tucking his daughter into bed. She seemed fragile on her back, her head on the crushed pillow, so dark against the sheets.

“Don’t be afraid,” Hock said. “Just stay here. If anyone knocks on the door, don’t say anything. Turn over, don’t let them see your face. Keep the net closed.”

She raised her head a little. “You are coming back?”

“Yes. I’m coming back to get you.”

He kissed her lightly, and tasting the warmth on her lips, kissed her again, bumping her teeth in his eagerness. And for the first time in the course of making his plan he hesitated, considered abandoning it, to stay beside this pretty girl. She would have allowed him.

“Don’t move,” he said.

Zizi began to sing in her throat, a frantic murmuring, as she did when she was anxious.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

He hated his lie, but it was the only way to get her to stay in the bed, under the mosquito net. And he hated his lie, too, because he was tempted to change his plan. In a crowded vision, standing in the hut, he was confronted by images of his life with her, the flight to Boston, his proud explanations to his friends: I’m her guardian. She deserves a better life. I knew her family. The clothes he’d buy — he saw her wearing them. He saw her sitting at his kitchen table drinking a glass of milk, saw her with an armful of books on the steps of a college. A good daughter. Smiling, because she seldom smiled here.

Those thoughts made him grim as he picked up his bag and slipped into the darkness, locking the door behind him, passing behind the house, cutting through the maize patch, a roundabout way to the road. And then he walked fast, trying to make time before the sun rose.

He reached the six-hut settlement of Lutwe as the sun, just bulging at the horizon, rinsed the darkness from the sky, and the day grew light, a pinky glow behind the trees, the sky going bluer. And before the sun blazed at the level of the low bushes Hock was at the crossroads. There he waited until he heard the rapping of the motorbike, and the warble of its rise and fall on the uneven road.

Seeing him, the driver of the motorbike slowed and came clumsily to a skidding stop. The boy Simon was seated on the back.

“Father,” said the driver — Marsden, Manyenga’s nephew, who’d been at the ceremony — and then he corrected himself, “ Nduna, ” and, correcting further, attempted “Meeneestah.”

“I’ll take this boy to Magwero,” Hock said.

Marsden said nothing but was clearly baffled. The engine was idling. He brushed at the flies settling on his face.

“It’s all right,” Hock said. “You can walk to Magwero. Or you can wait here and I’ll pick you up on the way back.”

“Chief Manyenga said to me—”

“This is the revised plan,” Hock said. “The new plan.” His words made the boy blink, and he was still batting the flies.

“The chief said—”

“I’m the chief.”

Marsden cut the engine, and both boys got off the bike, Marsden propping it on its kickstand as he swung his leg over. When Hock mounted it and stamped on the lever to start the engine again, the boys seemed bewildered. They backed away as though in fear from a thief, their thin bodies tensed in their loose clothes, on the point of fleeing.

Hock said, “Get on, Simon, you have to catch your boat.”

The boy got onto the back seat and steadied himself by holding Hock’s hips.