Paul Theroux - The Lower River

He was fleeing, he knew. He could have ridden the motorbike to the boma, but he would have been seen and probably detained. The river was better — he could lose himself in the bush. He wanted to get away, to vanish across the Mozambique border. The thought of distancing himself from Malabo excited him; the idea that he was breaking free of Malawi made him joyous. He had a change of clothes, his little radio, his passport, his money: everything he needed.

In the stern the boy Simon was asking a question. Hock didn’t hear the question, but he heard the answer.

“It is there.”

The boy said in English to Hock, “Reevah.”

Sunlight spanked the water ahead with such brilliance the current showed as muscles beneath bright scales on the turbulent surface. The boat nosed through the last thinning wall of reeds and shot out of the mouth of the channel, where it was caught and tipped by the wide flow of the river. The bow was yanked into the current and then the whole dugout was carried sideways along the stream. One of the paddlers wiped his face on his shirt as the other used his paddle blade as a rudder, steering the boat away from the tall bank of reeds. And just then, in a scoop in the reeds, a little bay, a hippo raised its blotchy head and was so startled by the boat he opened his jaws wide. Hock could see the reddish flesh of the mouth and the blunt pegs of its thick round teeth and the raw mottled skin of its fat body. He yelped — his first cry of joy in many weeks — and he pointed.

“You!”

Paddling more easily now, the men kept the boat in the current, sliding its beam crossways in the stream from reach to reach.

“We eat them,” the first paddler said in Sena.

“People here never ate them before,” Hock said, and again in speaking of the past he seemed to be referring not to another time but to a distant country. “What is your name?”

“Lovemore.”

“Why do you eat hippos, Lovemore?”

“Because we are hungry.”

The other paddler gave his name as Dalitso — blessings — and it was he, not Lovemore, who spoke a little English. Hock offered some of his oranges and tangerines to them, but they refused all food. Simon ate an orange, removing the peel in fastidious pinchings, such delicacy in a dugout on a river flowing through the bush.

The paddlers drank water from their plastic jug, and they rolled cigarettes and smoked. Hock knew from their glassy eyes and their concentration that they were smoking weed.

“ Chamba, ” he said.

“ Mbanje! ” one said, using the slang word.

Even in the hottest hours of the day, as Hock dozed under the shirt he spread across the gunwales for shade, the paddlers kept on, fueled by the weed smoke. The banks of the river were more clearly defined now, steep and sculpted flat, like the walls of a ditch. They could not see beyond them — no trees were visible, no high ground, only now and then a break in the bank where a green stream leaked out, or a sandbar at the edge where a small bumpy green croc was sleeping.

“Where is Mozambique?” Hock asked.

No one spoke, though one man jabbed his paddle at the opposite bank.

Toward midafternoon Hock saw an island of low huts, thatched with black decaying bundles of straw. Wondering whether it was a Sena settlement, he asked idly, “Who lives there?”

“Dead people,” one of the paddlers whispered.

Hock blinked and an ache of fear tugged at his throat.

A mile or so below that island — of graves, of ghosts? — they came to a wide muddy embankment where the broken hull, bare ribs, and rusty ironwork of a large wooden boat had been pushed onto the foreshore to rot. It was the only sign of habitation he’d seen since leaving Magwero. As they drew closer, he could see a shed, a sloping landing, and a man at a table under a mango tree. The man wore the khaki shirt of officialdom, including a brass badge on his pocket.

“Mozambique,” the paddler Dalitso said, easing the dugout against the landing.

Hock climbed out, glad for the chance to walk, relieved that the day had gotten him this far from Malabo. He helped them haul the boat onto the landing, then climbed the embankment and walked toward the man at the table.

“Passport,” the man said.

Hock took it from his pocket, smiling at the frontier — the man in his clean shirt, the table, the stamp and ink pad.

“You speak English?”

“No any Englis.” He examined the passport, moving the pages with his thumb. “Visa — forty dollar.”

“So you do speak English.”

“Visa,” the man said. He held up four fingers. “Forty dollar.”

Why am I happy? Hock asked himself. I am happy because no one knows me here.

At the small shed beyond the frontier post, Hock bought a box of salted crackers, a can of beans, some bottles of beer. He saw that the paddlers were building a fire, preparing a meal of nsima and stew, fussing with tin pots, scraping at the thick water-and-flour mixture.

He offered Simon a bottle of beer and sat with him on the embankment, on plastic beer crates, facing the river and the reddening sun. Already the day was cooler, and the slanting sunlight gilded the swarms of insects that streamed over the river like flakes of gold.

“Thank you,” the boy said, swigging beer.

“Tomorrow where do we go?”

“To Caya, on the Zambezi.”

“And then?”

“Find a lorry to Beira. Or maybe a bus.”

“How far to Beira?”

“One overnight. Then a bus to Maputo. Maputo, it is the capital city. Then Jo’burg.”

“I want to go.”

“It is your decision, father.”

“I helped you with money.”

“Yes, father.” Simon drank his beer slowly, a small mouthful at a time, as though rationing himself. He said, “I want a bright future for myself. I want to help my family with money. They are suffering too much. Maybe I can help my country, too. I can work, sure. I am willing and able, that is the goodness.”

“Did you learn English at the school in Malabo?”

“No, in Chikwawa. We have no school in Malabo. We have nothing in Malabo.”

Hock was about to lecture him, to tell him that once, many years ago, there was a school in Malabo, which had a library and teachers. There was a clinic, a monthly visit from a missionary, a plan for digging a well, and another plan for electricity. There was a church that was sometimes used as a village hall. But he said nothing, only smiled, and when he finished his bottle of beer he said, “Ask these people if they have a bed for me.”

“I will ask.”

Hock tuned his little radio, found some faint music, and listened, growing sad. The sound of the radio made him feel more remote, as though he was listening to the earth from distant space.

“They have a bed for you, father.” He led Hock to one of the nearby sheds. Seeing Hock with the radio to his ear he asked, “How many kwacha does that wireless cost for buying?”

“I don’t know,” Hock said. “Here, you can listen. You might learn something. You sound like a self-improver. Give it back to me tomorrow.”

A woman opening the door of the shed said, “ Ndalama. ”

Hock gave her five dollars. She tucked it into the fastening across her breasts and handed him a small towel. This he spread across the hard pillow on the shelf that served as a bunk, two planks that had been fixed from one wall to the other.

He lay in the hot stifling darkness. The small room stank of kerosene and dirt, and it was airless, the door closed, the bolt shot. It had no windows. It was obviously for storage, not a bedroom. Yet he was tired, and he slept, and when he woke and walked into the freshness of the morning, the river sparkling, he was happy again.