Paul Theroux - The Lower River

He expected one or two of them to interfere with him on his way to the riverbank. But as on the day before, they turned their backs on him. Why did it seem a greater hostility that they ignored him rather than faced him with insults? He was shamed by his memory of bantering with them like the silliest safari tourist, believing he could deal with children. His years of teaching had shown him that, misleadingly so. No, he was the father of an ungrateful and spoiled child — that’s who he was, and here were more of them.

Yet in another sense these children were like a separate species altogether, feral and damned. A village of adults might have listened, might have been persuadable, might have understood his predicament, his need to get down the river and go home. But these children had an infantile indifference and probably no thought of him except when he was close by. They had no notion of his plight, perhaps no idea of what home or attachment meant; they were too small, too abused, too rat-like and lost. They had no sympathy, either, and if they seemed to him like an alien species — cold, weird, cruel, hungry, blighted, dim, with dirty feet — then he must have seemed to them like a hairy giant, big and pale, in a sweat-stained shirt, clutching a bag, who’d come ashore to pester them.

A fat stick of wood landed near him, hard, clacking on the stones — someone had thrown it. He whirled around and saw a small boy laughing, and just in time to bat another stick away. What to do? It was foolish to lob a stick at one of these tormenting children, and when he reprimanded the laughing boy, saying, “Stop that!” the other children hooted at him. They were small and unafraid and looked compact and indestructible.

So he walked on, and glancing back he saw a boy behind him, mimicking the way he walked, feet apart, arms swinging — and there was more laughter.

The children were fearless. He walked faster, trying to be obvious in ignoring them, but when he got to the riverbank he saw that the canoe was gone. The river was dark green and depthless in the morning light. The buoyant clumps of ragged hyacinth — flowers and roots — in the wrinkles of current scarfing through the reeds showed the speed of the river’s flow. Swimming was out of the question. There were hippos, crocs, snakes, and just as dangerous, the burrowing bilharzia snails. The Lower River was as the people on its banks said — a snake, a poisonous one.

A kingfisher came to rest on a reed, and there it swayed. When it flew off, Hock felt a pang at the ease of its departure. He hoped to see a passing dugout, the sort of boat that had brought him here. But he knew that because the border between Malawi and Mozambique was so close, this was essentially a no man’s land, avoided by most travelers and many fishermen.

Unshaven and dirty, his shirt wet against his body, his trousers heavy with dampness, the cuffs muddy, he sat on his bag and batted at the mosquitoes around his head. Hunger, and the lumps of undercooked food he’d eaten the night before, made his mouth foul, his teeth slimy, and the morning sun slanting in his eyes made his head ache.

The river surged past him, gulping and chuckling in the muddy hollows where it undercut the bank, and he was teased by its speed, seeing the torn vines spinning downstream. Meditating this way, he began to find his old composure, the strength he often felt in solitude. Yet he had to fight the other thoughts — that he’d been a fool to return to Malabo, that he should have raised an alarm there, that he’d abandoned Zizi with the lie “I’m coming back,” that it had been a mistake to attempt an escape downriver instead of to the boma at Nsanje.

Breathing deeply, making his intake of breath a hopeful prayer, he calmed himself, vowing, I will find a way out and never come back. But at some point in this meditation he must have let out a sigh or a sob, a sound revealing of weakness, because no sooner had he released it than another sound rose as a mocking echo, and another, and a flutter of low laughter and tongue clicks and whispers.

He turned and saw twenty gleaming faces, boys in front, girls behind them, some holding infants, all of them blocking the path. They laughed again, and now his heart beat faster, making him hotter.

He stood, tottering, and began to move — he was at the edge of the bank — and they stood too, advancing on him, crowding him so that he had to step back. And when he slipped on the mud and struggled to maintain his balance, they advanced again, a low wall of chattering children in dirty shirts, pressing him back to the muddy lip of the embankment.

The river flowed just below him, swirling against the two poles that served as a mooring, curls of green current encircling the uprights. While he watched, a large wide-winged dragonfly shot back and forth between the children and him, finally coming to rest at the top of one of the poles, where it became still and insubstantial. Then it flew off, and the sight of this insect floating freely through air, landing, then flitting away, gave Hock another pang and filled him with despair.

Seeing that he had edged back, the children pushed forward as in a game, and now, standing at the bank, Hock’s heels were just above the water.

He recognized some of the children — the girls he’d seen the day before tending the cooking fires; the small skeletal boy who’d mimicked his walk; the several girls carrying infants, drooling dirty-faced infants covered in brown flies; the small boys who’d been kicking the rag ball; the girl whom he encountered grilling the slices of cassava. He had spoken to some of them. None had been friendly, but neither had they been openly hostile. Where he was concerned, they had, it seemed, engaged in careless play. But now in a mass they were implacable, blocking the path, forcing him to inch backward, blank-faced in his helpless indecision. He hated them all, even the infants.

He wished for a snake, any snake, big or small. Twig snakes and adders sometimes lurked at riverbanks, to pounce on mice or frogs. He would snatch up the snake and brandish it as a weapon. The children, who were not afraid of him, were terrified of snakes, and they’d run.

They saw him searching the tufts at the embankment edge, and what he saw disgusted him: twists of their excrement and the crudded leaves, for this was also their latrine; they squatted here, too lazy to dig a pit near the village. And they were so small their bare bottoms did not extend far enough over the edge of the bank, so they fouled the edge where he was standing.

“Enough,” he said, his voice an involuntary shriek, and raised his hand. “Go back.”

He looked for pity in their hesitation, but soon they were laughing, and repeating, “Enough! Go back!”— Nuff! Go beck! — and thrusting their dirty hands at him, moving toward him, so near that he clung to the mooring posts while holding on to his bag.

More children had gathered behind the ones in front, the first to arrive, and now there were thirty or forty in torn and dirty T-shirts— Las Vegas, Red Raiders, Willow Bend Fun Run, Rockland Lobster Festival. They were enjoying his fear, the sight of him growing frantic. They knew the river was deadly, filled with crocs and snakes and hippos, and if he fell, the steep side of the river would trap him.

“Please,” he said in their language.

Seeing his helplessness, his humiliation, they laughed, they screeched, they repeated the word, mimicking his nasal voice.

He thought of lashing out, perhaps hurting one or two of them with a slap or a punch, but there were far too many of them, and if he injured anyone, he’d be in worse trouble. So far, all he had done was show up and be meek, but that had turned him into their victim.

“I came to help you,” he said. “I want to give you something — anything. What do you want? I’m from America. I can get food, I can find money for you. A boat — I can get you a big boat. Or a well for water. I can bring a machine and drill a well for you. Lights, books, medicine, what do you want?”