Paul Theroux - The Lower River

For a moment Hock believed that the man was summoning the African to help him. But instead of approaching him, the African returned to the stainless-steel water tank next to the fence and resumed his work, using a rag to wipe off the dried polish and to buff it, shining it, so that a whole oval patch, head high, gleamed like a mirror.

Watching him work, Hock saw his own face reflected in the metal of the shiny tank, distorted because of the curving cylinder but clear enough for him to be appalled, terrified, and now he knew what the man had seen. He had not looked at his face for a week, since leaving his hut in Malabo, where he had a small mirror on the wall.

His first thought was, I am a monkey. His hair was wild, clawed to one side but stiff with caked dust and dried sweat. The grit in his eyebrows thickened them, made them seem hairier, and the bristles in his week-old beard were darkened with dirt and streaked with muddy sweat, still damp. His eyes were puffy, bloodshot, and miserable — the sad and scary eyes of a madman. Yet when he opened his mouth in horror, he saw that his teeth were white, and this whiteness made his face more monkey-like. The filthy face pushed against the fence, the dirty hands, the torn clothes, must have seemed so desperate to the agency man. The sight of himself devastated Hock. He had never imagined that he could have been so reduced, so degraded. He had become almost monstrous in his days as a fugitive on the river — or was it in Malabo he’d begun to degenerate? If so, it was no wonder they’d taken advantage of him. He looked as though he’d lost all self-respect. Judging from this wild face in the gleaming side of the tank, which the curve of the stainless steel distorted even more, he was an unwashed fugitive, the strangest sort of white man in the African bush — a dirty one, helpless and stinking and probably insane.

Yet he still had his good wristwatch, his small duffel bag, his medicine, his passport, his money, a change of clothes. The bag was filthy, too, but it was valuable, and he saw it as a friend.

“ Bambo —father,” Hock called to the African in the uniform, raising his voice so he could be heard above the generator.

The man winced, pretended not to hear, and went on polishing the tank. Hock, unable to bear seeing his dirty face, had moved away from the tank.

“Water,” Hock said. Getting no response he said, “ Madzi, ” and repeated it.

He thought he saw the African’s lips form the word pepani — sorry — but he could not be sure. The man glanced back at the bungalow, and while buffing the tank he stooped and picked up the plastic bottle he had used to dampen the washcloth. He wiped the mouth of the bottle on his shirt and then stuck its short neck through the chain-link fence.

Hock crouched and drank, but clumsily: the water slopped at his mouth and ran down his chin. He was aware that, with the bottle tilted this way, and in his submissive posture, he was like a baby, or a zoo animal being fed through a fence. He had never felt so helpless, but he was grateful to the African, and when he finished, gagging from the greedy mouthful, he thanked the man.

Without acknowledging Hock, obviously afraid that the white man might have seen him from the bungalow, he put the water bottle aside and set to work again. He had polished enough of the tank now so that Hock could see his upper body — horrible, wild man, desperate man, crazy man. Nothing this dirty man said could possibly be true.

Back on the field, among the scavenging children, facing the helicopter, he had felt he was at a low point. In the days at the village of children, cowering in the abandoned hut, sleepless, watching for hyenas, he’d felt he was at his wits’ end. And on the riverbank at the frontier, looking for a passing canoe to take him downriver, he’d felt abandoned. At Malabo, too, on the night of his decision to leave, he’d felt full of despair.

But none of these episodes could compare with the way he felt now, crouching on the wrong side of this perimeter fence, filthier than he’d ever been in his life, saying thank you to the African in the uniform for a gulp of the cloudy wash water.

“It tasted like champagne,” people said at moments like this. But no, this mouthful of warm water tasted foul, and the sour aftertaste of failure lingered in Hock’s throat and nauseated him.

He knew then that he had come to the end of something. He was defeated. He could not imagine anything worse than the degradation he felt on this sunny late afternoon in no man’s land, his reflection in the shiny tank staring back at him.

Two white men walked quickly toward him on the gravel path. The slow walk of the man earlier had signaled unhelpfulness; this brisk stride indicated pure hostility.

“You’re still here?” the first one said — the man from before, in the Hawaiian shirt.

The other one wore a bush shirt, bush shorts, and heavy boots, and seemed military and almost familiar. Both men were so clean, so intimidating, their cleanliness like strength.

“I know you,” he said.

Hock said, “Please help me. Send a message.”

“You’re the guy from the field, from this morning, when we were making the drop.” He turned to the other man, saying, “He was with those kids from the villages. He was trying to score a bag for himself. It was chaos, all his fault. We had to scrub it. That’s why I came back early. He put us off schedule.” He snapped at Hock, “How’d you get here?”

“He wouldn’t tell me who he was with,” the other man said.

“I am warning you,” the man in khaki said. “Get out of here the way you came in. If we see you again, we’ll shoot.”

The African, listening, looked fearful, and when the man in khaki gestured, he went back to polishing the water tank, his eyes widened in terror.

That fear penetrated Hock. He picked up his bag, and for the sake of his dignity he said, “You’re going to hear about this from the authorities. You’ll be sorry. I’m going to report you when I get back.”

“Mister, the way you look, you’re not going to make it back.”

Hock straightened and slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder. He stepped into the bush — he was still less than six feet from the fence, staring at the men. It occurred to him from the way they watched him that these men were unfamiliar with the bush, perhaps afraid, that they traveled in and out in the helicopter and had no sense of the path. Hock looked around, wishing for a snake — a fat one, a viper — that he could seize and shake at them like a thunderbolt.

“I’ll make it,” Hock said.

But when he turned, and ducked into the bush, and saw nothing but the narrow track with the faint impression of the motorcycle’s tire marks, he felt tired; and dispirited, away from the men, he sat down on a boulder. Almost immediately he was stung by ants. He slapped at his legs, he rubbed his arms. He walked farther, crossing to the far side of the steep bowl-like valley, wondering which direction to take. Looking around, he saw movement, a human figure. Leaning forward to see better, he heard mocking laughter. He knew who it was.

THEIR OWN LONG late-afternoon shadows floated on the path in front of them, leggy torsos in the red dust. They tramped this lengthening darkness to the whine of cicadas, and before they reached the lip of the valley the sun had dropped beneath the level of the trees, and flights of mouse-faced bats filled the air, darting like swallows. While it was light enough to gather firewood, Manyenga parked the motorbike under a tree and they went in search of dry sticks. They piled the wood but waited until dark before they lit it, because the fire was to keep animals away, hyenas or baboons or biting lizards, and to repel ants and flying insects.